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More "Stiffen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anything which could hurt wounded souls. I know how much grief, how much suppressed tenderness, are hidden, in thousands of women, beneath the armour of a dogged enthusiasm. They stiffen their sinews for fear of falling. They walk, they talk, they laugh, with an open wound in the side through which the heart's blood is gushing. No prophetic faculty is needed to foresee that the time is at hand when they will throw off this inhuman constraint, and when the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... find yourself inclined to change your mind before morning, just murmur over to yourself, 'England expects every man to do his duty.' That will stiffen ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... the feminine side of the chapel stiffen—Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically in love with no less than four girls and was devoted to dozens at a time. We had reason to believe that he was at that time engaged to two, and spring was only half over at that. This was the ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... were no other troops in support. Under these circumstances it was imperative that the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart with other surviving officers rushed among the scattered ranks and strove hard to gather and to stiffen them. The men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly. But the pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Molly, with the air of one who had experience; "just stiffen yourself out and fall over. But I don't believe you could ever get ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... see how we could support our jacks...." The engineer paused, then went on. "If you can't give me Mars or Tellus, how about some other planet? I don't care about atmosphere, or about anything but mass. I can stiffen her up in three or four days if I can sit down on something heavy enough to hold our jacks and presses; but if we have to rig up space-cradles around the ship herself it'll take a long time—months, probably. Haven't got a spare planet on ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... "So this is the explanation of the change that had passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to do good, but of your heavenly Master and his suffering brothers. Remember that! That was ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... not have been surprised to see him break into a goose-step. The other was of that mild, blue-eyed, tow-haired type from the Baltic provinces, with the thin, white skin which does not tan but burns. He was frailer than the other and he was tired! He would lag and then stiffen back his shoulders and draw in his chin and force a trifle more energy into ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... replied. "I haven't anything worse than a bruise. If I keep too quiet the injury will stiffen all the more. I must move my hip a bit, or I may be in for a ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... than I had felt when I was anticipating death by being drowned. I should have preferred drowning to a death like that; and when for a moment I dwelt upon the probability of such a fate, the blood ran coldly through my veins, and the hair seemed to stiffen upon ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... him and they clasped hands in the middle of the room. It was only for a second; for as quick as a flash, Mr. Roddy seemed to stiffen every muscle in his body. He pulled the other man toward him with one arm and shot out his other fist. It made a dull sound like a blow struck on a pan of dough. And the wretched murderer slumped down onto the floor like a sack ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... who were dodging the knife when they saw the luggage-carts looming in the distance. They at once drew the attention of The Chaperon to the approach of the carts, and were rejoiced to see him return the weapon to its sheath (in his leggings), and stiffen into the ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... matter of wind and weather had favoured England. She had won, against apparent odds, because her sons had found out on many a venturous voyage how the great game of war by sea ought to be played; and her enemy had not. She had won decisively. Philip might stiffen his pride and boast that he could yet send forth fleets mightier than the lost Armada. But on the day of the fight off Gravelines the doom of his power was sealed; and the Empire of the Ocean passed from Spain ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the law of his own national and private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distinctions, however, were unknown to Jane. If you were in a temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... muster and the silent march In the chill dark, when courage does not glow So much as under a triumphal arch, Perhaps might make him shiver, yawn, or throw A glance on the dull clouds (as thick as starch, Which stiffen'd heaven) as if he wish'd for day;— Yet for all this he did ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Wellington has got one together as secretly as he got up the lines of Torres Vedras, the thing is absurd. Besides, who had ever heard of Portuguese carrying on such operations as these, without having a lot of our men to stiffen them, and to set them a ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect, Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... be said, it must be admitted that the Christian religion has something astonishing in it. Some will say, "This is because you were born in it." Far from it; I stiffen myself against it for this very reason, for fear this prejudice bias me. But although I am born in it, I cannot help ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... fortunately, they were superficial ones. They were sore and bruised from being knocked down by the concussion, and by being precipitated into the cellar by the collapse of the mill. But they were still able to travel; though, as Jimmy said, if they remained inactive their muscles and joints would stiffen. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... some money into his pocket. Then he put on a ragged overcoat, and a hat which he drew down over his eyes with a furtive jerk of his yellow fingers. Then he went behind the bar and swallowed something; it was not whisky, but it brought a faint tinge of colour into his cheek, and seemed to stiffen ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the King's fear of his opposition. 'I will not hear a word on that head,' James burst forth.—'Then,' said Davidson, 'we must crave help of Him that will hear us.' Not only was Melville excluded from the Assembly, but its business was not allowed to proceed till he left the town, lest he should stiffen the brethren who resorted to him for advice against the King's proposals. The royal measures were, after all, only carried by ten votes; and even that majority would not have been secured had the King not ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... wonder, if it was one, had passed: and now—did her eyes play her false, or were the snakes round that Medusa's head upon the shield all writhing, grinning, glaring at her with stony eyes, longing to stiffen her with ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... handy are absorbed into the transport, or become machine-gunners. The sedentary take post as cooks, or tailors, or officers' servants. The waster hews wood and draws water and empties swill-tubs. The great, mediocre, undistinguished majority merely go to stiffen the rank and file, and right nobly they do it. Each has ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carried off by the sea one ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the warmth of life in his body. To add to his trouble, his foot, which had been broken in Tennessee previous to his capture, was now giving him great pain, and threatened to cripple him wholly; indeed, it would stiffen and disable the best of limbs to compass the journey he had made in darkness over strange, uneven, and hard-frozen ground, and through rivers, creeks, and bogs, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... suffering mind stretches its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when the soul forms some violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not express what I experienced, unless it was as if my pistol had said to me: "Think what you are ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... innocent as he doubtless did the beaters, huntsmen, and keepers of the estates over which he formerly shot. It has been his ambition to make Europe one vast Kaiserdom estate. But the sands are running out, and each "bag," whether by Zeppelin or submarine, serves but to stiffen the backs of the Allies and horrify neutral nations. Some day the accumulated horrors of the Kaiser's ideas of sportsmanship will have taught the latter the lesson that Kaiserdom with Europe as a Kaiser estate means the death of liberty, the extinction of the smaller nations, and the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... causes; viz.—broken ribs, and a crushed right hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... on poor old Ahuna, or let loose upon him the ghost of Kaaukuu's father, supposed to be crouching there in the corner, who commanded Ahuna to divulge to her the burial- place. I tried to stiffen him up, telling him to let the old ghost divulge the secret himself, than whom nobody else knew it better, seeing that he had resided there upwards of a century. But Ahuna was old school. He possessed no iota of scepticism. The more ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... can sometimes be removed by careful manipulations with the hand; but, where this can not be accomplished, the flexible probang should be employed. This is a long India-rubber tube, with a whalebone stillet running through it, so as to stiffen it when in use. This instrument is passed down the animal's throat, and the offending substance is thus ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... Son, and we're proud as Punch of you, that you want to be not only in America's 'First Hundred Thousand,' but in her 'First Ten Thousand.' We know it will stiffen your spine considerably to hear that your family are behind you. Well, we are—just ranks and rows of us, with our heads up and the colours waving. Even Grandfather and Grandmother are as gallant as veterans about it. So go ahead—but come home first, ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... this kind Manlia felt rather than heard or saw a change in Brinnaria next her, felt her stiffen and grow silent, rigid and tense. Manlia glanced at her, followed her gaze and became interested in the fight Brinnaria was watching. Before them, not immediately below them, but some distance out in the arena, fought ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... pass the jelly through it until clear, then pour it into moulds and put them in a cool place to set. One calf's foot and one cow heel will be more economical than two calfs feet. If fruit is desired to be in the jelly, it must be put in when the jelly begins to stiffen ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... commit themselves to fight. Some who fight see present human growth and the growth of human demands on resources as the stark unavoidable realities they are, and seek mainly to guide them and mitigate their effects. Others stiffen their necks against development to meet those demands, staunch enemies to all reservoirs and other forms of compromise, stubborn if highminded nay-sayers against the tide, consistent ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... telephone-wire under fire; each time it would break they would curse and tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... stiffen and crouch, thought of him even in that horrible moment; and she gripped his arm with all her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... education which had been given to her younger sister, and therefore, was nominally subordinate, but really she was chief. She considered it especially her duty not only to look after the children's clothes, the servants and the accounts, but to maintain TONE everywhere in the establishment, and to stiffen her sister when necessary, and preserve in proper sharpness her orthodoxy, both ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... the sky above, so that the air Impregnate chang'd to water. Fell the rain, And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that nought stay'd its course. My stiffen'd frame Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, And dash'd it into Arno, from my breast Loos'ning the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurl'd me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in his muddy spoils encircling ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... once (this being Thursday), and spend the night in the forest at a spot not far distant from the road. The negroes by themselves would never have consented to this plan, so great was their dread of bugaboos, but they derived courage from the companionship of white men, and, to stiffen their resolution, I told them how, when wearing the crown piece about my neck, I had escaped by night with nine companions from a place with stone walls ten feet thick. This impressed them greatly—Noah in particular; and in the evening, when we halted for our bivouac in