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More "Grasp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... essential part of the course of religious study prescribed at Oxford, and they had engaged from an early period a large share of my attention. Each treatise on the subject, taken by itself, appeared to me to have great argumentative force; but when I tried to grasp them all together in a higher act of thought, I was sensible of a certain confusion, and inability to reconcile their fundamental assumptions. One either formally stated, or virtually assumed, that the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in our modern life. The evils of our modern Christianity, the low tone of religion, the small grasp of Christian truth, the irreligious ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the value of any writer's work you must take his range into consideration. Kipling stretches, in emotion, from deep seriousness to exuberant laughter; and his grasp of character is quite firm and sure, whether he deal with Mrs. Hawksbee or with Dinah Shadd; with a field officer or with Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd; with the Inspector of Forests or with Mowgli. He knows the ways of thinking of them all, and he knows the tricks ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... beside it, excitedly asking: 'Who in the name of wonder are you?' He answered, 'I am King, sir.' For the moment I did not grasp the thought that the object of our search was attained, for King being only one of the undistinguished members of the party, his name was unfamiliar ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... shrieked the colonel, writhing in the grasp of the men who held him, "are you going to allow a senseless, wounded man to be murdered before your eyes? Oh, how could anybody ever mistake you for a gentleman for an instant?" he added, with withering contempt; and then turning his head ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... that matter of ancestral dignity, it gave me no trouble. Such a possession comes, I think, to little harm while a man keeps it in his own hands, and only falls to pieces when it gets into the grasp of a bad woman. Have we not seen half a dozen, nay, a dozen, such debacles in our own time? And I contend that the degenerate scion of a great house who goes to the wrong side of the footlights for his wife is a criminal, and deserves all that may befall him. I bade ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... as she greeted him. Yet a subtle smile on her face showed that she was not surprised by the visit. Shirley quickly outlined the occurrences of the dinner hour. When he asked her opinion, for he had learned to place a growing trust in her quick grasp of things, she walked ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... fortune offers another chance to a military leader who has once failed to gather the rich harvest which she has put into his grasp. Yet the German Emperor presents, together with his great General Staff, one of the few instances in history of a Commander-in-Chief so soon being given a splendid opportunity to retrieve such mistakes as those of ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... then, all that the Kingdom and People had, even to their Skins, has hardly been thought sufficient for their Kings." An awakening Caution to Americans! Lest by tamely submitting to be plundered, they encourage their Plunderers to grasp at all ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... and other healing agents. We expect him not only to diagnose the disease—to tell us exactly what is the matter—but also to be able to predict with, some degree of certainty the course of the malady. Even the nurse of the day must show some grasp of the principles ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... That's the way I feel about that. If you want to go around whittling up our educational institutions you can do so; but you will have to purchase them afterward yourself. I don't propose to buy any more damaged school furniture. You probably grasp my meaning, do you not? I send you to school to acquire an education, not to acquire liabilities, so that you can come around and make an assessment on me. I feel a great interest in you, Willie, but I do not feel as though it should be ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... intimation of her father's marriage which she had received, and reeling backward, she would have fallen had not Walter supported her. Quickly rallying, she advanced toward her father, who came to meet her, and whose hand trembled in her grasp. After greeting each of his children he turned to present them to his wife, wisely taking Carrie first. She was not prejudiced, like Mag, and returned her stepmother's salutation with something like affection, for which Lenora rewarded her by terming ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... the huge prison ship maneuver into position and sink noiselessly to the ground. It gleamed dully in the afternoon sun, tangible proof of Earth's long reach and powerful grasp. A hatch opened, and a landing stage was let down. The prisoners, flanked by guards, marched down ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... of Hayes was, on the whole, an admirable one. The problems which he faced were varied and difficult, but most of them were met sensibly and with success. To be sure, he did not grasp the social and economic forces behind the monetary agitation; nor did he have the insight and originality necessary for attacking the problem of industrial unrest as it appeared in the strike of 1877. But neither did his associates, nor his successors in the presidency ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... to have you talk, as in your latest letter, of the making of yourself. It seems so much more possible than that I could do the same. But I am a miserable groping creature, cast on a sea of doubt, rejecting one spar to grasp another, and crying all the time against the storm, for help. I do not know another man who has tortured himself so insistently with the problems that are unsolvable. You are firmer in your grasp, and when you get something ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... number of portraits; and while she painted comparatively few subject pictures, she arranged her models in so picturesque a fashion that, as in the example here given, her portraits have great charm of composition. With a virile grasp of form, tempered though it be with grace, Madame Lebrun offers an interesting example of woman's work in art; and, while she has nothing to concede to the painters of her time, is no less interesting as showing that by force of native talent the woman of the early part of the century ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... more usual, if a narrower—sense of the historical method; and here, too, Carlyle was a pioneer. He was among the first in our country to grasp the importance of studying the literature of a nation, as a whole, and from its earliest monuments, its mythological and heroic legends, downwards to the present. The year 1831—a turning-point in the mental history of Carlyle, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Po I-k'ao of having brought the animal into the palace with the object of making an attempt on the lives of the King and herself. But the Prince explained that the monkey, being only an animal, could not grasp even the first idea of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... hence must be a materialized Spirit. The trick is simple and highly deceptive, as any one can prove for himself by requesting a blindfolded friend to bare the left arm to the elbow, then let the experimenter grasp this bared arm, near the wrist, with the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, closing them around it tightly, and as he does so, asking the owner of the arm to note that this is his left hand, then let the experimenter, without relaxing this hold, stretch the remaining fingers and thumb ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... chattels, I could not help interposing somewhat of my authority in the affair. "Hold, hold, son!" says I, "these things are all mine; but as I have several of you who will all be equally pleased with them, though, as the first finder, you may be entitled to the best share, you are not to grasp the whole, you must all have something like an equality; and as to some things which may be equally useful to us all, they must be set up to be used upon occasion, and are to be considered as mine and your ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... us. With us, O Soul! Of this brief utt'rance canst thou grasp the whole?— Nay, comprehend one attribute of God, The Maker, Sovereign, Him who at a nod Can hurl all worlds to wreck, and with a breath Can wake a Universe from night and death, And clothe in Beauty's robes of richest bloom Ten thousand worlds ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the sapphire out of her grasp; and yet she could not wear it on her hand. She had thought of the tear-shaped pouch of gold which it was her custom to wear; but the slender length of chain that linked it to her neck was too frail for such a precious weight. At last she had fastened it around her neck on the strongest ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... flapper saved him from that. She came in, quiet but businesslike, and in a low yet distinct voices aid she wished it to be perfectly over at once. She did not relax her grasp of Bean's arm after she approached him, and he presently knew that something solemn was going on in which he was ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... when the future looms up before him he shrinks back from the contemplation, for the sins of the past throw their shadow over the future. He has houses, money and land, but he is a pauper in his soul, and a bankrupt in his character. In his eager selfish grasp for gold, he has shriveled his intellect and hardened and dried up his heart, and in so doing he has cut himself off from the richest sources of human enjoyment. He has wasted life's best opportunities, and there never was an angel, however bright, ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... never would have happened but for Palus' instantaneous grasp of the situation and lightning decision. Any other charioteer would have reined in or tried to swing round to the right; he lashed his team and guided them so perfectly that, with not a hand's- breadth to spare anywhere, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... panelling he could advance without seeing into the corridor. He was within a foot of the opening. Convulsed with fear, he put out his hand quickly and tried to pull the heavy oak on its hinges by the projecting bevel, but it was too heavy—he must look out in order to grasp the handle. The cold drops trickled down from his brow and he breathed hard, but he could not go back and leave the door unclosed. With a suppressed sob of agony he thrust out his head and arm. In a moment it was ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... enter into some more profitable, though perhaps less pretentious, employment than that of either soldiering or sailoring; that they would toil—with their hands, if need be—until they should accumulate a sufficient sum to return and recover the ancestral estate from the grasp of the avaricious usurper. They did not know how it was to be done; but, young, strong, and hopeful, they believed it might be done,—with time, patience, and industry to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... of surprise escaped the father, nor was any question asked, or reply given, for several minutes; each appearing to await the moment when he might speak, without betraying womanish curiosity or childish impatience. The white man seemed to take counsel from their customs, and, relinquishing his grasp of the rifle, he also remained silent and reserved. At length Chingachgook turned his eyes slowly toward his ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the wording of some of these sermons is beyond the grasp of the children for whom it was intended. Two things are to be noted in this connection. First, a child resents being talked down to. He soon detects a condescending smile and mock affability in a speaker. And when he detects these he closes ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... sun-burst of Les Chouans after this darkness-that-can-be-felt of the early melodramas. Not that Les Chouans is by any means a perfect novel, or even a great one. Its narrative drags, in some cases, almost intolerably; the grasp of character, though visible, is inchoate; the plot is rather a polyptych of separate scenes than a connected action; you see at once that the author has changed his model to Sir Walter and think how much better Sir Walter would have done the thing. But there is a strange air ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not seen any at the weapon's flash, but his question was answered a moment later, for there arose from within and without the hut a chorus of wild yells. At the same time Tom felt small arms grasp ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... charioteer, "Spake then for nought those wise and holy men Who cast the stars and bade us wait the time When King Suddhodana's great son should rule Realms upon realms, and be a Lord of lords? Wilt thou ride hence and let the rich world slip Out of thy grasp, to hold a beggar's bowl? Wilt thou go forth into the friendless waste That hast this ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and large, Mr. Ridgway is the most capable, energetic, and far-sighted business man I have ever known. He has a bigger grasp of things than almost any financier in the country. I think you'll find he will go far," he said, choosing his words with care to say as much for Waring ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... during which the Guardian had conducted its sane and conservative business life, it had gathered into its grasp a great many desirable adjuncts and aids to the smooth and proper operation of a first-class fire insurance company. Its agency plant, while not one of the largest, was second to none in the character and ability of the agents themselves; its force of office and field ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Vidler's foot, which was most fortunate both for him and myself, for it was my weight that prevented him from being thrown, and, holding on for dear life, I was dragged clear of danger. The suddenness of the movement jerked my gun from my grasp, and as Vidler possessed no weapon we were defenceless, and it would have been madness to think of ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... basque trimmed with silver buttons, and the high brown moccasins so dear to feminine Navajos. The orchestra was vocal, the bucks again furnishing the music. After circling around the spectators a few times the squaw decided on the man she wanted and with one hand took a firm grasp of his shirt just above the belt. Then she galloped backward around him while he was dragged helplessly about with her, looking as sheepish as the mutton simmering in the kettle. Other squaws picked ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... we have such divergent ideas on this subject is that so many people write about it who have had no experience in farming, while on the other hand there are few farmers who can state the case so the public can grasp the most ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... master's ancient friend, And always known the favorite of the duke, And, as I know, our lady's treacherous lord! Oh, Holy Mother, that to villain hawks Our dove should fall a prey! poor gentle dear! Now if I had their throats within my grasp— No matter—if my master be himself, Nor time nor place shall bind up his revenge. He's not a man to spend his wrath in noise, But when his mind is made, with even pace He walks up to the deed and does his will. In fancy I can ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... warmth of the greeting, and Dick smiled with gratification as he extricated himself from their grasp and tried to shake hands ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... to the desire of the villain in the purple, now that his father, by showing himself to the people in the 'toga pretexta', had set the seal to their basest suspicions. The thought that henceforth he could never hope to feel the grasp of an honest man's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a distance were now heard. "They are coming," said she to Brown; "you are a dead man." He was about to rush out, when the gipsy seized him with a strong grasp. "Here," she said, "here, be still, and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... from the preconceived opinion that the conception of Right must be a positive one, and then attempts to define it, will fail; for he is trying to grasp a shadow, to pursue a spectre, to search for what does not exist. The conception of Right is a negative one, like the conception of Freedom; its content is mere negation. It is the conception of Wrong which is positive; Wrong has the same significance ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... generous disposition, and won the honest liking of men who had always looked with suspicion upon aristocratic, to say nothing of Royal, efforts in their behalf. This was another illustration of the difference between Heirs Apparent to the Throne. Imagination fails to grasp the thought of the Stuarts or the Georges, when holding that position, trying to help the poor or uplift the labourer! Speaking at a meeting in London on January 12th, 1887, Lord Mayor, Sir Reginald Hanson, said: "All those who have been engaged in this scheme (the Imperial ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... his wonderful success in the post of Inspector of Target Practice in the United States Navy. That success was due not only to his intimate knowledge of gunnery, but also to his attractive personality, charm of manner, keen sense of humour, and quick and accurate grasp of any problem with which he was confronted. It was fortunate indeed for the Allied cause that Admiral Sims should have been selected to command the United States forces in European waters, for to the qualities mentioned above he added a habit of speaking ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... seems so far away," murmured Katy. "Why don't Albert come and save us?" and she held on to Smith with a grasp yet more violent, and he seemed more and more ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... his prey; and as Concini, absorbed in his occupation, still read on, he felt the grasp of a strong hand upon his arm, and on looking up he saw the Captain of the Guard standing at his side. Before he had time to inquire the meaning of this affront, De Vitry had already uttered the ominous words, "I arrest ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... this appeal was made, swore a dreadful oath, and had cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed his hand upon the boy's mouth, and dragged him to ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... end, and the knot by which we had connected the two lines had caught in some crevice. Try as I might I could not loosen it; yet I was not certain that its hold was firm enough for me to venture climbing up again by the portion of the rope that I held in my grasp. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... high prize, Friendship,—and all that charm'd us in the eyes Of yet unutter'd Love.—So pleasures past, That in thy crystal prism thus glow sublime, Beam on the gloom'd and disappointed Mind When Youth and Health, in the chill'd grasp of Time, Shudder and fade;—and cypress buds we find Ordain'd Life's blighted roses to supply, While but reflected shine ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... aspire. Her resources appeared to be without limit; she knew every language to which music is sung, every style in which music can be written with equal fluency. All schools, whether ancient or modern, severe or florid, sacred or profane, severely composed or gayly fantastic, were easily within her grasp. Like Malibran, she was a profoundly scientific musician, and possessed creative genius. Several volumes of songs attest her inventive skill in composition, and the instances of her musical improvisation on the stage are alike curious and interesting. Such unique and lavish qualities ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... beyond description to look at, and sat down in the entrances of the wooden houses, and stretched themselves on the floors and spat upon the door-handles. It was no use, the fell disease held them in a grasp from which there was no escape, and just six weeks before my arrival the living remnant fled ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... one was a veritable giant, swarthy of skin, hairy-chested. His great hands were extended to grasp or to parry—his head lowered with a ferocious scowl—and across his forehead swayed a tuft of black, shaggy hair. He might have stood for one of those northern barbarians whom the Romans loved to pit against their native champions in the arena. He was the greater because of ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... an awful fear shakes the body of Don Giovanni, and a cry of horror is forced out of his lips. "Repent, while there is yet time," admonishes the visitor again and again, and still again. Don Giovanni remains unshaken in his wicked fortitude. At length he wrests his hand out of the stony grasp and at the moment hears his doom from the stony lips, "Ah! the time for you is past!" Darkness enwraps him; the earth trembles; supernatural voices proclaim his punishment in chorus; a pit opens before him, from which demons emerge and drag him ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... advantage over its rivals, but the inability of Pittsburgh Base Ball patrons to comprehend the lack of success on the part of their team existed in the fact that they had but few opportunities, comparatively speaking, to watch the New York players and found it difficult to grasp the true import of that one great factor of speed, which had been so insistently demanded by the New York manager of the men who were under ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... helpless hands I grasp'd The sacred mirror's[147] sphere; And round my shoulder I my garments clasp'd, And prayed with ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... the paper was a half-page picture of the Rockford bank building with the flames curling up against its west wall, and underneath it a caption that he read over and over before he could grasp what it meant to him. The White Elephant had not burned; in fact, at the last it had turned into a good elephant, for it had not only not burned but it had stopped the progress of what threatened to be a very disastrous conflagration, according to a jubilant despatch from Rockford. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to hunt some buffaloe, and was now returning to find his master. They had been obliged to escape so rapidly that captain Clarke lost his compass and umbrella. Chaboneau left his gun, shotpouch, and tomahawk, and the Indian woman had just time to grasp her child, before the net in which it lay at her feet was carried down the current. He now relinquished his intention of going up the river and returned to the camp at Willowrun. Here he found that the party ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... filled with the lovely blossoms, and she was reaching out to grasp an especially pretty one, when a strangely familiar ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... at my wits' end to know what to do. I had dared so much, all had gone so surprisingly well, that it was heartbreaking to be foiled with liberty almost within my grasp. A great wave of disappointment swept over me until I felt my very heart sicken. Then I heard footsteps and hope ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... in my change of costume, my cropped hair, and my whiskerless cheeks, I kept well away from the coach-window, when the dinner at the inn was over and the passengers were called to take their places again. Thus far—thanks to the strength of my grasp on his neck, which had left him too weak to be an outside passenger—Screw had certainly not seen me; and, if I played my cards properly, there was no reason why he should see me before we got to ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... Christendom, through the imputation of degrading all things high and noble to the rank of the low and vulgar, of casting the pearls of a lofty and ennobled class before the swinish multitude, of throwing open the doors of the treasury, that creatures of low, plebeian blood might grasp the crown jewels which had for ages been kept sacred to the patrician few; in a word, we had to take upon ourselves all the odium of a despised democracy—a moral agrarianism which should make common property of all blessings ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... arises a man in history who, without distinction of birth or other advantages, is strong enough by sheer ability to grasp the opportunity, vault into power, and then stem the tide of events. Such a man was Godwin, father of Harold, last Saxon King; in England; and such a man was Boris Godunof, a boyar, who had so faithfully served the terrible Ivan that he leaned upon him and at last confided ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... the former. In fact, it seems to have been doubtful whether, at the time, the colony could by any device meet its obligations as they became due. The force of these observations must be frankly conceded; but it may still be doubted whether a less desperate remedy was not within the grasp of resourceful statesmanship. In his first telegram, sent on March 2nd, 1898, Mr Chamberlain called attention to the ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... restoration were assembled, did he feel manhood restored. If, however, he tried to keep a vow of silence in the chair of execution, he paid a heavy price; for Berry had his own methods of punishment. A little tighter grasp of the nose; a little rougher scrape of the razor, and some sharp, stinging liquid suddenly slapped with a cold palm on the excoriated spot, with the devilish hypocrisy of healing it; a longer smothering-period under the towel, when the corners of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "You may not grasp the connection of ideas—I don't the very least see how you should, and I've no extra special wish that you should. But you must just take my word for it that's one way of thickening the dust, in my particular case, and not half a ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... listened with distaste, but perforce (for what else could he do in the grasp of a man of twice his power?), to a brilliant and convincing summary of his character, terminating in a withering sketch of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... back, but was held by Emma's encouraging arm. Halsey stayed perforce, for the prophet's grasp had tightened convulsively ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... With a warm grasp of his hand Betty flew to the telegraph office and three days later she saw for the first time the broken-hearted mother. The resemblance was so startling between the mother and both sons she couldn't resist the impulse to throw her arms ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... cold water. The place to be selected for opening the windpipe is that part which is found, upon examination, to be least covered with muscles, about 5 or 6 inches below the throat. Right here, then, is the place to cut through. Have an assistant hold the animal's head still. Grasp your knife firmly in the right hand, select the spot and make the cut from above to below directly on the median line on the anterior surface of the windpipe. Make the cut about 2 inches long in the windpipe; this necessitates ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... the echo in his memory of Walther's song. "I feel it," he meditates, lending ear to the persistent voice in his brain, "and cannot understand it. I cannot retain it—nor yet can forget it! And if for a moment I grasp it, to measure it is beyond me. But how should I hope to grasp that which struck me as illimitable? No rule fitted it, and yet it had not one fault! It sounded so old, and was yet so new,—like the song of birds in the sweet May-time. One who should hear ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... would imply a more exquisite excision than he would care to make; rather he reached out, in the fashion of his time, and pulled with both hands from the dish before him, the very largest and fattest chunk of life that he could grasp. "You never saw a man," he said of himself, "who would more love to be king or to be rich than I would, so that I could live richly and not work and not worry, and that I might enrich all my friends and all good, wise people." Like Whitman he was so in love ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... it will be harder—longer." Then she stretched out her hand, and closed and opened it slowly. The most obtuse could not have failed to read the old simile of the steel in the velvet. "I shall win because it is my nature—and my power—to hold what I grasp." ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Anne was lifted down from the steed it was with no grasp of common courtesy, and her hand was not relinquished till it had been ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could spit! Unfortunately he spit too far, and hit Miss Julia's pink muslin. In an instant her white, slender fingers were buried in his wool. His screams soon brought Aunt Dilsey to the rescue. Upon learning the dreadful crime of which Jack had been guilty, she snatched him from Julia's grasp, and hurried him into the house without a word. From that time Dilsey was Julia's sworn enemy, and Jack was taught to make up faces at her, whenever he could ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... longer Isabelle tried to ignore the coming fact, to put it out of her mind, and grasp as much of her own life as she could before the life within her should deprive her of freedom. As Lane's new duties would not begin until the summer, it was arranged that Isabelle should spend the hot weeks at the Grafton farm with her mother, and then return to ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... pressure bore so hard upon him as an individual. He began to see that getting on in the world called for complete concentration of his efforts upon his own well-being. A pauper cannot be a philanthropist. One cannot take nothing from nothing and make something. To be of use to others he must first grasp ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Captain that Richard's grasp was needlessly protracted and severe. "What a grip the poor fellow has!" he thought. "Good by," he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... reached the Choctaw Chief a little too late. They know nothing of Borlasse, or how he has baffled them. They but believe, that, for the second time, the assassin of Charles Clancy has eluded the grasp ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... village or kindred: and the whole course of early English history consists of a long and tedious effort at increased national unity, which was never fully realised till the Norman conquerors bound the whole nation together in the firm grasp of ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... of those drivers who start off with a jerk. Had she been such a one, Miss Bannister might have been pulled against the side of the phaeton, for the grasp ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... two lads could only think of their attempt with a shudder, for their efforts, though they did not quite grasp the narrowness of their escape from death, had resulted in a peculiar shock to their system, one effect of which was to make then disinclined to do anything more than sit and lie in the darkness watching the faint suggestion of dawn in the direction ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... skin—those pretty features. Look at the delicate creature! and would you have thought that she would have dared what no man dared to do—that she would have defied those elements raging in their might, and have snatched their prey from their very grasp? Did I ever imagine, when I brought her as a helpless baby on shore, that she would ever have repaid the debt with such interest, or that such a weak instrument should have been chosen by the Lord to save one who otherwise must have perished? But His ways are not our ways, and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of fashionable society with its cliques and sets and every political history with its cabals and inner cabinets, witness to the struggle that goes on in the minds of men to adjust themselves to a body larger indeed than themselves, but which still does not strain and escape their imaginative grasp. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... another's power May grasp the prize for which I pine, And others now may pluck the flower I cherished for this heart of mine! No more, no more! The hand forsaking, The lute must fall, and shivered lie In silence: and my heart thus breaking, Responds not even to ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the crocodiles don't eat you," warned the other and, seizing the box in a firmer grasp, walked out of ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... these largest divisions of the animal kingdom are based, but simply upon the general structural idea. Striking as this statement was, it was coldly received at first by contemporary naturalists: they could hardly grasp Cuvier's wide generalizations, and perhaps there was also some jealousy of the grandeur of his views. Whatever the cause, his principle of classification was not fully appreciated; but it opened a new road for study, and gave us the keynote to the natural affinities among animals. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... condition, moved hastily back toward him from whom just now she had escaped. They glanced toward the sound; they saw at the window the puckered and perplexed face of the "judge"; they were just in time to see a big hand grasp him by the shoulder and yank him out of sight. They heard Summerling expostulate; they heard Jim Spalding's far from gentle voice ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... though they will not enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than you could have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good composers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials. I shall briefly state the chief ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... had not been sufficiently proved by me, this favorable opportunity[119] would have occurred to no purpose; mighty hopes, absolute power, would in vain be within our grasp; nor should I, depending on irresolution or ficklemindedness, pursue contingencies instead of certainties. But as I have, on many remarkable occasions, experienced your bravery and attachment to me, I have ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... no longer grasp at for herself she yearned now to pour lavishly, quickly, into Lucy's hands. Only so—such is our mingled life!—could she altogether still, violently and by force, a sort of upward surge of the soul which terrified her now and then. A mystical casuistry, bred in her naturally simple nature ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... he stopped, and continued in his brooding way: "It is peculiar that a man can die by inches in a living body; that a man can have the feeling that he's no longer a part of the present; and that he can no longer play his role, keep up with his own people, grasp what is going on about him, or know whether what is to come is good or evil. It is fearful when a ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... full pride of sight and beauty, you have had consideration for Blind Bertha, even when we two were children, or when Bertha was as much a child as ever blindness can be! Every blessing on your head! Light upon your happy course! Not the less, my dear May;' and she drew towards her, in a closer grasp; 'not the less, my bird, because, to-day, the knowledge that you are to be His wife has wrung my heart almost to breaking! Father, May, Mary! oh forgive me that it is so, for the sake of all he has done to relieve the weariness of my dark life: and for the sake of the belief ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... waist, and compressed his embroidered belt. He adjusted his white silk roll-up stockings with great exactness; tied up the flowing curls of his wig with a white ribbon, placed a scarlet feather in his hat, and then took his sword. The edge and point of the blade, the shell and pommel, grasp and guard of the hilt were all examined with scrupulous care for the last time; he drew on his gloves with care, and giving to the landlord the reckoning, which he might never return to pay, Lemercier called for his horse and rode through the main ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of the United States, and then, perhaps, some impeachment hunters will have a chance to impeach him. They will if he does not obey." He rebuked the gentlemen "who, when any measure comes here that seems almost to grasp our purpose, resist and tell us that it is a surrender of liberty. I remember that this was done to us at the last session, when everybody knows that if the Republican party lived, it must live by the strength of the Constitutional amendment, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... womanhood of to-day. Countries as well as individuals pass through periods of adolescence, of stress and strain and the pains of growth, when the old is merging in the new. The student generation of India is passing through that phase to-day, and no one who fails to grasp that fact can hope to understand the psychology of the present ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... two leaders, who, besides exhibiting rare personal prowess and quick-eyed military genius on fields of vast breadth, and in performances of unwonted magnitude and momentousness, were, moreover, by their great, brave deeds, most palpably saving England, saving Europe, from the grasp of an inexorable despot. Surely these were heroes of a stature to have strained to its utmost the reverence and the love of a genuine hero-worshipper. On the ten thousand luminous pages of Mr. Carlyle they find no place. Not ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... that, by inscrutable decree of the Almighty Powers, I am undergoing punishment for an old unregenerate point of view, being doomed to wear my detested motley for all eternity, to stretch out my hand for ever to grasp realities and find I can do nought but beat the air with my bladder; to listen with strained ear perpetually expectant of the music of the spheres, and catch nothing but the mocking jingle of the bells on my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and down the veranda continued, but she was in the grasp of her old enemy. A terrible fear and an agony of desire seized her. She wanted to go out into the bright sunlight with him, but she could neither move nor whisper. All her resolution, her hope, fell away, and ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... the arms of the washer, G, which, through the narrowness of the recesses, are allowed only just enough play to compensate for slight changes in the jaw. As the above device is applied to every jaw, it follows that any one of them may be nicely adjusted from the outside, so that all are caused to grasp the tool accurately. The spindle, instead of being solid as represented, may be made hollow. Patented to J.H. Vinton, August 18, 1874. For further information, address the manufacturer, Mr. F. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... doctrines. I see what is meant by them. There is no obscurity in the assertion that God foreknows everything, nor in the other assertion that man is a free agent. I can see clearly what is implied in both statements, although my mind cannot grasp both, and bring them together, and show the way in which they may be reconciled. So, too, infinity is a mystery. We cannot comprehend it. Our mind cannot go round it, grasp it, sustain it. Our thought ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... unsay to yon mutinous gentlemen what I have already said; but what you judge it right to promise in my name to them or to the insurgents, I will not suppose that mime honour will refuse to concede. But go not hence, O noblest friend that ever stood by a king's throne!—go not hence till the grasp of your hand assures me that all past unkindness is gone and buried; yea, and by this hand, and while its pressure is warm in mine, bear not too hard on thy king's affection for his ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to drag him out by the collar of his long cloak, calling, "Come with us—you are our prisoner." "I will not fly, you detestable fellow," was Becket's reply, roused to his usual vehemence, and wrenching the cloak out of Fitzurse's grasp. The three knights struggled violently to put him on Tracy's shoulders. Becket set his back against the pillar, and resisted with all his might, whilst Grim, vehemently remonstrating, threw his arms around him to aid his efforts. In the scuffle, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... causes, combined with an atmosphere so dense from fog and smoke as to make it impossible to distinguish friend from foe, produced a retreat in our army at the moment when victory seemed to be within its grasp. ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... slightest approach to condescension, or that writing down to the meaner capacity which must always offend an adult student; while the first principles of the science discussed are stated with such lucidity, that his capacity must be mean indeed who cannot grasp them, and they are illustrated by statistics which will remain always interesting, even to the best informed. Probably the particular charm of the book arises from its having been written currente calamo. The information had been all previously ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... hands clenched; he dies with his hands wide open. Entering life he desires to grasp everything; leaving the world, all that he possessed ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... contentment; how few extract from the present that good with which it is ever supplied! We read the fable of the dog and the shadow, and smile at the folly of the poor animal; while, though instructed by reason, we cast aside the substance of to-day in our efforts to grasp the shadowy future. We are always looking for the blessing to come; but when the time of arrival is at hand, what seemed so beautiful in the hazy distance is shorn of its chief attraction, or dwarfed into nothingness through contrast ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... shot within the confined space, a fall, and then, in the half darkness, he saw two powerful figures writhing to and fro. One was Henry and the other a mighty Shawnee warrior, naked to the waist, and striving to use a tomahawk that he held in a hand whose wrist was clenched in the iron grasp of his foe. Lying almost at their feet was the body of ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Wohlfart, no other is likely to do much good. Show me an embarrassed man who has strength to grasp an offered hand, and bid me help him, and for the sake of all I owe you, I will not refuse to do so. I think you are convinced ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... The which customers, seemingly well used to the sight of drunken waiters tottering to and fro with towers of plates, sat down at a table and waited calmly for attention. The popular audience, with that quick mental grasp for which popular audiences are so renowned, soon perceived that the table was in close proximity to a lofty sideboard, and that on either hand of the sideboard were two chairs, upon which the two waiters were trying to climb in order to deposit their plates ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... sleeping under the nut-trees in the garden, one warm morning in September; he had been collecting nuts to carry home, but being tired, he laid down to repose himself in the sun, and unfortunately fell asleep, nor did he wake till he found himself in the grasp of the merciless black cat, who springing upon her defenceless prey, strangled him in an instant. There was no fond Downy near, nor affectionate Velvet, to receive his last sighs, nor give him aid. The evening came, but no Silket returned ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... ribbon to her champion, who caught it as it skimmed through the air, pressed it to his lips and thrust it into the bosom of his jerkin. In another moment Katherine had disappeared and Villon found himself roughly held in the strong grasp of two soldiers, while the captain of the watch surveyed the scene with some astonishment, and the rogues were overawed by the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lectures at an informal tea given in the palm room of the B. & O. Depot and then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to grasp her by the hands—and feet. They carry her out to S.W. B. street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear of her she is writing postcards to the Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... that she had been permitted to win her spurs. For the threatening cutlas was caught in mid air by a huge bare hand, wrenched from its owner's grasp, and returned point first into the assailant's breast. And Milo's deep ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... tremendous prize to offer, and served to stimulate both teams to the uttermost. We had a rope with us which easily stretched across the dell, and admitted the twenty pairs of hands on either side to grasp it. Tempest carefully saw that neither side started with the least advantage, and waited till we were all ready before ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... sins, yet even honest persons, if they be of unripe age, should not foolishly court them. By foolishly acting in that way I have today been placed in a frightful situation. Indeed, I have been placed entirely within the grasp of this deity. Ye how can I do what is sinful by taking it on myself to surrender my person ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was the work of a moment only to dash forward and seize him, to find himself engaged in a sharp wrestle, to half draw his pistol as he struggled with his captive in the open. But once in the clearer light, he started, his grasp of the stranger relaxed, and he fell back ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... "upon a doubtful quest: whether I discover my daughter, and succeed in bearing her in safety from their contaminating grasp, or whether I fall into their snares and perish, there is an equal chance that I may return no more to Granada. Should this be so, you will be heir to such wealth as I leave in these places I know that your age will be consoled for the lack of children when your ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... happens with the lowest forms of superstition among ourselves, to lead to a recrudescence of the practice, especially among the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire over whom the once iron hand of Rome was beginning to relax its grasp. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... say, devices such as these are subject to the drawback that the mirrors employed sap a certain proportion of the rays of light. It will be remembered that we made allusion to loss of light in this way, when pointing out the advantage in light grasp of the Herschelian form of telescope, where only one reflection takes place, over the Newtonian in which there ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... for a weapon. To render it more harmless, the top had been cut square off. The edge, however, had been assiduously sharpened against a stone, as was evident from the markings upon it, so that it was still a dangerous implement in the grasp of ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thought someone must have gone beyond his depth. I went out and looked around, saw nobody, but still heard the calling. I finally looked at a pile of logs near the Falls and there saw a man who was calling for help. I threw a rope to him several times which he finally was able to grasp and I hauled him in hand over hand. His clothing was all wet and bedraggled, but a straw hat was still on his head although it was so wet that the green band had run into the straw. No trace of his boat was ever found. As soon as he landed, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... unusual combination of faculties defined a man broader and more profound than his broad achievement - one of the rare personalities in our Art, the most this exponent that sculpture has known in this land. In the initial stages of planning, his fiery initiative and amazing grasp of detail commanded attention, speedily resulting in the first general plan of the sculpture of the buildings and grounds; while later his tenacity and generosity assured the completed unity, as it now stands. Forty-four sculptors ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... grasp, he leaped upon the bulwarks and suddenly sprang far out amid the seething waves. The Count uttered a cry of horror that was echoed by the captain. As for the crew, so utterly stupefied were they that they did not seem to comprehend the suicidal act. For an instant Monte-Cristo and Giacomo ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... geological research. The vastness of distances and periods always impressed him. He had no head for figures, but he would labor for hours over scientific calculations, trying to compass them and to grasp their gigantic import. I remember once finding him highly elated over the fact that he had figured out for himself the length in hours and minutes of a "light year." He showed me the pages covered with figures, and was more proud of them than if they had been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Jubal A. Early was not the man for such an enterprise. Washington was at his mercy, but fortunately for us he did not know it, and let the opportunity slip. Even had he known it, I am of opinion that he lacked the nerve to grasp the advantages of the opportunity. On that Tuesday morning, Early was at Silver Springs, enjoying the luxuries of a spacious headquarters, and within sight of the grand old dome of the Capitol. What strange emotions the sight of this dome must ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... speculative or theoretical histories are of so much the less value whenever they are deficient in that closer research which can be obtained only in one way; not the most agreeable to those literary adventurers, for such they are, however high they rank in the class of genius, who grasp at early celebrity, and depend more on themselves than on ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... remembered, was drummed out of his tribe and sentenced by the courts for the murder of a white settler last spring. Small outlying settlements will rejoice when this body of hardened desperate men are once more in the grasp of the law." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... clogged and chilled by a present fear. And so the days passed on: I witnessed Bertha's engagement and heard her marriage discussed as if I were under a conscious nightmare—knowing it was a dream that would vanish, but feeling stifled under the grasp ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... symmetry; her lips Apart; her voice that clove through all the din, As a lute pierceth through the cymbal's clash, Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling; her Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born whiteness Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up From a dead soldier's grasp;—all these things made Her seem unto the troops a prophetess Of victory, or Victory herself, Come down to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the doctor, laughing. He was more than delighted—brimming over with happiness, in fact—but not over his mother's news; it was the letter held tight in his grasp that was sending electric thrills through him. "A fine old fellow is Dr. Pencoyd—known him for years," he continued; "I attended his lectures before I went abroad. Lives in a musty old house on Chestnut Street, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... la France!" rushed upon the enemy. The sword if small was sharp, and stabbed the poor toad would most undoubtedly have been, but for a sudden check received by the valiant little nobleman. It came in the shape of a large heavy hand that seized Monsieur the Viscount with the grasp of a giant, while a voice which could only have belonged to the owner of such a hand said in slow ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... Delsarte by this cruel trick instantly gave way before the reflection that success was a matter of life and death with him, and that perhaps his last chance lay within his grasp. He forgot his rags; every nerve became iron; and when the curtain was rung up, a beggar with the bearing of a prince advanced to the foot-lights, was received with derisive laughter by some, with glances of surprise and indignation by others, and, with a sad and patient smile on ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... a continuance of the morning struggle, unable to see far enough ahead to distinguish the country beyond. One moment they were in the grasp of the jungle, the next they had broken through and stood panting and wide-eyed on the edge of a realized paradise of dreams. It was a tiny lake bordered by a small, grass-grown prairie dotted with small clean clumps of palmetto, pine and cypress. The water of the lakelet was clear ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... earth was great, down where they were, and it made the passageway muggy and odorous. Fitful shadows were flung by widely separated oil lamps as they pressed forward—grotesque splotches of black that half a dozen times tightened the American's grasp on his sword, sure that a guard had come upon them. He knew that their margin of time in which to effect escape was small, and he gradually quickened their pace, sacrificing caution for speed. Taia's hand was in his left; and he had just turned to her to ask if they were ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... trial, I promise you, most confidently, that you will find Symbolic Logic to be one of the most, if not the most, fascinating of mental recreations! In this First Part, I have carefully avoided all difficulties which seemed to me to be beyond the grasp of an intelligent child of (say) twelve or fourteen years of age. I have myself taught most of its contents, viva voce, to many children, and have found them take a real intelligent interest ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... voice: "O Love, wilt have my gift?" I stretched my glad hands eagerly to grasp The heaven-blown bird, gold-hued, and longed to clasp It close and know it mine. Ere I might lift The shining thing and hold it to my breast Again I heard thy ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... removing all those hindrances that stand in the way of the free realisation of the individual will guided by a wise self-interest. So much the more necessary was it to give right direction to this sovereign will, and to offer to self-interest every assistance towards obtaining a correct and speedy grasp of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... and over again we hear the same story about the beautiful time in the future, which he saw coming nearer and nearer, but which always evaded his grasp at the last. Very often, when he appears grasping and dictatorial in his business dealings, we may trace his want of urbanity to some pressing pecuniary anxiety, which he was too proud to reveal. No doubt these ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... both down on their feet, saying, "Run before the next wave comes." Ten yards farther and they were beyond the reach of the sea. Harold was with them, and directed those who had got ashore to form lines, taking hold of each other's hands, and so to advance far into the surf and grasp their comrades as they were swept up. Many were saved in this way, although some of the rescuers were badly hurt by floating pieces of wreckage, for the vessel had entirely broken up immediately after ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... himself first in his hands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his house, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and furthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in his vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyes for his spirit, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs".(1) Now, accepting Mr. Darwin's theory that early man had "high mental faculties," the conception of a Maker of things does not seem beyond his grasp. Man himself made plenty of things, and could probably conceive of a being who made the world and the objects in it. "Certainly there must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too," said an Eskimo to a missionary.(2) The goodness is inferred by the Eskimo ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... to my eyes; for a few moments I was unable to speak, and could only once more grasp his ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... great importance for anyone who would comprehend the general story of Europe, to grasp the nature of those half-hidden centuries. They may be compared to a lake into which the activities of the old world flowed and stirred and then were still, and from which in good time the activities of the Middle Ages, properly so called, ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... one of the boat's crew, and crossing the bay one day with a commissariat-officer, the boat was capsized by a sudden squall. In attempting to save the life of the officer, he was seized by his dying grasp, and almost perished with him; but extricating himself, he swam back to the boat. Seeing the drowning man exhausted, and sinking, he dashed forward again, diving after him, and happily succeeded in saving his life. For this honorable act, he would have received a remission of sentence; ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... wound. She to the dust Fell headlong,—and, its work of slaughter done, The gallant sword dropp'd fast a gory dew. Instant, as though heaven's glorious torch had shone, Light was upon the gloom,—all radiant light From that dark mansion's inmost cave burst forth. With hardier grasp the thane of Higelac press'd His weapon's hilt, and furious in his might Paced the wide confines ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... gentleman to gentleman. Then, as the bitter remembrance of the difference in rank and station between them flashed on his memory, he was raising it proudly, deferentially, in the salute of a subordinate to his superior, when Chanrellon's grasp closed on it readily. The victim of Coeur d'Acier was of as gallant a temper as ever blent the reckless condottiere ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in wanting audacity, as Napoleon supposed. It was not a military but a political error—immense and irreparable. He might have crushed Turenne, and ought to have attempted it, but he let him slip from his grasp. The opportunity once lost did not return. Turenne until then was only second in rank; by a glorious resistance he acquired from that moment, and it was forced upon him to maintain, the importance of a rival of Conde. Mazarin grew from day to ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... within them, by deciphering the law written on their own consciences, however much its letters may have been obliterated or dimmed, Plato, and Cicero, and Seneca, and Epictetus, and Aurelius were enabled to grasp and to enunciate a multitude of great and memorable truths; yet they themselves would have been the first to admit the wavering uncertainty of their hopes and speculations, and the absolute necessity of a further illumination. So strong did that ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... and thou canst not plough go away!" However, as he was afraid of this great man, he left go of the plough, stepped back and stood at one side of the piece of land. Then the youth took the plough, and just pressed it with one hand, but his grasp was so strong that the plough went deep into the earth. The farmer could not bear to see that, and called to him, "If thou art determined to plough, thou must not press so hard on it, that makes bad work." The youth, however, unharnessed the horses, and drew the plough himself, saying, "Just ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... aspect of the street calmed her. The bleak air set her coughing; she slammed the door to, and returned to the kitchen to make fresh tea for Constant, who could only be in a deep sleep. But the canister trembled in her grasp. She did not know whether she dropped it or threw it down, but there was nothing in the hand that battered again a moment later at the bedroom door. No sound within answered the clamour without. She rained blow upon blow in a sort of spasm of frenzy, scarce remembering that ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... thoughtful man," answered the voice, modestly parrying the question. "But I assure you that only a man of intellect—of genius—has in him the intelligence, the sublime reach of soul, which could attain the full solution of the problem; they who merely blunder into it would fail to grasp the grand significance ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the game, into which Cardinal D'Amboise had entered with such prospects of success, been snatched from his grasp by the superior address of his Italian rivals, and the election of Pius the Third been publicly announced, than the French army was permitted to resume its march on Naples, after the loss,—an irreparable loss,—of more than a month. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... would have contained less faithful, information than his private correspondence; while, with all the penetration he assuredly possessed, it may be doubted if his diffuse and graceful style was adapted for the deep and condensed thoughts and the grasp of facts and events which are the chief excellences ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... is but one "right" way to hold the knife or fork. When the knife and fork are used together, grasp the handle of the knife or fork with the first finger and the thumb so that the end of the handle touches the center of the palm of the hand. The hands should almost cover the handle, but the first finger ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... however, even with the confident expectation of untold wealth being now almost within his grasp, not one of the party had forgotten the parting threat of Rising Cloud, and his warning that, ere many months were over, the camp at Minturne Creek would be assailed by the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... nights they had been following the heels of an enemy which was always just eluding their grasp. In this forced advance the provisions of the administration would often arrive so late at the cantonments that they could depend only on what they happened to have in their knapsacks. Desnoyers saw them lined up near the road devouring hunks of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... treatment—a rival who was neither compeer nor subaltern, and who affected to be his censor—a functionary of a purely anomalous character, sheltering himself under his abnegation of an authority which he had not dared to assume, and criticising measures which he was not competent to grasp;—such was the Duke of Medina ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... shouted the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious!" and in the tumult of a nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that tremendous exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated his flight; but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a disgraceful truce and an insidious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... titters of embarrassment were stilled, and mothers tightened their grasp on little hands, to emphasize the change of scene from light to graver hue. Some of the men looked lowering; one or two strode out of doors. They loved Parson True, but the Cattle-Show was all their own, and they resented even a ministerial innovation. The parson ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... oligarchy,—that is, the control of public affairs fell into the hands of a few persons. There was an evident tendency, however, towards the union of all the functions of governmental authority in the person of a single man, whenever one should be found of sufficient strength to grasp them. The younger Gracchus had exercised almost supreme control, and Marius, Cinna, and Sulla had followed him; but their power had perished with them, leaving no relics in the fundamental principles of the government, except as it marked stages in the general progress. Now other strong men ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... did—as a branch of his course on natural jurisprudence, a discussion of contracts requiring him to examine the principles of value, interest, currency, etc., and these lectures, though fragmentary, are remarkable for showing a grasp of economic questions before his time, and presenting, with a clear view of their importance, some of Smith's most characteristic positions. He is free from the then prevailing mercantilist fallacies about money. His remarks on value contain what reads like a first draft of Smith's ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... perfect happiness but such is not possible. Out of the infinity of his attributes only two, Thought and Extension, are accessible to us while the modes of these attributes, being essentially infinite, escape our grasp." ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... allow themselves to be worked upon in a frightful and shameful way.... In France a crisis seems at hand. What a very bad figure we cut in this mediation! Really it is quite immoral, with Ireland quivering in our grasp, and ready to throw off her allegiance at any moment, for us to force Austria to give up her lawful possessions. What shall we say if Canada, Malta, etc., begin to trouble us? It hurts me terribly. This ought ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... contact with him. Interested friends had laid my case before him, as one who might serve well in a higher position than that of a private, and he good-naturedly sent word to me to report to him at a certain hour in the rotunda of the St. Charles Hotel at New Orleans. The city was in the firm grasp of the Union, as our transport had sailed up the evening before. The ships of Farragut, their decks crowded with blue jackets held under their broad-sides a dense and sullen multitude. A heavy salute reverberated from the river as the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... pages I do not possess. He circulated remarks on my notes on the subject, published in the Athenaeum, in which he denies that the stereographic projection is a case of perspective, the reason being that the whole hemisphere makes too large a picture for the eye conveniently to grasp at once. That is to say, it is no perspective because there is too ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the demise of her four-footed favourite. The book that suits them best is 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' Its genial comedy, quite different from the violent delights of 'Pickwick,' is well adapted to their grasp; while its tragedy, the murder of Montague Tigg—the finest description of the breaking of the sixth commandment in the language—leaves nothing to be desired in the way of excitement. But here we stray beyond our bounds, for 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is not a 'sick book;' or ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to fight it on its own terms—and above all, my dear, not alone!" Mrs. Fisher gathered up her floating implications in a resolute grasp. "You've told me so little that I can only guess what has been happening; but in the rush we all live in there's no time to keep on hating any one without a cause, and if Bertha is still nasty enough to want to injure you with other people it must be because she's still afraid of you. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... The grasp with which he held her relaxed; a mortal despair settled upon his features, and recognising the impossibility of further concealing the effect of her words upon him, he sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands. She viewed him with an air of triumph, which brought back some of her ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... whose vengeance takes account Of sacred order's violated laws. See where he calls thee, burning to be gone, Pierce to exhaust the tempest of his wrath On yon devoted head. But thou, my child, Control his cruel frenzy, and protect 490 Thy tender charge; that when despair shall grasp His agonising bosom, he may learn, Then he may learn to love the gracious hand Alone sufficient in the hour of ill, To save his feeble spirit; then confess Thy genuine honours, O excelling fair! When all the plagues ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... cordial grasp of the hand,—"I reckon, in the matter of nuts you're going to reduce me to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... grapes so cunningly carved here? This middle grape of the cluster will turn round in the fingers that know how to find and grasp it, and so turning and turning slowly, unlooses a bolt within—here—and so the whole woodwork swings out upon hinges and reveals the doorway. Where that doorway leads I will show thee anon, if thou wouldst know the trick of the secret chamber at Chad that all men have ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... disappointment, but he had ears only for the laughing, chatting couple behind him. The fact that Blake was a married man did not prevent the lover from giving way to jealous envy. Chancing to look around as he warned the hilarious pair of a gully, he saw the girl grasp Blake's shoulder. Natural as was the act, his envy flared up in hot resentment. Except on their drive to Stockchute, she had always avoided even touching his hand with her finger tips; yet now she clung to the engineer with a grasp as familiar ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... rock, so as to leave vacant spaces. In the interstices grow brake and broad-leaved forest-grass. The trees that spring from the top of this wall have their roots pressing close to the rock, so that there is no soil between; they cling powerfully, and grasp the crag tightly with their knotty fingers. The trees on both sides are so thick, that the sight and the thoughts are almost immediately lost among confused stems, branches, and clustering green leaves,—a narrow strip of bright blue sky above, the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the vacant warehouses, twenty-odd feet away Cutty, from an oblique angle, had witnessed the peculiar drama without being able to grasp head or tail to it. For two hours he had crouched behind his window, watching the man on the cot and wondering if he would ever turn his face toward the candlelight. Then Karlov had entered. Gregor's ironic calm—with the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... We stood glaring at him, and he smiled upon us—as a cat smiles. Croisette told me afterwards that he could have died of mortification—of shame and anger that we had been so outwitted. For myself I did not at once grasp the position. I did not understand. I could not disentangle myself in a moment from the belief in which I had entered the house—that it was Louis de Pavannes' house. But I seemed vaguely to suspect that Bezers had swept him aside and taken his place. My first impulse ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... her the allotted number of minutes. If one of them, becoming too enthusiastic in conversation, forgot his companions and trespassed on their time, they reminded him by coughs, furious glances, and threatening words. If he persisted, the strongest of the band would grasp him by the arm and drag him away so that another might take his place. Sometimes when there were many suitors and time was at a premium, the girl would talk with two at once, trying to display no preference. Thus the courting ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as though the proffered honour was one far too wonderful to be real, Willem shyly extended his hand and met the friendly grasp of the flour-dusted fingers. The clown, striking an attitude, began in shrill, exaggerated diction, to chant the antiquated ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... protection of all migratory birds by the national government is the most important measure ever placed before that body in behalf of wild life. A stranger to this proposition will need to pause for thought in order to grasp its full meaning, and appreciate ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... tracks and kills him in the woods with a bullet from his rifle. He will not turn upon man unless when wounded or brought to bay. Then his assault is to be dreaded. Should he grasp the hunter between his great forearms, the latter will stand a fair chance of being hugged to death. He does not attempt to use his teeth like the grizzly bear, but relies upon the muscular power of his arms. The nose appears to be his tenderest part, and ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... subject. In one or two places people are cautioned not to eat too much and chew thoroughly, but what does this amount to? How many people know how much to eat or how thoroughly to chew? Very few physicians have a grasp of ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... other Boches. He dropped to escape, they plunged after him forcing him lower. He looked and saw a German aviation field under him. He was by this time only 2,000 feet above the ground. Fontaine saw the mechanics rush out to grasp him, thinking he would land. The attacking airplanes had stopped shooting. Fontaine pulled on full power and headed for the lines. The German planes dropped down on him and again opened fire. They were on his level, behind and on his sides. Bullets whistled ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... business, then, should give students a comprehensive many-sided survey of business and a thorough grasp of scientific method as used in analyzing business facts. It should prepare the student to think complicated business problems through to the end and to put the results of his thinking together into an effective working plan. Finally, it should maintain an atmosphere ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... the shortest way of doing this. When there are four vacant spaces you can pile four cards in seven moves, with only three spaces you can pile them in nine moves, and with two spaces you cannot pile more than two cards. When you have a grasp of these and similar facts you will be able to remove a number of cards bodily and write down 7, 9, or whatever the number of moves may be. The gradual shortening of play is fascinating, and first attempts ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... whom the ever blessed triad of health, hope, and happiness on earth, are dear, the sanctity of child-life and the improvement of the race; and especially to those whose clearer mental vision can grasp the stupendous fact of eternal Universal Unity—the oneness with that mighty Primal Cause, the great Life Principle, immanent and active throughout all nature; can grasp and assimilate the idea that everything that ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... before the stroke of twelve. He stood here, and was looking at the large fine bronze knocker; but now when, as the last stroke tingled through the air with loud clang from the steeple-clock of the Kreuzkirche, he lifted his hand to grasp this same knocker, the metal visage twisted itself, with horrid rolling of its blue-gleaming eyes, into a grinning smile. Alas, it was the Apple-woman of the Black Gate! The pointed teeth gnashed together in the loose jaws, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... thoroughly good sort, however, and, ignoring our plight, insisted on helping us round the corner. They said that, once we were out of the gorge and on the other face of the mountain, the strong draught ceased. So each woman took a frenzied grasp of her skirts, and, with an able-bodied man steadying her on each side, made the run and brought up safe on the other side. There did not seem to be much to see—nothing but the precipitous face of the cliff towering above us, the road cut out of it, winding steeply ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... call me a panegyrist of Republicanism, or of France. I have no love for either. But I may admire the spring of the tiger, or even give him credit for the strength of his tusks, and the grasp of his talons, without desiring to see him take the place of my spaniel on the hearth-rug, or choosing him as the companion of my travels. I dread the power of the multitude, I despair of its discipline, and I shrink from the fury of its passions. A republic in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... adopted by the great statesman to insure peace to the empire and to keep the power within the grasp of his own family. In both respects it proved successful. A second important step was taken by Iyemitsu, his grandson, and after him the ablest of the family. By this time many of the noted warriors among the daimios were dead, and their sons, enervated by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... word. Her teeth chattered so painfully that she could not articulate; she trembled so violently that she had to grasp the back ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a sympathetic rustle in the group. This at least they could grasp on the wing. Mrs. de Lacey interrupted to beg for exciting details, but Mrs. Goodrich and Mrs. Tracy ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... their backs, and had already been traveling for three days without water. But their backs were made for burdens, and their feet specially adapted to walking on the loose sand; for each of the broad toes had a soft, wide cushion, and this cushion enabled them to have a grasp on the sand, and at the same time kept them from ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... spirit moves, and thought comes face to face With the immutable, and time is past, And the spent soul, done, meets truth at last. Chance, fate, occasion, circumstance, In interfused radiance Are lost. Past, present, future, all combined In one sure instantaneous grasp of mind, And all infinity unrolls at our command, And beast and man and God unite, as worlds expand. ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... thought, a frame for the All. It is never the object of veneration or sacrifice, no myth brings it down to his comprehension, it is not installed in his temples. Man cannot escape the belief that behind all form is one essence; but the moment he would seize and define it, it eludes his grasp, and by a sorcery more sadly ludicrous than that which blinded Titania, he worships not the Infinite he thinks but a base idol of his own making. As in the Zend Avesta behind the eternal struggle of Ormuzd and Ahriman looms ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... sculptured fonts or stained-glass windows in the churches of the Middle Ages were full of teaching to a congregation of whom the greater part could not read, to whom therefore one great avenue of knowledge was closed. The ignorant are especially impressed by pictorial teaching, and grasp its meaning far more readily than they can follow a written ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... frighted wife that stood supported by Her lord at once grew pale and motionless. As one that watched with anxious care the growth Of a young tendril slowly fixes it Upon a new and stronger prop, e'en so Brave Rudra extricated himself from Her grasp and gently placed her on the couch; Then gazed on her for a few moments with His hands upon her throbbing temples, kissed Her brow, and ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... Mitchell towards a little school on the outside of the village, kept by an old woman called Mrs. Shand. In an English village I think she would have been called Dame Shand: we called her Luckie Shand. Half dragged along the road by Mrs. Mitchell, from whose rough grasp I attempted in vain to extricate my hand, I looked around at the shining fields and up at the blue sky, where a lark was singing as if he had just found out that he could sing, with something like the despair of a man going to the gallows and bidding farewell ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... to glance sideward at him, and Thomas became, for the first time, indistinctly aware that he had two faces. But before he could thoroughly grasp the fact, Judas said in his ordinary tone, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... he was soon able to spring on to the ground. His first action on doing so was to grasp Antonio's sword, and to hack away at the rope, to the great astonishment of the old Indian, who loudly expostulated, and attempted to stop him. But Antonio and I seized the bridge-keeper and held him fast while Uncle Richard finished the operation, and soon the rope swung ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... did not directly accuse himself; he had done as well as he could; he blamed "things," and said to himself, "it's my luck," by which he meant to express a profound feeling of dejection and weakness as of one in the grasp of inimical powers. By the working of unfriendly forces he was lying there under the pines, hungry, tired, chilled, and lone as a wolf. Jack was far away, Mary lost forever to him, and the officers of the law again on ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... better understand the nature of sanctifying grace by studying what are known as its "formal effects." As the causa efficiens of a thing is commonly farther removed from our mental grasp than its effects, we are ordinarily more familiar with the latter than with the former. For this reason the glories of divine grace can be best explained to children and to the faithful in general by describing the effects it produces ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... calendar to witness he never dreamed of their being involved in his plot. The paymaster's funds, not the lives of any of the paymaster's men, were what he had sought to take, and now, there lay the dollars almost within their grasp, but unless captured at once would be ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... and delivered a handful of envelopes into Grandfather Cornelius's grasp. The old gentleman scanned them at ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... and, in a whirling dream she saw a body floating down a stream. She stretched out her hand to grasp it when the eyes met hers, and the eyes were those of a dead man—and the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... not more than twenty feet away. He moved cautiously to her side expecting to catch hold of her rudder chain. He saw one-hundred-thousand dollars in his grasp. Now, he thought, "one of the most powerful enemies of Peru will be put beyond doing damage." When he was about midship and was preparing to reach for her chain, the steersman's bell rang a signal to the engineer, her wheel began ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... had been sore stricken by the escape of Wong Li Fu when that master scoundrel was actually in his grasp. But those powerful hands of his were far-reaching, and it would go hard with the jiu-jitsu expert when next they ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... which succeeded the discovery of the presence of the Great Serpent was the most painful of Mabel Dunham's life. She saw the means of effecting all she wished, as it might be within reach of her hand, and yet it eluded her grasp. She knew June's decision and coolness, notwithstanding all her gentleness and womanly feeling; and at last she came reluctantly to the conclusion that there was no other way of attaining her end than by deceiving her tried companion and protector. It was revolting to one so sincere and natural, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... be the man who cannot grasp the wonderful beauty of such a scene. At another time John ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of Winchester had seen the Six {p.119} Articles Bill carried—but his prey had then been snatched from his grasp. Now, embittered by fresh oppression, he saw his party once more in a position to revenge their wrongs when there was no Henry any longer to stand between them and their enemies. He would take the tide at the flood, forge a weapon keener ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... about to complain against such liberties being taken with his property, when the clock began rolling over in the air, and he had just time to grasp the sides of it to ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... happily ignorant of Mr. Lloyd-George's "Budget," the most vivid object-lesson of our day; but how many Americans who talked about the budget, and had impassioned views on the subject, knew what it really contained? If the student's intelligence is so trained that she has some adequate grasp of economics, if she has been lifted once and forever out of the Robin Hood school of political economy, which is so dear to a woman's generous heart, it matters little how early or how late she becomes acquainted with the history of her own time. "Depend upon it," said the wise Dr. ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a stronger stomach, and was up with the times!" If he were sorely vexed in spirit it was because he thought that the immense property which he had believed his own had slipped, perhaps for ever, from his grasp. For rising threateningly between the Chalusse millions and himself, he pictured the form of his father, this man whom he did not know, but whose very name ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... hands. The utter degradation of the nobles, and the misery of the country, gave to the cities of France an opportunity which one great man, Etienne Marcel, provost of the traders at Paris, was not slow to grasp. He fortified the capital and armed the citizens; the civic clergy made common cause with him; and when the Dauphin Charles convoked the three Estates at Paris, it was soon seen that the nobles had become completely discredited and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... poor house, Mrs. Parker," Farrel informed her, gravely, as he crossed the room and bent over her hand for a moment, releasing it to grasp the reluctant hand of her husband. "A double welcome, sir," he said, addressing Kay's father, who mumbled something in reply and introduced him to the potato baron, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... remember the faces, the eyes, the voices, we see again the gleam of silk and metal; the murmuring stir of that crowd, brilliant, festive, and martial; and we seem to feel the touch of friendly brown hands that, after one short grasp, return to rest on a chased hilt. They were Karain's people—a devoted following. Their movements hung on his lips; they read their thoughts in his eyes; he murmured to them nonchalantly of life and death, and they accepted his words humbly, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... was born: the millionaire-demagogue Burdett, the courtly, liberal Lord Grey, and the flower of the Catholic nobility, were invited to meet them. The delegates were naturally cheered and gratified; they felt, they must have felt, that their cause had a grasp upon Imperial attention, which nothing ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... art loathed, full well; Loathed and cursed by the lords of power. Ever they name thee the flag of hell, And rage in the fear of thy triumph hour. But their grasp grows week on the wills of men; Their armies falter; their guns are rust; As from prison, and labor of poverty's den Thy hosts speak NO to their ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... slave-holders, could never be forgotten. Brothers and sisters could not refrain from weeping over the remembrance of their separation on the auction block: of having seen innocent children, feeble and defenceless women in the grasp of a merciless tyrant, pleading, groaning, and crying in vain for pity. Not to remember those thus bruised and mangled, it would seem alike unnatural, and impossible. Therefore it is a source of great satisfaction to be able, in relating these heroic escapes, to present the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... "that he had come into Africa with the hope, and that hope had been increased by the success he had experienced in his operations, that he should carry home victory and not terms of peace. Still, though he had victory in a manner within his grasp, he would not refuse all accommodation, that all the nations of the world may know that the Roman people both undertake and conclude wars with justice." The terms of peace which he prescribed were these: "That they should restore ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... breathed his last. The echoing sound of the rifle shot had hardly died away, to which the true hunter ever listens with unfeigned pleasure as the sweetest of music on his ear, whenever he has seen that his game is surely within his grasp, the last faint melody was broken in upon and completely lost in a terrific roar from the woods directly behind him. Instantly turning his head to note the source of this sound, the meaning and cause of which he well knew by his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... and a large spear reserved for the thrust. Some warriors especially amongst the Eesa, prefer a coarse heavy lance, which never leaves the hand. The Somali spear is held in various ways: generally the thumb and forefinger grasp the third nearest to the head, and the shaft resting upon the palm is made to quiver. In action, the javelin is rarely thrown at a greater distance than six or seven feet, and the heavier weapon is used for "jobbing." Stripped to his waist, the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... Father Claude. The priest dropped to the ground beside him. His training had given Menard the faculty of awaking instantly into full grasp of a situation. ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... then there came on a blast, a horrible roaring wind bearing night upon its wings, snow, and sleet, and hail. Bagg says he had the fellow by the throat quite fast, as he thought, but suddenly he became bewildered, and knew not where he was; and the man seemed to melt away from his grasp, and the wind howled more and more, and the night poured down darker and darker, the snow and the sleet thicker and more blinding. "Lord have mercy upon us!" ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... quite mixed with Colston's line, still pressed on, and between Hooker's headquarters and his elated foe there was scarce an organized regiment. Hooker's fatal inability to grasp the situation, and his ordering an advance of all troops on Howard's left as far as the Second Corps, had made him almost defenceless. The troops which should have been available to stem this adverse tide were blindly groping in the woods, two miles ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that trouble lay behind him, and not before him; that he was soon to meet ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... hand; for the figure of S. Michael, who is bravely confronting the Dragon, setting his teeth and knitting his brows, truly seems to have descended from Heaven in order to effect the vengeance of God against the pride of Lucifer, and it is indeed a marvellous work. He had a more modern grasp of the nude than the masters before his day, and he dissected many bodies in order to study their anatomy. He was the first to demonstrate the method of searching out the muscles, in order that they might have their due form and place in his figures, and he engraved on copper ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the great area presented by her prize, alights on the ground to amputate the abdomen, the head and the wings; she flies away, carrying with her only the thorax, which gives less hold to the wind. If we keep to the bald facts, this does, I admit, give a semblance of reason. The Wasp appears to grasp the relation between cause and effect. The effect is the resistance experienced in the flight; the cause is the dimensions of the prey contending with the air. Hence the logical conclusion: those dimensions must be lessened; the abdomen, the head ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the paper. Soames's handwriting was characteristically dim. It and the noisome spelling and my excitement made me all the slower to grasp what T. K. ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... pistol shot, sensed the acrid smell of powder smoke, felt a muscular hand grasp the wrist which was extended toward the shelf of rock, and then a million stars seemed to be falling from the heavens. There was a roar as of an ocean beating against breakers, and then a lull during which ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... chess, which the American mind never seems able to grasp, are instinctively known by the man in the street in Europe. Every one has learned the gambits: they do not have to be explained, nor their importance demonstrated. The American can profitably study those maps so liberally displayed ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... and very ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a ring on its little finger and a black ball in its grasp. With all these personal advantages (to which may be added a strong savour of tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appearance) Mr Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and occasionally pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to me that the two turned to gaze earnestly into each other's eyes and then to clasp their hands in a quick nervous grasp, as though each hoped, by so doing, to take from the other a part of the sorrow they appeared to share in common. Neither spoke, however, but the mute sympathetic touch was doubtless more eloquent than words. Once again both stopped, at once and together, as if their minds, acting in unison ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... above sentences to this chapter that the reader may have an explanation of the meaning of a word sometimes met with. But the title of the chapter is "Monism and Dualism," and it is of this contrast that it is especially important to grasp the significance. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... developed the corral scenes which he had taken, with the thin youth taking his first lesson in the dark room. The thin youth, who said his name was Bill Holmes, did not have very much to say, but he seemed very quick to grasp all that Luck told him. That kept Luck whistling softly between sentences, while they wound the negative around the roped half barrel that had not so much as a six penny nail in it this time, so thoroughly ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... against the door set his nerves tingling afresh and made him tighten his grasp on the pistol. The steel was cold and slippery in his moist fingers. What an awful noise it would make when he pulled the trigger! If the door were to open how close he would be to the figure that came in! Yet he knew it was locked on the inside ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... not liberty. "The French," said Napoleon, "love equality: they care little for liberty." Equality is plain, simple, easily understood. Liberty is complex, and exceedingly difficult of comprehension. The most illiterate peasant may, at a glance, grasp the idea of equality; the most profound statesman may not, without much care and thought, comprehend the nature of liberty. Hence it is that equality, and not liberty, so readily seizes the mind of the multitude, and so mightily inflames its passions. The French are not the only people who care ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... thought best to take no notice of it. He knew well what was expected from them both in their little world, and felt for both their sakes it was better to educate his wife from the start in those matters which she did not seem to grasp fully. ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... single file to the head of the room, where Mr. Wilkins stood, his kind face actually beaming, and with extended hand greeted every individual inmate. After leaving him we marched to the other side of the room, where we also received a cheery 'good morning,' and cordial grasp of the hand from the estimable and motherly wife of the superintendent. To describe one day is sufficient to picture the manner in which the inmates of the Home (and I sincerely believe that 'home' is ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... other and greater care, that perchance, when ye are heated with wine, ye set a quarrel between you and wound one the other and thereby shame the feast and the wooing; for iron of itself draws a man thereto." But for us twain alone leave two swords and two spears and two shields of oxhide to grasp, that we may rush upon the arms and seize them; and then shall Pallas Athene and Zeus the counsellor enchant the wooers to their ruin. Yet another thing will I tell thee, and do thou ponder it in thy heart. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... chiefs, no money, no men. If many royalists remained in the Orne and the Manche, it was impossible to group them or pay them. The government gained strength and authority daily; at the slightest movement France felt the iron grasp in which she was held tightened around her, and such was the prestige of the extraordinary hero who personified the whole regime, that even those he had vanquished did not disguise their admiration. The King of Spain—a Bourbon—sent him the insignia of the Golden Fleece. The world was fascinated ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... conscience-stricken. He took her embrace and remorseful kiss quietly. "Don't be sorry, Lydia dear. You have just shown me, as in a flash of lightning, how much more powerful a grasp on ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... her freedom and safety offered to him as the price of his own! Here there was no question of dreams or of nightmares: no illusions as to the ultimate intentions of her husband's enemies. It was all a reality, and even now, before she had the strength fully to grasp the whole nature of this horrible situation, she knew that by her own act of mad and passionate impulse, she had hopelessly jeopardized the life of the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... this unexpected plan of Sam Brewster's, and her grasp on the soup ladle relaxed so that it fell to the floor with a ringing echo. But she paid no attention to it: she stood with mouth open staring at the master ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and confusions, often involving a whole department, due to the kind of work that is done by a man or woman who is physically unfit to attempt it. And the higher the type of work that has to be done, the more the elements of insight, grasp, and sound judgment enter into it, the graver and costlier are the mistakes that are likely to be made ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... him jerkily. It halted, then once more it moved. The shrub in his grasp gave out an inch, and was coming from its anchorage. Then his fist was closed on ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... seaman, Mr. Mellaire had told me, in whose watch he was; a good seaman, but "crank-eyed." When pressed for an explanation Mr. Mellaire had said that he was the sort of man who flew into blind rages, and that one never could tell what little thing would produce such a rage. As near as I could grasp it, Ditman Olansen was a Berserker type. Yet, as I watched him pulling in good time at the oar, his large, pale-blue eyes seemed almost bovine—the last man in the world, in my judgment, to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... sense, and probably with the majority of clairvoyants it goes no further than etheric and lower astral sight. In other words, they are able to raise the consciousness only to a grade of matter a little beyond the grasp of ordinary vision, while the properly developed, trained clairvoyant raises his ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers
... see how virtually all fatally wounded men know that they are going to die and how they grasp it with a certainty which exceeds the certainty of anything else in life. They often realize it sooner than the surgeons. It is most uncanny. Perhaps it is because their nervous system senses that ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... father had often acted unrighteously or foolishly. His attitude discloses a heart that despised, not only the parent, but also the divine commandment. Hence, nothing remains for the evil-minded son but to grasp an opportunity for obtaining evidence to betray his father's foolishness. He does not laugh at his drunken father as a boy would, nor does he call his brethren merely that they may look upon a laughable ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... father's life as well as my own. May the day be far distant when I enter upon the succession—may my venerated father for long years to come rule his land in peace and tranquillity. I long not to grasp the reins of government, for I know very well that I am yet much too young to guide them with wisdom ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... then moved for returns of the army and navy, both in America and Ireland. Chatham now made another speech, in which he expressed great alarm as to the actual state of those two important fortresses, Gibraltar and Minorca; contending that they were not secure from the grasp of France and Spain. He also took occasion again to extol the Americans, and to plead their cause, still justifying their opposition to the mother country. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... willing to believe, and which is just mysterious and quaint enough to have a sort of charm for their imagination, while it will represent common-sense and humanity. I want to express in the title, and in the grasp of the idea to express also, that it is the Thing at everybody's elbow, and in everybody's footsteps. At the window, by the fire, in the street, in the house, from infancy to old age, everyone's inseparable companion. . . . Now do you make anything out of this? which I let off as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... mistake, or else have carried out his twice-repeated purpose of resignation. Everyone admits that from the outset his position was one of great difficulty, but he increased it greatly by his practical refusal to grasp the nettle. He was not ambitious of power, but, on the contrary, longed for his quiet retreat at Haddo. He was on the verge of seventy and was essentially a man of few, but scholarly tastes. There can be no doubt that considerable pressure was ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... once to Cumae. Until news could be brought back he should remain here in the villa. This intention he announced in a tone abundantly significant, his hearers understanding that Aurelia's property was now in hands not accustomed to relax their grasp. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... nearly—I say, girls, do be careful. If that thing were to fall on Mary it might injure her seriously—and what should we do without her?" With a strong grasp he seized and raised their cumbersome load, while Mary, red, embarrassed, laughing, dishevelled, struggled out from underneath. She was not really hurt, but she was dismayed at the thought of the time, and ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... reserve at the proper moment to battle; he could draw upon tears or smiles alike, and whenever need was for using this cheap coin. He would cringe to a shoeblack, as he would flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion)—But yet those of the army, who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all: and as he rode along the lines to battle or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from before the enemy's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... religious philosophy. All these were so full at once of the profound seriousness of youth, and of the bubbling wine of its high spirits, as to recall another thing Gilbert said: that Dickens was "accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp that there is foam upon deep seas." That was the matter in dispute about himself, and very furiously disputed it was during these years. Was G.K. serious or merely posing, was he a great man or a mountebank, was he clear or obscure, was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was no symptom of anybody coming to claim the little girl, who stood very quietly at his side, one hand holding the dog fast by his ear, and the other still lying in Oliver's grasp. The boy hopped on one foot across the narrow alley, and looked up with bright, eager eyes ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... the trunk also differs from that of the Asiatic species. In that animal a kind of finger projects from the upper part of the extremity; but in the African species the end of the trunk is split so far, that the two lobes act as opposable fingers, and serve to grasp any object which the animal desires to hold. This structure can easily be seen by offering the animal a piece of biscuit. The forehead, too, affords another means of distinction, being convex in the African, and flat or slightly concave ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... players crowed and the audience groaned it was worthy of note that little McCall showed no temper. Yet he had failed to grasp a great opportunity. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... homoeopathic or imitative magic may be practised by itself, contagious magic will generally be found to involve an application of the homoeopathic or imitative principle. Thus generally stated the two things may be a little difficult to grasp, but they will readily become intelligible when they are illustrated by particular examples. Both trains of thought are in fact extremely simple and elementary. It could hardly be otherwise, since they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cannot keep from mixing himself up in the matter. He gives them a cautious shove with his finger and then it is done. Out they go, fluttering and uncertain, beating the air like bats, sink, but rise again, grasp what the art is and make use of it to reach the nest again as quickly as possible. Proud and rejoicing, the parents come to them again and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... political idols; there, under the low sky, rose the memorial shaft to Clay. There had lived beaux and belles, memories of whom hang still about the town, people it with phantom shapes, and give an individual or a family here and there a subtle distinction to-day. There the grasp of Calvinism was most lax. There were the dance, the ready sideboard, the card table, the love of the horse and the dog, and but little passion for the game-cock. There were as manly virtues, as manly vices, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... her mouth loosened and set free her great scream. It rang down the corridor and seemed to petrify his grasp upon her. His fingers loosened—and again she was running, bent forward, crying out, in a vast thirst ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... lovely things, and gentle—the sweet laugh Of children, girlhood's kiss, and friendship's clasp, The boy that sporteth with the old man's staff, The baby, and the breast its fingers grasp— All that exalts the grounds of happiness, All griefs that hallow, and all ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... may expect some help, knowing how careful the Lord is to judge us by the light we have, how generously He measures every effort after holiness, and blesses every pang of the spiritual hunger. We may not be able to grasp the creeds which others recite so fluently; we may not be able to give easy expression to the affections which thrill within us; may, perhaps, wonder if we love at all; but at least we can say this,—we want to be right. ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Marquis got the lap-cloth unwound from about the man's head. It was the driver of the cut-under. But we got no gain from his discovery. As soon as his face was clear, he tore out of our grasp and began to run. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Armand's grasp and made for the door. He appeared dazed, staring down at that paper which was scorching his fingers. Only when her hand was on the latch did he seem to realise that she ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... course, never again discussed with her his wife's incurable self-absorption, as on the day of her arrival, when the painful scene created by Mrs. Selwyn had practically forced him into some sort of explanation, but Sara's quick grasp of the situation had infinitely simplified matters, and by devoting a considerable amount of her own time to the entertainment of the captious invalid, and thus keeping her in a good humour, she contrived to save Selwyn many a bad half-hour of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... then, he played the enamoured countess so long as her fondness for him might be useful, her hostility detrimental. But once the Colonelcy of the Electoral Guards was firmly in his grasp, and an intimate friendship had ripened between himself and Prince Charles—the Elector's younger son—sufficiently to ensure his future, he plucked off the mask and allied himself with Sophia in her hostility ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... moment; and broken off because she intended to marry Nick. The announcement of his arrival in Paris and the publication of Mr. and Mrs. Hicks's formal denial of their daughter's betrothal coincided too closely to admit of any other inference. Susy tried to grasp the reality of these assembled facts, to picture to herself their actual tangible results. She thought of Coral Hicks bearing the name of Mrs. Nick Lansing—her name, Susy's own!—and entering drawing-rooms with ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... hand exhibits one of those mystic marks[84] which are the sure prognostic of universal empire. See! His fingers stretched in eager expectation To grasp the wished-for toy, and knit together By a close-woven web, in shape resemble A lotus blossom, whose expanding petals The early dawn has only ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... lost the best part of myself. In him were the foundations of so solid a confidence and friendship that all the years of life leaned upon him. His genius too was a fountain inexhaustible of thoughts and kept me ever curious and expectant. Nothing was too great, nothing too beautiful for his grasp or his expression, and as brilliant as his power of illustration was, he stuck like a mathematician to his truth and never added a syllable for display. I cannot tell you how much I have valued ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... views upon agriculture. But what's the use of farming without capital? What I mean to say is this: we see the blue sea and the orange tints on the mountains, and all that, I mean, and we don't seem to realize, I mean, that we may die at any moment and never see them again. How few people grasp that simple fact! It's enough to make one sick. Or do you think it's a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... grew livid. The end of all things was at hand; his dinner had been put back half an hour! This was a climax in the affairs of his life, which for the moment he failed to grasp or estimate. Was a father ever cursed with such daughters as his? He had been in the City all day working for them; he did not marry because he wished to leave them his money, and this was the return they made to him. His dinner had ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... rallied, and seizing the offending rider with no gentle grasp, dragged him from the wheel and ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain that these countries must be rescued from the grasp of ignorant and fanatical rulers, that the march of civilisation must progress, and its various elements of commercial prosperity must be developed. It is needless to observe that such will never be the case under ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... hope; for, according to her promise, she never ceased to pray for the erring object of her love; and she still therefore clings to the trust that there may have been light enough in his soul at the last for him to see and grasp the outstretched hand of Jesus. And sorrow has not made her selfish. She has learned to take a deepening interest in the happiness of others; and thus, in her self-denying works of faith and labours of love, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... that those inside were obliged to lie with their knees bent double. Royds, whose reports were invariably very brief and to [Page 106] the point, dismissed the tale of these five days in half a page, but no great effort of imagination is needed to grasp the horrible discomforts everyone must have endured. And yet when this party recounted their adventures on board the ship, the hardships were scarcely mentioned, and all that the men seemed to remember were the ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... spite of himself by this half-whispered conversation, glanced toward Inez. Instantly, Scott thrust the table against him and leaped toward the door. But Doug thrust out a spurred boot and the two young riders went down among the table legs. Inez twisted in Peter's grasp, but he pinioned both of her hands and watched the struggle anxiously. Suddenly he saw Douglas drive his knee violently into Scott's groin. Scott groaned and went limp. Douglas got to his knees and tied Scott's hands together with his own neckerchief. Then he dragged Scott ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... time Ernest was beginning to grasp details. "Suppose next time you start out to have fun you let my things alone. Isn't that Sherm's best tie ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... would hold on but as the weeks passed and she faithfully told him what record the days held he saw that in each she felt that she had less and less to grasp. And then came a letter which plainly could not conceal ominous discouragement in the face of symptoms not to be denied—increasing weakness, even more rapid loss of weight, and less sleep and great exhaustion after the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... their hands their young hearts were swayed by tender and tumultuous feelings. A too strong pressure startled them, and they loosened their grasp. The sun sank behind the hill. The shadows that fell upon their faces awakened them from their dreams. Again they said goodbye and reluctantly parted. Once they stopped and, turning, waved their hands; and the next ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... so much so; the mother had been plain and quiet. He had not known her father, for he had lately come to this State in hiding from another. He wondered, with his wide knowledge of the world, over her wild, haughty beauty, and gloated over it. He liked to think just what worth was within his easy grasp. A prize for the taking, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... telling them about Harry being in danger, but he had forgotten he was with his friend. At last he heard himself called. He started up, and was just in time to seize the tiller, which Harry had that instant let slip from his grasp, as he sank down to the bottom of the boat. In another second of time the boat would have broached to. The gloom of evening was coming on rapidly, and there was but a dreary prospect for poor David. He still felt very sleepy, and had almost ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Blount again, sternly, and put out a hand as she would have risen. "You go away? Where would you go? What would you do? Now, wait till I get done. Here," he cried almost savagely, "stand up here like I tell you, and listen to what I've got to say! Stand right there!" He drew in one grasp from his pocket his handkerchief and his gauntlet gloves, and swept a place clean upon the ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... ENJOYMENT different from that which the physicists of today offer us—and likewise the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the physiological workers, with their principle of the "smallest possible effort," and the greatest possible blunder. "Where there is nothing more to see or to grasp, there is also nothing more for men to do"—that is certainly an imperative different from the Platonic one, but it may notwithstanding be the right imperative for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... side," the lieutenant replied. "If we were the other side a man might possibly wrench himself way from our grasp, and might outrun us, but on this side of the gate he couldn't do so; for even if he did break away he would have to run back toward the village, the gate would stop ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... are!" he cried, rubbing his cold hands vigorously before offering to grasp the bony old fingers that were extended to him. "Glad to see you back, Uncle Joe. Comfortable? Well, well, how are you?" He shook his uncle's hand warmly. "Sorry to see you laid up again, sir, but we'll have you as good as ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... facts. When we say that a man owns a thing, we affirm directly that he has the benefit of the consequences attached to a certain group of facts, and, by implication, that the facts are true of him. The important thing to grasp is, that each of these legal compounds, possession, property, and contract, is to be analyzed into fact and right, antecedent and consequent, in like manner as every other. It is wholly immaterial that one element is accented by one word, and the other ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... operator, standing up to his middle in water, takes as many of the sticks in his hands as he can grasp, and removing a small portion of the bark from the end next the roots, and grasping them together, he with a little management strips off the whole from end to end, without breaking either stem or fibre. He then, swinging the bark around his head, dashes it repeatedly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... cliffs, sea-swept and forest-crowned, first seen as lighted by the rising sun, a nameless sermon preached, a wordless lesson taught, an everlasting poem sung. And our minds and spirits are calmed, refreshed, and invigorated; while in some dim way we grasp ideas that the silent scene irresistibly conveys to us. Rising within us, as we gaze, comes with fresh new force the knowledge of the qualities that should be ours: the high-hoping courage, the unshrinking energy, the dauntless resolution, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... unexpected plan of Sam Brewster's, and her grasp on the soup ladle relaxed so that it fell to the floor with a ringing echo. But she paid no attention to it: she stood with mouth open staring at the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Surely his grasp was slackening, his powers were passing, when like a flashlight those words illuminated his brain. He was as one in deep waters, swamped and sinking; but ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... there are those who grasp his hand, Who drink with him and wish him well. O in no drear and lonely land Shall he ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... for every disease, therefore do you who are sick come to me and be cured; while for you who do not suffer I can do as much or more, by telling you of your future, what evils to avoid and what chances to grasp." ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... unique, and so widespread, that it is difficult to write of it under the spell which still surrounds his memory. Many still remember seeing and feeling almost with awe the tremendous grasp of success which Dr. Talmage had all his life. A reminiscence of my girlhood will be pardoned: My father was his great admirer many years before I ever met the Doctor. Whenever I went with my father from my home in Pittsburg on a visit ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... near to the throne. If his accession had seemed even a likely thing at the time, it would not have been sanctioned. I speak as the staunch friend of the lady whose cause is so dear to us, but I wish you to grasp the facts." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... congregation of millions all over the world to appeal to. I stood before them, accredited in the religious course I had pursued, approved as a minister of the Gospel, upheld as a man and a preacher. The hand of Providence is always a mysterious grasp of life that confuses and dismays, but it always rebuilds, restores, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the hardships of this journey was that howsoever he held Jesus he seemed to cause him great pain, and he guessed by the feel that the body was wounded in many places; but the stars did not show sufficient light for him to see where not to grasp it, and he sat in the pathway, resting Jesus across his knees, thinking of a large rock within sight of his own gates and how he would lean Jesus against it, if he managed to carry him so far. He stopped at sight of something, something seemed to slink through the pale, diffused ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... epidemic that was carrying off the negro property. Finally, to pass over several stages in the decline of Marston's affairs, the ravages of the disease continued until but forty-three negroes, old and young, were left on the old homestead. The culminating point had arrived. He was in the grasp of Graspum, and nothing could save him from utter ruin. It had lately been proved that the Rovero family, instead of being rich, were extremely poor, their plantation having long been under a mortgage, the holder of which was ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... believe a word of it," Myron ventured, with a grasp at mental liberty. He essayed, at the same time, to draw away his hand, but Caddie seemed to fix him with a ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of it. A boy's nature does not grasp all these things. To us it was a matter of course that, if we were ill, Mrs Doctor should have us shut up in another part of the house, and, with her two daughters, risk infection, and nurse us back to health. I could not ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... dreadful amphitheatre, without knowing what torture was prepared for her, or what he would witness in a moment. Finally, as a man falling over a precipice grasps at everything which grows on the edge of it, so did he grasp with both hands at the thought that faith of itself could save her. That one method remained! Peter had said that faith could move ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... about Skye and its dolomite Cuchullins, Staffa, Iona, and Oban, where The MacDougal allowed us to see and handle (an unusual honour) the famous brooch of Lorne, the loss of which saved The Bruce's life, when he broke away from his captor, the then MacDougal; leaving tartan and shoulder-brooch in his grasp. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... horror of that moment. Fear—cold, abject, awful fear—ran through my veins like a drug; my face was clammy with the sweat of utter terror; my hands clutched wildly at some drapery, which tore from its fastenings and came down in my grasp.... ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... education'—and appeal to his opinion upon some passage in a British dramatist, say Shakespeare, it is ten to one that he shows not only ignorance of the author (the odds are twenty to one about that), but utter inability to grasp the point in question; it is too deep for him, and, especially, too subtle. If you are cruel enough to press him, he will unconsciously betray the fact that he has never felt a line of poetry in his life. He honestly believes that the 'Seven against ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... ground. Julia shrieked and fainted; Ferdinand drawing his sword, advanced towards the assassin, upon whose countenance the light of his lamp then shone, and discovered to him his father! The sword fell from his grasp, and he started back in an agony of horror. He was instantly surrounded, and seized by the servants of the marquis, while the marquis himself denounced vengeance upon his head, and ordered him to be ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... she said, "how is it with you? Uncle Indefer, speak to me!" He moved his head a little upon the pillow; he turned his face somewhat towards hers; there was some slight return to the grasp of her hand; there was a gleam of loving brightness left in his eye; but he could not then speak a word. When, after an hour, she left his room for a few minutes to get rid of her travelling clothes, and to prepare herself for watching by him through the ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... Our implements for sketching, together with a couple of double-barrelled guns and some fishing-tackle, distributed about the apartment, form agreeable objects for our gaze, while, at the same time, they are within our easiest grasp. Plenty of good fishing may be obtained in the deep, wide river which flows at our feet, and our guns may be equally well employed with sport in the opposite direction. As for our more peaceful instruments of art, there is abundant scope for them on every side; ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... that he reached the deck Harry had fully recovered, and he was the first to grasp Roger's hand and wring it convulsively as the latter stepped inboard. Harry could find no words wherewith to express his feelings adequately, but the pressure of his hand spoke for him, and Roger felt amply repaid for all ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... in a genial mood. The munificent offer received from Mr. Arnault had enhanced her self-appreciation, and she felt that she had met it with rare nerve and sagacity. She had not shown herself dazzled like a village girl, and eager to grasp the prize. Moreover, she had thought, with proud complacency: "The man who can offer so much is not going to give me up, even should I keep him waiting months longer. I still believe that Graydon can give me all I want at present, and at the same time a position in society which Arnault could ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... permit power to slip from their grasp without some extraordinary effort was scarcely to be expected. When the official returns were brought from the various voting-places to the Governor's office, there came from Oxford, a single precinct in Johnson County, "a roll of paper, forty or fifty feet long, containing names as thickly as ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... that you should not display your prowess. On the morning of that auspicious day will I dissolve thee from the wardenship, and give thee freedom to thy knighthood. I will, with my own hands, buckle on thy armour, with my right hand place a spear in thy grasp, and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... compliment from singers whose fame had reached me even in America. It was evident that my grain of a reply did not fall upon stony ground, for I never was among people who seemed to be so quickly impressed by any act of politeness, however trifling. A bow, a grasp of the hand, a smile, or a glance would gratify them, and this gratification their lively black eyes expressed in the most ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... not this—not this!' said Kate, trying to clasp her in her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had been the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would interpret as a license to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right direction, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... rest—all the storm of her sorrow was at peace—for one instant of time she tasted of life's sublimest joy ere the waters of blackness and despair closed in once more over her soul. For one instant only—then she remembered, and withdrew herself shudderingly from his grasp. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... of an orator, deserves to be considered as one of the most eloquent men in the world, if eloquence may be said to consist of the power of seizing the attention with irresistible force, and never permitting it to elude the grasp until the hearer has received the conviction which the speaker intends.... He possesses one original and almost superhuman faculty,—the faculty of developing a subject by a single glance of his mind, and detecting at once the very point on which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the roots of the pines, and we could pick up as many as we pleased; but generally even the most delicate mosses grasp the soil, and clasp their soft tendrils round the stones so firmly that you need a knife or a sharp stone to make them loose their hold. One of the uses of moss is to protect the rocks from the frost, and from the heavy rains which ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... two closely allied tendencies of great strength. Every child has a tendency to approach, grasp, and carry off any object not too large which attracts his attention, and to be satisfied by its mere possession. Blind hoarding and collecting of objects sometimes valueless in themselves results. This instinct is very much influenced in ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... hell, and heaven to behold; To welcome life, and die a living death; To sweat with heat, and yet be freezing cold; To grasp at stars, and lie the earth beneath; To tread a maze that never shall have end; To burn in sighs, and starve in daily tears; To climb a hill, and never to descend; Giants to kill, and quake at childish fears; To pine for food, and watch the Hesperian tree; ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... of vis inertive of constitution. This impenetrability had the effect of a somewhat buoyant disposition, not because he could be buoyed on the tide of any strong emotion, but because few things could disturb or excite him. Unable to grasp the significance of anything outside of himself and his attributes, he took immense pride in stamping his character, his nationality, his practicality, upon every series of circumstances by which he was surrounded: he sailed up the Nile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... is always unseen; spiritual things are often apparently unreal. God cannot be reduced to figures nor to material elements. This hand that works with ours may mean one thing to one and another to another. What we all need is to simply grasp the great fact of the spiritual forces that strengthen every good resolve, that give vigour in every good work, and give victory at last ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... several of them, I have become to a certain extent immune from the spell which seems to be exercised upon the commoner by personal contact with the Lord's anointed. Save when I have had some definite mission to accomplish, I have never had any overwhelming desire "to grasp the hand that shook the hand of John L. Sullivan." To me it seems an impertinence to take the time of busy men merely for the sake of being able to boast about it afterward to your friends. But because, during my travels in Jugoslavia, I ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... instant, and then in a flash realised her true position. Freeing herself from his grasp she exclaimed, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... and descriptive denunciation, addressed to the entire neighborhood, in which Elmendorf's personal character and professional career came in for glowing and not altogether inaccurate portrayal. Slowly the dishevelled scholar found his legs, Mart making one more effort to break away from the grasp of the law and renew the attack before he was led to the station-house, where, however, he had not long to languish before a major of cavalry rode up and bailed him out; but by that time, and without his luggage, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... across the table and gave me a hearty grasp of the hand. He was so agitated that he could not speak—choking with joyful emotion, as if he had been Jeanne's father, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... superior purposes of man, enveloped Howat. He forgot for the moment his companion, lost in a swelling pride of Myrtle Forge, of his father's fibre—the iron of his character like the iron he successfully wrought. He could grasp Gilbert Penny's accomplishment here, take fire at its heroic quality; a thing he found impossible in the counting room above, recording such trivial details as wool stockings for Jonas Rupp. He could be a forgeman, he thought, but never ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Later she opened it to the tale of Tomlinson. She did not entirely grasp it, but she could not entirely miss what it said. She hurried on; she wondered vaguely at the call of the Red Gods; here again, seeking distraction, she was whipped back to reality. There were the lines, staring at her, as ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... rose on my head; but my strong will still reigned supreme over all the terror and disquietude. I gained the water, and at once plunged into it, holding on by one hand, while I immersed the other and seized the dear letter, which, alas! came in two in my grasp. I concealed the two fragments in my body-coat, and, helping myself with my feet against the sides of the pit, and clinging on with my hands, agile and vigorous as I was, and, above all, pressed for time, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Governor Atterlin," he thought carefully. "I would have explained yesterday, but I had no understanding of the situation here until our anthropologist, Lola Montandon, elucidated it very laboriously to me. She herself, a scientist highly trained in that specialty, could grasp it only by referring back to somewhat similar situations which may have existed in the remote past—so remote a past that the concept is known only to specialists and is more than half mythical, even ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... heard, sir, the gossip about my father, which is on the lips of every fool in Europe. Let us have done with this pitiful make-believe. My father is a sot. Nay, I do not blame him. I blame his enemies and his miserable destiny. But there is the fact. Were he not old, he would still be unfit to grasp a crown and rule over a turbulent people. He flees from one city to another, but he cannot flee from himself. That is his illness on which you ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... about renunciation—nothing at all about spiritual zeal. They communicated the sense of plain ripe nature, expressed the unperverted reality of things, declared that the common lot isn't brilliantly amusing and that the part of wisdom is to grasp frankly at experience lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was for his beginning to wonder after this whether a deeply-wounded heart might be soothed and healed by such a scene, it would be difficult to explain; certain it was that as he sat there he dreamt, awake, of an unhappy woman ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... loser of thirty thousand pounds—the cunning parvenu listened with an air of as vague indifference as if he were not waiting with breathless anxiety the gradual dissipation of the funds, secured to the young spendthrift by the transfer of his estate, to grasp at the small remaining portion of his property. Unconsciously, when the tale of Sir Laurence's profligacy met his ear, he clenched his griping hand, as though it already recognized its hold upon the destined spoil, but not a word ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... appears to be lost its value is greatly enhanced, and all the comforts, and privileges, and opportunities, of his present situation, that he had made such an effort to give up, seemed to shrink into insignificance, compared with the domestic happiness that was now eluding his grasp. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... receipt of the news of Champney's flight; he vowed then he would not go again unless sent for; the sight of the mother's despair, that showed itself in speechless apathy, was too much for him. He could only grasp her hand at that time, press it in both his, and say: "Aurora, if you need me, call me; you know me. We'll help ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... for a while, for now it was clear that one way or the other he must make up his mind. All those strings of red tape, which he had meant to tie with such dilatory cunning hung loose in his grasp; to a Cabinet really set on resignation he could not apply them. Just as his hands had seemed full of power they became empty again. He knew that at the present moment no other ministry was possible, and that a general election was more likely to accentuate than to solve his difficulties; and so ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... speechless. She had borne the Emperor in her womb, but the philosopher outsoared her comprehension. She retired, leaving his Majesty in a reverie, endeavoring herself to grasp the moral of which he had spoken, for the guidance of herself and the ladies concerned. But whether it inculcated reserve or the reverse in the Dragon Chamber, and what the Imperial ladies should follow as an example she was, to the end of her life, totally unable to ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... badinage—I hope far distant is the day When from these scenes terrestrial our friend shall pass away! We like to hear his cheery voice uplifted in the land, To see his calm, benignant face, to grasp his honest hand; We like him for his learning, his sincerity, his truth, His gallantry to woman and his kindliness to youth, For the lenience of his nature, for the vigor of his mind, For the fulness of that charity he bears to all mankind— ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... of Waters, where we are not struck with the Novelty or Beauty of the Sight, but with that rude kind of Magnificence which appears in many of these stupendous Works of Nature. Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its Capacity. We are flung into a pleasing Astonishment at such unbounded Views, and feel a delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul at the Apprehension[s] of them. The Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a Restraint upon ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... continuing to do so from year to year, at the very door of poverty, and also look back on those New York parties through the same period, accumulating wealth by the usual course of business, and perhaps watching my progress, and waiting for the proper moment to step in with their money power and grasp the lion's share of the prize which justly belongs to myself. If they could look back on the circumstances and comprehend the case in all its reality and truth I should have no fear of a just decision by the Committee in the House of Representatives. ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... was, his transpositions into black and white of subjects by Troyon, Ruysdael, Crome, Constable, and many others are not so striking either in actual technique or individual grasp as his original pieces. Constable, for instance, is thin, diffuse, and without richness. Mezzotinted by the hands of such a man as Lucas, we recognise the real medium for translating the English painter. A master of the limpid line, Lalanne shows you a huddled bit of Amsterdam or a distant ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... throwing of the javelin, the proper term for all weapons of this character, was an interesting thing from the earliest times. The lighter weapons are thrown by grasping them between the thumb and the two first fingers; but the heavy ones like this need a firmer grasp, and on account of their weight are not so easily kept in a horizontal position when in the act of impelling it forwardly. When, however, the spear is grasped in the manner shown you, the little finger, and the next finger to it, both act to guide the stem, and by ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the yoke not yet your love's submissive neck is bent, To share a husband's toil, or grasp his amorous intent; Over the fields, in cooling streams, the heifer longs to go, Now with the calves ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... him, struggling to overcome her fear. She felt that if only she could grasp that fear, like a nettle, and hold it tightly in her hand it would seem so slight and unimportant. But she could not grasp it. It was compounded of so many things, of the silence and the dulness, of the Precincts and the Cathedral, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... go, dear uncle!' shrieked the unhappy girl; and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him, in order, by her grasp, to detain him. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... furnish the key to the situation: "I felt that I was doing more, and had more to do, when thinking of the broken lines." "The broken figure seemed more difficult to get, but to attract attention; continuous figure easy to grasp." "Felt more active when contemplating the image of the broken figure." "In the broken figure I had a feeling of jumping from line to line, and each line seemed to be a separate figure; eye-movement very perceptible." The dominance of the interrupted ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... gently walk, and sweetly talk, Till the silent moon shine clearly; I'll grasp thy waist, and, fondly prest, Swear how I love thee dearly; Not vernal showers to budding flow'rs, Not autumn to the farmer, So dear can be as thou to me, ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... conscious in passing that another arm was creeping from the water. He severed the first tentacle with one blow. When he turned to strike the second it had disappeared; so, too, had the second arm. The boat seemed to be free, but it was still within grasp. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... this? And yet how soon comes the Medusa, Thought, To chill the heart's blood of sweet fantasy! For, O bright orb! That glid'st along the fringe of those tall trees, Where a child's thought might grasp thee, Art thou not This night in thousand places hideous? To think Where thy pale beams may revel—on the brow Of ghastly wanderers, with the frozen breast And grating laugh, in murder's rolling eye, On death, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... life it should be yours to teach, because it should be yours to know and to act. Men are better than they seem, and the hidden virtues of life appear when men have learned how to translate them into action. Men grasp and hoard material things because in their poverty of soul they know of nothing else to do. It is lack of training and lack of imagination, rather than total depravity, which gives our social life its sordid aspect. When a plant has learned the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... I could see nothing in the dark pit of the hall below us. Was it possible I could remember it alight with candles, whose flames made soft halos on the polished floor? Brutus touched my shoulder, and the brusque grasp of his hand turned ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... later known as William the Silent, because of his customary discreetness. He was of German birth, a convert to Protestantism, and the owner of large estates in the Netherlands. William had fair ability as a general, a statesmanlike grasp of the situation, and above all a stout, courageous heart which never wavered in moments of danger and defeat. To rescue the Netherlands from Spain he sacrificed his high position, his wealth, and eventually ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... spoke, he tightened his arm about Seltz's throat until the latter gasped for breath. The revolver fell from his nerveless grasp—he clutched at the detective's arm and tried to tear it from his throat, all the while groaning and sputtering at a ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... pique; in a manner which added to political disappointment personal offence. When even his parasites began to look gloomy, the duke had a specific that was to restore all, and having allowed every element of power to escape his grasp, he believed he could balance everything by a beer bill. The growl of reform was heard but it was not very fierce. There was yet time to save himself. His grace precipitated a revolution which might have been delayed for half a century, and never need have occurred in so aggravated ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Stab! Ye sons of evil women!' he yelled to his men, and before poor Imam Bakar could free himself from the powerful grasp which held him, the spears were unearthed, and half a dozen of their blades met in his shuddering flesh. It was soon over, and Imam Bakar lay dead upon the sandbank, his body still quivering, while the peaceful morning song of the birds ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... other arts the result comes only after the learning is done; their fruits alone are agreeable; 'long and steep the road thereto.' Sponging is once more an exception, in that profit and learning here go hand in hand; you grasp your end as soon as you begin. And whereas all other arts are practised solely for the sustenance they will ultimately bring, the sponger has his sustenance from the day he starts. You realize, of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... back—come back, my Bonny, to me," and turned to leave the pantry. She had barely gotten outside the door, however, when she paused, and, muttering something about lemons and pickles, slipped away from Mrs. Stone's grasp and disappeared within ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... unarmed. And the monk is Evan, the Cymrian, of Gwentland; and the chief, by his voice, seemeth not to be Saxon. The monk bade me give thee these tokens" (and the scout displayed the broken torque which the King had left in the grasp of Harold, together with a live falcon belled and blinded), "and bade me say thus to the King: Harold the Earl greets Gryffyth, son of Llewellyn, and sends him, in proof of good will, the richest prize he hath ever ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such divergent ideas on this subject is that so many people write about it who have had no experience in farming, while on the other hand there are few farmers who can state the case so the public can grasp the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... both on the lakes and streams. It is fascinating to watch them unobserved, perched on a twig, as motionless as if petrified, until, suddenly, their prey is within grasp, and with ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... effort to reply. It was the crowning circumstance of his degradation. He extricated himself from his father's grasp, darted an angry look at the departing guest, and returned ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... a beggar, who had diagnosed a changeling, was allowed to try his hand at disposing of it, he made a large fire on the hearth and held a black hen over it till she struggled, and finally escaped from his grasp, flying out by the "lum." More minute directions are given by the cunning man in a Glamorganshire tale. After poring over his big book, he told his distracted client to find a black hen without a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... good wife." I have always been a literalist. I find out that it is the only way to interpret the Bible. When God says: "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him he shall bring it to pass," I believe that to be the way to act. My faith does not at all times grasp this or other promises, but there are times when I can appropriate them and make them mine; there are times when I can pray with faith, believing that I have the things I pray for, other times it is ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of his chains, so that he now has his hands and his left foot loose—only the right foot remains bound. This king causes the earthquakes when he struggles or stirs himself, and he is so strong that in shaking hands with him it is necessary to extend to him a bone, which he crushes in his grasp. For some unexplainable reason the Indians call him King Bernardo, perhaps by confusing him with Bernardo del ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... neatness; linen, delicate as woven gossamer, falls into folds as finely exact as an engraver's point could draw; velvet shoes tread without speck or spot upon the well-scoured pavement of a public street; men-at-arms grasp weapons and hold bridles with hands as carefully tended as any idle fine gentleman's, and there is neither fleck nor breath of dimness on the mirror-like steel of their armour; the very flowers, the roses and lilies that strew the way, are the perfection of fresh-cut ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... gold, they had handled it, and they were inflamed by a sense of what it ought to do for them. Perhaps half of them could not add a simple sum, could not grasp figures beyond a thousand, at most. And the sight of so much gold had made it, in a manner, cheap. It was there, a heap of it, and they wanted more of that shining heap than had been ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... and superior to any other in her experience. She had a comfortable feeling of condescension towards Nick and towards Jane Foley. And at the same time she blamed Musa, perceiving that as usual he was behaving like a child who cannot grasp the great fact that life is ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... foolishness.—Tho', if he should object to Scripture authority, he will find, in the laugh and contempt of Mankind, the real folly of those who, in the midst of affluence, by the most bare-fac'd and indelicate proceedings, obtain and continue to grasp at every means of ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... his father's grasp, and who knew that his father would certainly search him, to find out what he had brought to sell, thought it most prudent to produce the diamond cross. His father could but just see its lustre by the light of a dim lamp, which hung over their heads in the gloomy ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... German again raised his revolver, but Hal, moving quickly forward, again struck at the German's revolver with his own — he had no time to raise it to fire. The German's revolver was knocked from his grasp, but Hal also lost his grip on his weapon and both went clattering to the ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... the glory that will ever enshroud the heroes who, with perhaps not literally "cannon to right of them" and "cannon to left of them," but with a hundred cannon belching forth death in front of them, hurled themselves into the centre of a great army and had victory almost within their grasp. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... suddenly failed her; she shuddered, and turned faint. Danville's hand had in one instant grown cold as death in hers; the momentary touch of his fingers, as she felt their grasp loosen, struck some mysterious chill through her from head to foot. She glanced round at him affrightedly, and saw his eyes looking straight into the drawing-room. They were fixed in a strange, unwavering, awful stare, while, from the rest of his face, all expression, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... from the window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room, whose walls were hung with silvered canvas. This house his father said in that death-bed letter—had been built for his mother to live in—with Fleur's father! He put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp the shadowy hand of the dead. He clenched, trying to feel the thin vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that he—he was on his father's side. Tears, prisoned within him, made his eyes feel dry and hot. He went back to the window. It was warmer, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the same aim, that I worked like a convict before becoming what I am and to realize, in its perfection, the type which I wished to create—which I have succeeded in creating. That being so—what can you do? At that very moment when you think that victory lies within your grasp, it will escape you—there will be something of which you have not thought—a trifle—a grain of sand which I shall have put in the right place, unknown to you. I entreat you, give up—I should ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... on the padded platform, she fell on her knees, and the fall must have jarred her. But she was up in a flash, and the girl with the dipper, Minnie Wolff, found herself in the muscular grasp of ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... of the Church, in the age of Valentinian and Theodosius, unquestionably purified Neoplatonism. The struggle for dominion had led philosophers to grasp at and unite themselves with everything that was hostile to Christianity. But now Neoplatonism was driven out of the great arena of history. The Church and its dogmatic, which inherited its estate, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... an air of stupor. It was then that a shadow passed over his face, as though the flapping wings of some colossal bird had brushed against his forehead. And raising his eyes he saw the banner fall from Miette's grasp. The child, her hands clasped to her breast, her head thrown back with an expression of excruciating suffering, was staggering to the ground. She did not utter a single cry, but sank at last upon the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... beat it and shoot at it: it is dismembered already; but still in the frenzy of its final agony it stretches over all the ancient temple its disgusting, clawing tentacles. And the priests, themselves under sentence of death, push into the monster's grasp all whom they can seize ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... certain over-fastidious women have long clamored for some new method of putting on a pillow case, but these people have either lost their teeth, or the new ones do not grasp the situation. They have tried several new methods, such as blowing the pillow case up, and trying to get the pillow in before the wind got out, and they have tried to get the pillow in by rolling up the pillow ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... students of our form of government it is particularly interesting because of provisions[1] purporting to impose a tax on employers of child labor, for these represent an attempt by Congress to nullify a decision of the Supreme Court and grasp a power belonging to the states. The story of these provisions throws a flood of light on a method by which ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... parted from his candid friend, still unable to grasp the situation thoroughly. That the bank had spread abroad the false report seemed certain. He hurried, fuming with indignation, to call on Mr. Barnby and have the matter out with him. But it was past three, and the doors of the ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... evening!" saying which, Mr. Chichester turned away. But in that same instant, swift and lithe as a panther, Barnabas leapt, and dropping his stick, caught that slender, jewelled hand, bent it, twisted it, and wrenched the weapon from its grasp. Mr. Chichester stood motionless, white-lipped and silent, but a devil looked ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... out to do the neighborly for the best that was in me; but it seemed to hit the Major wrong. He turned about two shades pinker, coughed once or twice, and then got a fresh hold. "I'm afraid you fail to grasp the situation, Mr. McCabe," says he. "You see, we lead a very quiet life here in Primrose Park, a very domestic life. As for myself, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... though old. It was red, and the bright color seemed to take the child's fancy; he was never so good as when playing upon the gay old rag. His black eyes would sparkle, and his tiny fingers clutch at it, when the mother put it about him as he swayed in Abel's courageous grasp. And then Abel would spread it for him, like an eastern prayer carpet, under the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... into his intended victim, if Buck Lingley had not darted upon him as soon as he saw the knife. The deckhand was the stoutest person on board, and he bore the octoroon to the deck in an instant, and wrenched the knife from his grasp. ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... the rocky islands, hazed in blue, the yellow sun-drenched water, the tropic shore, pass as a background in a dream. He only is sweltering reality. Yet he is here to guard against a nightmare, an anachronism, something that I cannot grasp. He is guarding me ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... carry about; low dressers within reach of his arms; locks that he can easily manipulate; chests that run on castors; light doors that he can open and shut readily; clothes-pegs fixed on the walls at a height convenient for him; brushes his little hand can grasp; pieces of soap that can lie in the hollow of such a hand; basins so small that the child is strong enough to empty them; brooms with short, smooth, light handles; clothes he can easily put on and take off himself; these are surroundings ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... the purse in her lap and walked off; which vexed Tai-y so much the more that, after giving way to tears, she took up the purse in her hands to also destroy it with the scissors, when Pao-y precipitately turned round and snatched it from her grasp. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... little instruction, and more of our leader's mental penetration, I could do it myself. At times I shrank from encountering her gaze, for I verily believed that she read my inmost thoughts. And I could see that thought came out of her eyes, but it escaped all my efforts to grasp it; it was too evanescent, or I was too dull. Sometimes I imagined that the meaning was at the threshold of comprehension, but yet it evaded me, like forgotten words whose general sense dimly irradiates the ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... it?" She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... principle, a law hitherto undiscovered. We take care to repel no idea, no fact, under the pretext that abler men than ourselves lived in former days, who did not notice the same phenomena, nor grasp the same analogies. Why do we not preserve a like attitude towards political and philosophical questions? Why this ridiculous mania for affirming that every thing has been said, which means that ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... hand to the front and right as if about to grasp the hand of another individual—friend, friends, Fig. 331. For remarks connected with ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... in it; for although it is consolatory to know that they are in life, and are not unmindful of us, still a closely written sheet of paper is but a poor substitute for the animated conversation, the cordial grasp of the hand, and the kind glance of the eye; and we become more sensible of the distance that divides us when letters written many days ago arrive, and we remember with dread that, since these very epistles were indited, the hands that traced them may ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... this hard lesson; they were not wise, not prudent; they would not see the sharp sword suspended over their heads: their arms were madly thrown around each other, and they did not grasp this only anchor of safety which the fond brother, and not the stern king, had extended to them. They were lost! they ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... ship quite close, whose captain was an elderly man with a gray beard. He so waved his helmet that it slipped from his grasp and went spinning into the sea. When we lost him in our smoke his crew of Chinese were lowering a boat to recover the helmet. We heard the ships behind us roaring to him. Strange that I should wonder to this day whether ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... you do, Miss Ross? Wait a moment—wait a moment, until I can shake hands with you. Now, then, the other arm, Prissy. You are as welcome as flowers in May—and as blooming too, isn't she, Prissy?' and Mr. O'Brien enforced his compliment with a grasp of the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... madness by his jealousy, the Count rushed to the apartment of the Countess. "False and faithless, false and faithless!" he cried in hoarse rage, and clutching her in his iron grasp, lifted her in the air and hurled her through the casement into the ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... The pictorial systems of the Egyptians and the Hittites required a hand skilled in drawing to express them; the cuneiform syllabaries of Babylonia, Assyria, and Elam needed an extraordinary memory to grasp the almost infinite variety in the arrangement of the wedges, and to distinguish each group from all the rest; even the Cypriote syllabary was of awkward and unnecessary extent, and was expressed by characters needlessly complicated. The Phoenician inventor, whoever he was, reduced ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing my own. Isn't that worth some sort of return? Isn't it worth even the sacrifice of a whim? Louise, don't look at me that way. Is it possible that you don't grasp—" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the porch and a passage ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the man who has had what he believes to be 'a liberal education'—and appeal to his opinion upon some passage in a British dramatist, say Shakespeare, it is ten to one that he shows not only ignorance of the author (the odds are twenty to one about that), but utter inability to grasp the point in question; it is too deep for him, and, especially, too subtle. If you are cruel enough to press him, he will unconsciously betray the fact that he has never felt a line of poetry in his life. He honestly ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... this, my Lord! They throw us in the seas: Be pleas'd, we pray, for Jesus' sake, To save us from their grasp. ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... a whim or on compulsion, Patience could not even read. It was only with great difficulty, after poring over a book for some two hours, that he deciphered a single page, and even then he did not grasp the meaning of most of the words expressing abstract ideas. Yet these abstract ideas were undoubtedly in him; you felt their presence while watching and listening to him; and the way in which he managed to embody them in ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... and exhilarating sight to see the red-nosed man writhing in Mr. Weller's grasp, and his whole frame quivering with anguish as kick followed kick in rapid succession; it was a still more exciting spectacle to behold Mr. Weller, after a powerful struggle, immersing Mr. Stiggins's head in a horse-trough ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... he is wise and knows what he is about. The reader, however young, who meets him gets very soon a sense that if he were in trouble, not necessarily medical, he would go to Dolittle and ask his advice about it. Dolittle seems to extend his hand from the page and grasp that of his reader, and I can see him going down the centuries a kind of Pied Piper with thousands of children at his heels. But not only is he a darling and alive and credible but his creator has also managed to invest ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... over all that we say, over all that we do; and, while Rose anxiously tries to fill the silence, I lie in wait, ready for a word, a sigh, a look that will enable me to go straight to the heart of that soul, which I am eager to grasp even as we take in our hand a mysterious object of which we are trying to discover ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... to herself; "perhaps at ten; perhaps at five. Would it go lower? Suppose it went down to nothing. What could she say to her mother? How would she pay Mr. Taylor?" Her breath came short; a dull sense of some impending calamity took possession of her. Everything seemed slipping from her grasp. ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... exceptions, and the experience has been rather widely gathered all over the country, that this interest—or call it what you will—has been entirely without spite or bitterness, rather the delight of a child in a fairy story. For people are rarely envious of things far removed from their grasp. You will find that a woman who is bitter because her neighbor has a girl "help" or a more comfortable cottage, rarely feels envy towards the owners of opera-boxes or yachts. Such heart-burnings (let us hope they are few) are among a class born in the shadow of great wealth, and bred ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... back and forth, while upon it, on a square frame, is stretched a thin canvas, and really, I don't know how it's contrived, I didn't grasp it; only the miss guides some metallic thingamajig over the screen, and there comes out a fine drawing in vari-coloured silks. Just imagine, a lake, all grown over with pond-lilies with their white corollas and yellow stamens, and great green leaves ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... morning with father, mother, and Tom at breakfast, I produced the extra two dollars and a quarter. The surprise was great and it took some moments for them to grasp the situation, but it soon dawned upon them. Then father's glance of loving pride and mother's blazing eye soon wet with tears, told their feeling. It was their boy's first triumph and proof positive that he was worthy of promotion. No subsequent success, or ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... dissipation, who eagerly seek pleasure in the lofty dome, rich treat, and midnight revel—tell me, ye thoughtless daughters of folly, have ye ever found the phantom you have so long sought with such unremitted assiduity? Has she not always eluded your grasp, and when you have reached your hand to take the cup she extends to her deluded votaries, have you not found the long-expected draught strongly tinctured with the bitter dregs of disappointment? I know ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... green his love must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears listen, and want more: the eyes are gratified with gazing, and desire yet further; the nostrils are filled with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The touch, too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower. Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air and hold it in the hollow ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... laws by which the Self unfolds his powers in the universe, from the fire-mist up to the LOGOS, are the same laws of consciousness which repeat themselves in the universe of man. If you understand them in the one, you can equally understand them in the other. Grasp them in the small, and the large is revealed to you. Grasp them in the large, and the small becomes ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... 