"Stiffening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jane's manner. For the nurse was holding herself erect and proper—shoulders back, chin in, heels together. Gwendolyn had often noted that upon both Jane and Thomas her parents had a curious stiffening effect. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... waiting for? what did he expect? He was not usually bashful, he was no coward; there was nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to what he believed was his first real passion. But he could do nothing. He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was stiffening into a ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... excessive heat had wilted these flowers of loveliness and faded their bright hues. Their uncurled ringlets hung dangling down their cheeks, whose roses were heightened to an unbecoming crimson, or withered to a sickly pallor; their gossamer drapery, deprived of its delicate stiffening, flapped like the loose sails of a vessel wet by the spray. Here and there was a blooming maiden, still as fair and cool as if sprinkled with dew, round whom the atmosphere seemed refreshed as by the sparkling of a jet ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... to cope with the situation. A well-known figure of the desert town who long ago should have gone to the gallows is daily growing bolder, attaching to himself the wildest of the insurging element, and is commonly looked upon as a crime dictator. Unless there comes a stiffening in the moral fiber of the local officers, we dread to consider the logical outcome of ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... word was said that the German could hear, but he could see the recognition run from rank to rank and troop to troop, until the squadron knew to a man; he saw them glance at Ranjoor Singh, and from him to one another, and ride on with a new stiffening and a new air of "now we'll see what ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... Once the hunt swung away to the westward and the sounds of it grew faint. Dick hoped it would continue in that direction, but by and by it came back again and he crouched down anew in his narrow quarters. He felt that every bone in him was stiffening with cramp and needlelike pains shot through his nerves. Yet he dared not move. And upon top of his painful position came the knowledge that the Sioux would stay there to cut up the slain buffaloes. He was tempted more than once to jump ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the Dynamite Monopoly, and other leeches which drained the country. To them a free and honest government meant ruin, and they strained every nerve, even to paying bogus English agitators, in order to hinder the cause of reform. Their attitude undoubtedly had something to do with stiffening the backs of the Boers ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... into the Com-tech's place as if some of the stiffening had vanished from his thin but sturdy legs. "They wouldn't do that—" he protested, but his eyes said that he knew that ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... caisson took 2-1/2 months, and on April 2d lowering was started. Inverted brackets were bolted temporarily to the cutting-edge stiffening brackets, and the sinking was carried on by methods similar to those used at Long Island. The jacks and blocking supporting the caisson are shown in Fig. 4, Plate LXIV. As soon as the cutting edge entered the rock, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... fell, like a plague, upon the town. It came, sweeping across the long low flats, crisping the dark canals with white frosted ice, stiffening the thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each blade of grass and holding it in its iron hand and then leaving it an independent thing of cold and shining beauty. At last it blew in wild gales down the narrow streets, throwing the colour ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... books. If the leather is much perished or decayed, it will unduly absorb the size, and a second touch over may be necessary. The glycerine will have the effect of preventing the glue from drying too hard or stiffening the leather. When dry, the books may be rubbed over with a chamois leather. The above process, I find, helps to nourish the leather, and to restore that property which the heated air has destroyed. It also freshens up and greatly improves the appearance ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... feels the lines stiffening in his hands; and the harness soon becomes so dry and brittle that it cracks and perhaps breaks if ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... to the office of the latter, which was on the next floor of the Century Building, the legislator stiffening his will to resist the assaults he felt would be made upon it. But as soon as the door was shut Jeff surprised him by laying a hand on ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... measured when I say that this young man, as brave at least as the average of his kind, contemplated seizing a pistol and firing into his own head. But a deadly, chilly, langour was spreading over his limbs. It was as if his flesh had been wet plaster stiffening slowly about his ribs. Presently, he thought, the two witches will be coming in, with crutch and stick—horrible, grotesque, monstrous—affiliated to the devil—to put a mark on his forehead, the tiny little bruise of death. And he wouldn't be able to do anything. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... of anybody troubling the young people, for they had Reno along. This faithful creature watched over the trio most jealously and, as they were eating on the grass, he found some sudden reason to become excited. He rose up, stiffening his back, the hair rising on his neck, and a low growl issuing from his throat. The girls were a little startled, but Tom sprang up, motioned to Helen and Ruth to keep still, and ran ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... was savage," said Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening with shock at the memory. "You bloody-minded Earthlings must have been aware of the ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher
... them, his handsome, weather-bronzed face bearing the impress of truth, his eyes shining with the clearest, highest honor. The child Jeanne felt the stiffening of every muscle, and it went through her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... wire ropes of still greater tenacity, permitted the construction of road bridges of this type with spans at that time impossible with any other system of construction. The suspension bridge dispenses with the compression member required in girders and with a good deal of the stiffening required in metal arches. On the other hand, suspension bridges require lofty towers and massive anchorages. The defect of the suspension bridge is its flexibility. It can be stiffened by girders and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... to start again the single note of a bird far away in the woods sounded clearly on the quiet air. Joe would not have given heed to it had he been less attentive. He instantly associated this peculiar bird-note with the sudden stiffening of Silvertip's body and his attitude of intense listening. Low exclamations came from the braves as they bent to catch the lightest sound. Presently, above the murmur of the gentle fall of water over the stones, rose that musical ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... until his mother's return. Standing beside the crib, and gazing down at the rosy cheeks and curling locks, nestled against the pillow, Beulah's thoughts winged along the tear-stained past, to the hour when Lilly had been placed in her arms, by emaciated hands stiffening in death. For six years she had held, and hushed, and caressed her dying father's last charge, and now strange, ruthless fingers had torn the clinging heart-strings from the idol. There were no sobs, nor groans, to voice the anguish of the desolate orphan. The glittering eyes were tearless, but ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... first reconcile it all with reality. He went slowly over to the prostrate "Slim" Rawley, whom the others had laid out decently upon the ground, half expecting him to leap up and laugh in their faces; but the already stiffening figure with the fiendish scowl ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... thought many thoughts. A physiognomist would have been interested to trace the progress of those thoughts on the eloquent young face. There was surprise written there, and obvious gratification, and a demure, very feminine content; later on came pride, and a general stiffening of determination. The spoiled child of liberty and the High School-Mistress of the future had fought a heated battle, and the High ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... length of the gas envelope, with a view to reducing air resistance. The length of this was 230 feet, the diameter only 33 feet, and the capacity was 113,000 cubic feet, while the upper part of the envelope, to which the covering net was attached, was specially covered to ensure a stiffening effect. The car of this dirigible was dropped rather lower than that of the first machine, in order to provide more thoroughly against the danger of explosions. Giffard, with a companion named Yon as passenger, took a trial trip on this vessel, and made a journey against ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... been provisionally calculated from the mechanical theory of heat. His discovery of the true method of preventing the tendency of tubes to collapse, by dividing the flues of long boilers into short lengths by means of stiffening rings, arising out of the same investigation, was one of the valuable results of his minute study of the subject; and is calculated to be of essential value in the manufacturing districts by diminishing the chances of boiler explosions, and saving the lamentable loss of life which has during ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... it to Weedon Moore, that's all," he ventured, and then, in the stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even to mention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He ventured the audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've really ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Cheyenne; away, yelling shrill warning, go warrior and chief; away, down stream, past the stiffening form of the brave fellow they killed; away past the station where the loop-holes blaze with rifle-shots and ring with exultant cheers; away across the road and down the winding valley, and so far to the north and the sheltering ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... result, the vocalist or speaker must begin by taking breath through the mouth, as we have already insisted, and at once, before there is time for any stiffening of parts, commence to intonate—i.e., as soon as enough air has been inhaled for the purpose intended. The correct position is facilitated when one taking breath through the mouth acts as if about to yawn. If this act be well imitated, the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... such affliction and meek earnestness, that she gained her point, and sat silent and motionless, except when, stung by intolerable remembrance, she kissed my closed eyes and pallid lips, and pressed my stiffening hands to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 deg.-50 deg. Centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuehne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... fear of living ladies," the scald said, "how much more, therefore, of their ghosts! I had rather meet Danes. For when one sees them there comes a stiffening of back and ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... downstairs. The judge had been summoned from the cabin in which he slept, and he was now plying Father Orin with questions. There was a cry of alarmed amazement when the priest told of finding Ruth at Anvil Rock. Only William Pressley said nothing, and sat perfectly still, with a sudden stiffening of his bearing. It was not easy for the priest to make the whole story clear, for he did not understand it quite clearly himself. But he told as much as he knew of the night's events. And when he was ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... eternal sleep, would not all the riches and glories of the world seem tame in comparison with such joy! Innocent had never seen death—she could not realise that this calm irresponsiveness, this cold and stiffening rigidity, meant an end to the love and care she had known all her life—love and care which would never be replaced ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... 