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More "Rigidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... avoid, knowing that it opened on a part of the court which, from its commanding a view of the scaffold, he justly feared would be crowded. He had paused but to speak one word of encouragement to Agnes, who, with a calmness appalling from the rigidity of feature which accompanied it, now stood at his side; he bade her only hold by his cloak, and he hoped speedily to lead her to a place of safety. She heard him and made a sign of obedience. They passed the gate unquestioned, traversed ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... which often occurs with great rapidity, and during which the vocal bands increase to double their previous length in males, that, though the pitch of the voice, owing to increased length of the bands, suddenly lowers, yet not until full maturity is reached, do the laryngeal cartilages attain that rigidity, or the vocal bands that ready elasticity essential to the production of pure, resonant voice. Yet, during these years, while the voice is developing, the vocal bands remain unchanged in length. Even ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... She was sure he understood her by the sudden rigidity of his pose, while his eyes stopped twinkling, and his fingers ceased to travel along the line of his mustache. Her eyes fell before the scrutiny in his, but she lifted them again for one of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... stiffness and rigidity of English methods which hinders their acceptability amongst Indian people. On the other hand, the Indian priest is more patient in dealing with the people's difficulties. Rustics in England relate the history of a quarrel, or sickness, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... succumbed less to his gentleness than to the knowledge that it was she alone who evoked that gentleness out of a nature almost adamantine, wholly masculine. His faults she knew to be the faults of one who had hewn his own road in life—a rugged surface—a strain of rigidity beneath—at worst a tendency to dogmatise—and knowing as she did her own control over them, they attracted rather ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... grew almost intolerable. 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 watchful rigidity. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a spring or buffer to the body, nor could it adapt its sole to the various kinds of surfaces on which we have to tread or stand. Nature, with her usual ingenuity, has succeeded in combining those opposing qualities—rigidity, suppleness, and elasticity or springiness—by resorting to her favorite device, the use of muscular engines. The arch is necessarily constructed of a number of bones which can move on each other to a certain extent, so that the foot may adapt itself to all kinds of roads and paths. It is true ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... You, who are a florist, you know whether it is ever possible to restore the broken stem, to revive the faded colors, to make the sap flow again in the tender vessels of which the whole vegetative function lies in their perfect rigidity. If some botanist should attempt the operation, could his genius smooth out the folds of the bruised corolla? If he could remake a flower, he would be God! God alone can remake me! I am drinking the bitter cup of expiation; but as I drink it I painfully spell out this sentence: Expiation ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... the spectrum they rose and fell; blazing orange, silken, wonderful, translucent blues, and shimmering reds. Below, a broad band of paler hue, like sheet lightning fixed to rigidity, wavered and rippled. All the auroras of the northland blended in one could but have paled away before the splendour ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... intolerable, showed by their death-darkened tracery of inflamed veins how much the lone wanderer had suffered. The hands, with their strong bronze now paled to tarnished ochre, were heavily callused by manual labour, and sharply attenuated by recent hardship. The skin was cold, but the rigidity of death was yet scarcely apparent. Evidently he had not died of thirst alone, but of mere physical exhaustion, sealed by the final collapse of hope. And it seemed so strange to hear the low voices of Rory and Mary close by; to see through occasional spaces in the scrub ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of my principal conclusions first, i. e., that the only types of infection that are associated with pain are those in which the infection may be spread by muscular action or those in which the fixation of parts by continued muscular rigidity is an advantage; and, further, as a striking corollary, that the type of infection that may cause muscular action when it attacks one region of the body may cause no such action ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... where doubt exists, the foot should be lifted to the knee, and the cartilage carefully examined with the foot in that position. If, then, at any spot above the normal contour of the os pedis we meet with hardness or rigidity, we are to look upon that foot with suspicion. Nevertheless, providing our conscience is sufficiently elastic, the animal may be passed sound so far as the existence of a side-bone is concerned. We know, however, that with ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... no more to them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a hearing of the ears, a far-away interest of the inflexible heart, not pausing, not pitying, but austere with a holy austerity, rigid with a calm and passionless rigidity; and I find them none the less ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... themselves from an affection under any compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army, recognized in this charming girl a woman who could restrain his son by the power of virtue, and by the ascendancy of a nature that was firm without rigidity. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... end of the barrel the ringlets which had fallen over one of her ears. She was still breathing.... A shot in the temple. Her body contracted with a final shudder, then remained immovable with the rigidity of a corpse. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fine contempt for Mesopotamia and all its works. "And the mistress is tired of 'ousekeeping, so they're going to live in one of them there family 'otels, as they call them." The butler sighed, and then, as if conscious of having lapsed from correct behaviour, stiffened to rigidity and became merely butler once more. "Will you see the 'ouse ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... will from his body and devitalised it before the public eye. I have observed that the powdered personage has much greater control over his muscles than the ordinary footman with human hair, and is infinitely his superior in rigidity. Dawson tells me confidentially that if a footman smiles there is little chance of his rising in the world. He says a sense of humour is absolutely fatal in that calling, and that he has discharged many a good footman because of an ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that arrested my attention. It was the body of a very large man lying flat upon his face, his head buried among the roots of a good-sized tree. The arms were stiffly pressed against his side, and his legs projected at full stretch, exhibiting an appearance of motionless rigidity, as though a well-dressed corpse had been rolled over on its face. I at once recognised it as the body of the major, whom I supposed to have ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... early masters, the great motive struggling still with the minute and rigid hand. So the critics of the last century ignored, or underrated, the works of the earlier Tuscan sculptors. In what Cicero calls "rigidity" of Canachus, combined with what we seem to see of his poetry of conception, his freshness, his solemnity, we may understand no really repellent hardness, but only that earnest patience of labour, the expression of which is constant in all the best work of an early time, in the David of Verrocchio, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... afternoon he was told that his father would like to see him. He had finished the Scotsman and begun a conversation with his betrothed in a gently facetious vein, but it took him not a moment to adjust his features to the rigidity of an urn, and save for the faint squeaking of his boots, he ascended the stairs with noiseless solemnity. He found Mr. Walkingshaw propped up on pillows and breathing heavily. The demeanor of both was exactly becoming to ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... by a formal announcement of our arrival, the caravan made ready for reception by copious, but needed, ablutions of flesh and raiment. The women, especially, were careful in adorning and heightening their charms. Wool was combed to its utmost rigidity; skins were greased till they shone like polished ebony; ankles and arms were restrung with beads; and loins were girded with snowy waist-cloths. Ali-Ninpha knew the pride of his old Mandingo companions, and was satisfied that Mohamedoo would have been mortified had we surprised ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always endeavored to imitate the ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... masters to blush with shame and envy. Mrs Gore and Nelly danced too, weeping the while with joy, and so did the White Swan, but her performances were peculiar. She danced with a slowness of manner and a rigidity of person that are utterly indescribable. She looked as if all her joints had become inflexible, except those of her knees, and her arms hung straight down at her sides, while she pendulated about the floor and gazed at the ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... its secrecy, caution, vigilance, and energy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. Whatever was democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that was aristocratic in custom. It was a state of political freedom, but of social despotism. This rigidity of ancient usages was binding long after its utility was past. For what was admirable at one time became pernicious at another; what protected the infant state from dissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more matured community. It is in vain that modern writers have ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not apparently felt by the poet as monotonous. Four or five persons, each representing a purpose or a passion, occupy the scene, and obviously contribute by every word and deed to the advancement of the tragic action; and this narrowness and rigidity of intent would be intolerable, if the tragedies were not so brief: I do not think any of them is much longer than a single act of one of Shakespeare's plays. They are in all other ways equally unlike Shakespeare's plays. When you read Macbeth or Hamlet, you find yourself ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... as soon as the stun of the blow passed away, and the rending pain began to make itself felt. For a few seconds he gazed before him stupid and helpless, then his face turned quite grey, the eyes and nostrils gaped wide, and a curious rigidity ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... turned, and looking back over the left shoulder. It seems to me that Her Majesty should own