6) Yama says that "a fool who is blinded with the infatuation of riches does not believe in a future life; he thinks that only this life exists and not any other, and thus he comes again and again within my grasp." In the Digha Nikaya also we read how Payasi was trying to give his reasons in support of his belief that "Neither is there any other world, nor are there beings, reborn otherwise than from parents, nor is there fruit or result of deeds well done or ill done ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... regained the wheels which had been left in the middle of the road. The innkeeper and his friend now caught hold of the rear wheels. Only by seizing their queues could we drag them away at all, but even then before we could mount they would renew their grasp. It was only after another direct attack upon them that we were able to mount, and ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature,—whatever ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him to go off at the proper time for each. He will suck when brought to the breast as unfailingly as his lungs will begin to work upon contact with the air. He will cry from hunger or discomfort, clasp anything that touches his fingers or toes, carry to his mouth whatever he can grasp, in time smile when smiled at, later grow afraid when left alone or in the dark, manifest anger and affection, walk, run, play, question, imitate, collect things, pull things apart, put them together ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... outrage upon his self-esteem, that the secret which was the weapon of terror by which he meant to rule his sister Rachel, should, by her slender hand, be taken so easily from his grasp, and lifted to ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hourly miracle of life Blindfold we stand, and sigh, as though God were not. I have wandered in the mountains, mist-bewildered, And now a breeze comes, and the veil is lifted, And priceless flowers, o'er which I trod unheeding, Gleam ready for my grasp. She loves me then! She who to me was as a nightingale That sings in magic gardens, rock-beleaguered, To passing angels melancholy music— Whose dark eyes hung, like far-off evening stars, Through rosy-cushioned windows coldly ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... waking suddenly, Beheld the dawn was white, the day was near, And rose, and kiss'd fair Helen; no good-bye He spake, and never mark'd a fallen tear,— Men know not when they part for many a year,— He grasp'd a bronze-shod lance in either hand, And merrily went forth to drive the deer, With Paris, through ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... a tight grip holt of my principle all the while I've been describin' it, that it has weakened the grasp of my good right ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... off, and Maude set to work at the pans. When they were sufficiently scrubbed, she pulled off the dirty apron in which she had been working, and went towards the dry herb closet. But she had not reached it, when her wrist was caught and held in a grasp ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... not!" she cried fearfully, slipping her hand from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp. "O, will you go away—for the sake of me and my husband—go, in the name of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... when the chief riches of the world lay tossed for daring hands to grasp upon the bosom of the sea, and the sleeping spirit of the old Norse Rover stirred in their veins, and the lilt of a wild sea- song they had never heard kept ringing in their ears; and they built them ships and sailed for the Spanish ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... temper, again, of the romantic writer is one of excitement, while the temper of the classical writer is one of self-possession. . . On the one hand there is calm, on the other hand enthusiasm. The virtues of the one style are strength of grasp, with clearness and justice of presentment; the virtues of the other style are glow of the spirit, with magic and richness of suggestion." Mr. Colvin then goes on to enforce and illustrate this contrast between the "accurate and firm definition of things" in classical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... tearful eye, and the closer grasp of the arm which accompanied these latter words, showed how they filled the speaker's heart; nor were there wanting indications of how deeply they had touched the heart of him ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... might return, and return to discover—to own, perhaps, to himself and to her that he did love her, and that only mistaken pride, or her own coldness, or one of the hundred "mistakes" or "perhapses" by which men, so much more than women, allow to drift away from them the happiness they might grasp, had misled and withheld him! No; all was over. Henceforth she must live in her children alone—in the interests of others she ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... lunge, he pierced Buckingham's arm, the sword passing between the two bones. Buckingham, feeling his right arm paralyzed, stretched out his left, seized his sword, which was about falling from his nerveless grasp, and before De Wardes could resume his guard, he thrust him through the breast. De Wardes tottered, his knees gave way beneath him, and leaving his sword still fixed in the duke's arm, he fell into the water, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... masters, as the term of the apprenticeship shortens, and the end of their authority approaches nearer, are pressing their poor victims harder and harder, determined to extort from them all they can, before complete emancipation rescues them for ever from their grasp. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the intricacies of every character study in the Scriptures, he was competent to grasp the Pilgrim Fathers and all historical innovators, but Sarah Penn was beyond him. He could deal with primal cases, but parallel ones worsted him. But, after all, although it was aside from his province, he wondered more how Adoniram Penn would deal with his wife than how the Lord would. Everybody ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... was the poor gentleman's blindness that neither touch, nor smell, nor anything else about the good lass that would have made any but a carrier vomit, were enough to undeceive him; on the contrary, he was persuaded he had the goddess of beauty in his arms, and holding her firmly in his grasp he went on to say in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... was the instinctive act of one who habitually verifies every statement. Then, as those expressionless blue eyes were fixed on the stranger's face, the engineer's sensation was as though from behind that gray mask something reached out to grasp his innermost thoughts and emotions. He felt strangely transparent and exposed as one, alone in his lighted chamber at night, might feel someone in the dark without, watching through the window. Presently the colorless, ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... politician his wonderful grasp of other people's business would have won for him esteem. The error he made was working ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... Brunswick, &c. These colleges, however, were not established without much difficulty and without the energetic resistance of the ruling powers, inasmuch as they often raised their pretensions so high as to wish to substitute their authority for the senatorial law, and thus to grasp the government of the cities. The thirteenth century witnessed obstinate and sanguinary feuds between these two parties, each of which was alternately victorious. Whichever had the upper hand took ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... helps to explain their motive for killing the divine bird. The notion of the life of a species as distinct from that of an individual, easy and obvious as it seems to us, appears to be one which the Californian savage cannot grasp. He is unable to conceive the life of the species otherwise than as an individual life, and therefore as exposed to the same dangers and calamities which menace and finally destroy the life of the individual. Apparently ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... side, and no truer or more needful instinct has been given to Man, but he fails to use it in the way intended. This world is a Touchstone, a Finding-place for God. Whoever will obey the law of finding God from this world instead of waiting to try and do it from the next, he, and he only, will ever grasp and take into himself that fugitive mysterious unseen Something which—not knowing what it is, yet feeling that it exists—we have ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... in despair, and with the iron strength of frenzy he tore himself loose from the grasp of the corporal who fell prone into the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves," the unconscious justification for a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better for one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... moved backward, as if crushed, her head falling on her bosom. Her beautiful insane dream was over. She just could grasp that it was not her husband, her Yann, and that nothing of him, substantial or spiritual, had passed through the air; she felt plunged again into her deep abyss, to the lowest depths of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... body on your back and bore him off the field, at the same time sounding the retreat with your bugle? Why didn't you tell me that on two separate occasions, when the color sergeants of your company were shot and the flag fell from their grasp, that you took the flag and bore it forward, sounding the charge, until you were relieved of your double duty? In other words, when there were so many good things that you could say for yourself, why ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... little ugly nauseous elf, Who judging only from its wretched self, Feebly attempted, petulant and vain, The "Origin of Evil" to explain. A mighty Genius at this elf displeas'd, With a strong critick grasp the urchin squeez'd. For thirty years its coward spleen it kept, Till in the duat the mighty Genius slept; Then stunk and fretted in expiring snuff, And blink'd at JOHNSON with its last ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with her into the great arms of the ferocious monster. Instantly every man, woman, and child of the band were upon the bank, but all unarmed. Cries and wailings went up from every mouth. What was to be done'? In the meantime this white and savage beast held the breathless maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with his precious prey as if he were used to scenes like this. One deafening yell from the lover warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe, and dashing away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife, returns almost at a single bound to the scene ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Unable to grasp the fact that she is mildly snubbing him, Mr. Ryde smiles gayly, and says, "Oh, really?" with an amused air that incenses her still more highly. "Was there ever," she asks herself, angrily, "so hateful a man, or ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... wet, elfish-looking hair out of her black eyes, and proceeded to scrub such of the smaller children as could not escape from her relentless grasp. Some submitted dumbly, and others struggled under her vigorous application of the icy rag, but all she attacked came out clean ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... seen that the spirit of conciliation, of a calm but earnest desire to obtain a firm grasp of the most reasonable relations between Church and State through patient study of the phenomena exhibited in other countries, were the leading motives of the man. Yet he was perpetually denounced in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... moment she was clinging to him with a trembling, eager, convulsive grasp. Tenderly did he fold her in his arms, and press his lips ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... American hare, and carrying off wounded Grouse before the sportsman could secure his prey. It is also a good fisherman, posting itself on some convenient spot overhanging the water, and securing its finny prey with a lightning-like grasp of the claw as it passes beneath the white clad fisher. Sometimes it will sail over the surface of a stream, and snatch the fish as they rise for food. It is also a great lover of lemmings, and in the destruction ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... said, "I feel that now and here. Will you not tell me something of yourself in return? I cannot read your mind clearly—it is occupied with something I cannot grasp—what is ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her parasol into the gravel at her feet. "It is David's money. You took his wife. Now you are taking his money. . . . You can't keep both of them." She said this very gently, so gently that for a moment he did not grasp the sense of her words. When he did it seemed to him that she did not herself realize what she had said, for immediately, in the same calmly matter-of-fact way, she began to speak of unimportant ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... found himself brought more closely face to face with the signs of a mind constructed like his own, with an aim and a purpose which he could understand, employing ways and means, and tending clearly to an end, and methodically following out a system which he could both perceive and grasp." Such a man's whole life is one act of reverence to that God in whose inner presence he finds himself illuminated and strengthened; and if there be revelation of divine things on earth, it is when the hidden secrets of nature are ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... brain could maintain its flickering strength no longer. There was a low cry of "Oliver!" that stabbed the heart; then, suddenly, her limbs were loosened, and she sank back, unconscious, out of her friend's grasp and ken. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... enough. If I want to help the poor, that is, to make the poor no longer poor, I must not produce poor people. And I give, at my own selection, to poor men who have gone astray from the path of life, a ruble, or ten rubles, or a hundred; and I grasp hundreds from people who have not yet left the path, and thereby I render them poor also, ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... enemy while preparing for a charge, these putrefying bodies were thrown headlong, pell mell, like the filling of blind ditches with timbers. One Confederate would get between the legs of the dead enemy, take a foot in either hand, then two others would each grasp an arm, and drag at a run the remains of the dead enemy and heave it over in the pit. In this way these pits or ditches were filled almost to a level of the surface, a little dirt thrown over them, there to remain until the great ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... they see but the facades; do they not wish to know how Parisians live and speak and act by their firesides? But time, alas! is lacking for the formation of those intimate friendships which would bring this knowledge within their grasp. French homes are rarely open to birds of passage, and visitors leave us with regret that they have not been able to see more than the surface of our civilization or to recognize by experience the note of our inner ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... plant probably as many million seeds.[907] In these several cases, the spermatozoa and pollen-grains must exist in considerably larger numbers. Now, when we have to deal with numbers such as these, which the human intellect cannot grasp, there is no good reason for rejecting our present hypothesis on account of the assumed existence of cell-gemmules a few thousand times ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... which were out of the way, doubtless my complexion and hands were quite enough to distinguish me from the regular salt who, with a sunburnt cheek, wide step, and rolling gait, swings his bronzed and toughened hands athwart-ships, half opened, as though just ready to grasp a rope. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... wanted me to," said the man. "I'll make up for lost time now." As he spoke he grasped the hand which extended from George's right sleeve and as George at that same moment turned quickly away, the astonished handshaker stood holding in his grasp an arm which had apparently come from the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... fallen under the Redan. The whole way up to the guns was strewed with bodies, and as I got nearer to the guns, there were many corpses of Russians, who had attacked the British as they were retiring. I looked eagerly about. There lay poor Marshall. I took his hand. He would never grasp rifle again. Near him lay a Russian soldier, whose bayonet, it seemed clear to me, had pierced his breast, and who himself had been shot at the same moment by Marshall's rifle, for the weapons lay crossed on the ground as they had fallen from the grasp ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... stopped, wi' the greatest victory o' the war within their grasp. They stopped. They waited. And the line was formed again. Somehow, new men were found tae tak' the places of those who had deed. Masks against the gas were invented ower nicht. And the great chance o' the Germans tae win the war ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the balcony, Diemuth pretends that her strength is failing. At his entreaties she loosens and lets down her long hair, but when he tries to grasp it she jerks it back with a cry of pain and rates him harshly.—At last he perceives, that she has been fooling him all the time. He is helplessly caught in the trap and the returning citizens seeing him hanging between {436} heaven and earth deride him, congratulating Diemuth on having ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Jarvis did his best to grasp the situation, but failed. All that he could do was to maintain ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were more lively than he had anticipated, or whether Ted purposely relaxed his hold, certain it was that the gander, with a scream of fury, backed out of his grasp and fluttered on to the floor; proceeding to waddle with great speed and evident indignation across the kitchen into the ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... soon felt that a new power had arisen. The Commissioner was not only a name but an actuality. Nothing was so trivial as to escape his attention; nothing too wide for him to grasp. He knew his men—it is said that he knows every man in the force, an exaggeration with a great deal of truth in it—and ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... a comin', and so is the Duke. And a way is opened: waves o' the sea roll hack at these words, and I walks right out, as large as life, and the fust Egyptian that follers is drowned, for the water has closed over him. Sarves him right, too, what business had he to grasp my life-preserver without leave. I have enough to do to get along by my own wit, without ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... was aptly asked if the devoted laborers in that remote vineyard were not deserving of support. Were civilization and Christianity to be snatched from the Zenanese just when both were within their grasp? So on for nearly half a column the writer meandered in the most orthodox style, just as he had done scores of times before when advocating certain missions. Some one who found him the next day running his finger down the letter Z, in the index to the "Handy ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... worn, into the possession of his majesty, and to us they were of unspeakable value. They assented, and took a list only, and did the same with the books, medicines, &c. My little work table and rocking chair, presents from my beloved brother, I rescued from their grasp, partly by artifice, and partly through their ignorance. They left also many articles, which were of inestimable value, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... the problem is deserving of careful study. The desire for children in so many homes where every advantage could be given, may be gratified when more knowledge of how wisely to modify the environment of the rich is within our grasp. ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... until the sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars, with its eddy of planet-specks lost in the confused glittering of the remoter light. I was no longer a denizen of the solar system: I had come to the outer Universe, I seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole world of matter. Ever more swiftly the stars closed in about the spot where Antares and Vega had vanished in a phosphorescent haze, until that part of the sky had the semblance of a whirling mass ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... guard, two thousand strong, under General Keane, emerged at the mouth of the canal Villere, and camped on the bank of the river, [Footnote: Letter of Major-General John Keane, Dec. 26, 1814.] but nine miles below New Orleans, which now seemed a certain prize, almost within their grasp. ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... fraudulent king (who is doomed to roll a monstrous boulder uphill forever), stopped to listen. The daughters of Danaus left off their task of drawing water in a sieve. Tantalus forgot hunger and thirst, though before his eyes hung magical fruits that were wont to vanish out of his grasp, and just beyond reach bubbled the water that was a torment to his ears; he did not hear ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... that, in much, Collingwood was a more able diplomatist than the men by whose authority he was circumscribed. His letters to Stanhope prove that he was a more apt tactician and had a profounder grasp of the political situation of his day than he has been credited with by posterity. Again and again, does he foretell that a particular line of action will be fraught with a particular result, or ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... on the whole, an admirable one. The problems which he faced were varied and difficult, but most of them were met sensibly and with success. To be sure, he did not grasp the social and economic forces behind the monetary agitation; nor did he have the insight and originality necessary for attacking the problem of industrial unrest as it appeared in the strike of 1877. But neither did his associates, nor his successors in the presidency for many years to come. On ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... by morning, and the child never saw him again; but inasmuch as those about him understood no English and he no French, it was some time before he could grasp the false assurances of Madame that his father had gone on a journey but would presently return. The child knew positively that the man was not his father, but when he was able to make this correction the matter had faded into insignificance: life had become too painful to leave time or ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... is very agile of movement, and unless the pit is at least twelve feet in depth there is danger of his springing out. Any projecting branch on the inside of the stakes affords a grasp for his ready paw, and any such branch, if within the reach of his leap, is sure to effect his escape. For this reason it is advisable to trim smoothly all the projections and leave no stub or knot hole by which he could gain the slightest hold. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... example, but in the world's history I do not recall a man before him who, while still having power in his grasp, was ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... either admit scepticism to be the issue of the debate, or else, condemning our absolute view of truth, find some means of utilizing the relative truths which are all that humanity seems able to grasp. But to come to terms with relativism is to renounce the dogmatic attitude entirely, and to approach the problems of philosophy in a totally ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... seemed settled for Hitty; her father admitted no nursing but hers. Month after month rolled away, and the numb grasp gradually loosed its hold on flesh and sense, but still Judge Hyde was bedridden. Year after year passed by, and no change for better or worse ensued. Hitty's life was spent between the two parlors and the kitchen; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the silken scarf from her face, and even in the glimmer of the dull street-lamp under which the man had drawn her he could see the auburn hair and blue eyes. But he still kept his grasp on her arm. There were slaves who were not black, he knew, and "quality white" girls were not running about ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... missive spear; The Trojan stoop'd, the javelin pass'd in air. Then near the corslet, at the monarch's heart, With all his strength, the youth directs his dart: But the broad belt, with plates of silver bound, The point rebated, and repell'd the wound. Encumber'd with the dart, Atrides stands, Till, grasp'd with force, he wrench'd it from his hands; At once his weighty sword discharged a wound Full on his neck, that fell'd him to the ground. Stretch'd in the dust the unhappy warrior lies, And sleep eternal seals his swimming eyes. Oh worthy ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... at a distance were now heard. "They are coming," said she to Brown; "you are a dead man." He was about to rush out, when the gipsy seized him with a strong grasp. "Here," she said, "here, be still, and you are safe; stir not, whatever you see or hear, and nothing ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... his grasp, darted to the shelf, seized the shrivelled pice of bark, and pressed it against her bosom as though it ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... playing had been heard to compare with it during that season, with the exception of Burmester's performance of the Beethoven concerto. "Such wealth and sensuous beauty of tone, such certainty of technique, such mental grasp of the work, and at the same time such all-conquering temperament have not been heard in Berlin at the hands of a female violinist during several years." After many recalls, she gave, as an encore, a rousing performance of a ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... For my belief is that boys read altogether too few of such books. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say, have too few opportunities to read such books, because so often we fail to see how quick in their reading their minds are to grasp the more difficult, and how keen and competent their conscience to draw the right conclusion when situations are presented ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... blood was up, five fingers of tanglefoot tingling in each fist and bubbling in his brain. Struggling in the sergeant's grasp, he shouted his reply: "Settle be damned! How'd you settle wid Willett for the girl he did you out? Bluffed him on a queen high, and called it square! You're nothin' but a bluffer, Case, an' all ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... of doubt or of presumption, but in it spoke real, though struggling faith, seeking to be confirmed. Therefore it was not regarded by God as a sin. When a 'wicked and adulterous generation asked for a sign,' no sign was given it, but when faith asks for one to help it to grasp God's hand, and to go on His warfare in His strength and as His instrument, it does not ask ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with sparkling eyes, 'then you are a jolly old Ethel! Come along, then;' and he took her on his arm, ran down-stairs with her, and before she well knew where she was, or what was going on, she found herself in his great grasp passive as a doll, dragged off into the midst of a vehement polka that took her breath away. She trusted to him, and remained in a passive, half-frightened state, glad he was so happy; but in the first pause heartily ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visit his own land of Fragrant Purity; for with exacting care he has set down no detail that has not come under his direct observation (although it is not to be denied that here or there he may, perchance, have misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the inner significance of an act), so that Impartiality necessarily sways his brush, and Truth lurks ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... into active motion; and this applies to all, excepting, of course, such movements as are the result of heredity, where no words, but some other incentive, such as "scent" may possibly come into play. It is difficult for human beings to grasp that there is life in the sub-conscious, and that it is in those sub-conscious regions that the will ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... what I tell, No marvel; for myself do scarce allow The witness of mine eyes. But as I looked Toward them, lo! a serpent with six feet Springs forth on one, and fastens full upon him: His midmost grasp'd the belly, a forefoot Seiz'd on each arm (while deep in either cheek He flesh'd his fangs); the hinder on the thighs Were spread, 'twixt which the tail inserted curl'd Upon the reins behind. Ivy ne'er clasp'd A dodder'd oak, as round the other's limbs The hideous monster ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Arden, my old friend, All the pleasures we have known Thrill me now as I extend This old hand and grasp your own— Feeling, in the rude caress, All affection's tenderness; Feeling, though the touch be rough, Our old ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... lowest view of prayer mere petition; but even that, I think, is set on its right footing as soon as we grasp the true conception of the ideal father. Do you mean to say that, because your father's rules were unwavering and his day's work marked out beforehand, he did not like you to come to him when you were a little child, with all your ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... cope always with two simultaneously is an indication that the young art of music has not yet emerged from its teens. This is one reason why most song is as yet so intrinsically unmusical. Its reach is, as a rule, forced to exceed its grasp. Also the accident of having a fine voice usually determines a singer's career, though a perfect vocal organ does not necessarily imply a musical nature. The best voices, in fact, often belong, by some contrariety of fate, to the worst ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... live. And yet I suffer. Thirst chokes and tortures me: my heart and brain are aching, and my tongue is on fire. The sound of water is in my ears: a torrent rushes by, near me. If I could only reach it, I might drink and live: but I cannot move; I am chained to the rocks. I grasp one after another, and endeavour to drag myself along: I partially succeed; but oh, what efforts I make! The labour exhausts my strength. I renew my exertions. I am gaining ground: rock after rock is passed. I have neared the rushing water; I feel its cold ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... states authoritatively "The incontrovertible fact then is as follows: The Lord who is known from the Vedanta texts ... recognising that the Vedas are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself ... with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the true meaning of the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... when, he breathed his last. The echoing sound of the rifle shot had hardly died away, to which the true hunter ever listens with unfeigned pleasure as the sweetest of music on his ear, whenever he has seen that his game is surely within his grasp, the last faint melody was broken in upon and completely lost in a terrific roar from the woods directly behind him. Instantly turning his head to note the source of this sound, the meaning and cause ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... come—you must!" he said, threateningly; and, loosening his grasp on her shawl, he threw his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... maintain, Now let your inspiration show it. To you is known what we require, Strong drink to sip is our desire; Come, brew me such without delay! Tomorrow sees undone, what happens not today; Still forward press, nor ever tire! The possible, with steadfast trust, Resolve should by the forelock grasp; Then she will never let go her clasp, And labors on, because she must. On German boards, you're well aware, The taste of each may have full sway; Therefore in bringing out your play, Nor scenes nor mechanism spare! Heaven's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... as a compensation for having her taken care of at his house; her children were sold in Carolina; and thus was this poor forlorn being left alone in her misery. In all this wide land of benevolence and freedom, there was no one who could protect her: for in such cases, the laws come in, with iron grasp, to check ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one word shed light, quickened her inner ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... which Guy could not refuse to listen. It could not be his intention to wreck her happiness. He could not know all that hung upon it. Her happiness! She shivered suddenly in the chill of the morning air. Could it be that happiness—the greatest of all—had been actually within her grasp, and she had let it slip unheeded? Sharply she turned her thoughts back. No, she must not—must not think of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... U.S. 230 (1908). Justice Holmes, who spoke for the Court in both cases, asserted in his opinion in the latter that the New York statute was "directed to jurisdiction," the Mississippi statute to "merits," but four Justices could not grasp the distinction. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... which, however, age had never cooled. He could, therefore, write with a most powerful pen when discussing the death of that unfortunate man, the late candidate for Silverbridge, crushing his two foes in the single grasp of his journalistic fist. Phineas had certainly said some hard things against Lopez, though he had not mentioned the man's name. He had congratulated the House that it had not been contaminated by the presence of so base a creature, and he had said ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... perching birds grasp a twig firmly with their very limber toes and sharp claws, and put their head under their wing; but many others, like tame Geese and Ducks, sleep standing on the ground on one foot or sometimes ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... it has been the highest care to his successors to keep clear and bright. He imparted to it above all that purpose which I hope is forever inseparable from it, when in his cordial love of good literature he stretched a welcoming grasp of recognition to every young writer, East, West, North, or South, who gave promise of good work. Remembering his kindness in those days to one young writer, very obscure, very remote (whose promise still waits fulfilment), I must not attempt to praise him, lest grateful ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... and a few more oaths, I heard Charlie (or at any rate somebody) coming toward me, with a loose and not too sober footfall. As he reeled a little in his gait, and I would not move from his way one inch, after his talk of Lorna, but only longed to grasp him (if common sense permitted it), his braided coat came against my thumb, and his leathern gaiters brushed my knee. If he had turned or noticed it, he would have been a dead man in a moment; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... he got hold of her hand; and she let it remain in his grasp; but her quiescence did not mean ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... one of her hands, and when in her excitement the hand struggled to get away again, it was not permitted. Ellen understood that very well, and immediately checked herself. Better than words, the calm firm grasp of his hand quieted her. Her sobbing stilled; she turned from the arm of the sofa, and leaning her head upon him, took his hand in both hers and pressed it to her lips, as if she were half beside herself. But that was not ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... shut up like the fingers of one's hand. But what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself would perish in its grasp." ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... faithfully endeavoring to grasp the details of his hostess' narrative, passed a hand in bewildered fashion across his forehead. He murmured that the story was—ah—very interesting, very interesting indeed—yes. Martha ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... off, and the horses snorted and ran so fast; then they stopped, and the other mans came back, and I heard them say, 'He's killed; he's quite dead.' O papa, I'm so frightened!" and she clung to him with convulsive grasp, sobbing ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... condemnation of the burning of the Capitol. Then, on the heels of this intelligence, came rumors that the British invasion of New York had failed and that Prevost's army was in full retreat to Canada. The Americans could hardly grasp the full significance of this British reversal: it was too good to be true. But true it was, and ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... and fell upon his knees, as if in the presence of some heavenly spirit, his hot tears falling upon the fragile hand she held out to him, which he clasped, unconsciously, in both his own, with a grasp so like a vise that it would have smitten her with sharp pain had she been capable at that moment ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... This earthly mind may be of noble calibre, enriched by culture, high-toned, virtuous, and pure. But if it know not God? What though its correspondences reach to the stars of heaven or grasp the magnitudes of Time and Space? The stars of heaven are not heaven. Space is not God. Natural Law, Death, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... noticed anything for days," she said, catching Noel's hand in an ardent grasp and holding it so that the baby could see the ring. He felt her fingers close upon it almost lovingly. He knew she could have kissed it, because it had for that second been of interest to her child—and with no knowledge that it was in any way different from the ring upon it. When the ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... not, though in falling, blindness hide Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod, The light thy lessening grasp no more controls: Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide: This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls Play on through time beneath ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... to the throne. If his accession had seemed even a likely thing at the time, it would not have been sanctioned. I speak as the staunch friend of the lady whose cause is so dear to us, but I wish you to grasp the facts." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very beginning a prospect of being very successful, even merely considered as a trade route—a prospect which the British Government, capitalist, and merchant did not seem to grasp, but which was fully appreciated by the quicker and more far-seeing Russian official and trader. Any fair-minded person cannot help admiring the Russian Government for the insight, enterprise and sound statesmanship with which it lost no time in supporting the scheme (discarded ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Toilet.— After the application of the binder and napkin, comes the undervest; the fingers of the nurse are passed up through the sleeve to seize the infant's hand and pull it through; as soon as it gets a little older the child will grasp a finger laid in its palm, which greatly facilitates this part of the toilet. The stockings are next put on and pinned with safety-pins to the napkin; then comes the petticoat, the band of which is also loosely fastened with safety-pins, and ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... for itself. There are two varieties. One has flat, sucker-like discs, which hold themselves tightly against whatever surface they come in contact with, on the principle of suction. The other has tendrils which clasp themselves about anything they can grasp, or force themselves into cracks and crevices in such a manner as to furnish all the support the vine needs. So far as foliage and general habit goes, there is not much difference between these two varieties, but the variety with disc-supports ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... possible we settled down to our work, and tried to grasp its possibilities. We saw many pleasing evidences of what had been accomplished by faithful predecessors, and were soon convinced of the greatness of the work yet to be done. For, while from our ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... cried the words. "The Phantom Herd!" He sat up straight in his chair. Here was his title, for which his mind had groped so long and could not grasp. His title— ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... shoulder. It was an angel's visit. Matilda saw it, as well as she knew that she had been walking with one; he brought some warmth and light even into that drear region; some brightness even into those faces; though he staid but a few minutes. Giving then a hearty hand grasp, not to his scholar only but to the poor woman her mother, whom Matilda thought it must be very disagreeable to touch, he with his ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... proofs of great growth, and nowhere are they greater than at the very close. Stevenson died young: in some phases he was but a youth to the last. To a true critic then, the problem is, having already attained so much—a grand style, grasp of a limited group of characters, with fancy, sincerity, and imagination,—what would Stevenson have attained in another ten years had such been but allotted him? It has over and over again been said that, for long he shied presenting women altogether. This is not quite true: Thrawn Janet ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... formula of freedom for all comes to the fore. So at last universal suffrage is introduced as the panacea. Freedom seems within grasp. Now it looks as if a method and an objective have been hit upon, that will lead both the free and the enslaved out of their mutual bondage, and release the handcuffs which have bound them together. All the trial and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sought and all in vain, you must at length come to this fountain in which is all grace and happiness. If you had what you seek, yet if ye would indeed believe in Christ, you must deny them and look upon yourselves as ungodly, to be justified by faith. Why then do you grasp after that which can do you no good, (though you had it), I mean, in point of your acceptation? Consider it, my beloved, that the honour of God and your own happiness lies most in this, nay not only that, but your holiness too, which you pretend to seek after, lies in it. Till you come to Christ, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... cabinet. Yet from his place in the House the ex-minister continued manfully to uphold the general who was doing England's work in Spain. There was need of all the support his genius could contribute to this task, for parliament was slow to grasp the deep purpose of the campaign, was impatient for results, and prone to grumble at the bill of expense. Yet in the end Canning enjoyed the satisfaction of pointing to the complete verification of his hopes. He might have been Foreign Minister in the Liverpool ministry at its ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... people had she been in the water, that even yet the prince could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw her ascend slowly, grasp the balcony, and disappear through the window. He turned, almost expecting to see her still by his side. But he was alone in the water. So he swam away quietly, and watched the lights roving about the shore for hours after the princess was safe in her chamber. As soon as they disappeared, ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... than by an eager grasp of the small hand, Dr. Douglass came out. His horses and carriage were ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Barthorpe Herapath had foolishly allowed himself to become warm and excited, Burchill had remained cool and watchful and calculating. And now in the slight diversion made by the entrance of the other detectives, he suddenly and adroitly threw off the grasp of the men who held him, darted through the open door on to the stairs, and had vanished before Davidge could cry out. Davidge darted too, the other police darted, Mr. Halfpenny smote his bell and shouted ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... new arrangements and combinations of words with which to express old thoughts and older emotions, yet that is not an unfair statement of the task of the literary artist. Words—symbols that represent the noises that human beings make with their tongues and lips and teeth—lie within our grasp like the fragments of a jig-saw puzzle, and we fit them into faulty pictures until our hands grow weary and our eyes can no longer pretend to see the truth. In order to illustrate an infinitesimal fraction of our lives by means of this preposterous game ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... for a moment believed that a little child so helpless and so young as Cecile carried about with her so much gold—I am afraid he would have simply watched his opportunity, have stifled the cries of the little creature, have torn her treasure from her grasp, and decamped. But Anton believed that Joe was the purse-bearer, and Joe was a more formidable person to deal with. Joe was very tall and strong for his age; whereas Anton was a remarkably little and slender man. Joe, too, watched the children day and night like a dragon. Anton felt that in ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... smell, Wakes in the spirit a profound disquiet, And greeting seems the foreword of farewell. Budding like all the world, the soul would swell Out of its withering mortality; Flower immortal, burst from its heavy shell, Fly far with love beyond the world and sea, Out of the grasp of change, from time ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... which is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers. If the flower assimilated their dead bodies as the pitcher plant, for example, does those of its victims, the fly's fate would seem less cruel. To be killed by slow torture and dangled ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... James, we should be ready with about forty thousand to come into line as the right wing of that army. Approaching Richmond from the north and west, the south side railroad would be at once in our grasp, and that to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... at the Royal Academy, for the culture of Riseholme, led by herself, rejected as valueless all artistic efforts later than the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a great deal of what went before. Her husband with his firm grasp of the obvious, on the other hand, would be disappointingly capable even before her maid confirmed his conjecture, of concluding that she had ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the endeavor after knowledge and truth the life of the mind. In the midst of the movements of time, of the daily work of life, of its perplexities and contradictions, we should lift our gaze fearlessly to the clear vault of heaven, and seek ever to obtain a firmer grasp of and a keener insight into the origin of all goodness and beauty, the capacities of our own hearts and minds, the intellectual fruits of mankind throughout the centuries, and the wondrous works of nature around ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... altogether! At last I got him persuaded to try to hold his breath, and commit himself to me; so he agreed, and down we went. But I had not got him half way through, when he began to struggle and kick like a wild bull, burst from my grasp, and hit against the roof of the tunnel. I was therefore, obliged to force him violently back into the cave gain, where he rose panting to the surface. In short, he had lost his ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... obstacle, he had brought a rope which he now uncoiled from around his waist. He flung it dexterously over the ledge. To his utter surprise, it caught there at the middle, while the other end dangled within his grasp. He seized it, gave a few strong tugs at each end of the rope to make certain it was secure, leaving his coat and rifle on the ground, and then he began to climb ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... hour they thought the driver of the other aeroplane would be likely to be sleeping. At the very door of the hotel they came upon Mr. Thomas Q. Collins! He strolled up as Ned stepped into the doorway and extended his hand. Ned took it, gave it a perfunctory grasp, and attempted ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... overwhelming their faces with the earth which they threw over them. A living Numidian, with lacerated nose and ears, stretched beneath a lifeless Roman who lay upon him, principally attracted the attention of all; for when his hands were powerless to grasp his weapon, turning from rage to madness, he had died in the act of tearing his antagonist with ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... and his associates, consenting to conform to this custom, not without suspicion of a sinister design, were endeavored to be dragged off as prisoners by the savages; but strong and active, they bounded from their grasp, and entered the gate, amid a heavy shower of balls—one only of the nine, was slightly wounded. The Indians then commenced a furious assault on the fort, but were repulsed with some loss on their part; and every renewed attempt to carry it by storm, was ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... minute she disengaged herself from my grasp, and held out her little white hand to me, thanking me as sweetly as thanks could ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... mendicants did not live up to their doctrine for a single generation. In the middle of the century Bonaventura had to reprove the Franciscans for their greed of property, their litigation and efforts to grasp legacies, and for the splendor and luxury of their buildings.[2200] The two great orders of friars became an available power by virtue of their hold on the tastes and faiths of the people. They became the militia of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... She drew back from the window, her figure tense. "When it comes within my grasp, I will do everything, everything, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... There was very little of the whilom dude in his rough and easy costume, with a large handkerchief tied loosely about his neck; but the eyeglasses and the flashing eyes behind them, the pleasant smile and the hearty grasp of hand remained. There was the same eagerness to hear from the world of politics, and the same frank willingness to answer all questions propounded. The slow, exasperating drawl and the unique accent that the New Yorker feels he must use when visiting a less blessed portion ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... annoying. Because of the soreness of the mouth, the child cannot draw strongly enough on the nipple to get a normal feeding, and as a result the nutrition of the child is poor. These children are hungry and when offered the nipple grasp it greedily, draw a few mouthfuls then stop because of the pain ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... more suitable night for our escape. It was so dark that we could only see a few inches in front of our noses. The doctor, silent and with a swelling heart, accompanied me for a couple of hundred yards. I urged him to return to the tent. He stopped to grasp my hand, and in a broken voice the good man ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the trenches. The main streets of the city were cleared and guarded by the police and soldiery. The crowds were enormous, and disorderly, and more than two hundred of the rioters were killed. Yet it seemed as if the government had the situation in a firm grasp, though an ominous incident was that the Pavlovsk regiment on being ordered to fire upon the mob, mutinied and had to be ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the words were light, The hands upheld were small and white,— Such hands as strong men love to grasp And crush in an ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... now growing weaker, and each knew that a few minutes more must decide the fortune of the battle. Bonus still fought for the gun, and now his weight began to tell. Then, as he got within reach, and stretched hand to grasp it, Blanchard, instead of dragging against him, threw all his force in the same direction, and Sam was shot clean over the gun. This time they twisted and Will fell underneath. Both simultaneously thrust a hand for the weapon; both gripped it, and ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... question of physical heredity, like the lip of the Habsburg or the tainted blood of the Spanish Bourbons. It is a question of political environment, a question of dynastic tradition. Indeed, we must carefully study that Hohenzollern family tradition of politics if we want to grasp the full significance of the word, if we wish to understand how such a dynastic tradition may become a formidable power to European history. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has an eloquent and profound chapter on the "Spirit of the Hive." In the domestic and international ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... full of resentment. Snatching the sword from his grasp, she kept on telling him to quit the room at once. But Chia Lien continued to prattle foolish nonsense in a drivelling and maudlin way. His manner exasperated dowager lady Chia. "I'm well aware," she observed, "that you haven't the least consideration for any one of us. Tell some one to go and call ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Company, and in Humour, 'till we arrived at Victoria. Where he added one Thing, by Way of Appendix, in Relation to the Carthusians, That every Person of the Society, is oblig'd every Day to go into their Place of Burial, and take up as much Earth, as he can hold at a Grasp with one Hand, in order to prepare ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... was near the centre of the ford, when suddenly those at the tip of it were lifted from their feet as Rachel had been, nor could those behind hold on to them. They were torn from their grasp and swept away, the most of them never to be seen again, for of these men but few could swim. Thrice this happened until strong swimmers were sent to the front, and at length these men won across as Rachel had done, and caught hold of the ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... Ganse, John H. Howe, Thomas Revera, Joe Sampson, Henry Sampson, Isham Quick, and scores of others whom we must, if we do the right thing, acknowledge as the black fathers of this city. Thrifty and industrious Negroes have always been the objects of the envy of poor whites who will eagerly grasp the opportunity when given, to destroy the property of these people. While it is your object, Colonel, to carry the election, and triumph politically, they will murder and plunder, and when once licensed ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... felt a strong desire to grasp his ally, Fix, by the hand. He remembered that it was the detective who procured the sledge, the only means of reaching Omaha in time; but, checked by some presentiment, he kept his usual reserve. One thing, however, Passepartout would never forget, and that was the sacrifice ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... approach of complete darkness and the look of wind in the south than we were about our triumph. After indescribable effort and hardship we were witnessing a marvel of the natural world, and we were the first and only men who had ever done so; we had within our grasp material which might prove of the utmost importance to science; we were turning theories into facts with every observation we made,—and we had but a moment ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... among her pillows, her eyes leveled at the few stars beyond her door, opened to admit any cooling breeze. Her head ached. It was like the computations of astronomers; to a certain extent the human mind could grasp the distances but could not comprehend them. It was more than chance. Chance alone had not brought him to the crumbling ledge. There was a strain of fatalism in Elsa. She was positive that all these ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... quickly, and, with averted face, held out his hand to her; but as she made no motion to grasp the hand, he began distractedly to button his ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... awkwardly, walks with difficulty, crossing its legs immediately on assuming the erect posture, an infirmity which it often takes years to overcome. Just, too, as the idiot is slow to notice, slow in learning to grasp anything, or to stand or walk, so he is late in learning to talk, he often acquires but few words, for his ideas are few. He learns even these few with difficulty, and employs the same to express many different things; he generally articulates them indistinctly, often indeed so ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... greengrocer. The women, "marchesane, principesse, cameriere, cittadine" and all, are become equally dangerous: the sex is aggressive, powerful: when women are wronged they do not group themselves pathetically to sing "Protegga il giusto cielo": they grasp formidable legal and social weapons, and retaliate. Political parties are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as they are, than be brought to the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... dim, tarnish. empapar soak, steep. empedernido, -a hard-hearted. empearse persist, insist. empeo m. determination, desire. empero adv. however, notwithstanding. empezar begin. empleo m. employment, use. emponzoar poison, taint. empuje m. impulse. empuar grasp, grip. en prep. in, into, at, for, among, on, upon, with, of, to, against, by, over, like; —— que when. enamorado, -a enamored, loving, in love. enamorar inspire love, woo; —se de fall ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... kingdom in Northern Italy would at once compensate Ferdinand for his abandonment of this heritage and extend the Austrian supremacy over the Peninsula, for Rome and Central Italy would be helpless in the grasp of the power which ruled at both Naples and Milan. A war alone could drive France from the Milanese, but such a war might be waged by a league of European powers which would remain as a check upon France, should she attempt ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... the mucous membrane of one cheek, near the corner of the mouth, as a dark, ragged, sloughing ulcer and spreads for two or three days before the substance of the cheek is infected. If you grasp the cheek between the thumb and finger you can then feel a hard and sensitive lump. The cheek may be eaten through by the third day, though a week generally passes before this happens. There is a burning watery discharge from the unhealthy wound. The breath smells terribly and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sphere of influence of the league of civilized nations. It was a part of this problem to enter the equation with such deliberate caution as to upset no part of the nicely calculated adjustments of white to darker peoples. And it was also a part of his problem that he should not relinquish his grasp upon the factors that led to honor, recognition ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... spectacle, that almost froze my blood. In the skeleton gripe of the right hand, interlaced within the clenched bones, gleamed the wide-mouthed vial which was the object of our mutual visit. Graham fell upon his knees, and attempted to withdraw the prize from the grasp of its dead possessor. But the bones were firm, and when he finally succeeded in securing the bottle, by a sudden wrench, I heard the skeleton fingers ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... a strange language; so strange, indeed, that the soldiers with him failed to entirely grasp his meaning, and one shouldered his rifle, while the other brought ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... connection, for though it was to be a long engagement and a great secret, everybody found it out. Lucas had long made up his mind that so it would end, and told his mother that it was a relief the crisis had come. He put a good face on it, wrung his cousin's hand with the grasp of a Hercules, observed "Well done, old Monk," and then made the work for his final examination a plea for being so incessantly occupied as to avoid all private outpourings. And if he had very little flesh on his bones, it was hard work ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (meno mosso), to murmuring strings (where the theme of striving can possibly be caught) the blissful melody sings in full song, undisturbed save by the former figure that rises as if to grasp,—sings later, too, in close sequence of voices. After a short intervening verse—leicht bewegt—where the first vision appears for a moment, the song is resumed, still in a kind of shadowy chase of slow flitting voices, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... through the inner recesses of his being like a gusty wind through an open door. He had grown to manhood with nothing but a cold, passionless tolerance in his attitude toward women. Technically he was aware of sex, advised as to its pitfalls and temptations; actually he could grasp nothing of the sort. A very small child is incapable of associating pain with a hot iron until the hot iron has burned him. Even then he can scarcely correlate cause and effect. Neither could ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the wonders I seemed to see, even the Road by which souls travel from There to Here and from Here to There, and the Gates that were burned away, and the City of the Mansions that descended, were but signs and symbols of mysteries which as yet we cannot grasp ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... first Huguenot war, though the revolt was successful, was the means of France remaining a Catholic country. It gave colour to the assertions of the Guises and their friends that the movement was a political one, and that the Protestants intended to grasp all power, and to overthrow the throne of France. It also afforded an excuse for the cruel persecutions which followed, and rallied to the Catholic cause numbers of those who were, at heart, indifferent ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... America more especially, very greatly increased the writer's fame. The pathetic vein it had opened was perhaps mainly the cause of this, but opinion at home continued still to turn on the old characteristics,—the freshness of humor of which the pathos was but another form and product, the grasp of reality with which character had again been seized, the discernment of good under its least attractive forms and of evil in its most captivating disguises, the cordial wisdom and sound heart, the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... community to watch and experts are always ready and interested to judge them. But nobody is interested in examination papers, and school children and especially captains should not be taxed with more than the absolute necessity of proving a candidate's fair grasp ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous
... intelligible statement in regard to his affairs. In the wish of the latter for an assignment, he passively acquiesced, and permitted all his effects to be taken from his hands. And so he was thrown upon the world, with his family, helpless, penniless, crushed in spirit, and weak as a child in the strong grasp of an over-mastering appetite, which had long been gathering strength ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... except in the fashion of clumsy wrestlers. The thud of hard fists against yielding flesh was a new and terrifying experience. Pegrani was game, though, and he flailed about with his powerful arms, endeavoring to get his opponent in his grasp. Sidestepping to avoid one of his rushes, Blaine brought up a terrible uppercut that ended flush upon the Llott's jaw. His head snapped back and his knees gave way beneath him. Down he went in a flabby heap. Suddenly ashamed, the young pilot turned ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... been attended with the same results elsewhere. In despotic countries, where the will of the monarch has been strongly expressed and vigorously supported, a diminution of the evil has for a time resulted, but only to be increased again, when death relaxed the iron grasp, and a successor appeared of less decided opinions on the subject. This was the case in Prussia, under the great Frederick, of whose aversion to duelling a popular anecdote is recorded. It is stated of him that he permitted duelling in his army, but only upon the condition ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... reality soon to be grasped by his willing hands? His heart grew buoyant with hope; the lightness of his heart gave elasticity to his step and sent the blood rejoicingly through his veins. Freedom was almost in his grasp, and the future was growing rose-tinted and rainbow-hued. All the ties which bound him to his home were as ropes of sand, now that ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... Almamen, "upon a doubtful quest: whether I discover my daughter, and succeed in bearing her in safety from their contaminating grasp, or whether I fall into their snares and perish, there is an equal chance that I may return no more to Granada. Should this be so, you will be heir to such wealth as I leave in these places I know that your ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an thou return to thy country and kingdom, thou wilt be distracted from me and forget the love of me; or that thy father will not further thy wishes in this matter and I shall die. Meseems the better rede were that thou abide with me and in my hand-grasp, I looking on thy face, and thou on mine, till I devise some plan, whereby we may escape together some night and flee to thy country; for I have cut off my hopes from my own people and I despair of them." He rejoined, "I hear and obey;" and they fell again to their carousal and conversing. He tarried ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... to stay. These are my quarters, and I recognize your right to come here in search of me, since I was not at reveille; but I want a witness here to bear me out. I'm too amazed yet—too confounded by this intrusion of Captain Chester's to grasp the situation. I never heard of such a thing as this. ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... when toiling in the grasp of Care Amid the eager throng, A votive seer, her greetings thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... flashes of color, darting like elfin wings here and there as Georgina twisted the ribbon, pleased Aunt Elspeth as if she were a child. She lifted a thin, shriveled hand to catch at them and gave a weak little laugh each time they eluded her grasp. It was such a thin hand, almost transparent, with thick, purplish veins standing out on it. Georgina glanced at her own and wondered if Aunt Elspeth's ever could have been dimpled and soft like hers. It did not seem possible ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... now an evil start has been made in the direction of applying them to the choice by the States of electors of President and Vice-President. If this is accomplished, we shall then have the three great departments of the Government in the grasp of the "gerrymander," the legislative and executive directly and the judiciary indirectly through the power ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... needed assistance came so consciously that I almost exulted in the assurance of coming victory. Springing up, I shouted out, "I know where all your children are, who are not among the living! I know, yes, I do know most certainly where all the children are, whom Death has taken in his cold grasp from among us, the children of the good and of the bad, of the whites and of the Indians, I know where all ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... cold chill of the blackness creep into his marrow. He had to move. He wanted to move, to find the right place, moving with the infinity of possible bodies. A stream of consciousness was all he could grasp, for the blackness enclosed everything. A sort of death, but he knew he was not dead. Blackness was around him, and in him, ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... have persuaded me that, in the utter absence of criminating evidence, I should not be detained long; I forbore to argue, but my opinion remained always the same. I had heard how tenacious was the grasp of Federal officials, unless loosened by more golden oil than I could then command. I had heard, too, how slowly aid or intercession from the free outer world could penetrate these mock-bastilles, and how reluctantly the authorities would grant the supreme favor of a hearing, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... in Venezuela, Im Thurn's in Guiana, those of Ehrenreich, von den Steinen, Meyer in Brazil, or of Bandolier, Bastian, Bruhl, Middendorf, von Tschudi in Peru, afford the historian of comparative sociology ample groundwork for a comprehensive grasp of South American tribes. In all parts of the western hemisphere society was organized on cognate kinship, real or artificial, the unit being the clan. There were tribes where the basis of kinship was agnate, but these were the exceptions. The headship of the clan was sometimes hereditary, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... when he had so well manipulated the district delegates that he was sure of nomination in the convention, Senator Sprague had hurried home from Washington and defeated him just as the prize was in his grasp. The Senator made a speech to the delegates, in which he pointedly declared that it was men of honor and brains, not men of money, that should be chosen ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... cup which the astrologer had handed to him, and which contained not wine, but distilled spirits. He swore half an oath, dropped the empty cup from his grasp, laid his hand on his sword without being able to draw it, reeled, and fell without sense or motion into the arms of the domestic, who dragged him off to his chamber, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... just finished one letter and was starting the next when of a sudden he found himself taught from behind. His arms were pinned to his side, his pistol wrenched from his grasp, and a hand that was not overly clean was clapped ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... come in. Of these, 9 are right, 16 partially right, and 2 wrong. The 16 give the distance correctly, but they have failed to grasp the fact that the top of the hill might have been reached at any moment between ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... caribou raised their heads, stared in stiffened wonder for a few seconds, offering a steady mark for the smoking rifle if it had been in the grasp of a butcher. Then, as though propelled by one shock, they cut for ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... that this prince, observing the gradual decay of the monarchy, tried to restore its vigour, and that his first thought was to hold with a firm grasp, even before assuming the Imperial crown, the cluster of nationalities, mutually hostile and always discontented, that go to make up the Dual Empire. So far as foreign relations are concerned, we may assume ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... are anxious to learn the subject from its simplest form to the more complex details, and he has therefore made a thoroughly useful book. Few people realize the delight of using a microscope intelligently, nor do they grasp the true value of even the simple pocket forms of this invaluable little instrument. If they did properly appreciate the microscope, every boy would carry a two or three loop lens, and find it as useful almost as the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 23, June 9, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... child, the baby hardly able to toddle and clinging to the mother's skirts. There was the young brother, the little fellow, whimpering a little perhaps at the noise and confusion and terror which his tiny brain could not grasp. There was the baby, the baby which used to be plump and smiling and round and pinky white, now held convulsively by the mother to her breast, its little form thin and worn ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... of history. Looking at human history comprehensively, seeing clearly that there had been a hitherto unrecognized regularity of march amid the confusion of the past, and that it was possible to grasp the history of the progress of man as a whole, he saw and stated the possibility of society to improve itself through intelligent government, and the need for wise laws and general education to enable ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... by the shoulders and bent her backwards to kiss her, and held her up above the earth in his arms, waving her this way and that, till she felt how little and light she was in his grasp, though she was no puny woman; then he set her on her feet again, and laughed in her face, and said: "Sweetling, let to-morrow bring counsel. But now let it all be: thou hast said it, thou art weary; so now will I dight thee a bed of our ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... O my friends, to lose the latest grasp— To feel the last hope slipping from its hold— To feel the one fond hand within your clasp Fall slack, and loosen with a touch so cold Its pressure may not warm you as of old Before the light of love had thus expired— To know your tears are worthless, though they ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... hesitated, as though endeavoring to rearrange the idea in his own mind, and possibly doubtful of how much to confide to his companion. When he finally replied his words came forth so swiftly I could scarcely grasp their meaning with my slight knowledge ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... has the grand note of sincerity. What he desired he in no small measure achieved—that his readers should be arrested and feel themselves face to face with reality. His startling intuition, his intellectual uprightness, his grasp upon things as they are, his passion for what ought to be, made a great impression upon his age. It was in itself a religious influence. Here was a mind of giant force, of sternest truthfulness. His untruths were those of exaggeration. His injustices were those of prejudice. He invested many questions ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... directly accuse himself; he had done as well as he could; he blamed "things," and said to himself, "it's my luck," by which he meant to express a profound feeling of dejection and weakness as of one in the grasp of inimical powers. By the working of unfriendly forces he was lying there under the pines, hungry, tired, chilled, and lone as a wolf. Jack was far away, Mary lost forever to him, and the officers of the law again on his ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... concussion of their bodies as they came together. I think the eagle must have been crippled, so that it could not fly up again, for the fight from that time was carried on upon the ground. The lynx seemed anxious to grasp some part of his antagonist's body—and at times I thought he had succeeded—but then he was beaten off again by the bird, that fought furiously with wings, beak, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Austen is the best example in the whole range of English literature of the wisdom of knowing your limitations and cultivating your own special plot of ground. She offers a permanent rebuke to those who (because of youth or a failure to grasp the meaning of life) fancy that the only thing worth while lies on the other side of the Pyrenees; when all the while at one's own back-door blooms the miracle. She had a clear-eyed comprehension of her own restrictions; and possessed ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... What Man can range From such Seraphic Pleasure? 'Tis want of Charms that make us change, To grasp the Fury, Treasure. What Man of Sense wou'd quit a certain Bliss, For Hopes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... man. Frank came in yesterday afternoon, and after he had glanced at the paper, he said: "By the way, Crettell's dead." I did not grasp it at first. He repeated: "Crettell—he's dead." I burst into tears. I couldn't help it. And, besides, I forgot. Frank asked me very roughly what I was crying for. You know, Frank has much changed these last few months. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... the blight of the spirit of this present world is the failure to perceive the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp of scriptural truth. Though the Bible was given to a peculiar people, self- centered and exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in suggestions that its content can be appreciated the full only by those whose sympathies run out ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... trembled in his grasp. She had turned from his pleading glance, but when he ceased, she raised her head and struggled to speak. A smile, beautiful, holy in its beauty, appeared struggling with tears, and a faint flush had risen to her cheek, but voice she had none, and for one moment ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... so with Ina Klosking. The day she just missed Edward Severne, and he seemed to melt away from her very grasp into the wide world again, she could drag herself to the theater and sing angelically, with a dull and aching heart. But next day her heart entered on sharper suffering. She was irritated, exasperated; chained to the theater, to Homburg, yet wild to follow Severne ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... spoke to them, and they instantly rushed upon us like tigers. They seized Dr. Lobdell's hat, threw it into the air, and began to beat him. One ruffian seized me by the throat. By main strength I loosed his grasp, and was moving off, when two men tried to wrest my cane from me, but did not succeed. We retreated as last as possible, but when we got out of the reach of their hands, they resorted to throwing stones, some of them weighing two or three pounds. One hit ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... The face was, as it were, the picture of all. Henry Ward Beecher was emphatically a large man. The blood was positive; the circulation good. The digestion was perfect, and the man enjoyed good food. Especially the length from the ear to the front of the eyebrows denoted intellectual grasp. There was not much will power. Whatever he had done (and Mr. Burns emphatically disclaimed passing any judgment on the "scandal") he had not done of determination, but had rather "slid into it." He was no planner. He gathered people round him by the "solar" force of his mind. If he had been a designing ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... conditioned in part by this type of genius. Creative genius must always compel our admiration and our respect. It may create a world epic, a matchless symphony of tones or pigments, a scientific theory of tremendous grasp and limitless scope; or it may create a vast industrial system, a commercial enterprise of gigantic proportions, a powerful organization of capital. Genius is pretty much the same wherever we find it, and everywhere we of the common ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... this kind it is perilous to grasp too hastily at absolute results. We might fancy, for example, that the feeling of educated men towards the relics of the saints would be a key by which some chambers of their religious consciousness might be opened. And in fact, some difference of degree may be demonstrable, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... amusing to see how they minded her contemptuous orders; how these black-bearded fire-eaters, the terror of the country, each one of whom could have crushed her in his grasp as a wolf crushes a lamb, slunk back, silenced and obedient, before the imperious bidding of the little vivandiere. They had heeded her and let her rule over them almost as much when she had been seven years ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted the Allah Acbar, "God is victorious!" and in the tumult of a nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that tremendous exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated his flight; but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the Koran which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was compelled to yield to a disgraceful truce and an insidious compromise. He retreated with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... proud my friendship to proclaim, And Europe gazed, where'er her hero came! I grasp'd the laurels of heroic strife, The thousand perils of a soldier's life; Obedient in the ranks each toilful day! Though heroes ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the present and the earnest laborers of the years to come. But it is a doctrine which cannot be shaken. The constant and universal action of variation, the struggle for existence, and the "survival of the fittest," few who are competent to grasp will have the temerity to doubt. And to many, that lies within it as a doctrine, and forms the fibre of its fabric, is the existence of a continuity, an unbroken stream of unity running from the base to the apex of the entire ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... soul with the dissolution of its organs: on empirical grounds, the assertion of it is therefore unwarranted. But though no amount of obscurity enveloping the subject, no extent of ignorance disabling us now to grasp the secret, is a legitimate basis of disbelief, yet actually, there can be no doubt, in multitudes of instances, the effectual cause of disbelief in immortality is the impossibility of vividly conceiving its ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... subtle smile on her face showed that she was not surprised by the visit. Shirley quickly outlined the occurrences of the dinner hour. When he asked her opinion, for he had learned to place a growing trust in her quick grasp of things, she walked silently ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... his heel. You fell, but you are of the kind that bounds, and to-day you are once more upon a pinnacle. You vegetated for years, until the moment came when you could once more seize fortune in your grasp. You are no longer Danglars the bankrupt and thief—you are Laisangy, respected and trusted. Know then that I have it in my power to throw you back into the mire from which you have struggled. I am ready to be your enemy or your accomplice, the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... your spider!" shouted Skeleton, throwing himself on Germain so that he could neither make a movement nor utter a cry. His voice died under the formidable grasp of the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... they had crossed to the other side of the river, for we should have been obliged, before we could reach the bridge, to traverse a vast open expanse which they could have kept under the fire of their artillery. My Chasseurs, prompt to grasp the reason of things, scrutinised the opposite bank no less intently than I. No movement could be seen; nothing suggested the presence of troops among the russet thickets which covered the sides of the silent hill. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... In response to an almost imperative gesture from the nurse, Anna laid her hand upon his. He fell back upon the pillows with a little moan, clutching the slim white fingers fiercely. In a moment his grasp grew weaker. The perspiration stood out upon his forehead. His ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an observer who was surprised to find that he had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire. I had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more general use of this instrument,—which, with a stupid fatuity, the public has, as yet, failed to grasp. Because its signals have been first applied by means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of the chemical power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as it might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... it when 'tis wildest." Orators have appeared who have rivaled the great masters of antiquity. The doors of the American Parthenon are ever open to invite the humble but aspiring youth to enter and fill the loftiest niche. The highest dignity is within the grasp of all; for the lowly boy, born and reared in our own sweet valley of Cumberland, shall, when the spring comes round again, be clothed by the people with the first of mortal honors—that of guiding for a time the American republic upon her highway ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... he seemed to grasp it now in a manner peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he already accounted himself, and on the strength of the logic that if a man must hang, a sheep as well as a lamb may be the cause of it, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... trip came to an end all too soon, and, because they were so near the landing side, they were crowded off the broad deck before Glory was quite ready and, in the onrush of hurrying passengers, Bonny Angel's hand was wrested from her grasp. ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... madam she was, passed on as quietly, as mechanically even, as if I had not raised my voice, and, before I could grasp the fact that she was melting from before me, flitted through the hall to the front door and so out, leaving behind on the palm of my hand the "feel" of her wool dress, which I had just managed ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... her head and held her breath to listen; and sure enough, from within the convent came the sound of the voices of the nuns at their evening prayers. She listened breathlessly, a change came over her face, a light into her eyes, and she tightened her grasp of Graham's hand. The melancholy voices rising and falling in unison, seemed a pathetic, melodious interpretation of the inarticulate ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... because you were selfish, because you knew I must accept them from you, were almost unbearable. The touch of your thief-trained hands to steal from everything its beauty and self-respect has galled me beyond all endurance. My body has received its last vile grasp ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... nominally accomplished its purpose; but, judging from the report submitted to the Governor of Quebec, its chief result was a painful revelation. It was shown that, in spite of an expensive chain of fortified posts, the great West was fast slipping from the martial grasp of New France, and passing under the stronger influence of English trade. The huge, unwieldy empire was clearly falling to pieces, and La Jonquiere's arrival in Quebec brought no improvement to the situation. Of high merit as a naval officer, the new Governor had less distinction ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... of the way. Elizabeth didn't want the handkerchief tied over her eyes, but she submitted meekly, at a look from Olga. Half a dozen girls flung themselves in her way, and the one on whom her limp grasp fell ignored the fact that Elizabeth could not name her, and gaily held up the handkerchief to be tied over her own eyes in turn. Nobody caught Olga again. She was as quick as a flash and as slippery as an eel. Elizabeth's eyes followed her constantly, ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... in, hissing, grinding, and bumping, to the side of the dusty platform, did Ben's keen eyes catch sight of two herdsmen's horses—cow ponies—tethered back of the shanty beside the saloon, and up went the lid of his box at the instant, in went his right hand, and then out it came full grasp on a brown-barrelled six-shooter. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... message of infinity. Neither of us would speak at such times. Harry had a turn for emotional sentiment, I knew, but I too could feel that it was good to lie there motionless and silent, and try to grasp its meaning. Then the strained sense of expectancy would fade at the sight of the approaching homestead, or a bronco blundering into a badger-hole would call us back to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... lives to plotting against governments, and who formed, in their community of interest and purpose, a sort of obverse of the Holy Alliance, a federation of kings' enemies, a league of principle and creed, in which liberty and human right stood towards established rule as light to darkness. As the grasp of authority closed everywhere more tightly upon its baffled foes, more and more of these men passed into exile. Among them was the Genoese Mazzini, who, after suffering imprisonment in 1831, withdrew to Marseilles, and there, in combination with various secret societies, planned an incursion ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... pardon,' he said, as he gave a cousinly grasp, 'and I think you will try kindly to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Davenport later noted, Gordon Gray was a lawyer, not a personnel expert, and he failed to grasp the full implications of the Army staff's recommendations.[14-116] Davenport was speaking from firsthand knowledge because Gray, after belatedly learning of his experience and influence with the committee, sent for him. Politely but explicitly ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... counties; and wherever his power had reached, he had used it on a great scale for the destruction of his forests. Woods-slayer, field-maker; working to bring in the period on the Shield when the hand of a man began to grasp the plough instead of the rifle, when the stallion had replaced the stag, and bellowing cattle wound fatly down into the pastures of the bison. This man had the face of his caste—the countenance of the Southern slave-holding feudal lord. Not the American ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... in spite of the illiberality, of his scruples about the particular use of it under discussion didn't efface the ugliness of his demand that they should buy a good house with it. Then, as for his alienation, he didn't, pardonably enough, grasp the lift Frank Saltram had given her interest in life. If a mere spectator could ask that last question, with what rage in his heart the man himself might! He wasn't, like her, I was to see, too proud to show me why he ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... battle-line with the Tyrrhene forces, are marching down by the Tiber river and filling the plain. Immediately spirits are stirred and hearts shaken and wrath roused in fierce excitement among the crowd. Hurrying hands grasp at arms; for arms their young men clamour; the fathers shed tears and mutter gloomily. With that a great noise rises aloft in diverse contention, even as when flocks of birds haply settle on a lofty ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... had not been clever enough, when he had been far, far too clever already. He always thought that Dame Fortune was a capricious and fastidious dame, a sort of Elizabeth of Austria or Alexandra, Princess of Wales, elegant beyond his grasp. Whereas Dame Fortune, even in London or Vienna, let alone in Woodhouse, was a vulgar woman of the middle and lower middle-class, ready to put her heavy foot on anything that was not vulgar, machine-made, and appropriate to the ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... unreliability. A secret private code is often employed, necessitating the elimination or transposition of certain words, figures or letters before the whole will become intelligible and useful. If by any chance an uninitiated hand should attempt to grasp such veiled directions, failure would be certain. We confess to have employed at an early stage of our own career this same strategy and time-honored camouflage to protect a precious lot of recipes. Promptly we lost this unctuous ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... mind made up to grasp any desperate chance, with a courage utterly reckless, that Martin disembarked on the volcanic ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... patriarchate of Constantinople—Eutychius, who was already patriarch when the council assembled; and when he twice tears Formosus from his grave to parade him in his vestments about Rome,—we may suspect that the perfect grasp of documentary history from the twelfth century does not reach backwards in ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... he could have expected. He felt assured that at last he floated on the stream destined to bear him to the sea. The key to the river system of the south-east portion of the continent was in his grasp, and all former fallacies and fanciful theories were answered for good. The voyage down the Murray, as this river was named, after Sir George Murray, then the bead of the Colonial Department, now continued free from some of the difficulties that had beset them in the Morumbidgee. The natives ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... mixed with Colston's line, still pressed on, and between Hooker's headquarters and his elated foe there was scarce an organized regiment. Hooker's fatal inability to grasp the situation, and his ordering an advance of all troops on Howard's left as far as the Second Corps, had made him almost defenceless. The troops which should have been available to stem this adverse tide were blindly groping in the woods, two miles ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... was not wilfully and deliberately following the course that was to separate us, that she was taking it with hesitations and regrets. Yet she spoke plainly enough, she spoke with a manifest sincerity of feeling. And while I had neither the grasp nor the subtlety to get behind her mind I perceive now as I think things out that Lady Ladislaw had both watched and acted, had determined her daughter's ideas, sown her mind with suggestions, imposed upon her a conception of her situation that now ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... left alone, dazed and tremulous at the fortune now hovering within his grasp, laid upon the altar of his gods his first fruits of success.—Long, long after, when the chimera had become a form radiantly real, Ivan looked back upon this night as perhaps the happiest of his life. That it should be spent in solitude, seemed to him most natural. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the purple of the laticlave below. And in this red parody of kingship the Christ stood, unmoved as a phantom, but in his face and eyes there was a projecting light so luminous, so intangible, and yet so real, that the skeptical procurator started, the staff of office pendent in his grasp. ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... they call for the best thought that the man confronted by them can muster; the perils hidden in a wrong decision overcome even the clamors of vanity. It is in such situations that the superior mental grasp of women is of obvious utility, and has to be admitted. It is here that they rise above the insignificant sentimentalities, superstitions and formulae of men, and apply to the business their singular talent for separating the appearance from the substance, and so exercise ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... news came that Mithridates had defeated Fabius,[417] and was marching against Sornatius and Triarius, through very shame the soldiers followed Lucullus. Triarius, being ambitious to snatch the victory which he thought was in his grasp, before Lucullus, who was near, should arrive, was defeated in a great battle. It is said that above seven thousand Romans fell, among whom were a hundred and fifty centurions, and twenty-four tribunes; and Mithridates ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... so much as we were. The General's grasp has relaxed, and he does not hold us with a tight reign and stiff bit ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... of rain-spoilt hay. He stood and looked while one might count five, and then without a word or cry rushed up from the water, straight on Ursula, who was riding first of the three lingerers, and in the twinkling of an eye tore her from off her horse; and she was in his grasp as the cushat in the claws of the kite. Then he cast her to earth, and stood over her, shaking a great club, but or ever he brought it down he turned his head over his shoulder toward the cliff and the cave therein, and in ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... three of the great green leaves, put the handsome flower in his hand with so much good-will that he felt as if he had received a very precious gift. Then he said good-night so gratefully that Merry's hand quite tingled with the grasp of his, and went away, often looking backward through the darkness to where the light burned brightly on the hill-top—the beacon kindled by an unconscious Hero for a young Leander swimming gallantly against wind and tide toward the ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... moment they cease to obey this rule. Every Jacobin, like every African monarch or pasha, must it that he may be and remain at the head of his band.—That is the reason why the chiefs of the party, its natural and pre-determined leaders, are theoreticians able to grasp its principle and logicians capable of drawing its consequences. They are, however, so inept as to be unable to understand that their enterprise exceeds both their own and all other human resources, but shrewd enough to see that brutal force ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had the hardest blow of his life. He knew at last what he wanted, but in finding it out it seemed that he had put it forever beyond his grasp. He reached home in misery, dropped into an armchair without even removing his overcoat, and sat there for over an hour, his mind racing the paths of fruitless and wretched self-absorption. She had sent him away! That was the reiterated burden of his despair. Instead of seizing the girl and holding ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the fundamental questions concerning the races, the next point for consideration is the policy to be adopted under present circumstances, in order to increase the amount of good which is within our grasp and lessen the evil which we may avert. This ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... to my confusion, a strange, sweet blankness, an expression I failed to give a meaning to until, without delay, I felt on my arm, directed to it as if instantly to efface the effect of her start, the grasp of the hand she had impulsively snatched from me. It was the irrepressible question in this grasp that stopped on my lips all sound of salutation. She had mistaken my entrance for that of another person, a ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... prompted these quite unpremeditated words, and as Klea—while he spoke them with quivering lips—had attempted with the exertion of all her strength, which was by no means contemptible, to wrench her hands from his grasp, he forced her—angry as he still was, but nevertheless with due regard for her womanliness—forced her by a gentle and yet irresistible pressure on her arms to bend before him, and compelled her slowly to sink down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Tommy worked his rifle in cold fury. He aimed at no man, but the propelling grids were large. For a one-man ship they were five feet in diameter, and for the big freight ships, they were circles fifteen feet across. They were perfect targets, and Aten seemed to grasp the necessary tactics almost instantly. Dead ahead or from straight astern, Tommy could not miss a shot. The fleet of Rahn went fluttering downward. Fifteen of the biggest were down, and six of the two-man planes. A sixteenth and seventeenth flashed ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the national and central one sends down an iron arm, clasping them all by a firm bond to itself and to each other. And in each, the grasp of this arm is riveted and double riveted, above and below, by these two comprehensive, unmistakable articles, without which the others had else been valueless; and for which the framers of this great instrument are entitled to our lasting gratitude ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the exorcism. In the north-east of Scotland, for example, where a beggar, who had diagnosed a changeling, was allowed to try his hand at disposing of it, he made a large fire on the hearth and held a black hen over it till she struggled, and finally escaped from his grasp, flying out by the "lum." More minute directions are given by the cunning man in a Glamorganshire tale. After poring over his big book, he told his distracted client to find a black hen without a single feather of any other colour. This she was to bake ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... matter of fact," replied Tom, "Koku will merely hold to the fellow until we get there. But my giant's strength is enormous, and he does not always know the strength of his grasp. He might hurt the fellow. Come on," and Tom leaped from the doorway of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's picture with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexander were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all States save its own, Plato withdraws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy "Atlantis." Just in the grimmest period of English history, with the axe hanging over his head, Sir Thomas More gives you his "Utopia." Just ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when he awakened next morning. The tent was saturated, the fire ill to light, and that day was spent in unremitting toil. The stream ran strong against them, and Seaforth's wet hands grew blistered from the grasp of the paddle and his knees raw from the rasp of the craft's bottom as he swung with the weary blade. Hour by hour the rain beat on them, and the pines that crawled out of it went very slowly by, while it was almost a relief to stand upright now and then, and with ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... claimed the major part of my thoughts, and when I went to sleep it was with her scornful words ringing in my ears. I awoke in the darkness—perhaps it was in but a few minutes—with the confused dream that Luella Knapp was seized in the grasp of the snake-eyed Terrill, and I was struggling to come to her assistance and seize him by his hateful throat. But, becoming calm from this exciting vision, I slept soundly until the morning sun peeped into the room with the cheerful announcement ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... brought down his battle-axe with such a strong blow that the private's spear was shattered and knocked from his grasp, and he was helpless ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... chief was a ready listener now, and was unusually quick to grasp a situation, although he could not learn the ethics of the white man. The Professor had him present at one of the trials for theft of a petty nature, which occurred a few days ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
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