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 process can be conducted by daylight, from the mixing to the stiffening, so that it is very convenient to be able to keep the emulsion in the same vessel during ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... wretch! Have you evicted the poor widow, and she on her deathbed? For stiffening the neck and hardening the heart, commend me to the close-to-nature life of the farmer. I wouldn't own a farm for worlds. It risks one's immortality. Give me the wicked city for pasturage—and a friend who will run a farm, at his own risk, and give me the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... out all that is pure and holy from my sight. It used not to be thus! My passions—my whirlwind passions, that carried me forward for so many years—are dead, or dying. It takes time to wind me up to a brave action:—my joints are stiffening, and crack within their sockets, when called upon to do their duty. The very good I would, I cannot! This Walter, whom I love next to my own Barbara—to find him in the lion's net! That Jewish girl I sought, merely to save her from yon hell-hound's grasp!—she ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... there had been nothing quite so definite. He had met her at the tea room—there had been one final week of closing after his arrival—and he had not quite made up his mind about her before she had left for Bloomfield, beyond a certain stiffening of fibre, an aloofness that was new, and a business-like air that seemed to say "Come across," that he did not exactly like. But then a week is not a very long time to get down to bed-rock with a person, especially when that person is ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Mr Flintwinch, stiffening with indignation and amazement, moistened the fingers of one hand at his lips, softly described a circle with them in the palm of the other hand, and continued with a menacing grin to screw himself in the direction of his wife; gasping some remark as he advanced, of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... were still dwelling in the past. "And when saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand—as she did to me—it was as if across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth peeping out? ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... applause. It reached Rosalind, full and resonant. It carried to the rider of the black horse, and glancing sidelong at him, Rosalind saw his face whiten under the deep tan upon it. It carried, too, to the other side of the street, and the girl saw faces grow suddenly tense; noted the stiffening of bodies. The flat, ominous silence that followed was unreal and oppressive. Out of it came the rider's voice as he urged the black to a point within three or four paces of Corrigan and sat in the saddle, looking at him. And now ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wet eyes, and though he knew of nothing for which to be forgiven, he melted utterly. His hand went out impulsively to hers, but she avoided the clasp by a sort of bodily stiffening and chill, the while the eyes smiled ...
— The Game • Jack London
... painfully certain. The Mohammedan villagers were terrified and inhospitable. They would not even allow a morsel of bread to be sold to the faithful Nestorians who accompanied the family, nor even barley for their tired, hungry horses. And when the limbs of the child were cold and stiffening under the power of the deadly disease, they would not sell one stick of wood to warm water for her; but again and again ordered the heart-stricken travellers to leave the village with their dying child. As a further aggravation, after the father had twice administered laudanum, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the wheeling days Until the cord goes slack, Until the very heartstring frays, Until the stiffening back Can ply no more; keep then the door, And, thankful in the sun, Watch you the same unending ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... him sharply—a sudden stiffening of the spine; spine stiff and eyes sharp, acting together. What he saw made him ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... struggle, or laboring under sudden emotion, his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously: there are dozens of cases noted, particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays, inspector, much as you may resent the limitation. No; what we can say is this. If he had been shot after the hour at ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... some wild berries to her father. "I say, sis," he pleaded, "can't we get back? I am stiffening, and you may all have to get together and ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... good advice," said Callaghan. "It will hurt to move, sir, and you beaten to a pulp first and then stiffening for the three days you're after lying here; 'tis all I wish I could rub you, with a good bottle of Elliman's to do it with. But if them Huns move you 'twill hurt a mighty lot more than if you move yourself. Themselves is the boys for that; they think they've got a feather in their caps if they ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... taken a long nap by the gnawed fence-rail, and the cool air after sundown made him impatient to be gone. The two friends jolted homeward in the gathering darkness, through the stiffening mud, and neither Mrs. Trimble nor Rebecca Wright said a word until they were out of sight as well as out of sound of the Janes house. Time must elapse before they could reach a more familiar part of the road and resume conversation on its ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... we delay to let loose that fury, that is so terrible, when our nests are attacked? I feel my angry sting is stiffening, that sharp sting, with which we punish our