the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... lurked strange apprehensions, strange anticipations, strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous thraldom—but he was angry ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... walk for the present," suggested Tad. "We shall stiffen up if we ride in our present ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... (Spence's Anecdotes, 1820, p. 173): "Shakespeare generally used to stiffen his style with high words and metaphors for the speeches of his kings and great men: he mistook it ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... then saw the white youth stiffen with swift decision, saw him whirl to face the crag. For a moment he stood with eyes riveted upon the Agong till the little knob swung toward him, then he bent slightly at the knees and his hand swept back with a swiftness that seemed to bring the pistol leaping to meet the extended arm. It ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... all around him and growled his terriblest. For some unexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as though he had turned to some insensate metal. From where he sat watching—curious to see what Cash would do—Bud saw him flinch and stiffen as a man does under pain. And because Bud had a sore spot in his own heart, Bud felt a quick stab of understanding and sympathy. Cash Markham's past could not have been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... constant beef-tea, and which had the advantage of being very quickly and easily prepared. She made a cup full of strong coffee, strained out the grounds very carefully, and added as much sugar and milk as though for drinking hot, and enough isinglass to stiffen it, and either left it in the cup or poured it into a mould, and when cold it was ready to turn out and serve as a jelly. This was only given occasionally, as it was not considered very strengthening; but nurse found it useful to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... and virile and brutal in him seemed to harden and stiffen in the moment after he had seen the beach-comber collapse limply on the sand under the last strong knife-blow; and a sense of triumph, of boundless self-confidence, leaped within him, so that he shouted aloud in a very excess of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... sequence of events was permissible or even thinkable in the presence of game. The Dog at first intimation by scent must convey the fact to the Man, must proceed cautiously to locate exactly, must then stiffen to a point which he must hold staunchly, no matter how distracting events might turn out, or how long an interval might elapse. The Man must next walk up the birds; shoot at them, perhaps kill one, then command the Dog to ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds, and to enjoy a ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... heated by passing through jackets round the high-pressure turbines. The framework of the planes consisted of hollow rods made of an aluminum alloy of high tensile strength, and the canvas stretched over the frames was laced with wire of the same material. To stiffen the planes, a bracket was clamped at the axis, and thin wire stays were strung top and bottom, as the masts of a yacht are supported. The airman was in some degree protected from the wind by a strong talc ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... done," can be fulfilled even to the letter, if we have the faith of the Apostles, and such as the Lord commanded them to have. For which is more strange, that a mountain should descend into the sea; or that mountains of water should stiffen of a sudden, and, firm as a rock only at an old man's feet, should flow softly everywhere else? All the city wondered; and the greatness of the sign was bruited abroad ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... "horses" or "bents" used to support them, that they spring badly, it is usually a simple matter to nail a cleat across the underside of the planks and stand an upright strut underneath to support and stiffen the plank. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... him from head to foot. He lifted his hands, as if he must cry aloud in anguish. Then suddenly his face and figure seemed to congeal and stiffen with some awful inward coldness—the frost of the last circle of the Inferno—it spread upon him till he stood like a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... way of doing things," said Bart. "But we're due to stiffen up a bit now. We're not going to stand for attempts to murder in ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... the order "Fix Bayonets!" their hands trembling violently over the task. But when the bugle sounds the charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands grip the rifle with grim determination. "It was his life or mine," said a young Highlander describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet through him." There is no time for sentiment, and there can be no thought of chivalry. Just get the ugly business ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... I had but one more shot, and wished to hold it till he should be close; but my torn hand was weak, and the bruised tendons had already begun to stiffen. Into that deep place, where bank and trees overhung, the sun did not come, and I felt the cold striking into my raw flesh. More than that, my weight upon my shoulder began to cut off the blood from my arm. I felt pricking in my flesh, my arm began to be numb, and I ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... idea eagerly. Some of the poles were split into eight feet lengths. These were wetted and hung over the fire, the process being repeated until the wood was sufficiently softened to be bent into the required shape. This was done by the chief. Two cross-pieces were added, to stiffen them and keep them in the right shape when they dried; and the wood was then trimmed up and scraped by the men. When it had dried and hardened, the work of filling up the frame with a closely-stretched network of leather was undertaken. This part of the work occupied three ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... us. Objects we travel on, if horses, often stampede or are stampeded; if wagons, they break down; if shanks, they stiffen; if feet, they chafe. No such trouble befalls Birch; leak, however, it will, as ours did this morning. We gently beguiled it into the position taken tearfully by unwhipped little boys, when they are about to receive birch. Then, with a firebrand, the pitch of the seams was easily persuaded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... body stiffen, that when he was called it required another ten minutes and a second glass of whisky to unbend his joints and limber ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... Lift her with care; Fashion'd so slenderly, Young, and so fair! Ere her limbs frigidly Stiffen too rigidly, Decently,—kindly,— Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... drawings are given (Fig. 62 and Fig. 63) of the front and back of a jacket that will preserve the advantages of the corset without its evils. This jacket may at first be fitted to the figure with corsets underneath it, just like the waist of a dress. Then, delicate whalebones can be used to stiffen the jacket, so that it will take the proper shape, when the corset may be dispensed with. The buttons below are to hold all articles of dress below the waist by button-holes. By this method, the bust is supported ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... see this sad procession,' said she, and mounted to a turret, whence through an open window she looked upon the funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested upon the form of Iphis stretched on the bier, when they began to stiffen, and the warm blood in her body to become cold. Endeavoring to step back, she found she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her face, she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs became stony like her heart. That you may ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... tablespoon gelatin in 2 tablespoons cold water. Boil 2/3 cup maple syrup until it spins a thread. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Pour slowly onto 2 egg whites, beaten stiff. Put in a cool place and when it begins to stiffen fold in 2/3 cup heavy cream beaten stiff. Add 1/2 cup pecan nut meats broken in pieces. Fill center of sponge cake box with charlotte mixture and serve ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley
... tried to make her distinguish between the public and the private virtues. But the word "responsibility" slipped from him and he felt her stiffen. This was preaching, and she hated preaching even more than history. Her attention strayed again and he rallied his forces in a last appeal. But he knew it was a lost battle: every argument broke against the close front of her indifference. He was talking a language ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... forward, put his hand on the girl's waist, and drew her towards him. He felt her yield, and heard her draw a fluttering breath. Her head drooped so that he could not see her face; she was slipping into his arms, and then, in the moment of surrender, he felt her body stiffen. She put her hands on his shoulder and pushed him back; the canoe lurched and he had some trouble to prevent a capsize. The water splashed against the rocking craft, and Sadie, drawing away, fixed her eyes on him. She ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... other form, owing to the lack of the truss formation which is the strong point with the superposed frame. A truss is a form of construction where braces can be used from one member to the next, so as to brace and stiffen the whole. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... swans most eagerly eat The green weeds trailing in the moat; Inside the rotting leaky boat You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... my hair rise and stiffen. The sound echoed and reverberated through the silent night, and then died away; but before it had done so I had sprung to the great beam and closed the upper gate. As I did so I caught sight of the old man trembling and shaking at the ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... use determination all the time; so it will be sufficient if your muscles are taught to be quickly responsive to determination of mind on any occasion. (You know it helps you to carry out a resolution if you stiffen your body at the moment you make up your mind to do a thing, but continued stiffness of the body in determination would be a strain likely to weaken your power of action unless backed by a tremendous, stored-up reserve strength of muscles.) Begin your ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... fiddle. She's lucky to get any kind of a husband; she's too humbly to choose. I declare, she reminds me of a Jack-o'-lantern, though if you look at the back of her, or see her in meetin' with a thick veil on, she's about the best appearin' woman in Edgewood.... I never see anybody stiffen up as Anthony has. He had me make him three white shirts and three gingham ones, with collars and cuffs on all of 'em. It seems as if six shirts at one time must mean something out o' ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... five days after this (August 22) Edwin's jaws began to stiffen. For nine or ten days there was suspense, so hard to bear. Some symptoms were not so bad, it did not assume so acute a form. I thought he ought to be carried through it. He was older, about twenty-one, six feet high, a strong handsome ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... finished her work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... diffusion of instruction is, perhaps, not wholly without its inconveniencies; it certainly fills the nation with superficial disputants; enables those to talk who were born to work; and affords information sufficient to elate vanity, and stiffen obstinacy, but too little to enlarge the mind into complete skill ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... I fled from Port Agnew, suspected that I had had a change of heart. He said to me: 'So this is your idea of playing the game, is it?' I assured him then that I had not returned to Port Agnew with the intention of marrying you, but merely to stiffen your morale, as it were. He seemed quite satisfied with my explanation, which I gave ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... horses in the distant stable-yard rattling their harness—one of the younger "Excelsior" boys burst into a hysteric laugh, but the fierce eye of Yuba Bill was down upon him, and seemed to instantly stiffen him into a silent, grinning mask. The young girl, however, took no note of it. Following out, with lover-like diffusiveness, the reminiscences ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wilderness! How romantic, how inexpressibly delightful, that idea seems to some minds! Ay, even when the weight of years begins to stiffen the joints and slack the cords of life the memory of God's great, wild, untrammelled, beautiful wilderness comes over the spirit like a refreshing dream and restores for a time something like the pulse ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... did. You were CO then, and we thought maybe you were a sickman even if you didn't look like it, and you kept sort of sticking up for the sick corps whenever it was mentioned. Well, that's all right. New officer in charge, trying to stiffen up discipline, et cetera and so forth. But now we've got Frendon for CO. You're in the same boat as the rest of us, and you still keep insisting that the sickmen are O.K. But you're a ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... a chair. Her arms lay nerveless on the table. Her face was hidden in them. But now, overhearing us, or stung by some fresh thought, she sprang to her feet in anguish. Her face twitched, her form seemed to stiffen as she drew herself up like one in physical pain. "Oh, I cannot bear it!" she cried to us in dreadful tones. "Oh, will no one do anything? I will go to him! I will tell him I will give him up! I will do whatever he wishes if he will only ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?