this picture, for it is an exquisite specimen of Mr. Sully's peculiar coloring, and a very lovely portrait. Here is no rigidity, no constraint, no irksome state. There is a springy, exultant vitality in the bearing of the graceful figure, and the light poise of the head, while in the complexion there is a tender softness and a freshness ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... been added between the clusters of leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;—the old incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand for the under surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on the top of it you see true ribs. Look at the upper and under surface ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... end of the apartment, and they saw Damiotti, standing at the head of two or three steps, sign to them to advance. His dress was so different from that which he had worn a few minutes before, that they could hardly recognize him; and the deadly paleness of his countenance, and a certain rigidity of muscles, like that of one whose mind is made up to some strange and daring action, had totally changed the somewhat sarcastic expression with which he had previously regarded them both, and particularly Lady Bothwell. He was barefooted, excepting a species of sandals in the antique fashion; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Peter, and from the tenderness of his immaculate purity said to the adulteress, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." There are some sectarians in whom the arbitrary narrowness, fierceness, and rigidity of their received creeds have so demoralized and hardened conscience and sensibility in their native healthy directions, and artificially inflamed them in diseased channels, that we verily believe, if the decision of the eternal destiny of the human race were placed in their hands, they would with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... duty," she said, with a decided rigidity of countenance, "to tell you what we know of that girl, and now we leave the matter with you"; which was a falsehood, if Miss Calthea was capable ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... there much under the influence of the priest, especially the women, and, indeed, among the upper classes the confessional and other priestly operations are attended with as much rigidity as in past centuries, although the male sex has very greatly emancipated itself therefrom, and receives any allusions to the priest with a shrug of the shoulders, or, at times, with coldness or open hostility towards that worthy. The Church has fallen into disrepute ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... by the knowing ones. On referring to the list, I found he was entered as "Recriminator," and that the rest of the deputation had refused to give him a warranty. He sprang up with angry activity; he placed his left hand on his breast, the right hand he extended with cataleptic rigidity, and with an expression of countenance which I can only compare to that of an injured female of spotless virtue, he began, "You, sir—yes, I say, you, sir—you presume to speak of the slave—you, sir, who come from a nation ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... frozen into rigidity and silence by a dreadful and indefinable sensation of horror, they heard a fluttering sigh coming from the opposite end of the room, apparently from somewhere near the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... clearest and most logical intellect that the Reformation produced, though not the broadest; who reigned as a religious dictator at Geneva and in the Reformed churches of France, and who gave to John Knox the positivism and sternness and rigidity which he succeeded in impressing upon the churches of Scotland. And the peculiar doctrines which marked Calvin and his disciples were those deduced from the majesty of God and the comparative littleness of man, leading to and bound up with the impotence of the will, human dependence, the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... inward drama and argument, occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and rubbing his hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve. Rosamond took ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... lean and high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... was as bad as, if not worse than, the historically disastrous remark about super-tax, and a general rigidity, as of some partial cataleptic seizure, froze Mrs. Poppit's guests, rendering them, like incomplete Marconi installations, capable of receiving, but not of transmitting. They received these impressions, they also continued (mechanically) to receive more chocolates and sandwiches, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... is often found between them in regard to the intellectual faculties. More or less of delicacy in these organs, of heat in the blood, of promptitude in the fluids, more or less of suppleness or of rigidity in the fibers and the nerves, must necessarily produce the infinite diversities which are noticeable in the minds of men. It is by exercise, by habitude, by education, that the human mind is developed and ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... killed is soft. After a while it goes into a state of rigidity known as rigor mortis. Then it begins to soften again. This third stage is really a form of decay, called ripening. It is believed that the lactic acid formed is one of the principal agents producing this softening. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... think, to hope for Italy; and the Italy of his ideal was a Republic embracing every member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and the superstition which had degraded the man to the slave, indebted to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and his impatience with any bargaining away of national rights, excluded him from the work of those practical politicians and men of expedients who in 1859 effected ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... by Dr. Trenes. Aiguier, thanks to his peculiar system of muscles and nerves, can transform himself in most wondrous fashion. He has very properly dubbed himself "L'Homme-Protee." At one moment, assuming the rigidity of a statue, his body may be struck sharply, the blows falling as on a block of stone. At another he moves his intestines from above and below and right to left into the form of a large football, and projects it forward, which gives him the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... names and properties of many plants and herbs; and this knowledge had often been called into requisition for the benefit of many of the people as well as the animals of the neighborhood. Never had his skill been needed more than now, for poor Tiepoletta had not recovered consciousness, and her rigidity and the ghastly pallor which had overspread her features seemed to indicate that she had already ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... at four o'clock in the morning, a Napoleon who dictates half the night in his bath, and who works eighteen hours a day, would scarcely suffice for its needs. Such a regime cannot operate without constant strain, without indefatigable energy, without infallible discernment, without military rigidity, without superior genius; on these conditions alone can one convert twenty-five millions of men into automatons and substitute his own will, lucid throughout, coherent throughout and everywhere present, for the wills ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... knew the tones that spoke, the persuasive commanding tones hard to resist, apt to compel. Slowly I turned myself round; the speakers must be within eight or ten feet of me, but I could not see them. Still they came nearer. Then I heard the sound of a sob, and at it sprang to rigidity, poised on ready feet, with my hand on the hilt ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... A still rigidity and pale— An Indian aloofness lones his brow; He has lived a thousand years Compressed in battle's pains and ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... made. The frame is slit at the inner horizontal edges, and then folded in such a way as to make individual clamping-jaws for each end-flange. The clamping-in is done at great pressure, and the resultant plate has great rigidity and strength. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the subject. Why argue with him? The slant with which they got at things was different. Like her father, he had the mental rigidity that is ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... he kicked the wreckage about the room, his glance fell upon his rifle with the fixed bayonet. And then the swine-dog ran amok. Boudru stood with his back to the door: the blood froze in his veins, and his little body stiffened into absolute rigidity. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... Matthew Arnold read it, is not between the two nations which Providence has so closely knit together, but between insolence, dulness, rigidity, on the one hand, and sensibility, quickness, flexibility, on the other. What Arnold lamented was that England has too often been represented in Ireland, and here also when Irish questions were discussed, by "the genuine, unmitigated ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... road, literally like some heavy statue hewn there in the age of the Druids. It seemed impossible that he should ever move. Turnbull grew restless with this rigidity, and at last, after calling his companion twice or thrice, went up and clapped him impatiently on one of his big shoulders. Evan winced and leapt away from him with a repulsion which was not the hate of an unclean thing nor the dread of a dangerous one, but was a spasm of awe and separation ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... ripe in years, in reputation, and in the wisdom of a vast experience. It was possible for him to treat Albert with something of the affectionate authority of a father; but, on the other hand, Albert was no Leopold. As the Baron was very well aware, he had none of his uncle's rigidity of ambition, none of his overweening impulse to be personally great. He was virtuous and well-intentioned; he was clever and well-informed; but he took no interest in politics, and there were no signs that he possessed any commanding force of character. Left to himself, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... up and down I took in mine the small hand which emerged from the great fur cuff of her boat cloak, and gradually its rigidity relaxed under my friendly pressure. I remembered, as I occasionally tightened my grasp upon it, that my dear little baby sister Lois, who was taken away from us before she outgrew her babyhood, used to squeeze my hand in this fashion, and when I asked her what it meant, she invariably ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... unfolds a dispatch, and looks for something to sit on. A cloak is thrown over a log, and he settles to reading by the firelight. The others stand round. The light, crossed by the snow-flakes, flickers on his unhealthy face and stoutening figure. He sinks into the rigidity of profound thought, till his ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... differ from every one that has preceded it. If it be true, as every physicist believes, that the earth is a cooling globe, then, whatever its present stage of refrigeration, the time must come when its surface contour will assume a rigidity of level not yet attained. Then, just as surely, the slow action of the elements will continue to wear away the land surfaces, particle by particle, and transport them to the ocean, as it does to-day, until, compensation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... an example of civilization too notable in one sphere to call for eulogy, are often to be seen elbowing on the ragged edge of barbarism in the other. They must therefore be reduced to accept laws not of their own making, and of an extreme rigidity. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... abandonment to conjugal affection so much to be desired. We married to please our families, and we lived apart as much as possible to please ourselves. Though not without certain physical charms, Mrs. Stanhope was a woman of great moral rigidity and religious austerity, who saw life through the diminishing end of a sectarian telescope, and who cared far more for the distant heathen than for the local convivial pagans who composed my entourage. She had brought to me a considerable sum of money, ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... of trickling water from all directions like tiny voices whispering together. Now and then something moved with a small rustling. It might have been a lizard, a crab, or even a bat. But Chris thought of snakes and stiffened to rigidity, scarcely daring to breathe. The roar of the sea sounded remote and far, yet insistent also as though it held a threat. And, above all, thick and hard and agitatingly distinct, arose the throbbing of her ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... only did so, but did it with such a sudden breaking up of her rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature, that my heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare apartment, which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-room, with very different feelings from those with which I had ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... crowning piece of craft, Sally suddenly relaxed her rigidity and inclined langorously towards Vane who had no alternative save catching her. No sooner did she feel his arms than she sank gracefully into them, ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... that she had done her best, and then Miriam's face mocked her as it peeped furtively round the bedroom door. Thus she was brought back to her starting place, and finding the circle a giddy one, she determined to travel on it no more, and with her old rigidity, she kept this resolve. It was, however, less difficult than it would once have been, for her mind was weary and glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the noises in the house. She was astonished ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... it will be until morning," he said—"it is a question of the rigidity of certain muscles. But you need not be alarmed, she is ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... taken a handle of a rake and given her such a punch among her blue ribbons that her classic features would have frantically twined themselves around one resounding howl—but I didn't. I simply remarked to Jone, with a statuesque rigidity, that it was six o'clock and I was going home; to which he said he was going ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... much trouble that we succeeded in laying bare some portions of the temporal muscle which appeared of less stony rigidity than other parts of the frame, but which, as we had anticipated, of course, gave no indication of galvanic susceptibility when brought in contact with the wire. This, the first trial, indeed, seemed decisive, and, with a hearty laugh ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as a matter of fact this ultramarine joke of yours is about east. It was blue on the Mercy G.—mighty blue, too. And it needed the inspiring hope of the gold I was soon to pick up in nuggets to stiffen my back-bone to a respectable degree of rigidity. I was about ready to wilt. But I discovered two Englishmen on board, and now I get along all right. We have formed a little temperance society—just we three, you know—to see if we cannot, by a course of sampling and severe study, discover which of the captain's liquors is most dangerous, so ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... the wrist made its play, or hearts of diamond not to be enchanted when such a bland smile enlivened the lips of the musketeer. Raoul, following his friend, cajoled the women who admired his beauty, pushed back the men who felt the rigidity of his muscles, and both opened, thanks to these maneuvers, the compact and muddy tide of the populace. They arrived in sight of the two gibbets, from which Raoul turned away his eyes in disgust. As for D'Artagnan, he did not even see them; his house with its gabled roof, its windows crowded ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tells, and the man did not hesitate to hold the plow, as the example of Cincinnatus will show us. Time was precious, and thrift and economy were necessary to success. The father was the autocrat in the household, and exercised his power with stern rigidity. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... her veil as she came near him—her long widow's veil, which to-day she had resumed. Beneath it, framed in it, the face appeared of an ivory rigidity and pallor. The eyes only were wild and living as she came up to him, clasping her hands, evidently ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... planes, 3 1/2 ft. wide, giving 70 ft. of sustaining surface, about 10 more in the tail. The making of this model required great consideration; various supports for the wings were tried, so as to combine lightness with firmness, strength and rigidity. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... on Irene's face, and even James became conscious of the rigidity that took possession of her whole figure beneath the softness of its silk and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human in the intensity of its pathos, the tired head falls downwards, the limbs contract with spasmodic pain, then stiffen into rigidity; and one wonders, if the Eternal mocked that silent appeal from those great sad eyes, eyes that had neither part nor lot in the sin and sorrow of war, how shall a man dare look upwards for help when the bitterness of death draws nigh ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... This rigidity of form and subordination to reason is as characteristic of Attic tragedies as of temples. It would indeed be possible to work out a close parallel between the two forms of art. But we must return to our immediate subject, sculpture. Temple sculpture exhibits the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... knowledge whatever of Shakespeare. Acquaintance with his works might, and I suppose certainly would, have impaired my relish for the great French dramatists, whose tragedies, noble and pathetic in spite of the stiff formality of their construction, the bald rigidity of their adherence to the classic unities, and the artificial monotony of the French heroic rhymed verse, would have failed to receive their due appreciation from a taste and imagination already familiar with the glorious freedom of Shakespeare's ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... articles of furniture. A chair is, probably, the most difficult piece of household furniture to make, because strength is required. In this type soft wood may be used, as the large legs and back pieces are easily provided with mortises and tenons, affording great rigidity when completed. In designing, therefore, you may see how the material ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... rather fond at political gatherings of making some allusion to Mr. Fox. His father had sat in the House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed the French war. I don't suppose that anybody not actually IN IT—no Londoner certainly—can understand the rigidity of the bonds which restricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know may restrict it now. There was with us one huge and dark exception to the general uniformity. The earl had broken loose, had ruined his estate, had defied decorum and openly lived with strange ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... that the reproach was ill founded, for it proceeded from a wrong conception of the principle itself. But it seems to us that, far from condemning this doctrine in its serious application, the historical method may serve to explain and to justify it. Employing less of rigidity and dryness in form, it reaches consequences more in harmony with social life. But it is not to be imagined that we do not meet in this way with many ancient and glorious precedents. The great principles of industrial liberty, as well ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... a man came in every day to clean the knives and boots. Service with her was well requited, and much labour was never exacted. But it was not every young woman who could live with her. A rigidity as to hours, as to religious exercises, and as to dress, was exacted, under which many poor girls altogether broke down; but they who could stand this rigidity came to know that their places were very valuable. No one belonging to them need want for aught, when once the good opinion of Miss ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... myself—but how else shall I calm myself save by forgetting all that nightmare of religions and races, save by holding out my hands with prayer and music toward the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God! The Past I cannot mend—its evil outlines are stamped in immortal rigidity. Take away the hope that I can mend the Future, and you ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... drawn together to a point at one end and then inserted into a conical shoe; these longitudinal bars are wound spirally with a -in. rod wire tied to the bars at every intersection. This spiral rod has a pitch of only a few inches, but to bind it in place and give rigidity to the skeleton it is wound by a second spiral with a reverse twist and a pitch of 4 or 5 ft. As thus constructed, the reinforcing frame is sufficiently rigid to bear handling as a unit. The piles used at Bristol were 14 to 15 ins. in diameter and 52 ft. long, and weighed ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... growing out of those speeches, the ramblings through shades and rose-twined parterres, the raptures and romance, all tend prodigiously to take off the alarm, or instruct the inexperience, of the female heart. I know no more certain cure for the rigidity that is supposed to be a barrier. At all events, the Chevalier and his valet, probably both footmen, alike had profited of their opportunity. Our play had cost us two elopements; two shots between wind and water, which threatened to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... front of his automobile, with a pair of glasses, relatively as huge as himself, to his eyes. Occasionally he would purse his lips, and John knew that his favorite expression was coming forth. To the young American's imaginative mind his broad back expressed rigidity and strength. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... twitch of the muscles of the face, an instant distortion, which in the next instant had passed and left no trace. These twitches gradually grew in frequency, but no muscle outside of the face lost any of its rigidity, or betrayed any interest in what was happening to Jim. I mean if something was happening to him, and I knew perfectly well that that was the case. At last a pair of tears began to swim slowly down his cheeks amongst the twitchings, but Jim sat still and let them run; then I saw his right ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the first time, and Laverick thought that he had never seen anything so wonderful as the change in her features. The strained rigidity passed away. An altogether softer light gleamed in her wonderful eyes. She was certainly by far the prettiest child he had ever seen. As yet he could ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the bed and distinctly saw himself stretched on his back in the same clothes he had worn on going out. In his face were the lines of death, and a rigidity in the hands that would never ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... shoes. If someone touched him, he shrieked. The shriek was so piercingly frightening that one instinctively let him go, as though one had been shoved. Each time it happened one was as as helpless as the first time. Doctor Mondmilch was called. She stroked him a bit. His rigidity dissolved in sobs. He received drops, was put to bed, slept badly. Mechenmal called out, so that it echoed in the street, ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... considered their fittest ornament. There is something strangely original and attractive in the grotesque hideousness of these heads, agonised with pain, scowling in anger, or frightful with their upturned eyes in the rigidity of death, all bleached and shadowed as they are by the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... world. How much more secure would this position be, if the front rank of the assailants were enticed within the fortress and given strong positions upon the walls! They would soon drink into their lungs the strong air of possession, they would soon be stiffened by that electric rigidity which falls on a man when he becomes possessed of a vested interest. There was little probability that the knights admitted to the senate would continue to be in any real sense members ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... a magistrate. Livy[1] and Cicero[2] call him praetor maximus; Seneca[3] calls him magister populi; what he decreed was looked upon as a fiat from above. Livy[4] says: pro numine observatum. In those times of incomplete civilisation, the rigidity of the ancient laws not having foreseen all cases, his function was to provide for the safety of the people; he was the product of this text: salus populi suprema lex esto. He caused to be carried before him the twenty-four axes, the emblems of his power of life and death. He was outside ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... glanced at the card which his butler had brought in to him, carelessly at first, afterwards with that curious rigidity of attention which usually denotes the setting free of a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the loss of the rigidity of her pose. Hannah's head drooped and her fingers tapped faintly on the table. He moved closer, urging ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... consequences, from which doubtless he would not shrink, would be that a super-chemist (so to speak) could write him and his experiments and his book down in a series of chemical formulae—a consequence which takes a good deal of believing. But it also involves him in a belief in the rigidity of chemical reactions; and we are entitled to ask for an explanation of the identical behaviour of the chemical reaction in connection with epiblastic and mesoblastic cells—both pure chemical compounds ex hypothesi and, as far as we can tell from their normal behaviour, ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Haughty, contemptuous, the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Like a woman raped by force, rising above her fate, Borne up by the cold rigidity of hate, Stands the marble arch of the Place du Carrousel. Tap! Clink-a-tink! Tap! Rap! Chink! What falls to the ground like a streak of flame? Hush! It is only a bit of bronze flashing in the sun. What are all those soldiers? Those are not the uniforms of France. Alas! No! The uniforms of ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... pontoons, and he was therefore rather anxious for the first ten minutes or quarter of an hour after he found himself fairly in the open sea. But the bracing was found amply sufficient to give the required rigidity, and this fact once demonstrated he kept away before the wind, and coasted along the northern shore of his island, keeping at a sufficient distance from the tremendously lofty cliffs to prevent his being becalmed. With the wind over her quarter the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... sudden straightening of the arm. The blade slipped in between the Colonel's forearm and body, and was out again before the soldier fully comprehended what had happened. Maurice permitted a cold smile to soften the rigidity of his face. Beauvais saw the smile, and read it. The thrust had been rendered harmless intentionally. An inch nearer, and he had been a dead man. To accomplish such a delicate piece of sword play required nothing short of mastery. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... incredible blindness, only her childish inability to face any painful fact until it struck her between the eyes, had kept her from discovering the truth before it was thrust on her by the idle chatter of strangers. A curious rigidity, as if she had been suddenly paralyzed, passed from her heart, which seemed to have ceased beating, and crept through her limbs to her motionless hands and feet. Though she longed to call out and ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... brightly lit," Thresk explained. "At the first glance I saw something moving. I was inclined to believe it a snake and to account in that way for Captain Ballantyne's fear and the sudden rigidity of his attitude. But I looked again and I was then quite sure that it was an ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... frames of all sorts. One retained a little of it on one's hands after moving a chair or opening a window; and even the hangings, having been dipped in that Pactolus, preserved upon their stiff folds the rigidity and sheen of metal. But there was nothing individual, homelike, dainty. It was the monotonous splendor of the furnished apartment. And this impression of a flying camp, of a temporary establishment, was heightened by the idea of travelling that hovered ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... silently held forth his right arm to the inspection of the other, who fingered the iron rigidity of muscle under the cloth with ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... gleam seemed to command Byrne to respect. But Byrne was too startled to make a sound. Amazed, he stepped back a little—and on the instant the seaman flung himself forward headlong as if to clasp his officer round the neck. Instinctively Byrne put out his faltering arms; he felt the horrible rigidity of the body and then the coldness of death as their heads knocked together and their faces came into contact. They reeled, Byrne hugging Tom close to his breast in order not to let him fall with a crash. He had just strength enough to lower the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the veil of that inexorable silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice—and what a voice! The clicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knew and used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down the message. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption. ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... individual personality which ends where another personality begins, in other words that the two personalities are entirely separate. This is an error. There is no such hard and fast line of demarcation between personalities, and the boundaries between one and another can be increased or reduced in rigidity according to will, in fact they may be temporarily removed so completely that, for the time being, the two personalities become merged into one. Now the action which takes place between healer and patient depends on this principle. The patient ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... helping the voice it is really preventing a free, natural production, and that other parts are then compelled to do its work; this accounts for many ruined voices. "To make a part rigid is equal to the extirpation of such part. While it is in a state of rigidity it ceases to take part in any action whatsoever: it is inert and the same as if it had ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... keelson. These are connected to the keelson, to the beams, and to each other by iron bands. The whole of the ship's interior is thus filled with a network of braces and stays, arranged in such a way as to transfer and distribute the pressure from without, and give rigidity to the whole construction. In the engine and boiler room it was necessary to modify the arrangement of stays, so as to give room for the engines and boiler. All the iron, with the exception of the ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... tubes, but I have not found this to be the case in practice. There is, of course, no difficulty in eliminating the rubber connections between the fall tubes and the mercury supply from the air trap, but it impresses a greater rigidity on the structure and, as I say, is not in general necessary. It must not be forgotten that the mercury always exercises considerable pressure on the rubber joints, and so there is little tendency for gas to ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... and method of S. Thomas are part of that strange rigidity of the thirteenth century which is one of the startling paradoxes of the ages of faith. It is surely a consolation that these ages of a faith which moved mountains, or at least essayed to remove the Turk, were minded to express their beliefs in the coat of mail of human reason! ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... rude litter, hastily made from bushes fastened together. Upon this lay the dead body of a man, his white face upturned, and his limbs stiffened in the rigidity of death. Hawbury did not remember very distinctly any of the particular events of his confused struggle with the brigands; but he was not at all surprised to see that there had been one of the ruffians ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... that of the American constitution between 1804 and 1865. No (p. 045) constitutional system, however, long stands still, and least of all one of the English variety, in which there exists but little of even the formal rigidity arising from written texts. Having no fixed and orderly shape assigned it originally by some supreme authority, the constitution of the United Kingdom has retained throughout its history a notably large measure of flexibility. It is by no means to-day what it was fifty years ago; fifty years ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... a marked toxic effect on the heart. The former induces emetic and cathartic phenomena, trembling and progressive weakness. The latter does not cause vomiting or diarrhoea, but ansthesia and rigidity of the limbs. Both poisons arrest the heart in systole. Injected hypodermically they are irritant, are eliminated by the liver, but are not found in ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... from that moment. As he kicked the wreckage about the room, his glance fell upon his rifle with the fixed bayonet. And then the swine-dog ran amok. Boudru stood with his back to the door: the blood froze in his veins, and his little body stiffened into absolute rigidity. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startling was it, that she might have fancied it expected, save for her knowing herself too serious to have played at wiles to gain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cautioned to insist that the men accustom themselves to it. As a rule, it is so exaggerated that it not only becomes ridiculous, but positively harmful. The men must be taught to assume a natural and graceful position, one from which all rigidity is eliminated and from which action is possible without first relaxing muscles that have been constrained in an effort to maintain the position of attention. In other words, cooerdination rather than ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there was something ominous in her rigidity. She had the air of ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... snap, but Tredgold and Chalk made no move. Glued to their seats, they stared blankly at the door, until the rigidity of their pose and the strangeness of their gaze began to affect ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... his back. His flaming red hair framed a greenish grey face ghostly in its rigidity. A few minutes before Captain Marschner had seen the man still running—the same face still full of vitality—from heat and excitement. His knees gave way. The sight of that change, so incomprehensible in its suddenness, gripped at his vitals like an icy ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... brusqueness of manner, the shyness is there, and cannot be wholly concealed. The naturally graceful and intensely social French cannot understand such a character; and the Englishman is their standing joke—the subject of their most ludicrous caricatures. George Sand attributes the rigidity of the natives of Albion to a stock of FLUIDE BRITANNIQUE which they carry about with them, that renders them impassive under all circumstances, and "as impervious to the atmosphere of the regions they traverse as a mouse in the centre of ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... striking in a lonely central figure in a scene, the outline cuts so sharply against the horizon. Nan's eyes seemed riveted on it as she listened to Phillis's voice; it seemed to her as immovable as a Sphinx, its rigidity lending a sort of barrenness and forlornness to the landscape, a black edition of human nature set under a violet ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... to a crew, thus exposed, the appearance of half-drowned rats. Luckily the wind began to subside, and by degrees old ocean wore a face of undisturbed serenity. Our crew was a motley one; but among them, an Abbess, with a visage of parchment-like rigidity, and with her broad streaming bands, seemed to experience particular distress. She was surrounded by some hale, hearty market women, whose robust forms, and copper-tinted countenances, formed a striking contrast to her own. A little beyond was an old officer or two, with ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... magistrate. Livy[1] and Cicero[2] call him praetor maximus; Seneca[3] calls him magister populi; what he decreed was looked upon as a fiat from above. Livy[4] says: pro numine observatum. In those times of incomplete civilisation, the rigidity of the ancient laws not having foreseen all cases, his function was to provide for the safety of the people; he was the product of this text: salus populi suprema lex esto. He caused to be carried before him the twenty-four ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... ceremony was performed over me! But do you be discreet. Say nothing below stairs of what has passed between us here," said Salome, speaking now with such amazing self-control that no one could have guessed the anguish and despair of her soul but for the marble whiteness and rigidity of ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Ghawazee ancestors, to be the plaything of man; a well-made body, yes, even beautifully made, with no heaviness such as showed in the face, a body that could move lightly, take supple attitudes, dance, posture, bend, or sit up straight, as now, with the perfect rigidity of an idol; a body that could wear rightly cascades of wonderfully tinted draperies, and spangled, vaporous tissues, and barbaric jewels, that do not shine brightly as if reflecting the modern, restless spirit, but that are somnolent and heavy and deep, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... support should extend from the fetlock region to the elbow, but the cotton and bandages are to reach to the foot. When one considers that, with the supportive appliance placed on each side of the affected member, rigidity is accomplished as much from tensile strain put upon the leather as from its own stiffness, it is seen that the leather need not be of the heaviest—sole leather is unnecessary. Because of the more ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... by one inch high, mounted upon a polished wooden pedestal. It was that of a guinea-pig. The flaky fur gleamed like the finest silk, and one felt that the coat of the minute creature would be as floss to the touch; whereas in reality it possessed the rigidity of steel. Literally one could have done it little damage with a ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... make them. If there was any gratitude or vanity in my nun's heart, I felt I could stir it up, if Sister Sarah would listen to me long enough; and if gratitude, or even vanity, could be stirred, the rigidity of my nun would be impaired, and she might find herself ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... with a sharpness of tone and a rigidity of facial muscle which, considering the handsome compliment I had just paid her, argued, I was afraid, a foregone conclusion. "You always have recourse to some folly of that sort whenever I am desirous of entering into a serious ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... somnambulistic, and once fell down a stairhead during sleep. In spite of her bodily sufferings with indigestion, eye-strain, and depression she retains her youthfulness. She has slight powers of reasoning. She has had times of unconsciousness and rigidity, I have never heard any mention of epilepsy. She has a horror of showing prudishness in regard to the healthful manifestations of sex life, and is always praising examples of what she terms "a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in which he had now consciously lived for the last twelve months was, in spite of the sharp rigidity and certitude and inexorable logic from which he shrank, undoubtedly a place of large horizons. In fact it seemed as if there were no horizons. On all sides there stretched out illimitable space, for eternity (with its corollaries) was fully as effective ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Christian country two children were born, one hundred years apart, and the world had now so far progressed that absolute power over the life of the offspring was denied the parents. The one was ruled with iron rods; he was made to obey with a rigidity of compliance and a severity of treatment in case of failure which made obedience a slavish duty, and he was taught besides that he was a child of Satan and an heir of hell. He found no joy in his youth, and his miserable ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... consequences; nor can anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free-will is drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together mutually with stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly, if it is wished to depend on the moral conduct of man ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stony rigidity spread, her eyelids drooped, her head rolled from side to side, a pitiful, moaning cry came from her pinched lips, and then, at last, drawing a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... was this motive at first that made me jealous of my good-conduct marks; made me study the prison regulations and live up to them with a rigidity that knew no lapses. I am not defending the motive; I cheerfully admit that it was unworthy. None the less, I owe it something: it sustained me and kept me sane and cool-headed at a time when, without some such stimulus, I might have ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... figure to a startling rigidity. "I ain't a-goin' to work!" he flung out. "Let him do it; he's a nigger!" And this was the last ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... lower limit of temperature that man can endure depends on many things, but no one can survive a temperature of 45 deg. C. (113 deg. F.) or above for very long. Mammalian muscle becomes rigid with heat rigor at about 50 deg. C., and obviously should this temperature be reached the sudden rigidity of the whole body would render life impossible. H.M. Vernon has recently done work on the death temperature and paralysis temperature (temperature of heat rigor) of various animals. He found that animals of the same class of the animal kingdom showed very similar temperature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... bungalow was of irreproachable tone. Next, Ah Chun was a power. And finally, Ah Chun was a moral paragon and an honest business man. Despite the fact that business morality was higher than on the mainland, Ah Chun outshone the business men of Honolulu in the scrupulous rigidity of his honesty. It was a saying that his word was as good as his bond. His signature was never needed to bind him. He never broke his word. Twenty years after Hotchkiss, of Hotchkiss, Morterson Company, died, they found ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... mouth is closed, the nose poked out, the head elevated. The muscles of breathing, and those of the limbs, become contracted so that the neck is hollowed, and the tail is raised, the horse stands with outstretched limbs. The animal shows great stiffness or rigidity in attempted movements. The eyes are sunken, and when startled or excited, the breathing is quickened and the flanks have a wrinkled or corrugated appearance. Death may quickly occur from continuous spasms of the muscles of ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... years. An election, in England, seems, for the time, to level all distinctions, not only of rank, but even of pride: Lady Glistonbury herself, at this season, found it necessary to relax from her usual rigidity.—There was an extraordinary freedom of egress and regress; and the haughty code of Glistonbury lay dormant. Vivian, of course, was the centre of all interest; and, whenever he appeared, every individual of the family was eager to inquire, "What news?—What news?—How do things go on to-day?—How ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... her that only her incredible blindness, only her childish inability to face any painful fact until it struck her between the eyes, had kept her from discovering the truth before it was thrust on her by the idle chatter of strangers. A curious rigidity, as if she had been suddenly paralyzed, passed from her heart, which seemed to have ceased beating, and crept through her limbs to her motionless hands and feet. Though she longed to call out and awaken Oliver, who, complaining of insomnia, spent the night ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... and for all. Life, as was said in the first chapter, is something unique, with the unique property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary process. ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... you give us of France, England, or Russia?" continued Servadac, perfectly unconscious of the stolid rigidity with which his advances were received. "We are anxious to hear anything you can tell us. Have you had communications ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... elegantly made. Her face was neat and delicate, and it was set with light blue eyes; and when she was not changing her place restlessly, or looking round as if she fancied someone was approaching, when she was still (which was seldom), a rigidity of feature and an almost complete want of bosom gave her the appearance of a ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... expression in the correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from the beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what it is—heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of events so remote that their discussion could give no offense. Sometimes authors accepted the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the outside edge you tried to recover. You lacked confidence, in short, in the centrifugal force, and bothered yourself, instinctively, without knowing it, with the laws of gravity. Try again; you stick to that. Rigidity. Right foot—look over right shoulder, not too far, just a turn of the head. Left foot—look over left shoulder. There, you did not fall then. Trust to the centrifugal force, that's the thing," and he swept away ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the drums was hypnotic. As if in a trance he saw, at the side of the way they must go, the form of the head priest beckon them on. The two victims at his side took one step on the path to their death. And the same stiff rigidity held Jerry as he, too, moved onward and up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... indications" in the remains of the original windows. The whole of this part is worthy of careful study and should be compared with the corresponding parts of Trinity Church. Everywhere we see signs of individual thought and design mainly directed to softening the rigidity of the horizontal lines of the square-headed and transomed "Perpendicular" windows. The method of cusping the drop-arch and the varied treatment of these in nave, choir and transepts are noteworthy while the little quatrefoil at the intersection of mullion and transom is a really happy innovation. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... for most foods. Some days before, thin bones such as leg or wing bones of fowl, or rib bones of lamb should be soaked in diluted hydrochloric or nitric acid (one part acid to ten of water), to dissolve the mineral substance which gives the bone its rigidity. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... moment when the Little Nugget gave tongue, I had just struck one, and I stood, startled into rigidity, holding it in the air as if I had decided to constitute myself a sort of limelight man ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... run out finished work. First you see a door open because the lock is taken off by a key that opens all mysteries; and the great ropes that have been far inferior to the force of resistance, that has held the door shut, are all sufficient in power. By getting sick, muscles become convulsed to rigidity of great strength with force enough to push the new engine of life out into open space easily, by nature's team that never fails to obey orders to deliver all ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... rigidity in this respect has annually led thousands of people to resort to revolting and immoral acts and join in collusion, in order to obtain relief from wretched and unbearable marriage bonds. Such laws are unjust. Such ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... business, his present place of abode, and so on, and Warburton was all but turning away in impatience, when at last she drew aside, and cautiously invited him to enter. Further acquaintance with Mrs. Wick led him to understand that the cold, misgiving in her eye, the sour rigidity of her lips, and her generally repellant manner, were characteristics which meant nothing in particular—save as they resulted from a more or less hard life amid London's crowd; at present, the woman annoyed him, and only the clean freshness of her ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... became then an eye, a rigidity, an intense out-thrusting and ransacking of thin-spun ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... once; indeed he felt every moment the reviving forces of life throbbing through his tough young body. How could he look up and face his victorious foe? He decided rather to continue his efforts to die, and forthwith stiffened out into such rigidity as can be observed only in the bodies of those who have been ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... erect, unshaken, firm almost to rigidity. A white heat of resolute energy burnt in every ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... larger and extending up to support the roof. Four horizontal pieces attached to these corner posts and, supported by several of the small posts, form, together with a few joints, the support for the floor. In order to give more rigidity to the building and to render the floor stronger, the joints are supported by several posts, these last being propped by braces set at an angle of about 45. In the case of a house built for defense, the number of supports and crosspieces is such that the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... traditional idea of scholarship. The old college was a place where strict, inherited conceptions of scholarship and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested for its main support upon a basis of the classics and mathematics, which imparted a classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... greatest actor was undoubtedly Got, our second Delaunay, and so on. And if, in his judgment, Febvre came below Thiron, or Delaunay below Coquelin, the sudden volatility which the name of Coquelin, forsaking its stony rigidity, would engender in my mind, in which it moved upwards to the second place, the rich vitality with which the name of Delaunay would suddenly be furnished, to enable it to slip down to fourth, would stimulate and fertilise my brain with a sense of ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... process of liberation is not the leg with which the locust makes its leaps; it has not as yet the rigidity which it will soon acquire. It is soft, and eminently flexible. In those portions which the progress of the moult exposes to view I see the legs bend under the mere weight of the suspended insect when ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... and commendable, no doubt. But for such a procedure to be of any real value it should be entered into by all. Gentlemen"—his rigidity was all gone now and so was his pallor—"I am unwilling to submit myself to what, in my eyes, is an act of unnecessary humiliation. Our word should be enough. I have not the coin——" Stopped by the absolute silence, he cast a distressed look into the faces about him, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Although I retained sufficient rigidity to keep him in his place, Mrs. B. would not allow any further connection with her, and she made me withdraw, and bade me go to sleep like a good boy, and she would give me a further lesson in ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... shadow of his covert, and, stiffening his muscles for a protected spell of rigidity, prepared to listen with all acuteness and intensity. Just one word from this Lawson, inadvertently uttered in a moment of passion, might be the word Duane needed ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... members and the steps of the substructure may seem perfectly level; but the measuring rod betrays marvelously subtle curves. As nature abhors right angles in her creations of beauty, so have these Greeks. Rigidity, unnaturalness, have been banished. The Parthenon stands, not merely embellished with inimitable sculptures, but perfectly adjusted to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... for a time in a state intermediate between perfect dryness and humidity, from which different parts of its structure, being unequally affected in this respect, will acquire different degrees of relaxation and rigidity, and thus have a tendency to assume a wavy or slightly curly form, provided the hair be left loose enough to allow it. For this purpose nothing is better than washing the hair with soap and water, to which a few grains of salt of tartar (carbonate of potash) have been added; or it may be ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... feared it. He made no protest in words; his revolt was inward and showed itself only in an added pallor and increased rigidity of face lines. He arose and went to a near window, peering for a while aimlessly out between the partly ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of Gravitational Matter in any part of the Universe," said: "We are all convinced with our President (Professor Rucker) that Aether is Matter. Aether we relegate to a distinct species of matter which has inertia, rigidity, elasticity, compressibility, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the others, where the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish and sweep round to the outside of the foot, with the greatest regularity of curve; the nails are short, and the toes broad at the points, indicative of pressure on the ground." Rigidity he considers to have been the character of the first epochs, changing ultimately as in the Elgin marbles, "from the hard characteristics of stone to the vivified character of flesh." He thinks Reynolds "would have acknowledged the supremacy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... seated before a well-filled table, Hector could not preserve his rigidity. He felt the joyous expansion of spirit which follows assured safety after terrible peril. He was himself, young again, once more strong. He told Sauvresy everything; his vain boasting, his terror at the last moment, his agony at the hotel, his fury, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... not sure whether he had seen what was only too obvious from my position, that the door of the safe was imperfectly closed, and that Milverton might at any moment observe it. In my own mind I had determined that if I were sure, from the rigidity of his gaze, that it had caught his eye, I would at once spring out, throw my great coat over his head, pinion him, and leave the rest to Holmes. But Milverton never looked up. He was languidly interested by the papers in his hand, and page after page was turned as he ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... placidly in the position in which the nurse had left her; but no breath came from her lips, and a rigidity of feature was accompanied by the precise expression which had characterized her face when Pierston had her as a girl in his studio. He saw that it was death, though she appeared to have breathed her last only a few ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... hansom. "Oh! He mustn't, he mustn't." She was still more frightened by the discovery that he was shaking all over. Bewildered, shrinking into the far off corner, avoiding his eyes, she yet saw the quivering of his mouth and made a wild attempt at a smile, which broke the rigidity of her lips and set ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and D'. These guides, H and H', each consist of a cast iron box fixed by a nut to the extremity of the arms, h and h', and coupled by crosspieces, j and j', which keep them apart and give the guides the necessary rigidity. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... to forgiveness I do not quite comprehend the term. It is one I do not often use. What is done cannot be undone. If you will alter your present habit, forgiveness, whatever you may mean by it, becomes superfluous.' His lips shut into their usual rigidity. Not a muscle in them would have stirred if I had kissed them with tears. No tears rose; I was struck into hardness equal to his own, and with something added. I HATED him. 'Henceforward,' I said to myself, 'I will not submit or ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... 108] Malo felt himself conscience-bound to set himself in opposition to the amusements, sports, and games of his people, and he was unable, apparently, to see in them any good whatsoever. Malo was a man of uncompromising honesty and rigidity of principles. His nature, acting under the new influences that surrounded him after the introduction of Christianity, made it impossible for him to discriminate calmly between the good and the pernicious, between the purely human and poetic and the depraved elements in the sports practised by ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... early times, in cases where there was likely to be a failure of proper heirs. The subsequent popularity of wills, and the indulgence with which the law came to regard them, were due to a desire to correct the rigidity of the Patria Potestas, as reflected in the law of intestate succession, by giving free scope to natural affection. In other words, the conception of relationship as reckoned only through males, and as resting on the continuance of the children within their father's power, gave way, through ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... martyr to love, without being conscious of, and touched by, that silent adoration which appeals to his vanity, both as a man of letters and a man of the world. Since he had seen Ida in her luxurious home, about which there was the same suspicion of vulgarity that clung about herself, the rigidity of his principles ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... comfortable assurance that she had done her best, and then Miriam's face mocked her as it peeped furtively round the bedroom door. Thus she was brought back to her starting place, and finding the circle a giddy one, she determined to travel on it no more, and with her old rigidity, she kept this resolve. It was, however, less difficult than it would once have been, for her mind was weary and glad of an excuse to take the easiest path. She lay in bed according to Zebedee's bidding, hardly moving under the clothes, and listening to the noises in the ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... themselves to the control of the rich and powerful; but although the authority exercised was at first mild, and ensured to the bondsmen almost the same privileges with their masters, yet the idea of power soon crept in upon the mind, and at length lenity was converted into rigidity, and the gall of servitude became insupportable; the oppressed, soon found that that liberty, which they had just given up, was an inalienable privilege of man, and sought means to regain it: this was effected,—but not until a time when ignorance began to decline, when improvements were ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... limit of the weight of the iron. Soft wrought iron, divided into the largest possible number of pieces, will serve our purpose best. The question of strength of materials plays also an important part. We cannot reduce the quantity and division to such a point that the rigidity and equilibrium of the whole structure is in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... our duty," she said, with a decided rigidity of countenance, "to tell you what we know of that girl, and now we leave the matter with you"; which was a falsehood, if Miss Calthea was capable of ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... any desired effect. You wish to produce a flow of tender feeling, and you tell a pathetic tale, which ought, you think, to move the heart. But at every sentence the features of the listeners harden into more and more rigidity, or even relax into mocking laughter; whereas the suggestion of a noble thought, which seems to have nothing to do with pathos, may instantaneously melt the soul and unseal the fountain of tears. Or is it the conscience which is to be affected? ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... possible radiant maternity, rather than intellectuality. The masses of hair were braided and wound coronet-style about the small uplifted head. The eyes, deep, dark, and mystical gave no clue to the inner woman; but the mouth, while it was tender in its curves, had a rigidity of purpose in its expression that fixed the attention. A pretty, rounded chin, a slender, slightly tilted nose, an exquisite throat set off by the cloud of lace—such was the face that Gaston beheld, and presently it wrung a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... been shot through the head with a revolver, and his death had been instantaneous. The rigidity of the body showed that the crime had been committed some time before. And then he made a still further discovery. By the side of the coffin lay a pile of clothes, and to Juve's amazement he recognized them as being ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... the internal bracing wires should be just sufficient to give rigidity to the framework. They should not be tensioned above that unless the wires are, at their ends, bent to form loops. In that case a little extra tension may be given to offset the probable elongation ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... of tone do not depend upon excessive pressure of the breath, so the muscular power of the organs used in singing does not depend on convulsive rigidity, but in that snakelike power of contracting and loosening,[1] which a singer must ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... light footsteps, and turned his head. At all times slow of thought and slower of speech, he was galvanized into a sudden rigidity that differed only in degree from the symptoms displayed by his chief officer. Certainly he could not have been more stupefied had he seen the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... pigs had escaped from their sty by leaping clean over the top, and that she was endeavouring unassisted to drive them in through the door which she had set open. The lines of her countenance changed from the rigidity of business to the softness of love when she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes languishingly upon him. The animals took advantage of the pause by doubling and bolting out of ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... beautiful, but pride gave her features a certain rigidity which scared her admirers away. The thought of marriage had never occurred to her. The young men were not fully qualified, and those to whose social position there was no objection, were too old. If she, the daughter of a general, had married a captain, then a major's wife would have ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... earns," said Sal, pointedly, "we'll soon get enough in a common line to take us to Ameriky, and he'll be safe enough there." On this Jan thought that he made a most desperate struggle and remonstrance. But in reality his lips never moved from their rigidity, and he only rolled his head upon his shoulder. After which he ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... forward like men bent with age. As soon as the maraboot calls, not a person was to be seen in the streets; all commence, as soon as he pronounces "Allah Akber!" All pretend to keep it, and if they do not, they take care that no one shall know it; but from the wry faces and pharasaical shows, the rigidity may be called in question. None of the European party kept the fast, except for a day now and then; for all travellers, after the first day, are allowed exemption, but they have to make it up at some ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... displeasure; for it was an understood thing that no one was to be ill or tired in his household without leave asked, and cause given and assigned. But she never thought of that now. Her great desire was to hold quiet till she was alone. Quietness it was not—it was rigidity; but she succeeded in being rigid in look and movement, and went through her duties to Elizabeth (who preferred remaining with her upstairs) with wooden precision. But her heart felt at times like ice, at times like burning fire; always a heavy, heavy weight within her. At last Elizabeth went to ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... there is such a change in her face, such rigidity of her whole body, that he stops and averts his eyes. When he looks again she is drinking. She puts the glass down, and gives a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this general conclusion as to mental rigidity and bodily clumsiness, the two views diverge from here. According to Bergson, the comic presupposes "something like a momentary anaesthesia of the heart;" "laughter is incompatible with emotion." For Freud this absence of emotion ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... nights appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for my labours, and I became haggard and spectre-like, through anxiety and watching. At length his eyes unclosed faintly, yet with a look of returning life; he became pale and weak; but the rigidity of his features was softened by approaching convalescence. He knew me. What a brimful cup of joyful agony it was, when his face first gleamed with the glance of recognition—when he pressed my hand, now more fevered than ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Paris. M. G. de Torcy has introduced a mesmerized woman into the lion's cage, where she unconsciously puts her head in the lion's mouth: then, in a state of cataleptic rigidity, head and feet resting on two stools, the lion is made to jump over the rigid body, then with paws resting on her body, to pull a string by his teeth and thus fire a pistol. Of course this draws enthusiastic audiences. Medical Freedom. The ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... with a star-lit heaven. Had I only been content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out before me! But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing beside it! I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, 'It is a matter of minutes now,' and then—and then—the slow creeping of her hand to her husband's mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips—its steady clinging ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... who wandered by night into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the holy man; but he died as he yielded, and the arms stiffening by some miracle to iron-like rigidity, she was unable to free herself, and died of starvation, as her bondage loosened in decay. And I had increased my difficulties by adopting as part of my