enemies. Come, children, cast your cloaks to the winds, run, shout, tell Cleon what is happening, that he may march against this foe to our city, who deserves death, since he proposes to prevent ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... unknown, astonish'd at the sight, My trembling sister strove to urge her flight; And first the pardon of the nymphs implored, And those offended sylvan powers adored: But when she backward would have fled, she found Her stiffening feet were rooted in the ground: 40 In vain to free her fasten'd feet she strove, And as she struggles only moves above; She feels th' encroaching bark around her grow By quick degrees, and cover all below: Surprised at this, her trembling hand she heaves ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... some of whom had already begun to feel their joints stiffening with rheumatism, she said: "Fishing's a hard game, boys, for the best of us. And it doesn't get any easier as we get older. There's a lot of you who will have to go into dry-dock before long and get patched up. And there's some that can't afford to lay up. You've been working with your hands ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Jack would have thumped his skull, as he once did the Cat's, and settled the affair in a minute; but now it took several minutes, during which he himself got roughly handled; so when the afternoon came he was suffering from one or two bruises and stiffening wounds; not serious, indeed, but ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this manner he lingered on two years, and died in the beginning of May, when he had been carried out upon the balcony, in the sunshine. "Glashka, Glashka! the bouillon, the bouillon, you old foo ..." lisped his stiffening tongue, and without finishing the last word, it became silent forever. Glafira Petrovna, who had just snatched the cup of bouillon from the hands of the butler, stopped short, stared her brother in the face, crossed herself slowly ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the old-timer saying the words now. And, as he listened to the grim warning again, he felt—as perhaps those two prospectors felt in the moment of their awakening down by the river—that fate had sadly swindled him. He was stiffening his trigger-finger for the pull, peering across the sights at the Indian who had climbed to within a few yards of the weapon's muzzle, when—the warrior on the summit of the next knoll waved his hand. The Apache ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... upon the platform and began pawing Kathlyn, and shortly after the younger sister followed. Neither of the girls noted the stiffening mustaches of the leopard. The animal rose, and his nostrils palpitated. He hated the dog with a hatred not unmixed with fear. Treachery is in the marrow of all cats. To breed them in captivity does not matter. Sooner or later they will ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... talesmen grew into the hundreds and the same extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... you got my note?" he inquired, stiffening up, yet determined to ignore her touch of sarcasm, and ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking her into contact with the reckless, ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... some in course of construction at the maker's works. It is also claimed to be of considerable advantage to bleachers and finishers of white goods, on account of the uniformity of the stretching causing but small disturbance to the stiffening.—Textile Manufacturer. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... magnificent machinery running like lightning. Only for a minute, though,—only for one short, painful minute. It was only a half-mile dash,—poor old fellow!—only a hopeless struggle against a rival that never knew defeat. Suddenly all ceased as suddenly as all began. One stiffening quiver, one long sigh, and my pet and pride was gone. Old friends were near him even then. "I was with him when he won his first race at Tucson," said old Sergeant Donnelly, who had ridden to our aid, "and I knowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... answer. His kingdom silently awaited his coming so he struck out at a sharp pace. The run of the day before, in place of stiffening him, had put him in racing trim and he went like the wind. He was in playful mood. He danced and shied as each cloud-shadow struck him, a dim figure in the shade but shining red-chestnut in the sun patches. On every hand he saw dozens of places where he would have ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... lot of stiffening, too. You go through the Southwest and see the country they trailed over—the hot, dry places and the quicksands and canyons and all that. They sure made them Injuns remember ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... knew it; his arm was stiffening, and Egerton struggling in the water with all the agony of a drowning man, hampered his movements and well ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... rapidly succumb, others linger for a few hours. They are all dead by tomorrow. I leave the corpses on the table, exposed to the air. Instead of drying and stiffening, like the asphyxiated insects intended for our collections, my patients, on the contrary, turn soft and slacken in the joints, notwithstanding the dryness of the surrounding air; they become disjointed and separate into loose pieces, which ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; of natural hair into peruke; of natural walking into that which will disarrange no ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... have died by stiffening at last into some routine. Thus the Gothic gaiety of the thirteenth century stiffening into the mere Gothic ugliness of the fifteenth. Thus the mighty wave of the Renaissance, whose crest was lifted to heaven, was touched by a wintry witchery of classicism and frozen for ever before it fell. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... building fell with a sullen noise to the ground. The rain had quenched the fire, and the house was not all consumed. Wild with terror, Kenneth rushed forward; his feet slipped on the bloody threshhold, and he fell on the mangled bodies of his father and his children. The demoniac laceration of the stiffening victims told too plainly who had been their murderers. How that night of horror passed Kenneth knew not. The morning sun was shining bright—when the bereaved and broken-hearted man was roused from the stupor of despair by the sound of the word "father" in his ears; he raised his eyes, and beheld ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... his tender recollection. After wandering for several hours in the thickest mist upon this Novembry heath, and what by moorish ground—what by the dripping atmosphere being thoroughly soaked, and stiffening with cold, the author and Mr. Vanley discovered on a declivity of the bleak Mount Patrick a solitary hovel. It stood apart from all houses or dwellings; and even the shepherd on this particular night had stolen away (probably on a love-tryst): however, if the shepherd was gone, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... in constant trepidation, playing for the smallest of stakes, and always looking out for something—calculating, standing whole days by the gaming-tables to watch the play—even seeing that play in my dreams—yet seeming, the while, to be in some way stiffening, to be growing caked, as it were, in mire. But I must conclude my notes, which I finish under the impression of a recent encounter with Mr. Astley. I had not seen him since we parted at Roulettenberg, and now we met quite by accident. At the time I was walking in the public ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is that over there?" inquired Hal, coming out of a brown study as he felt some reproach in the stiffening attitude of ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... at Pelliter, but he could feel the quick, tense stiffening of the other's body. There was a moment's silence. Then Pelliter spoke in ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... there, and the former was giving the Vice-President his last instructions, with the evident purpose of stiffening him up a bit. For Thompson seemed to need stiffening badly. One by one, and two by two, the directors came straggling in, and presently Porter, with a parting injunction to Thompson, left the room and crossed over to McNally's office, where his lieutenant was waiting for him. There they plotted ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... himself more cogently and more profoundly than his teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that in a very short time piety and grace made of him a different being, and transformed faults so numerous and so formidable into ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Henry, sharp as his eyes were, could not see twenty feet in front of him, and, just like the bear that had once occupied it, he lay very close in his lair. The confinement was growing irksome to one of his youth and strength, as he felt his muscles stiffening, but it was necessary, because he heard the signals of the Indians to one another through the fog, sometimes not more than two or three hundred yards away. Their proximity, he knew, was due to chance, as there was nothing to disclose to them where he lay. They were merely following the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with a heightened color, when the sound of light, hurried footsteps, and the rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the hall. A swift recollection of her companion's infelicitous reputation now returned to her, and Grace Nevil, with a slight stiffening of her whole frame, became coldly herself again. Mr. Rushbrook betrayed neither surprise nor agitation. Begging her to wait a moment until he could arrange for her to pass to her carriage ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... that they laugh at thee "These boyish follies, which alone the boy Can idly act, or gracefully enjoy, Add new reproaches to thy fallen state, And make men scorn what they would only hate. "What pains, my brother, dost thou take to prove A taste for follies which thou canst not love! Why do thy stiffening limbs the steed bestride - That lads may laugh to see thou canst not ride? And why (I feel the crimson tinge my cheek) Dost thou by night in Diamond-Alley sneak? "Farewell! the parish will thy sister keep, Where she in peace shall pray and sing and sleep, Save when for thee she ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... now saw quite clearly what Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared—sickeningly—with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then—this in the two or three days that followed ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... or three of the rabble behind her were in the act of poising themselves with great stones in their hands, and their muscles were stiffening for a cast when, just in the nick of time, the obstinate snap yielded, and with a jerk ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... true devotion. The movable tent answered to the temporary character of the 'dispensation.' The more fixed and elaborate the externals of worship, the more danger of the spirit being stifled by them. The Old Testament worship was necessarily ceremonial, but here is a caveat against the stiffening ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Sirdar or Commander-in-Chief of the Khedivial troops, of forming a real native army. It was that distinguished soldier, aided by an exceptionally able staff, who first took in hand the re-organisation and proper training of the fellaheen recruits. By dint of drill, discipline and stiffening with British commissioned and non-commissioned officers he soon made passable soldiers of the "Gippies." The new army was at first restricted to eight battalions of Egyptian infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery. Although there ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... the camels quietly waited awhile after their burdens were taken from their humps. Then, as if an afterthought had struck them, they slowly approached the scoop-outs and with the most indifferent air would take a mouthful of the liquid, then, stiffening their necks, they would lift their heads and calmly survey the scenery around them, till their drivers