— The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... adheres but slightly to the bones, with its fibres contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an animal has died otherwise than by slaughtering, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the fire, which was rapidly going down now for want of something to burn; but as they stood near, their faces scorched, while the cold wind drawn by the rising heat cut by their ears and threatened to stiffen their backs. The reeds and young trees which had been burning were now smoking feebly, and the only place which made any show was the peat-stack, which glowed warmly and kept crumbling down in cream-coloured ash. But when a fire begins ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... heat became so oppressive to his impatience, that he was beginning to think of giving up the idle venture, when suddenly he came face to face with a perpendicular and impassable wall of cliff. This curt arrest to his progress was just what was needed to stiffen his wavering resolution. He understood the defiance which his ready fancy had found in the stare of the eagle. Well, he had accepted the challenge. He would not be baffled by a rock. If he could not climb over it, he would go round it; but he would ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... can be awkward enough when he chooses. You can never tell how far he'll let things go on. But when his back once gets up he'll stiffen pretty hard." ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... said that any attempt to apply this stigma in practice would be extremely difficult to carry out, would involve all kinds of difficulties and complications in trade and in finance, and that the threat of it is more likely than anything else to stiffen the resistance of the Germans and to force them to rely on their militarist leaders as their only hope of salvation. However, the Committee points out that recent legislation shows a desire to ascertain and record the ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... never play well. At any minute her father's voice or her mother's eyes would stiffen her fingers and stop them. She knew what she would do; she had always known. She would make poems. They couldn't hear you making poems. They couldn't see your thoughts falling into ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... through what mechanism it happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as one enfolded in the cloak of St. Anthony, that inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting his game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and—how led who can say?—she would fly like a wireless message to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... was an elation thoroughly dampened by dread. As the days had passed, however, and nothing more terrible happened, his courage came creeping back, even growing into modest bravado. Excursions to the country with his rifle became frequent again. He began to feel himself stiffen-up when Miss Sallie would tell a neighbor how he was getting ready for the possible war; this neighbor told other neighbors, and he was soon basking in admiring looks which were as meat and drink to him. It was on this crest of popularity that Marian ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... me a dozen pairs of silk, stitched with gold to stiffen them,' she said. 'You shall have six; but send your cousin in quest of the Islands of the Blest. They lie well out in the Western Ocean. If you can make him mislay his compass he will never come back ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... in love with Mr. W.J. LOCKE'S incurable romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... She wore a man's hat. It was turned up on one side with a big breastpin. I noticed it wasn't any eight-dollar hat; she had to fix it that way to stiffen the brim in front. It was a ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... murmur of horror; to many brave men death in this special form is appalling. Here and there a woman shrieked; one fainted. Meanwhile, the young man's face was becoming livid; his neck seemed to stiffen, his eyes to protrude. The king looked at him and shuddered. "Saint Denis!" he muttered, the perspiration standing on his brow, "what an escape! What an escape! Can nothing be done ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the snow on one side, and having in his hand a whip, of which the handle, made either of wood, bone, or whalebone, is eighteen inches, and the lash more than as many feet in length. The part of the thong next the handle is platted a little way down to stiffen it and give it a spring, on which much of its use depends; and that which composes the lash is chewed, by the women to make it flexible in frosty weather. The men acquire from their youth considerable expertness ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... form, the wealthier class comes to exert a retarding influence upon social development far in excess of that which the simple numerical strength of the class would assign it. Its prescriptive example acts to greatly stiffen the resistance of all other classes against any innovation, and to fix men's affections upon the good institutions handed down from an earlier generation. There is a second way in which the influence of the leisure class acts in the same direction, so far as ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... form in which to exhibit its powers. It appears in the world, and men lay hold of it, and represent it to themselves, in histories, in forms of words, in sacramental symbols; and these things which in their proper nature are but illustrations, stiffen into essential fact, and become part of the reality. So arises in era after era an outward and mortal expression of the inward immortal life; and at once the old struggle begins to repeat itself between the flesh and the spirit, the form and the reality. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Saviour was inscribed. The lady picked up the package, when immediately the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... scowl, Where hell hounds ravage, and the furies howl; Though chang'd, deform'd, still, still ye meet my view, Ye still are left to hear my last adieu! My friends, my children, gor'd with many a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, Consign'd to vultures, and to wolves a prey, Your toils are past; no more ye wake to feel Lust's savage gripe, or rapine's reeking steel! And Thou, to whom my wedded faith was given, On earth my solace, and my hope in heaven, Approv'd in manhood, as in youth ador'd, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Olive's feelings; but she would never have known how to excuse herself; and latterly she had been growing more and more like her father in certain traits. Perhaps her passion for Bartley had been the one spring of tenderness in her nature, and, if ever it were spent, she would stiffen into ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... are disposed to do nothing at all. They forget that it is the brief three-minute rests that enable the mountain-climber to press on till he reaches the top whereas longer periods of inactivity might serve to stiffen his limbs and impede ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... commiserated by the strong, there is great peace in finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had had an inkling of what was coming, and had sent Bill Totts to join the union and investigate. Bill's job was in the wash-room, and the men had been called out first, that morning, in order to stiffen the courage of the girls; and Bill chanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when Mary Condon started to enter. The superintendent, who was both large and stout, barred her way. He wasn't going to have his girls called out, and he'd teach ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... on your part, he will bend to your hand in every articulation. Without these, however unintentionally on your part, you will be perpetually subjecting him to the severest torture, to defend himself against which he will resist your hand, poke his nose, and stiffen his neck, and every other part of his body. The horse can endure no greater torture than that resulting from an uneven hand. This is known to every hack-cabman. Every hack-cabman has hourly experience that a job in the mouth will compel his jaded slave ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... an absent, far-away look, his arms and legs seemed to stiffen, and a tremor ran through his limbs. Chris watched him with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been taken; the Reform Bill was carried, the sceptre of power had passed away from the aristocracy and the privileged ranks to the middle and lower middle classes. The Conservative party were looking eagerly out for young men of promise to stiffen their ranks in the new parliament, the first elected under the Reform Bill, the first which the middle class had their due share in creating; the first in which such cities as Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham were allowed to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... the door of the chartroom, and retreated with instinctive good taste. She stopped crying after a time, and I knew the exact instant when she realized my touch. I felt her stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I stepped back, hurt and angry—the hurt for her, the anger that I could not remember that I was ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the door he thought of himself crawling back to his bunk and feeling his neck swell and his hands burn with fever and his arms and legs stiffen until everything would be effaced in the blackness of death. But the roar of the wind and the lash of the spray as he staggered back along the deck ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... yous. Your dart is ter be King of the Push, an' knock about the streets with a lot of mudlarks as can't look a p'liceman straight in the face. You an' yer pals are seein' life now all right; but wait till yer bones begin ter stiffen, an' yer can't run faster than the cop. Then it'll be jail or worse, an' yous might 'ave bin a good workman, with a wife an' family, only yer ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... apart. Ruff felt his nerves stiffen—felt himself constrained to hold even his breath as he widened a little the crack in the curtains. This was no stealthy entrance. The door had been flung open. Von Hern, his dress in wild disorder, pale as a ghost, and with a great bloodstain upon ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd at the hand ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... used for the attachment of wire or other stays to stiffen the wings or other parts ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much the hope ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... all that strength in his back would get his back up at trouble, and back out of any fight that came his way," declared Private Hyman. "But see here, can you place your head on one chair and your feet on another, stiffen your body and lie there without touching the floor ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... The game certainly ceased to be amusing after an uneventful fifteen minutes had passed. He was just about to give up, to step forth into the trail and resume his journey to the cabin, when he caught a strange sound, which made him stiffen back at once into ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of Branksome greets thee by me, Says, that the fated hour is come, And that to-night I shall watch with thee, To win the treasure of the tomb." From sackcloth couch the Monk arose, With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd; A hundred years had flung their snows On his thin locks and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in color. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is apt to electrify ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... sponge, three cups sugar, one cup butter, three eggs, one teaspoonful soda dissolved in a little water, one pound raisins, one teaspoonful each of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice; flour enough to stiffen. ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy. Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... the slouching team slouched a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered youth, the white down just beginning to stiffen into bristles on his long upper lip. His pale eyes and pale hair looked yet paler by contrast with his thin, red, wind-roughened face. In his hand he carried a long-handled ox-whip, with a short goad in the ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... her sufferings, seeking to get the better of them by efforts of will, she all at once experienced such extraordinary lassitude that she yielded vanquished. Then, having become a woman again, even a little girl, no longer feeling the strength to stiffen herself, to stand feverishly erect before her terror, she plunged into pity, into tears and regret, in the hope of finding some relief. She sought to reap advantage from her weakness of body and mind. Perhaps the ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... up with none o' the fellers. I knowed fellers try to kiss her; but her style was to stiffen them with a clip under the ear, an' they sort o' took the hint, an' never come back. But by-'n'-by a man from the Queensland border, he bought the place next ours but one; an' our two fam'lies got ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... by his elbows, his eyes gazing blankly at the unlit fire. Five minutes passed; he did not rise. He seemed dazed, stupid, terror-stricken. Five more minutes passed. He did not move. He seemed to stiffen, to grow rigid, and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... dawned on me 'this Presence among us is the same that once walked in Jerusalem and Galilee.' At that moment there appeared at the door a newcomer of dark hue. A frost fell on the company; they seemed to stiffen and close their ranks; the host's face turned in trouble and uncertainty from the newcomer to the guest of honor. The Guest arose and spoke to the stranger,—'Take my place!' ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... reconnoitre. Unluckily, this force seized three messengers of peace dispatched by Black Hawk and, in the clash which followed, was cut to pieces and driven into headlong flight by a mere handful of red warriors. The effect of this unexpected affray was both to stiffen the Indians to further resistance and to precipitate a fresh panic throughout the frontier. All sorts of atrocities ensued, and Black Hawk's name became a household bugaboo the ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... they had failed to reach an agreement. When President Cleveland permitted the publication of a letter which he had written to Chairman Wilson condemning the Senate bill, the fact was disclosed that the influence of the Administration had been used to stiffen the opposition of the House. Senator Gorman and other Democratic Senators made sharp replies, and the party quarrel became so bitter that it was soon evident that no sort of tariff bill could pass ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... wondrous dexterity of his adversary, Sintram opposed his far superior size; and he dealt so fearful a blow on the horned helmet, that a stream of blood rushed forth, the small man fell as if stunned, and after some frightful convulsive movements, his limbs appeared to stiffen ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... to themselves, but under white leadership they stiffen. They will fight if given the Indian style. They will never stand in defense, but if we lead them to a surprise, they'll give good account of themselves. That is my plan La Forest—that we creep ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... more courage than ever I had; don't you s'pose you can stiffen up and defend yourself a little mite?... Your father'd ought to be opposed, for his own good... but I've never seen anybody that dared do it." Then, after a pause, she said with a flash of spirit,—"Anyhow, Waitstill, he's your father after all. He's no blood relation of mine, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and continued late; which in the end was a good thing for the year's cut. The season was capricious, hanging for days at a time at the brink of a thaw, only to stiffen again into severe weather. This was trying on the nerves. For at each of these false alarms the six camps fell into a feverish haste to get the job finished before the break-up. It was really quite extraordinary how much was accomplished under the nagging spur of weather ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... babe apart to rest, And shades its eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that from the cloudy hold Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, The germs we lay to slumber here. O blessed harvest yet to be! ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... sense, against which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... accidental bending of the joint gives very great pain, it is a grave mistake to put the knee in splints to prevent bending. What is wanted is to encourage bending as far as that can be done without much pain, so that the joint may not permanently stiffen. Even where, by the use of splints, permanent stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... however, our noble hidalgo found the blast of war blowing, and so he at once proceeded to stiffen his sinews and summon up his blood. Taking no notice of Russell, he ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... sneeze. There is a chilly vapor off him—a swampish miasma—that puts me in a snuffling state, beyond poultice and mustard footbaths. No matter how I huddle to the fire, my thoughts will congeal and my purpose cramp and stiffen. My conceit too will be but ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... not misplaced. This was not the first time Father Burke had been called upon to stiffen the faith of wavering converts. Considerable experience and a perfect familiarity with the subject rendered the task an easy one. The tones of Father Burke's voice were, in themselves, almost sufficient for the purpose. Deep, calm, mellow, ravishingly ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... vast crowd of spectators. There were many who pretended to be able to gauge the capacity and fielding power of a club in this stage, but experienced onlookers knew the fallacy of such a premature decision. Often the very fellows who displayed carelessness in practice would stiffen up like magic when the game was actually started, and never make a sloppy play from that time on, their throwing being like clock-work and their stopping of hard hit bounders ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... the dead silence, the clatter of a pebble struck on the girl's raw nerves and made her wince. She saw the muscles of Lynch's back stiffen and the barrel of his Colt flash up to cover the narrow entrance to the ledge. For an instant she hesitated, choked by the beating of her heart. Should she cry out? Was it the man really coming? Her dry lips parted, and then all at once a curious, slowly moving object barely visible above ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... they stiffen themselves, Richard. They know they are going to have their photograph taken, and can't ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... consist of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen in the Sockets. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... it is." She spoke gaily, but the Kid could see her body stiffen slightly. "I'm no good at ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... good kid," said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... dear. It has to be done; and the braver you are, the sooner it will be over. You are bound to suffer the first few times, but it would be ten times worse to allow the joint to stiffen. Now be brave, and try to take just two steps with me! I will support you on one side, and—" Nurse looked round questioningly—"Mr Harold will take the other. You can lean all your weight on us. We won't let ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... one by one the North King's searching lance Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died; And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance; 'God is as close by sea as land,' he cried, 'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'— And look'd as one who o'er ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... inquiring of him what he wanted. He thought it so ridiculous to make inquiries of strangers, before his own house, after his wife and children, and still more so, after himself, that he mentioned the first neighbour whose name occurred to him, Kirt Stiffen. All were silent, and looked at one another, till an ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... moment we saw it till it was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length, and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were approaching behind ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave, and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity of mind, looked at her future master and waited ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Stiffen your upper lip. You know Who are your friends and who your foes now; We pay for knowledge as we go; And though you get some sturdy blows now, You've a fair field—no favors crave— The storm once passed will find you braver— In virtue's cause long may you wave, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the Pirolo to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. We saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. The woman's voice went on, sweet and deep ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... mornings now, Winterward with glittering brow, Stiffen in the silver grass; And what though robins flock and pass, With subdued and sober call, To the old year's funeral; Though October's crimson leaves Rustle at the gusty door, And the tempest round the eaves Alternate with pipe and roar; I sit, as erst, unharmed, secure, Conscious ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... of my eyes. Their way of conducting a retreat was always to fire a volley and then run away helter-skelter, and though I had been teaching them better manners, I always knew they would break if I wasn't there to stiffen them. I was a good deal knocked about, besides the wound on the head, and before I could manage to roll into the bushes, Sher Singh's men were back. I thought it well to appear more dead than I was, especially when I saw them going round and finishing ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... which now suddenly overspread the whole of the old man's face, and seemed to quickly stiffen the rugged and wrinkled fingers that had at first trembled in drawing a pair of shears from a ragged pocket, appeared to satisfy Paul's curiosity for the present. But after a few moments' silent snipping, during which he could detect in the mirror some traces of agitation ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... the fastest boat on the lake, or, at least, faster than any with which I had had an opportunity to measure paces. But it made but little difference how fast she was, as long as there was hardly wind enough to stiffen the mainsail. Mr. Parasyte ordered the men to take their places on the thwarts, and ship their oars. I saw that a little farther out from the shore there was a ripple on the water, and putting one of my oars out at the stern, I sculled till I caught the breeze, ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... been advanced very close to the enemy's trenches, and there were no other troops in support. Under these circumstances it was imperative that the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart with other surviving officers rushed among the scattered ranks and strove hard to gather and to stiffen them. The men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly. But the pipes blew, and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, the backs of their legs so flayed and blistered ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... same clearness of understanding as we; the same recognition that it is GOD and not the Devil who rules the World; the same power of discrimination between different kinds of truth.... Had our LORD come later, He would have come to mankind already beginning to stiffen into the fixedness of maturity.... The truth of His Divine Nature would not have been recognized." (pp. 24-5.)—Is this meant for bitter satire on the age we live in; or for disparagement of the Incarnate WORD?... But in the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds, and to enjoy a great deal of happiness, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... began. Ye Gods! what prodigy do I behold? Hath Hector, 'scaping death, risen again? For him, with confident persuasion all Believed by Telamonian Ajax slain. 355 But some Divinity hath interposed To rescue and save Hector, who the joints Hath stiffen'd of full many a valiant Greek, As surely now he shall; for, not without The Thunderer's aid, he flames in front again. 360 But take ye all my counsel. Send we back The multitude into the fleet, and first Let us, who boast ourselves bravest in fight, Stand, that encountering him with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... to be able to gauge the capacity and fielding power of a club in this stage, but experienced onlookers knew the fallacy of such a premature decision. Often the very fellows who displayed carelessness in practice would stiffen up like magic when the game was actually started, and never make a sloppy play from that time on, their throwing being like clock-work and their stopping of hard hit bounders ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... soldiers experiencing a sinking sensation, a feeling of collapse, at the order "Fix Bayonets!" their hands trembling violently over the task. But when the bugle sounds the charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands grip the rifle with grim determination. "It was his life or mine," said a young Highlander describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet through him." There is no time for sentiment, and there can be no thought of chivalry. Just get the ugly business over and ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... they fall from the maternal perambulator, they briskly pick themselves up, briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble and spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their neighbours. As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for them. Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without some expenditure of energy. The animal, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the girl at his side stiffen and tremble against his arm as she turned from him. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... he felt himself to be, instinct told him that he could act now as it would be impossible to do later, when his wounds began to stiffen and his muscles to refuse to obey his will. No bones were broken. He could still keep his feet and use his arms; and when the faithful servant brought up a horse and helped his master to mount, Paul ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... waved in response to the violence of his oratory. He, too, was perspiring with his ideas. He had a marvellous staccato method of question and answer. He would shoot a question like a rifle bullet at the heads of his audience, and then stiffen back like a wary boxer, both clenched hands poised in a tremulous gesticulation, and before any one could answer his bullet-like question, he was answering it himself. As I edged my way nearer to him I discovered that ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... time he appeared there no more. Then, one evening when it was almost dark, James Moore, going the round of the outbuildings, felt Owd Bob stiffen against his side. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... ask through what mechanism it happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... expression of that feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible, display curiosity ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by its side. 'Best to do this,' she muttered, 'ere he stiffen.' She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... success the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed. When he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them. Obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources. The record of human achievement is full of the truth. "There is no difficulty to him ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... indulges one's self in expectations, in tolerances, and these rather increase with the lapse of time. We should say that your theory of the stiffening tastes is applicable to the earlier rather than the later middle life. We should say that the tastes if they stiffen at the one period limber at the other; their forbidding rigidity is succeeded by an acquiescent suppleness. One is aware of an involuntary hospitality toward a good many authors whom one would once have turned destitute from the door, or ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... unresponsive. She was not writing when I came in, but sitting doing nothing. She said nothing to me about Mr. Gideon's call, till I mentioned him myself. Then she seemed to stiffen a little; I saw her hands clench over ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most useful, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to stiffen. Instead of beseeching looks I got threatening ones. Three minutes before I had been dictator; now I was a prisoner, and if I could read signs one in a ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... touch.' More pupils have been hindered through this clumsy terminology than I should care to estimate. There cannot be a wrist touch since the wrist is nothing more than a wonderful natural hinge of bone and muscle. With the pupil's mind centered upon his wrist he is more than likely to stiffen it and form habits which can only be removed with much difficulty by the teacher. This is only an instance of one of the loose expressions with which the terminology of technic is encumbered. When the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in color. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... benevolence, and "beat" though he might be, the gaunt stranger was made welcome, shared their meat and drink, and, growing speedily confidential in his cups, told them that he could tell a tale some folks would pay well to hear, and then proceeded to stiffen out ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... it was the very devil. Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Give at the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will half step forward to catch you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat him to it. Stiffen up and straighten up with an effort of will-power—will- power's the idea, gameness, and all that, and kiss your hands to the audience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your heart's been pulled 'most out of you and you'll have to go to the hospital, but for right ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... And shades its eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that, from the cloudy hold, Of winter breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth and nurse with dew The germs we ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... the ground, then they felt it stiffen, and were again on the alert. Venning ran his fingers lightly along the jackal's back till he reached the nose, which was pointing straight up. Without a moment's delay he ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... warm suds with Ivory or Castile soap and add to it a handful of salt to set the color. Wash each piece through this, and rinse through two clear waters to which just enough vinegar to taste has been added, the latter to brighten the color, then stiffen in cool starch and hang in the shade. When washing delicate colored fabrics a tablespoon of ox gall may be substituted for ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... came to the door of the chartroom, and retreated with instinctive good taste. She stopped crying after a time, and I knew the exact instant when she realized my touch. I felt her stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I stepped back, hurt and angry—the hurt for her, the anger that I could not remember that I ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... soldiers in heavy cowhide knapsacks, leather gaiters, and blue great-coats buttoned back at the skirts; and I heard the militia at the quarters calling across the stable-yard that these grimy battalions were some of Washington's veterans, hurried north from West Point by his Excellency to stiffen the backbone of Lincoln's militia, who prowled, growling and snarling, around ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... that head,' James burst forth.—'Then,' said Davidson, 'we must crave help of Him that will hear us.' Not only was Melville excluded from the Assembly, but its business was not allowed to proceed till he left the town, lest he should stiffen the brethren who resorted to him for advice against the King's proposals. The royal measures were, after all, only carried by ten votes; and even that majority would not have been secured had the King not ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... elevations on the valves become inflamed and then adhere together, or adhere to the wall of the heart, and thus incapacitate a valve. Sometimes these excrescences undergo partial fatty degeneration, or may take on calcareous changes and thus stiffen a valve. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... could have pictured poor Alice charging such spirits to avenge her. That set me thinking, and I began to wonder if they would let up on me if I abandoned Gilbert. The temptation was insidious, and I had to stiffen myself against it; but really, dear boy! he was too charming to be sacrificed to such demons. And so, after all, I never found ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... damaging the smaller varieties. However, by firing with the full choke barrel at about fifty yards two or three pellets almost always hit even the smallest birds. A very good method of preserving them is to inject formol into the bodies which at once stiffen out and become rigid in any position they are placed. Birds can thus be set with the wings extended in a flying position or as if roosting, the effect being much prettier than any which can be obtained by stuffing. If is however, necessary to arrange ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... a steel, and of another temper: The clotted blood-drops of Thyestes's sons Still stiffen on its frame: do not delay To furbish it once more in the vile blood Of Atreus; go, be quick: there now remain But a few moments; go. If awkwardly The blow thou aimest, or if thou shouldst be Again repentant, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... on what it is." She spoke gaily, but the Kid could see her body stiffen slightly. "I'm no ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... fellow who handled the sheep so brutally. Every time he dragged one and threw it into the pit he yelled: "Ho! Ho!" Carley was impelled to look at his face, and she was amazed to meet the rawest and boldest stare from evil eyes that had ever been her misfortune to incite. She felt herself stiffen with a shock that was unfamiliar. This man was scarcely many years older than Glenn, yet he had grizzled hair, a seamed and scarred visage, coarse, thick lips, and beetling brows, from under which peered gleaming light ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... hair began to stiffen at the roots, and a chilly sensation like that which might ensue from the unexpected and clammy touch of the dead, ran through me. It was hard to die so young and so far from home. Theological questions which before had attracted ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... thousand miles of country, 'all these are excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the Englishman's Socialism, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... England. She had won, against apparent odds, because her sons had found out on many a venturous voyage how the great game of war by sea ought to be played; and her enemy had not. She had won decisively. Philip might stiffen his pride and boast that he could yet send forth fleets mightier than the lost Armada. But on the day of the fight off Gravelines the doom of his power was sealed; and the Empire of the Ocean ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... began to stiffen at this exordium, but he fixed himself in an attitude of anxious attention, and the doctor, after having taken two pinches of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... my queen tells me except command my tones when there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to be ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of granulated gelatine will stiffen 1 1/2 to 2 quarts of jelly. In hot weather more is required. If fruit, vegetables, or nuts are to be molded in the jelly, use ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... about forty feet of rope had been very cautiously paid out, and some eight measurements taken, the peon who was superintending the operation of lowering was suddenly seen to stiffen his body, as though something out of the common had attracted his attention; he raised one hand as a sign to the other two to cease lowering, and gazed intently downward for several seconds. Then he signed for the lowering to be continued, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... him and growled his terriblest. For some unexplainable reason it did not work. Cash sat stiff as though he had turned to some insensate metal. From where he sat watching—curious to see what Cash would do—Bud saw him flinch and stiffen as a man does under pain. And because Bud had a sore spot in his own heart, Bud felt a quick stab of understanding and sympathy. Cash Markham's past could not have been a blank; more likely it held too much of sorrow for the salve of speech to lighten ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... such scenes, and to regard them lightly, threw off the sheet, and raised the corpses, one by one, that he might the better view them. One peculiarity Mr. Bloundel noticed; namely, that the limbs of these unfortunate victims of the pestilence did not stiffen, as would have been the case if they had died of any other disorder; while the blotches that appeared on the livid flesh made them objects almost too horrible to look upon. In many cases the features were frightfully ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... enough to lose the lovely entrance of Dublin Bay, stiffen her limbs, and confuse her brains, and she stood still as the stream of passengers began to rush trampling by her, feeling bewildered and forlorn. Her cousin's voice was welcome, though over-loud and somewhat piteous. 'Where are you, stewardess? where's ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feel Pheola stiffen. I guess no woman, no matter how plain, likes to be reminded ...
— The Right Time • Walter Bupp