task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... that seem so full of laughing loveliness; then, with a sob which is almost human in the intensity of its pathos, the tired head falls downwards, the limbs contract with spasmodic pain, then stiffen into rigidity; and one wonders, if the Eternal mocked that silent appeal from those great sad eyes, eyes that had neither part nor lot in the sin and sorrow of war, how shall a man dare look upwards for help when the bitterness of death draws nigh unto him? The grey lines above, on flank, and front, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... she, in a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman's condition, as if the whole had been ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... hardened and so unresponsive that he declared it incapable of movement without an antecedent general crash and breaking up. No laws, he reasoned, could be made because there were no means by which the general will could express itself, such was the rigidity of absolutism and feudalism. The splendid studies of Montesquieu, which revealed to the French the eternal truths underlying the constitutional changes in England, had enlightened and captivated the best minds of his country, but they were too serious, too cold, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... are very convenient in cases of emergency. But as they relax when selfish ends are to be subserved, and retain their rigidity only when judging the conduct of others, the inference is, that the persons possessing them are either hypocritical, or else, as was acknowledged by Parson D., in similar circumstances, they have mistaken their ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... a lean and high-featured matron, encased in the rigidity of her Sunday bombazine, gave a prim poke with her umbrella in the ribs of a sparrow-like little man, with a discoloured, scraggy beard, who nodded in one corner of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of the rest of his person, and shewed his breadth of shoulder and strength of muscle to good advantage; as if carved in black marble; only there was sufficient graceful mobility and dignified ease of carriage and attitude; no marble rigidity. Black he was, this savage, but not negro. The features were well cut and good. What the hair might be naturally could only be guessed at; the work of a skilful hair-dresser had left it something for the uninitiated ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... personalities and allusions growing out of those speeches, the ramblings through shades and rose-twined parterres, the raptures and romance, all tend prodigiously to take off the alarm, or instruct the inexperience, of the female heart. I know no more certain cure for the rigidity that is supposed to be a barrier. At all events, the Chevalier and his valet, probably both footmen, alike had profited of their opportunity. Our play had cost us two elopements; two shots between wind and water, which threatened to send the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... study as examples of modern use of the Blackletter. It will be observed that almost as many variants of each letter are employed as the number used would permit, thus giving the panel variety and preventing any appearance of monotony or rigidity. Notice the freedom and variety of the swash lines in the capitals, and yet that each version is quite as graceful, logical and original as any of ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... scientific world is being convulsed by the attempted substitution of some inflexible law for a personal God with a living will, it is not strange that some phase of the same idea should creep into even the purest theology, and that in Mr. Robertson's theory of prayer we should find traces of the rigidity characterizing 'ultra predestinarian' as well ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was erected under the superintendence of Phidias. His greatness lay in statuesque painting, which he brought nearly to perfection by the ideal expression, the accurate drawing, and improved coloring. He used but few colors, and softened the rigidity of his predecessors by making the mouth of beauty smile. He was the first who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses. He gave great expression to the face and figure, and his ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... when he opened his dining-room door, there was no hint of emotion in his bearing. He bore himself with the rigidity of a man who knows he has a battle ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... hardly necessary to inform you that since his time the domain of the naturalist has been immensely extended—the whole science of geology, with its astounding revelations regarding the life of the ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions of years, this ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... standing still and lying down, hoping that the wave would pass me by; but in each and every case it gave me the same stirring treatment. Once I stood erect and rigid as the wave came on, but it intensified suddenly the rigidity of every muscle to a seemingly rupturing extent, and I did not try that plan again. The effect of each wave on me seemed to be slightly weakened whenever I lay down and fully ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... believe anything about the perversions of this dehumanized brotherhood; but even he could not believe that the Professor had fallen in love with that particular wax lady. He could only suppose that the man's malady (whatever it was) involved some momentary fits of rigidity or trance. He was not inclined, however, to feel in this case any very compassionate concern. On the contrary, he rather congratulated himself that the Professor's stroke and his elaborate and limping walk ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... vibrant to the eye of science, and the very stones are pulsing with the joy of life. The countryside sings, and there is the beat of rhythm not merely in our hearts but in every particle of our body. Stillness is a delusion, and immobility a fiction of the senses. Life is movement and activity, and rigidity and stiffness come more near to what we understand as death. Yet even in death there is no stillness, there is but a change in the form of activity. The body is no longer alive as an organised community, but in its individual cells: the activity is the liveliness of decomposition. Thus all the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... coma ensues. It is an awful moment, in which nobody seems even to breathe. The two Misses Blake turn into a rigidity that might mean stone; the young man pauses irresolutely, yet with a sternness about his lips that bespeaks a settled purpose not to be laid aside for any reason, and that adds some years ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... his voice Carrie started violently, and looked up at Max, staring with eyes full of wonder and something very like delight. The rigidity with which she had held herself, the automatic manner, the hard, off-hand tone, all disappeared at once; and it was a new, a transformed Carrie, the fascinating, wayward, irresistible girl he had remembered, who gave him a smile and a nod, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... and friends, but it was a time of grief and mourning among young and old. The young Friends assured the intended bride, that they would not marry the best man in the Province and do what she was about to do; and the elder dames, so far relaxed the Puritanic rigidity of their rules, as to allow the invitation of an uncommonly large company of guests to the wedding, in order that a long and perhaps last farewell, might be said to the beloved daughter, who, with her husband, was about to emigrate to the "far West." Loud and long were ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... pass; but as Don cleared him, and got right below, the bush to which Jem clung with one hand came slowly out of the interstices of the stones, and but for the exercise of a large amount of muscular power and rigidity of will, he would have ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... to the fraudulent shrine got back into their carriage, and drove sadly away, instructing their driver with the rigidity which their limited German favored, not to let any house with a bust in its front escape him. He promised, and took his course out through Konigstrasse, and suddenly they found themselves in a world of such eld ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... increase in rigidity of ceremonial in these books is to be read along with the stern decrees of Ezra as to separation from family and friendly relations with non-Jewish neighbors. It was, in a word, a Puritan reformation. There was just the same combination of heightened moral conviction with urgency upon ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... relenting in the loss of the rigidity of her pose. Hannah's head drooped and her fingers tapped faintly on the table. He ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Colburn—had a face sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful and traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely reached middle age. There was something severe in his aspect and a rigidity throughout his person—characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a schoolmaster; which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson, was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost invariably ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... echoed the Professor, quite palpably abashed by the unexpected answer. The rigidity of his attitude relaxed, and he became once more the old man he had appeared as he sat in a heap in his chair. "You will excuse me," he muttered, edging round towards the ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... yield point and may be considered as a viscous fluid. The pressure must continue to increase toward the center. We do not know what is the temperature, but it is perfectly possible that at a greater depth the earth may become rigid once more if the effect of pressure in promoting solidity and rigidity continues, as Bridgman tells me he thinks probable. We do not even have to assume a change in the chemical composition of the earth's substance, though it is perfectly allowable. This, then, will be a third layer, once ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... aesthetic empathy, like other intellectual and emotional activities, are at the mercy of a hostile mental attitude, just as bodily activity is at the mercy of rigidity of the limbs. I do not hesitate to say that we are perpetually refusing to look at certain kinds of art because, for one reason or another, we are emotionally prepossessed against them. On the other hand, once the favourable emotional condition is supplied to us, often by means of ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... not notice the stern rigidity of the figure which stood between him and the moonlight, but clasped it warmly to his heart.—"Now I've got you, Ducky!" cried he, pressing all too affectionate kisses upon the face ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... should laugh!" said Richie, composing his countenance into its natural rigidity. "I did but smile, to bring my visage into coincidence and conformity with your ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
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