would draw their attention to the fact that there was at least another draught of water in the pool. It should be remembered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... bundled out on the platform into the arms of a Corporal and two men of the——Regiment. Golightly drew himself up and tried to carry off matters jauntily. He did not feel too jaunty in handcuffs, with four constables behind him, and the blood from the cut on his forehead stiffening on his left cheek. The Corporal was not jocular either. Golightly got as far as—"This is a very absurd mistake, my men," when the Corporal told him to "stow his lip" and come along. Golightly did not want to come along. He ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... narrow entrance sped the faithless messenger, tearing up the water in his mad flight, while the brave Guidala struck in vain at his huge body. Suddenly a roar of thunder sounded and the thunderbolt fell on the back of the monster, bearing him down beneath the waves and then, stiffening like a bar of iron, pinning him to the bottom far below. In vain he struggled to free himself; the bar held him fast and sure. In his struggles the shell fell from his mouth, but a little Tamban caught it and brought ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... eyes upon the crowd. His temples were throbbing with violence enough to stun him, and he felt a numbness as of intoxication creeping over him. Suddenly he caught sight of the long chain used in working the swinging of the gate. With a bound he grasped it, stiffening his arms, and making a buttress of his feet, and at last the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... of it. "Swear? You won't try and back out of it?" he said, lifting his hand adjuringly. His companion solemnly drew his finger across his throat, as if cutting it, and the oath was taken. The one who had lost the cap, hitched up his trousers and pulled himself together, his whole figure stiffening with determination; then he put his hands upon the fence, vaulted it, and walked with bent head and firm step across the yard, looking like one who had staked his all upon one card. When he had secured the cap, and turned his back upon the House, he sent a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... this dark inclement sky How many wanderers faint and die! One, flouncing o'er the treacherous snow, Sinks in the pit that yawns below! Another numbed, with panting lift Inhales the suffocating drift! And creeping cold, with stiffening force, Extends a third, a ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... man Seltz cannot be quite a fool. Look!" He held up the forefinger of the dead man's right hand, upon which was a dull red burn, with bits of the red sealing wax about the nail. "He wasn't taking any chances." He let the already stiffening arm fall, and continued his examination of the body. "The method by which the man was killed," he remarked slowly, "is not yet clear to me. Certain finger prints on the throat indicate that he might have been strangled, but they are hardly deep or extensive enough for that. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... but not continuous, often accompanied by contractions of the features and drawing up of the legs. The cry of hunger is a continuous, fretful sound, after feeding or sometime before the next feeding. The cry of temper is loud and strong, accompanied by kicking or stiffening of the body, and, this should never be given away to from the first. The cry of a sick child is feeble and whining. Baby should not be rocked to sleep, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... be nothing to forgive," Angelo replied, stiffening. "She is an angel. And now, enough of my affairs. Let us ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... out—or sent out—to buy in a shop: something concrete and portable, that Strefford's money could pay for, and that it required no personal participation to obtain. What a fool the lawyer must think her! Stiffening herself, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... all very well, my dear—but you must reflect, that, etc., etc., et cetera"—each et cetera a dab of wet wool, taking out more and more stiffening and color, until the beautiful project hangs, a limp rag, on her hands, a forlorn wreck over which she could weep ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... long clasp, the hushed and trembling kiss, The mother weeping at her beauty's side, And Death's last look and stiffening clutch—is this, Is this the outcome of a nation's pride? There lie the clammy corpses far and wide, And locks bedabbled and the princely cheek, Son, father, brother, husband, side by side— Oh, such a tale of horror who can speak! Together heaped the dead ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... difficult," said Gail to the stiffening teacher. "Competition is the soul of trade. If I can give the poor souls an idea that other men want me—quite flaunt them, you know—they all come bounding up to want me, too. It's very cheering, don't you think, to have a faithful hound or ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... the horror of the scene, and the terrible aspect of the dead in the sight of the girl who had been her one darling. But Gorgo had remained by her side, and, while she did everything in her power to revive the stiffening body, the overwhelming might of Death had come home to her with appalling clearness. She felt the limbs of one she had loved growing cold and rigid under her hands, and her spirit rose in obstinate rebellion against the idea that annihilation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understand. I ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to crossing the difficult places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and more tenderly, if there had not been the consciousness of my financial dependence on her always stiffening my pride, I think she would have moved with me from the outset, and left the Liberals with me. But she did not get any inkling of the ends I sought in my change of sides. It must have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. She had, I knew—for surely ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the