... miserable throng during the conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence of the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and seventy-eight. Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the sense of present discomfort to hear it, he seemed to stiffen all over with the shock of horror, and then hung a dead weight on Stephen's arm. It would have dragged him down, but there was no room to fall, and the wretchedness of the lad against whom he staggered found vent in a surly imprecation, which was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... alone again," he whispered passionately, but to his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ground with ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... conclusion of the formalities, which ended by the horrible sentence of the traitor being pronounced on the whole two hundred and seventy-eight. Poor little Jasper woke for an interval from the sense of present discomfort to hear it. He seemed to stiffen all over with the shock of horror, and then hung a dead weight on Stephen's arm. It would have dragged him down, but there was no room to fall, and the wretchedness of the lad against whom he staggered found vent in a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... themselves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... forward on his face. His hands were numb, dead. He lay supported by his elbows, his eyes gazing blankly at the unlit fire. Five minutes passed; he did not rise. He seemed dazed, stupid, terror-stricken. Five more minutes passed. He did not move. He seemed to stiffen, to grow rigid, and the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... he was lost after hours' tracking in the interminable large grasses. An enormous snake, with fearful mouth and fangs, was speared by the men. In the evening I wounded a buck nsamma, which, after tracking till dark, was left to stiffen ere the following morning; and just after this on the way home, we heard the rogue elephant crunching the branches not far off from the track; but as no one would dare follow me against the monster at this late hour, he was reluctantly left to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... know that, in riding mules down steep or long hills, you do much to stiffen them up ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... regularly jolly; though now he's a minister, perhaps he'll stiffen up and turn sober. Wont it be a shame if he does?" and Thorny looked alarmed at the thought ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... the French interpreter, Drouillard, and three of the Kentuckians, and started on up the left-hand stream with one boat. The current of the river seemed to stiffen. It cost continually increasing toil to get the boat upstream. They were gone for several days, and no word came back ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... way before General Scarlett could stiffen their courage, and as his brigade, that of heavy cavalry, trotted towards the redoubts, other and more stirring work offered itself. The head of a great column of Russian horse, three thousand sabres, came over the crest of the hill ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... throughout the country. Arms and ammunition, especially heavy artillery in which the Turkish army was notoriously weak, constantly arrived from Germany and Austria. Every train from the central countries brought German army officers and a sprinkling of German noncommissioned officers with which to stiffen the Ottoman troops. The army was mobilized and General Liman von Sanders, a distinguished German officer, was appointed inspector general of the Turkish army. Immense stores of food and munitions were concentrated at Damascus, Constantinople, Bagdad, and on the Trans-Caucasus frontier, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... still. I seemed to stiffen. My heart gave a mad throb of hope, then seemed to stop. What did she mean? I faced her fully once more, and, I doubt not, I was very pale. Yet lest vanity should befool me, I dared not act upon suspicions. And so "True, mademoiselle," said ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... prompt with the Pudneys. I knew at last what I meant—I had ceased to wince at my responsibility. I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would; but it didn't fade, and, individually, it hasn't faded even now. During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I WAS so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener "with" them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in between ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... was not misplaced. This was not the first time Father Burke had been called upon to stiffen the faith of wavering converts. Considerable experience and a perfect familiarity with the subject rendered the task an easy one. The tones of Father Burke's voice were, in themselves, almost sufficient for the purpose. Deep, calm, mellow, ravishingly sympathetic, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... own smile stiffen as he wondered what could be going wrong. Surely, they could not doubt his loyalty! A hasty glance at Colonel Korman revealed no expression on the military facade affected ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... it now. Your father, Oliver, wishes me to go out on the pond, and bring home the sled we left there, the other night, in the storm. The wind has come out in the north-west, and there is every prospect of a bitter cold night. It has begun to stiffen already, and, before morning, the sled may be ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... barked Willoughby de Wing. "All right, I'll have your escort in a jiffy. Have a whisky and soda, my boy, to stiffen you before the ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... on the first night that Maternus rose up! They stiffen if they stay a whole night on the cross. If he could walk to Daphne three nights later, he had not been crucified many hours. Come, let us go to the baths before the crowd gets there. If one is late those insolent attendants lose one's clothing, and there is no chance whatever ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... bunch and up went every little new-born nose as it sniffed at the recession of the maternal fount. One little precocious even went so far as to attempt to set his wee fore paddies against Rose Mary's knee and to stiffen a tiny plume of a tail, with a plain instinct to point the direction of the shifting base of supplies. Rose Mary gave a cry of delight and hugged the whole talented family to her breast, while Stonie and Tobe yelled and danced as Uncle Tucker turned with evident emotion ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... our brave land that are memorable for fights that registered the land unconquerable. Why a last stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen our backs ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Smith's men, who notices a very fine skin an Indian is wearing, lifts it to show it to Smith. The Indian resents this act, and there seems to be resentment and fear among all the red men. The Englishmen stiffen to attention, but Smith, who feared neither man nor devil, goes among the Indians carrying a copper kettle and a gorgeous blanket. He held out his blanket persuasively and added several strings of beads. Then he draped the blanket on himself. The Indian at last reluctantly ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... precision, that he could not tell that she did not love him. And apparently he could not. He let her go after a minute, and flung himself down by her in just the attitude that the knock on the door, fifteen months ago, had interrupted. And Marjorie tried not to stiffen herself, and not to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel that a perfect stranger was doing something he had no ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with continually ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... neglect any precaution which might save his strength for the morrow. He lay down upon his bed, stretching himself at full length, and carefully keeping his right arm free, lest, by letting his weight fall upon it as he lay, he should benumb the muscles or stiffen the joints; from time to time he rubbed a little strengthening ointment upon his wrist, and he was careful that the light should not shine in his eyes and weary them. At six o'clock his seconds appeared with the surgeon they had ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... seemed for an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the old parchment in ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the neck, many objects are indicated, and the material of which it is composed would give reason to turn all its powers of thought, to ask why it is so formed, as to twist, bend, straighten, stiffen and relax at will, to suit so many purposes? A very tough skin—a sheathe—surrounds the neck with blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia, glands great and small, throat and trachea. In bones we find a great canal for spinal cord. It is well and powerfully protected by ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... power over us just because of their natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood: experienced soldiers tell us that at first men are sickened by the smell and newness of blood almost to death and fainting, but that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood, at least for the moment, with a deep eager love. It is a principle that if we put down a healthy instinctive aversion, nature avenges ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... to me. I would have visions of him in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying, sometimes being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance furtively at his domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee. We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser lusts, the viler shames, the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... light pressure of Sir Reginald Elphinstone's hand upon his arm, and turning, he saw the baronet raise his hand and point. He looked in the direction indicated, and in a moment his frame seemed to stiffen with eagerness as he gazed. For there, standing knee-deep in a pool, some two hundred yards away, and quite alone, was an animal not unlike a giraffe, but very much smaller, and with a neck that, although not so long in proportion to its body as that of a giraffe, was still very long. The creature ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... can be made as strong structurally as the other form, owing to the lack of the truss formation which is the strong point with the superposed frame. A truss is a form of construction where braces can be used from one member to the next, so as to brace and stiffen the whole. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her with a ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... cooperative factors which alone had justified Rumania's entering into the war had proved to be failures. The arrival of material from Russia was delayed because, after Turtekaia was taken, a new Russian corps was sent to the Dobrudja to stiffen up that front. The railroad communications were bad and immediately became congested by the movements of troops, thus interfering with the shipping of badly needed material. I have since heard the Russian reactionary government charged with purposely holding up ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "I have—and a bad one, too, and that's why I sent for you. The stocktaking is nothing; but I was afraid I might get another that would stiffen me properly. Look here, Lawson, you've been a true friend to me. You picked me up six months ago a drunken, half-maddened beast in Apia and saved my life, reason, and ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... dead silence, the clatter of a pebble struck on the girl's raw nerves and made her wince. She saw the muscles of Lynch's back stiffen and the barrel of his Colt flash up to cover the narrow entrance to the ledge. For an instant she hesitated, choked by the beating of her heart. Should she cry out? Was it the man really coming? Her dry lips ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... the ground), "I had the earth dug up and fresh mould put in, to refresh these old trees; well, my man, digging, found a box, or rather, the iron-work of a box, in the midst of which was the skeleton of a newly born infant." Monte Cristo felt the arm of Madame Danglars stiffen, while that of Villefort trembled. "A newly born infant," repeated Debray; "this ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not, O blood, like water; Still thee, blood, of life the honey; Wherefore thus thy source o'erflowing, Breaking thus the bonds that hold thee? Let the blood as stone be hardened, Firm as oak-tree let it stiffen; In the stone-like veins around it, Let the blood be stanched, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... from fust to last!" burst out Billy. "If a angel from heaven comed down-long and tawld 'e the truth 'bout un, you wouldn't b'lieve. God stiffen it! You make me mad! You'd stand 'pon your head an' waggle your auld legs in the air for un if ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... awkward enough when he chooses. You can never tell how far he'll let things go on. But when his back once gets up he'll stiffen pretty hard." ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... blue great-coats buttoned back at the skirts; and I heard the militia at the quarters calling across the stable-yard that these grimy battalions were some of Washington's veterans, hurried north from West Point by his Excellency to stiffen the backbone of Lincoln's militia, who prowled, growling and snarling, around Burgoyne's ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... in beaded rows drops deck the spray, While Phoebus grants a momentary ray, Let but a cloud's broad shadow intervene, And stiffen'd into gems the drops are seen; And down the furrow'd oak's broad southern side Streams of ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... whip, of which the handle, made either of wood, bone, or whalebone, is eighteen inches, and the lash more than as many feet in length. The part of the thong next the handle is platted a little way down to stiffen it and give it a spring, on which much of its use depends; and that which composes the lash is chewed, by the women to make it flexible in frosty weather. The men acquire from their youth considerable expertness in the use of this whip, the lash of which is left to trail along the ground ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Tired as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. Little evidences of the subtle but ever-living friction between my Mohican and the two ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... had but one more shot, and wished to hold it till he should be close; but my torn hand was weak, and the bruised tendons had already begun to stiffen. Into that deep place, where bank and trees overhung, the sun did not come, and I felt the cold striking into my raw flesh. More than that, my weight upon my shoulder began to cut off the blood from my arm. I felt pricking in my flesh, my arm began to be numb, and I feared that ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... broken below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be moved, bind ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... existence was still dear to me, and I dreaded to lose it. Every succeeding minute proved to me that I must abandon all hopes of relief. I was become an absolute skeleton: My eyes already failed me, and my limbs were beginning to stiffen. I could only express my anguish, and the pangs of that hunger which gnawed my heart-strings, by frequent groans, whose melancholy sound the vaulted roof of the dungeon re-echoed. I resigned myself to my fate: I already expected the moment of dissolution, when my Guardian Angel, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... He felt little Jennie stiffen, and draw away from him; so quickly he had to set to work to patch up the damage. "I want you to get well," he pleaded. "You're so good to everybody—you ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... in," and she entered with the confident air of the morning. Directly she saw Viola, however, she seemed to stiffen with resentment, and stood still by ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... the darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like the ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... monoplane can be made as strong structurally as the other form, owing to the lack of the truss formation which is the strong point with the superposed frame. A truss is a form of construction where braces can be used from one member to the next, so as to brace and stiffen the whole. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... voice was masterful, the voice of the thoroughbred, when he gets in earnest. Brenton longed to stiffen himself against the mastery, but he could not. His ineffectual effort lent an edge of sarcasm ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... half of trepidation, half of exultance, Phillips crushed his cap upon his head. "I—I've a notion to. I can ALMOST say it; anyhow, I can say enough so she'll understand. Gad! I will! I just needed you to stiffen me up." Fiercely he wrung the woodsman's hand, and, forgetful of all else but his new determination, moved toward the door. "Thanks for all you've done for me, old man, and all ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in place, and a small package upon which the name of the Saviour was inscribed. The lady picked up the package, when immediately the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... first expeditionary force was capable of stiffening any conscript army, for I do not think that a finer force ever went down to battle. But to talk about stiffening these people now would be ludicrous. You might as well stiffen the old Guard. There may be weak regiments somewhere, but ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The now almost forgotten busk was a small slip of steel or wood, used to stiffen the stays. Florimel threatens to employ it as ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... weapon, a stone tied in a crotched stick, from the heap of wedding gifts, and smites PADAHOON to the earth, standing threateningly over him. The others stiffen into tense attitudes, drawing their blankets tighter, their eyes burning bright. PADAHOON draws the knife that hangs in ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... so they did discountenance poor Denys. And that whole day I wore in experimenting these German lasses; and 'twas still the same. An ye doff bonnet to them they stiffen into statues; distance for distance. But accost them with honest freedom, and with that customary, and though rustical, most gracious proffer, of the kissed hand, and they withhold neither their hands in turn nor their acquaintance in an honest way. Seeing which I ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "Yes, stiffen your backbone and stick out your chin, and square your elbows, and really amount to something. Why do you simply flop about and do nothing and leave everything to what you call 'the family'? Why do you have to be helped all the time? Why ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... cock's feather in his cap, almost like a gentleman, and hang his cloak over one shoulder, and pull up his hose till they almost cracked, so as to show off his leg? Ah, he had handsome legs, my poor Vito, and he never would use anything but pure beeswax to stiffen his mustaches. No, he never would use tallow. He was almost ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... her 'desolation' was to be the advance of the enemy to her walls. Armies had been many times encamped round her, and many times been scattered; but this siege was to end in capture, and no angel of the Lord would stalk by night through the sleeping host, to stiffen sleep into death, nor would any valour of the besieged avail. Their cause was to be hopeless from the first. Flight was enjoined. Usually the inhabitants of the open country took refuge in the fortified capital when invasion harrowed their fields; but this time, for 'them that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and of another temper: The clotted blood-drops of Thyestes's sons Still stiffen on its frame: do not delay To furbish it once more in the vile blood Of Atreus; go, be quick: there now remain But a few moments; go. If awkwardly The blow thou aimest, or if thou shouldst be Again repentant, lady, ere 'tis struck, Do not thou any more tow'rd ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... may be boxed, Fig. 285, D, that is, portions of the sides may be affixed to the top. These extra pieces are a help to stiffen the top and to keep it from warping. A boxed top may have the top board flush with the sides, Fig. 285, E. The disadvantage of this is that the top may shrink and part from the sides and give a bad appearance. The overlapping top, Fig. 285, F, obviates this trouble of shrinkage and adds a decorative ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... could hardly be the emissaries of a woman scorned, even if one could have pictured poor Alice charging such spirits to avenge her. That set me thinking, and I began to wonder if they would let up on me if I abandoned Gilbert. The temptation was insidious, and I had to stiffen myself against it; but really, dear boy! he was too charming to be sacrificed to such demons. And so, after all, I never found out what they ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the dead warrior were given time to stiffen, Deerfoot adjusted them as they were when he first discovered him sunk in meditation. The body was made to sit erect, the back supported by the rock behind it; the feet were extended in a natural position, and the arms folded across the massive ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... I felt Manmat'ha stiffen in my arms with deadly terror. Resistless hands dragged us apart and held me absolutely motionless in spite of the deadly agony which filled me, while Manmat'ha's stifled shriek arose from midway across ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... word he was saying, and Martin saw his body stiffen and his eyes dilate. Even Ichi betrayed agitation, and Martin saw a violent but quickly mastered emotion flit across his ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... it is undoubtedly and profoundly true that you no sooner have an institution, whether in society, in politics, or in religion, than you are threatened with the danger that the institution may first exaggerate itself and then harden and stiffen into a machine; and that in the realm of religion, preeminently, those whose office it should be to quicken and infuse it with new life should themselves come at last to "worship the net and the drag." And just here you find in the history ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... an almost imperceptible instant to stiffen in his seat. The gray eyes glazed over; the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... talk when the thermometer registers more than twenty degrees of frost, for the lips stiffen and contract into wrinkles like the lips of a very old woman. Perhaps neither of the watchers was in the humour to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... drew her to his side. "So this is the explanation of the change that had passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to do good, but of your heavenly ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... looked positively dumbfounded. "Good Heavens, no!" he cried. "I was speaking to the chauffeur." (Jackson's back seemed to stiffen a little.) "I've told him a thousand times to be careful about running up on people like that. Now this is the last time I'll warn you, Jackson. The next time you go. Understand? Just because you happen to be ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... menacing him, she wanted but three years of seventy. She had battled too with many a storm—wind and weather, suffering and persecution, sorrow and privation, had beat upon her hard—very hard. They had but served to stiffen and wither and harden, however. Her corporeal frame, shattered as it seemed, was destined to outlive many of the young and fair spirit-tabernacles around it—to pass over, by long years, the ordinary ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... now set in motion, even this large quantity of emulsion will stiffen in at least an hour and a half. It may be further remarked that, the outside of the kettle being black, the lid being light-tight, and all the apertures in it being firmly closed, nearly the whole ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... he added, seeming to stiffen his shoulders in resentment at the calmness with which she regarded him. "I tell you that I waive the authority of a father and appeal to your gratitude; I remind you that I saved your life—leaped into the cold water and seized you, not knowing whose ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... lunge, and was out of the doorway before the old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he felt the reins stiffen in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack beside ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Oriental prevented the attempt being made. The delay mentioned allowed of fresh pressure being brought to bear on the Khedive; and while Gordon emphatically declared, partly from a sense of consistency, and partly because he hoped to stiffen the Khedive's resolution that he would not act with the Debt Commissioners on the Inquiry, Ismail Pasha was coerced or induced into surrendering all he had been fighting for. He gave his assent to the Commissioners being on the Inquiry, and he turned his back on ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... where ladies are, How sad soever I was before, Though like a ship frost-bound and far Withheld in ice from the ocean's roar, Third-winter'd in that dreadful dock, With stiffen'd cordage, sails decay'd, And crew that care for calm and shock Alike, too dull to be dismay'd, Yet, if I come where ladies are, How sad soever I was before, Then is my sadness banish'd far, And I am like that ship no more; Or like that ship if the ice-field splits, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... irresistible impulse to kiss his father—which was a most unusual endearment between them. As he put his hand on the table to get off the chair, it touched the trough, and once more his mood changed. He seemed to stiffen, and all he could do was to hold out his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... none o' the fellers. I knowed fellers try to kiss her; but her style was to stiffen them with a clip under the ear, an' they sort o' took the hint, an' never come back. But by-'n'-by a man from the Queensland border, he bought the place next ours but one; an' our two fam'lies got acquainted. Wonderful clever ole feller he was, in regard o' findin' out new gases, an' smells, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... men, dogs, and sled may be used to complete the scene, or they can be cut from newspapers or old magazines. Stiffen by pasting them on cardboard; then cut out the men, dogs, and sled more carefully in detail. Bend one leg forward and one backward to make the men stand alone, and bend two legs outward and two inward to enable the dogs to stand. Paste narrow strips of paper ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... to drop between us and the sun, and at the same time to loop-circuit the prisoners, who were a trifle unsteady. We saw them stiffen to the current where they stood. The woman's voice went on, sweet and deep ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark, And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. —Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; Coral ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... mechanism it happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen the lower jaw? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... spiritual advantages of feasting is that it expands you beyond your common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the putting on of the cap, and the relief, followed by further expansion and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... is regularly jolly; though now he's a minister, perhaps he'll stiffen up and turn sober. Won't it be a shame if he does?" and Thorny looked alarmed at the thought of losing his ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... introduced to vary the too constant beef-tea, and which had the advantage of being very quickly and easily prepared. She made a cup full of strong coffee, strained out the grounds very carefully, and added as much sugar and milk as though for drinking hot, and enough isinglass to stiffen it, and either left it in the cup or poured it into a mould, and when cold it was ready to turn out and serve as a jelly. This was only given occasionally, as it was not considered very strengthening; but nurse found it useful ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds, and to enjoy a great deal of happiness, in this ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... don't believe I need to hand you any advice. Just stiffen up, that's all. Anything you want ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... nothing t' call with when I've done wi' ye. I'm goin' t' jab ye on th' beak t' begin with, then I'll 'ook my left t' your kidneys an' swing my right to your p'int an' crumple ye up with a jolt on your perishin' solar plexus as 'll stiffen you till th' ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... watching him all the time she was speaking, and only half realised that her indignation was warmly simulated in order to produce an effect upon him and stiffen a wavering determination. For a moment Gaga did not speak. He was turning the matter over in his mind, and Sally saw the changes of opinion that passed across his face. Weakness, submission, obstinacy, bewilderment were all to be observed. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... too, was rather pale. She smiled nervously, and instinctively her hand crept out and touched Merriton's sleeve. She could feel him stiffen suddenly, and saw how proudly he ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... of their natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood: experienced soldiers tell us that at first men are sickened by the smell and newness of blood almost to death and fainting, but that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood, at least for the moment, with a deep eager love. It is a principle that if we put down a healthy instinctive aversion, nature avenges herself by creating an unhealthy ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... proposition to be demonstrated, but only the poor description in words of an habitual mood going far deeper into life than words can ever carry us. Without for a single moment falling off into the nullities of pantheism, neither did he for a single moment suffer his thought to stiffen and grow hard in the formal lines of a theological definition or a systematic credo. It remains firm enough to give the religious imagination consistency and a centre, yet luminous enough to give the spiritual faculty a vivifying ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Ruff felt his nerves stiffen—felt himself constrained to hold even his breath as he widened a little the crack in the curtains. This was no stealthy entrance. The door had been flung open. Von Hern, his dress in wild disorder, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the scouts and signallers. The handy are absorbed into the transport, or become machine-gunners. The sedentary take post as cooks, or tailors, or officers' servants. The waster hews wood and draws water and empties swill-tubs. The great, mediocre, undistinguished majority merely go to stiffen the rank and file, and right nobly they do ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... long. Caliban was coming with his big wood-sled and more rope and blankets, and as I caught sight of him the most extraordinary thought flew into my mind, which worked with a dreadful clearness, for I saw them stiffen and sink and slip away every second. Rosy bayed just then, and as my heart sank, for I thought they were gone, it suddenly occurred to me what ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... dark" had been taken; the Reform Bill was carried, the sceptre of power had passed away from the aristocracy and the privileged ranks to the middle and lower middle classes. The Conservative party were looking eagerly out for young men of promise to stiffen their ranks in the new parliament, the first elected under the Reform Bill, the first which the middle class had their due share in creating; the first in which such cities as Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham were allowed to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... "This will stiffen it all right," returned Blake, sternly, as a louder sound from without told of a larger mass of the earth sliding into the waters of the Canal, whence the drift had been excavated with so ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that, from the cloudy hold Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the mellow mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth and nurse with dew The germs we lay to ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... he met the proposal more directly by pointing out that, so far from such a policy conducing to the maintenance of peace, it would merely offend the pride of the Germans and stiffen them in their present attitude.[147] Two days later Sir Edward Grey pointed ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... "Impossible return. Dartie." Soames shook his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... servants as one enfolded in the cloak of St. Anthony, that inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting his game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and—how led who can say?—she would fly like a wireless message to the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a child is usually a letter of thanks; somebody has sent him a box of chocolates. The thanks tend to stiffen a child's style; but in any case a letter is the occasion of a sudden self-consciousness, newer to a child than his elders know. They speak prose and know it. But a young child possesses his words by ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... he put down one letter and opened another, the Major was seen to stiffen and the Junior Sub. to wilt. The attention of the table became as fixed and frigid as that of the midnight sentry at a loophole. The Colonel toyed happily with another letter (while the Senior Captain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... slight stoop of his shoulders, the soft figure, the heaviness under the eyes betray in some measure perhaps the consequences of nature's excessive generosity. Given all these things you take, it may be, too much for granted. There is not much to stiffen the mental, moral, and ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Strelitski drily. "Ceremonial religion is so apt to stiffen in a rigor mortis. It is too dangerous an element; it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do. Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism. Add the Statute ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fluid age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle The savants of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... piece of whalebone or ivory, formerly worn by women, to stiffen the forepart of their stays: hence the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... bosom thrill! I freeze! I freeze! just Heaven regards my fault, Numbs my cold limbs, and hardens into salt!— Not yet, not yet, your dying Love resign!— This last, last kiss receive!—no longer thine!"— 265 She said, and ceased,—her stiffen'd form He press'd, And strain'd the briny column to his breast; Printed with quivering lips the lifeless snow, And wept, and gazed the monument of woe.— So when Aeneas through the flames of Troy 270 Bore his pale fire, and led his lovely boy; With loitering ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... him down south and, as to any other Portuguese army, unless Wellington has got one together as secretly as he got up the lines of Torres Vedras, the thing is absurd. Besides, who had ever heard of Portuguese carrying on such operations as these, without having a lot of our men to stiffen them, and to ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... informed, was a being to hold in fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal for ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... for the value of the service itself, that He calls for it so long and so repeatedly, till at last the iron sinew gives way: no, but for the sake of bending the iron sinew itself, and when it is bent in one direction, I conclude He does not mean to stiffen it there, but would have it bend perhaps back to the very same position as at first it was so hard to bend it from, with this one wide difference, that in the first case it was so in its own will, but now in His will. Perhaps thou thinkest ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... a little; he felt the invisible barrier stiffen between them. "Mr. Morganstein promised to motor us through to the National Park Inn when the new Government road was finished, but we've been waiting for the heavy summer travel to be over. It has been like the road to Mecca since the foot of the mountain ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... said; and steps came along through the hall; she opened the door as he came up. Mr. Buxton stopped abruptly, and the two men drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, ever so slightly. A shade of aggressive contempt came on Hubert's keen brown face that towered up so near the low oak ceiling; while Mr. Buxton's eyelids just drooped, and his features seemed to sharpen. There was an unpleasant silence: Isabel ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... on the high road, a few dotted figures in the village streets. Below the flying-men the packed thousands are crouched still to earth. At the sound of the engine's drone, at sight of the wheeling shape, square miles of country stiffen to immobility, men scurry under cover of wall or bush, the long, moving lines in the trenches halt and sink down and hang their heads (next to movement the light dots of upturned, staring faces are the quickest and surest betrayal of the earth-men to the air-men), the open roads are emptied ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that he was not presenting a perfectly regular appearance to his new officers; and he dropped into his chair, making a ludicrous effort to stiffen his muscles and put on his dignity, ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Again he saw the white face of that child Mary Traill as she fled in horror before the jeering ruffian whom he had slain, and other things even more unspeakable seen on that dreadful evening rose now before the eyes of his memory to stiffen his faltering purpose. The Spaniards had shown themselves without mercy or sentiment or decency of any kind; stuffed with religion, they were without a spark of that Christianity, the Symbol of which was mounted on the mainmast ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... tremor shook him from head to foot. He lifted his hands, as if he must cry aloud in anguish. Then suddenly his face and figure seemed to congeal and stiffen with some awful inward coldness—the frost of the last circle of the Inferno—it spread upon him till he stood like a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... who if they cannot do something of considerable moment are disposed to do nothing at all. They forget that it is the brief three-minute rests that enable the mountain-climber to press on till he reaches the top whereas longer periods of inactivity might serve to stiffen his ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... Louder's eyes grew troubled. She knew something of the quality of Tilly's mind, which resembled her father's in a peculiar immobility. Once let her decision run into any mould (be it whatsoever it might), and let it stiffen, there was no chance, any more than with other iron ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
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