duty before me, and, as I knelt down sorrowfully by the dead form and respectfully composed his stiffening limbs, I thought that it was unjust of fate to place a well-meaning man, whose nerves were not of iron, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,—she, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... STIFFENING ORDER. A custom-house warrant for making a provision in the shipping of goods, before the whole inward cargo is discharged, to prevent the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... be sitting here in solitude listening to the music of one of Nature's mighty harp-strings. Her grand symphonies peal forth through the endless ages of the universe, now in the tumultuous whirl of busy life, now in the stiffening coldness of death, as in Chopin's Funeral March; and we—we are the minute, invisible vibrations of the strings in this mighty music of the universe, ever changing, yet ever the same. Its notes are worlds; one vibrates for ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... fastens to us, and won't be shaken off till he has worried us to death; the sword-fish stabs us with his sword; and the thrasher whips us to death with his own slender, but strong and heavy body. Then, men harpoon us, shoot or entrap us; and make us into oil and candles and seats, and stiffening for gowns and umbrellas," said the bone, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... wounded in the head and at some time during the long hours of darkness between sunset and dawn the bandage had partly slipped off, and hemorrhage had begun. The blood had run down on his neck and shoulders, coagulating and stiffening as it flowed, until it had formed a large, red, spongy mass around his neck and on his naked back between the shoulder-blades. This, with the coal-black hair, the chalky face partly buried in mud, and the distorted, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... stern-sheets, shaking his sides with laughter at the singular contest which was going on; but Mr. Lowington, though evidently amused, maintained his gravity, and was as dignified as usual. The appearance of the principal ended the struggle. A glance from him was quite sufficient to take all the stiffening out of the runaways, and even Wilton, though he talked valiantly behind Mr. Lowington's back, and neglected even to give him the simple title of "mister," had not the courage to resist the strong arm of his authority. As the second cutter ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... as well as fear-stricken, and Helen, suddenly seeing a barb-wire fence ahead, felt herself go faint, for she had never taken a fence, and she knew that Pat never had. She must get control of herself again. And this she did. Stiffening in the stirrups, she gripped a single rein in both hands and pulled with all her strength. But she could not swerve the horse. On he plunged for the obstruction, evidently not seeing it. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... judgment. It is impossible to describe my sensations as I witnessed the various unsuccessful attempts to relieve Belanger. The distance prevented my seeing distinctly what was going on, and I continued pacing up and down upon the rock on which I landed, regardless of the coldness of my drenched and stiffening garments. The canoe, in every attempt to reach him, was hurried down the rapid, and was lost to view amongst the rocky islets, with a rapidity that seemed to threaten certain destruction; once, indeed, I ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... mortal power can disconnect them. Sooner or later every transgressor must be humbled; he must fall—by judgment, or by penitence—before the sword of excision, or into the arms of mercy. Happy for us if external visitations produce internal prostration of spirit; if, instead of stiffening ourselves into resistance, we bend to the inflictions of parental chastisement; and if present and temporary sufferings excite a feeling which will supersede the necessity of future and more ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Kentuckian, cut off from home and friends, and dying among strangers. An almost imperceptible glance indicated that he wished me to take up his Bible. The fast-stiffening lips whispered, "Read." I read to him the Fourteenth Chapter of St. John, stopping frequently to note if the faint breathing yet continued. Each time he would move the cold fingers in a way that evidently meant "go on." After I had finished the reading, he whispered, so faintly that ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... riding-masters are such admirers of the "square seat," that when giving a lady her first few lessons, they will as a rule keep constantly telling her to keep her right shoulder back, which she cannot do without twisting and stiffening her body. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... desire, with aching back and stiffening muscles, with pick and shovel gouging and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled up the hill. Before him was the smooth slope, spangled with flowers and made sweet with their breath. Behind ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... "Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible. They've been bowing and scraping until there's a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... as of anguish passing over his face like the shadow of a cloud; then leaving it clear, though sad with the habitual sadness which had scored its many lines. "You have surprised me, indeed. But——" He stopped abruptly, and apparently for the first time noticed the young man standing near. Stiffening slightly, Colonel DeLisle looked keenly at Max, his eyes trying to solve the new puzzle. "But—my daughter, you have come to ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... and emotions which had usurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often do, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of the charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of stiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have spelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I was too old ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith |
