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More "Stave" Quotes from Famous Books



... soprano with that sympathetic timbre, that power of expressing every phase of her artistic conception, that bird-like quality of the upper notes, that marvelous beauty and equality of the entire range of two octaves and three quarters (from B below the stave to G on the fourth line), that exquisite sonority, that penetrating pianissimo, that unrivalled messa di voce, that mastery over technique of which so much has ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... steel-cap cleft in twain, His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain; Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid the rout, "For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on, and fight it out!" And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And now he quotes a stage-play, and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... men are powerless. There come times in man's life when he moves heaven and earth, figuratively speaking: prays until he can pray no more: sacrifices, it may be, his money, his health, his prospects, and does everything that is in the power of a human being in a vain attempt to stave off a threatened disaster. But, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his cries to a pitiless heaven, the relentless march of fate cannot be stayed. It moves forward like a huge juggernaut and crushes his hopes, his dearest ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... need of our all falling into a panic, or all being obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into their hands. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by visiting various free lunches during the day. Every night I arrived with my dollar, and that meant beer and beds for a score. I also brought along a flour sack half full of biscuits, cold pancakes, corn ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... you, indeed,' said the fellow, as the stranger disclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. 'What of that? Be merry, master. A stave of a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... Quintal," returned the other, who was beginning to talk rather thickly, so powerful was the effect of the liquor on his unaccustomed nerves; "I shay, ole feller, you used to sing well once. Come g-give us a stave now." ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... seeing of why it was; and he resolved, in justice to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and, taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes, saw that his feelings in—the old time had been hers. Instantly the old time gave him its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given, Alike, to playground and the grave,— And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... of the soul, Oh, sleeper, snore! Whistle me, wheeze me, grunkle and grunt, gurgle and snort me a Virile stave! Snore till the Cosmos shakes! On the wings of a snore I fly backward a billion years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him limb from limb, And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to death, for I am Virile! Snore! Snore! Snore! Snore, O struggling and ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave's end as well as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I should have given 't you to-day morning; but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... provision the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at Montgomery, hesitated—drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... much at variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will not ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... followed one another in a jigging kind of fairly rapid sequence, running up and down the gamut and in and out, as if the notes of the composer had suddenly become animated, and, like some kind of tiny, big-headed, long-tailed goblins, were chasing one another in and out of the five lines of the stave, leaping from bar to bar, never stopping for a rest, making fun of the flats and sharps, and finally pausing, breathless and tired, as the player now finally laid down the bow, took out a fine laced handkerchief, and began to wipe his ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... and junket and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to, bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down would drop his chin ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... all that!" said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... and so the mace-bearers, being on their own ground forgot their manners, and peremptorily demanded their pay before they would allow us to move one step farther. At first I tried to stave the matter off, promising great rewards if they took us quickly on to Suwarora; but they would take no alternative—their rights were four wires each. I could not afford such a sum, and tried to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses. the grieve had met the relief party from Thrums. Already the weavers had helped Waster Lunny to stave off ruin, and they were now on their way to Whinbusses, keeping together through fear of mist and water. Every few minutes Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... reduced exactly under any of these heads; as between 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: thus it is ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... by way of variety. 'The Night before Larry was stretched' was done by a bishop, they say; and 'Lord Altamont's Bull' by the Lord Chief Justice; and the Solicitor-General is as up to fun as any bishop of them all. Come, Jim, tip us the stave!" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... dull should only probe things that are soft and tender. He who has a blunt knife must search out the ways to cut joint by joint. Since, therefore, it is best for a man in distress to delay the evil, and nothing is more fortunate in trouble than to stave off hard necessity, I ask three days' space to get ready, provided that I may obtain from the king the skill of a freshly ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... how delighted he was to see me, how it pleased him to see that we came to him with our little troubles, etc. He kept off the subject of the laisser-passer as long as he could, but when he could stave it off no longer he said that he must ask me to see von Herwarth, who had been placed in charge of all matters regarding passports, etc. I made a blue streak over to Herwarth's office, and saw him after a little delay. He kept me as long as he could, ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... legions of Caesar came over the Alps, and finding the snowy slopes in front of them, immediately sat down on their shields and slid down upon the Northern races they had come to conquer. Many a New England youngster in days gone-by learned to come down a hill on a barrel stave in much the same way; he, too, with blood of the conqueror in his veins. The toboggan wasn't really invented; it grew. From that invention has worked out many devices specially fitted to the sport under special conditions. Switzerland has seen coasting ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... of The Strayed Reveller does not cease with its rhymelessness. The rhythm and the line-division are also studiously odd, unnatural, paradoxical. Except for the "poetic diction" of putting "Goddess" after "Circe" instead of before it, the first stave is merely a prose sentence, of strictly prosaic though not inharmonious rhythm. But in this stave there is no instance of the strangest peculiarity, and what seems to some the worst fault of the piece, the profusion of broken-up ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... Pains I felt were very Sharp, and hindred my Rest; my Blood was heated and boiling up to a Fever, which being agitated with daily dressing my Wounds, it requir'd a skillful Physician and a good Regimen in the Patient, to stave off a Fit of Sickness. My Brother prov'd an excellent Nurse, and had he not us'd a great deal of Reason in keeping me from improper Nourishment, the Game would quickly have been up with me. I was also waited upon several times by a worthy Clergyman, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... theatres would be streaming towards cars and ferry. It was time we were on board again. Often there would be a crowd of us bound for the wharves. It was a custom to tramp through 'sailor-town' together. On the way we would cheer the 'crimps' up by a stave or two of 'Mariners ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... from an old Germanic verb that means to scratch and the Germanic name for the beech. Our earliest books were wooden tablets on which inscriptions were scratched. The word book itself comes from Anglo-Sax. b[o]c, beech; cf. Ger. Buchstabe, letter, lit. beech-stave. Lat. liber, book, whence a large family of words in the Romance languages, means the inner bark of a tree, and bible is ultimately from Greek {byblos}, the inner rind of the papyrus, the Egyptian rush ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... Susan, or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... you kindly; it ain't many suvrings as comes my way—though I hate the sight on it, I do. I'd like to stave a hole in the bottom of that there cranky concern; it ain't safe, and that's the fact. There'll be another accent out of it one of these fine days and no coming to next time. But, Lord bless you, it's her way of pleasuring herself. She's a queer un is Miss Beatrice, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... they have echoed o'er the arsenal, Keeping due time with every hammer's clink, As a good jest to jolly artisans; Or making chorus to the creaking oar, In the vile tune of every galley-slave, Who, as he sung the merry stave, exulted He was not a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it holding ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce the South ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of a bottle and glass, flanked by the words "Bon Vin de Macon a 8 et a 10 S." hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot's cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the Cafe or the Trois Freres, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood for a similar amount. It needs a three ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... practically suggesting to them the policy, or rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North Borneo Company, the British Government no longer called for the observance of these provisions of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... your recruits, you must assemble them at some central point where you have a large quantity of arms and equipment stored, generally at your own expense—though "Sam" Hughes is remedying this—and issue these, stave off complaints that the fit is not exactly up to West End standards, and, if you are an old "stager," give them an hour or two of drill while enthusiasm ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... ocean-currents from the far north. In sailing along she was often obliged to run with great violence against lumps so large that they caused her whole frame to tremble, stout though it was. "Shall we smash the lump, or will it stave in our bows?" was a question that frequently ran in the captain's mind. Sometimes ice closed round her and squeezed the sides so that her beams cracked. At other times, when a large field was holding her fast, the smaller pieces would grind and rasp against ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. Behind the battered and tottering Crimson wall a figure raved and ranted and roared, entreating his teammates to stave off the Bulldog's advance. He stamped from end to end in the churned up sod, prodding each player in a vicious manner. But there was no visible stiffening of the Harvard defense at the savage barking of its ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? Has Dr. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... where the prisoners lay, they flew at him to fell him. But even on the threshold Herdegen saw through their purpose, and had no sooner shut the door than he drew his hunting knife. Then the old beldame gripped him by the throat and clawed him tooth and nail; one of the ruffians beat him with a stave torn from the bedstead till he weened he had broken or bruised all his limbs, while the other, whose hands were yet bound, pressed between him and the door. In truth he would have come to a bad end, but that the younger woman saved him at the risk of her own life. The man who had rid himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... is, if I can help Description; and I won't reflect,—that is, If I can stave off thought, which—as a whelp Clings to its teat—sticks to me through the abyss Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss Drains its first draught of lips:—but, as I said, I won't philosophise, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... cursed shower the other night, that made it incumbent on Cluffe, who had had two or three sharp little visits of his patrimonial gout, and no notion of dying for love, to get to his quarters as quickly as might be—he had no doubt that the last stave of their first duet rising from the meadow of Belmont, with that charming roulade—devised by Puddock, and the pathetic twang-twang of his romantic instrument, would have been answered by the opening of the drawing-room window, and Aunt Becky's imperious summons to the serenaders ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person she knows, rather than leave the ground clear for him. She should not go for moonlight strolls, nor to look for the Southern Cross on board ship, if she really wants to stave off his proposal. There is no need to be rude, and even if she has to appear unsympathetic, that is better than to humiliate him by a rejection. Some women glory over their hapless suitors as an Indian counts his scalps. This is the height of bad taste and heartlessness. ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... BUNG-STARTER. A stave shaped like a bat, which, applied to either side of the bung, causes it to start out. Also, a soubriquet for the captain of the hold. Also, a name given to the master's assistant serving ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... saying, she shivered and covered her face. Now while Beltane yet stared, amazed by her saying, the bushes parted near by and a hooded figure stepped forth silent and soft of foot, at sight of whom all men gave back a pace, and Roger, trembling, drew a second cross in the dust with his bow-stave, what time a ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... the savage folk, with sword and stave, Set on me, weening to have found rich prey. And now my bones lie weltering on the wave, Now on strange shores winds blow them far away. O! by the memory of thy sire, I pray, By young Iulus, and his hope so fair, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... after another short prayer, joined us with a face of angelic serenity. Having greeted each of us affectionately, he entered into conversation with us, until we were called, as we soon were, to table. I, who watched his actions most closely and ever found them regular and harmonious as a stave of music, was amazed at the brevity of this preparation and thanksgiving. In the evening, therefore, when we were alone together, I said, using the filial privilege which I knew was mine, "Father, it seemed to me this ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... eat six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks. Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard—we need nowt but the boards we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... sang, and thou, the last, Sweet Spenser, of their god-like line, Soar far too swift for verse of mine One strain to compass of your song. Yet there are poets that prolong Of your rare voice the ravishment In silver cadences; content Were I if I could but rehearse One stave of Wither's starry verse, Weave such wrought richness as recalls Britannia's lovely Pastorals, Or in some garden-spot suspire One breath of Marvell's magic fire When in the green and leafy shade He sees ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... some few succeeding seconds, the diapason stop only was opened ... and how sweet and touching was the melody which it imparted! "Oh Dieu! (exclaimed our valet) que cela est ravissant, et meme penetrant." This was true enough. A solemn stave or two of a hymn (during which a few other pipes were opened) was then performed by the organist ... and the effect was, as if these notes had been chanted by an invisible choir of angels. The darkness of the heavens added much to the solemnity of the whole. Silence ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of the house-Servants—male and female—all negroes or mulattoes. There are shrieks, intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action. As in such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost painless. How did Coleridge discount his own notes of this ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... back into the snow. The desire to live increased, and when I felt the numbness creep from my limbs into my body, I crawled alongside Peoria Red and snuggled closely against him, hoping that our mutual body warmth would stave off the crisis to the last possible moment. He was groaning, and mustering the last vestige of control I yet had over my benumbed hands, I searched about in the darkness until I found his frozen fingers, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!" and the gang relieved streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton waterbutts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats then began to arrive, so many per day, with the tea chests. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... stave within a few feet of them, grunted discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who looked up and down the shaded cave of ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... dangers of the northern shore, which was to leeward; towards this broken land, however, and lee-shore, the ship settled very fast, notwithstanding our utmost efforts: In this pressing emergency we were obliged to stave all the water-casks upon the deck, and between decks, to clear the vessel, and to make her carry better sail, and at length, happily escaped the danger which threatened us. After we got clear of those islands, and drew off from the Streight's mouth and the land, we found the sea run more regularly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine. ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off tomorrow. To-morrow— ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... few weeks like this would enable us almost to complete the courses," replied the engineer. "Easy, lads, easy! If you run her up so fast you'll stave in the planks. Stand by with ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... soul Melodious descant gave, But yet his voice so rich and sweet Swell'd not the sacred stave, The Christmas wreaths o'er arch and nave Were lingering still to cheer His parting visit to the fane Which he had ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... have been, what they are, or what is like to become of them hereafter: such thoughts they count unmanly and hurtful. And now they are for any thing rather than the word: an alehouse, a playhouse, sports, pleasures, sleep, the world, and what not, so they may stave of the power ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... The Spaniard was firing her guns as she came on, the Nashville was replying. Captain Long was working to stave off the impending disaster. Hastily the engineer got up steam. The gun-boat was ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott

... chucked over to stave the bottom," growled Dick Bannock, beginning to row. "If I hadn't shoved her off, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... it by de stem wid he teef. He wouldn't fling it down, kase he's feard he'd spile de berries. Time he totch de groun' good, Miss Grace, she hauled off, she did, an' smacked his jaws ez hard ez she could stave, an' axed him how dar'ed he skeer 'em like dat? An' Mars Jim, he larfed out loud, and said: 'Princess wanted it,' an' den he put de truck he'd resked his nake ter git in Miss Pocahontas's arms, an' she hugged it up tight, an' went long to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... by the public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung beneath the lilacs since the Colonel ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... nothing is the matter. But if he merely answers "No-o-o!" he means yes, and in order to stave off sea-sickness he must be ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... was less dense to the left, I thought, and in a moment I came out upon an open space, and saw a young man in the garb of a shepherd, a looped blue tunic, with a hat tossed back upon the shoulders and held there by a cord. He had leaned a metal stave against a tree, the top of it adorned by a device of crossed wings. He was stooping down and disengaging something from the earth, so that when I drew near, he had taken it up and was gazing curiously at it. It was the herb ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... boat, would certainly come on shore in their other boat to look for them, and that then, perhaps, they might come armed, and be too strong for us; this he allowed to be rational. Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat, which lay upon the beach, so that they might not carry her off; and taking everything out of her, leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim; accordingly, we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... lane. For this flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow, set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles through her side and stains the yellow paint. But ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to prevent, mon ami. What's to become of the king ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... after dinner, and Maude sat alone at work in the banquet-hall. She was almost unconsciously humming to herself the air of a troubadour chanson—an air as well-known to ourselves as to her, though we have turned it into a hymn tune, and have christened it Innocents, or Durham. A fresh stave was just begun, when the hall door opened, and a voice at ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of "The Mermaid"; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good deal of a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... I dare say I shall become quite good again. Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its imperfections. They will never keep the race together through shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevitable dissolution. It is beautiful—that old childlike faith in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, I dare ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... our work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire, and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly knows that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... whole business appeared infinitely distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in order to insert a wooden disc, disfigure ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.— You with the unpaid bill, Despair,— You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,— I will pay you in the grave,— Death will listen to your stave. Expectation too, be off! To-day is for itself enough; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good Alter long pain—with all your love, This you never ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never speak again—don't take ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... Base of the First Metacarpal Bone.—Bennett of Dublin described an injury of the thumb which, although comparatively common, is often mistaken for a sub-luxation backward of the carpo-metacarpal joint, or a simple "stave of the thumb." It consists in an "oblique fracture through the base of the bone, detaching the greater part of the articular facet with that piece of the bone supporting it which projects into the palm" (Fig. 53). We have frequently ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... "Look at him!" repeated Judah. "When I go up to the depot he'll stand right in the middle of the railroad track and go to sleep. I have to whale the timbers out of him to get him awake enough to step ahead so's a train of cars won't stave in his broadside. But get him home here where he can see the barn, the place where he knows I stow the oats, and he wants to run right over top of a stone wall. Can't hardly hold him, I can't. Who-a-a!... Well, Cap'n Sears, here we ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute himself, and which he was unwilling should ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... collapsed into inert heaps, asleep immediately. Carse extracted a ray-gun from the belt of Leithgow's suit and prepared to stand watch. But that was too much. He over-estimated his capacity. He had come through thirty hours of hellish sleep-denied delirium, and he could not stave sleep off any longer. He staggered and went down, and his eyelids were glued in sleep when his ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... teeth of the natural color; and Swen with the Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG, Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born; and the Monks of Ely had not yet (by about a hundred years) begun that singing, (Without note or comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELY date before the Conquest) is preserved this stave;—giving picture, if we consider it, of the Fen Country all a lake (as it was for half the year, till drained, six centuries after), with Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the music of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... sink sank or sunk sunk [adj. sunken] sit sat [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... with even a theoretical civil character undecided. But many of the members, who saw the illogic quite plainly, voted for it, being dazzled if not seduced by the thought that it was a compromise which would stave off an irreconcilable conflict at least for the present; so Washington, who wished the abolition of slavery, voted for the compromise along with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the South Carolinian who regarded slavery as higher than ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the noonday ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... build your dam and be damned to you. Of course, if you complete your contract eventually, you will force me to pay you for it, but in the interim you will have had to use clam-shells and woodpecker heads for money. I know I can stave off settlement of your judgment for a year; after that, should I acquire title to the Rancho Palomar, I will settle ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring 'that' of Sheridan. 'Oh,' replied the attorney, 'the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.'—'Well,' said I, 'and what do you mean to do?'—'Nothing at all for the present,' said he: 'would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?' and here he began laughing, and going over ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... type a score of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to the depredator ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old- fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father's wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda's earnings being large enough to stave ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... thyself, Reft was the solace that we had in thee, Menalcas! Who then of the Nymphs had sung, Or who with flowering herbs bestrewn the ground, And o'er the fountains drawn a leafy veil?- Who sung the stave I filched from you that day To Amaryllis wending, our hearts' joy?- "While I am gone, 'tis but a little way, Feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed, Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive, Beware the he-goat; ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone—we think he has gone off with Florrie," she cried, "and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... paths by others trod. The man who trusts himself, and dares step out, Soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout. 'Tis I who first to Italy have shown Iambics, quarried from the Parian stone; Following Archilochus in rhythm and stave, But not the words that dug Lycambes' grave. Yet think not that I merit scantier bays, Because in form I reproduce his lays: Strong Sappho now and then adopts a tone From that same lyre, to qualify her own; So does Alcaeus, though in ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... best. Capitaines of longe and of greate experience. Souldiers well trayned in Fflaunders to joyne with the younger. Harqubusshiers of skill. Archers, stronge bowmen. Bowyers. Ffletchers. Arrow head makers. Bow stave preparers. Glew makers. Morryce pike makers, and of halbert staves. Makers of spades and shovells for pyoners, trentchers, and forte makers. Makers of basketts to cary earthe to fortes and rampiers. Pioners and spademen for fortification. Salte peter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... of tallow stuck outside my hat, I will be through those bars in no time. French iron ar'n't worth a d—n, and the sentry sha'n't hear me if he lolls against them; although it may be just as well if Thompson tips us a stave, as then we may work ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavoured to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... firing the bomb directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom I have hitherto said nothing, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... sound of his own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... plain and sea and distant Welsh mountains beyond that. Now I thought nothing of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, though they ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... may be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... boat, with the money under his arms, and whistling as he went the pathetic air of "Shule Aroon." It was the first time I had heard that tune; I was to hear it again, words and all, as you shall learn, but I remember how that little stave of it ran in my head after the free-traders had bade him "Wheesht, in the deil's name," and the grating of the oars had taken its place, and I stood and watched the dawn creeping on the sea, and the boat drawing away, and the lugger ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... when success I cannot crock this Does their designs attend, stave. And then their ways, who thus ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... to action, and she followed him so swiftly that she reached the top, and the broad road there, almost as soon as he. Before then, however, he had caught up a barrel stave, which happened to be lying in a too convenient spot, and was belaboring ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... 4 o'clock, the drummers of the regiment began to beat their drums as hard as they could stave, and I saw men running in every direction, and the camp soon became one scene of hurry and excitement. I asked some one what all this hubbub meant. He looked at me with utter astonishment. I saw soldiers running to their tents and grabbing their guns and cartridge-boxes and hurry out again, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... am a living sinner, the rosy-faced old boy took up his flute and blew a stave or two of ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... cramped, and he knows he has been asleep. But a curious impression is on his mind, as if some one came and looked at him. The lamp burns, the corners of the room are shadowy. An ugly chill creeps up his back, and he rises, stretches himself, whistles a stave of rondeau, and inspects the outer room. All is as usual. He will go back to bed. Or had he better take another ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... and by G-d, you are both. When he spoke this, he was a prisoner in the store-tent, and asked the captain, If he was to be kept there all night? On these provocations, the captain attempted to strike him again, but the centinel said, he should strike no prisoner of his. But Cozens endeavouring to stave a cask of brandy, was soon after released. This day got out of the ship several chests of wax candles of all sizes, bales of cloth, bales of stockings, shoes, with some clocks and mercantile wares, with which the ship ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... vines. From below there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his loves and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... he was clear of his enemies, several other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... you on account of my little child.' There he stopped with a break in his voice. Harold, with intent to set his mind at ease and to stave off further expressions ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... on this head, yet I do not see that the measure could have been decently avoided, most certainly not, consistent with the letter and spirit of my instructions. I have endeavored to adapt the mode to the main end I have in view, that is, to stave off any question touching the expediency of the voyage at this time, or prior to my obtaining permission to make it; for the reasons mentioned in my letter of the 24th instant, as well as for others, which it may not be prudent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... reverses came to the Union Arms, so seemed to grow proportionately the efforts, on all sides, to force forward, or to stave off, as the case might be, the great question of the liberation and arming of the Slaves, as a War Measure, under the War powers of the Constitution. It was about this time (July 12, 1862) that President Lincoln determined to make ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... I was very sorry about it, for my castles in Spain have been real homes to me. But there is no fear. She has a block of wood she found in the blacksmith shop which she calls her "dear baby." A spoke out of a wagon wheel is "little Margaret," and a barrel-stave is "bad ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... Mag Trega and they unyoke there and prepare their food. It is said that it is there that Dubthach recited this stave:— ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... account of the heat, and their terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time, which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the forerunner ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... a task to get the dory aboard, even with the aid of the Bolo's stern davits. The sea was rising every minute and even when they had the "falls," as they are called, secured to the little dinghy, she threatened to stave either herself or the Bolo while she was being hoisted and lashed. At last, however, even that task was accomplished and the boys began to anticipate a rest. But the indefatigable Ben would not let them loaf, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... Colwyn reached Heredith the following day. The brief English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered woman striving to stave off the inevitable ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... They say—and perhaps you will say—that friendships and affections can do more; but I assure you, where there are not the means to stave off grinding toil or crushing poverty, affections wither; or if they do not quite wither, they bear no golden fruit of happiness. On the contrary, they offer vulnerable spots to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... like a fort, and if we reach 'em in time we may stave off our pursuers. They're coming fast, and they're spreading out in a long line now. That helps 'em, because it's impossible for fugitives to run exactly straight, and every time we deviate from the true course some part of ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... posthumous ambition! Meanwhile Mr. Douce, with considerable plunder, had made his way to America: the bank owed nearly half a million; the purchase money for Lisle Court, which Mr. Douce had been so anxious to get into his clutches, had not sufficed to stave off the ruin,—but a great part of it sufficed to procure competence for himself. How inferior in wit, in acuteness, in stratagem, was Douce to Vargrave; and yet Douce had gulled him like a child! Well said the shrewd small philosopher of France—"On peut etre plus fin qu'un autre, mais pas plus ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain; Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid the rout, "For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on, and fight it out!" And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And now he quotes a stage-play, and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... would go 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery, come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks pa—well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... twice the speed of the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane. The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead. Marianne cried out in delight. She had forgotten her hope that the mares might not win. All she desired now was that blood might ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... the lovers taken to a barren desert, in the hope that they would die of starvation there. Solomon and his wife wandered through the desert until they came to a city situated by the sea-shore. They purchased a fish to stave off death. When Naamah prepared the fish, she found in its belly the magic ring belonging to her husband, which he had given to Asmodeus, and which, thrown into the sea by the demon, had been swallowed by a fish. Solomon recognized ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... after which, one of them began singing alone, at the same time playing admirably well upon her lute, having been before advertised of the subject on which she was to sing. The words were so agreeable to the prince of Persia's sentiments, that he could not forbear applauding her at the end of the stave. Is it possible, cried he, that you have the gift of knowing people's hearts, and that the knowledge of what is in my mind has occasioned you to give us a taste of your charming voice by those words? Were I to choose, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... close of the war of 1812, and it remained intact until a year or two after the town of York became the city of Toronto, when it was partly demolished and converted into a more profitable investment. The new structure, which was a shingle or stave factory, was burned down in 1843 or 1844, and the site thenceforward remained unoccupied until comparatively recent times. When I visited the spot a few weeks since I encountered not a little difficulty in fixing ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song - O, you envy the blessed death that can ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... they had so lately stood together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... their goods, others to get paid for what they had allowed the sailors to take up upon credit. But the first lieutenant would not allow any of them to come on board until after the ship was paid; although they were so urgent that he was forced to place sentries in the chains with cold shot, to stave the boats if they came alongside. I was standing at the gangway, looking at the crowd of boats, when a black-looking fellow in one of the wherries said to me, "I say, sir, let me slip in at the port, and I have a very nice present to make you;" ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given, Alike, to playground and the grave,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... sing as I went on my way. It seemed as if my gaiety had accumulated while suppressed, and that I was, in my present joyous mood, entitled to expend the savings of the previous week. But just as I was about to uplift a merry stave, I heard, to my joyful surprise, the voices of three or more choristers, singing, with considerable success, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... back on the postponed clause of the First Article, involving the all-important question of the offer of the Kingship. Through two sittings that day, and again on March 25 (New Year's Day, 1657), there was a very anxious and earnest debate with closed doors, the opposition trying to stave off the final vote by two motions for adjournment. These having failed, the final vote was taken (March 25); when, by a majority of 123 to 62, the Kingship clause was carried in this amended form: "That ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... black train, the clerk did remain Twenty years, squalling o'er a dull stave; Yet his mind was so evil, he'd swear like the devil, Nor repented ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... suppose that in the theatre of that time Purcell had only strings to write for. Purcell wrote in all twenty-two sonatas—twelve in three parts, ten in four. So far as the number of parts is concerned, there is little real difference. In the three-part works one stave serves for both the string bass-player and the harpsichordist; in the four-part ones there are two separate staves, with trifling variations in the two parts. The twelve three-part sonatas were issued, as has been said, in 1683. They are pure, self-sustaining music, detached ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... The scene that met his eyes was resplendent with life and beauty. Masked figures were flitting by, clad in every imaginable garb. Here was a sleek-faced friar, rotund and merry; there, a gypsy maid, or mild-eyed shepherdess with her stave. Lonely hermits and whimsical jesters, cackling witches, and members of a pilgrim band—all thronged together with laugh or grimace, adding their own peculiar lustre to the brilliant assembly. By and by a Turk ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood

... Quarter, and thou must always find something to say against them. At last your talk will come Rangrivervale, and then thou must say, there is small choice of men left in those parts since Fiddle Mord died. At the same time sing some stave to please Hrut, for I know thou art a skald. Hrut will ask what makes thee say there is never a man to come in Mord's place? and then thou must answer, that he was so wise a man and so good a taker up of suits, that he never made a false step in upholding his leadership. He will ask, 'Dost thou know ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... biforous— A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,— Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the burnished light on high; Magicians stave their heads in dust, The vermin feed on reeking bones, Each gnome sobs to a green-horn'd toad. And monarchs of this dungeoned sky Untomb each son in sacred trust As vypers sound their rasping tones, Farewell the ancient Greek's abode! Then spectres of the tower'd night, (Vultures of the sun, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... big men in the business kept faith with him. Now and then, when the British Intelligence were too hot on the trail, Parrish and Marbran would give away one of the small fry belonging to the organization and thus stave off suspicion. They could do this in complete safety, for so perfect was their organization that the small fry only knew the small fry in the shallows and never the big fish in ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... come right down to it," he continued, "killing a man, no matter what he's done to you, is a serious business. I propose we make one more attempt to stave this thing off. Let's see if we can't get to talk with the marshal himself; at any rate, warn him of the danger of going any further. Boys, let's not fire the first shot. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone—we think he has gone off with Florrie," she cried, "and he—he ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... cold as the glacial air, and Ross tried to meet it with an outward show of uncracked defenses. He decided to pick and choose from his information, feeding them scraps to stave off the inevitable. Hope dies very hard, and Ross having been pushed into corners long before his work at the project, had had considerable training in verbal fencing with hostile authority. He would volunteer nothing.... Let it be pulled from him reluctant word by word! He would ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in order ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... lady in after years, was that Goldsmith read to her and her sister the first part of a novel which he had in hand. It was doubtless the manuscript mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, on which he had obtained an advance of money from Newbery to stave off some pressing debts, and to provide funds for this very visit. It never was finished. The bookseller, when he came afterward to examine the manuscript, objected to it as a mere narrative version of the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... done; and so greatly was he revered for his exalted character, so universal was the confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he remained President, the party that surrounded him was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, to bring that power into pacific and rational relations with the United States. The government aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all foreign politics; to maintain that perfect ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... to haul the boat in and out, and the stanchions serve to keep her fast, so that she cannot swing to either side when the rope is hauled tight: for the sea would else fill her, or toss her ashore and stave her. The better to prevent her staving and to keep her the tighter together there are two sets of ropes more: the first going athwart from gunwale to gunwale, which, when the rowers benches are laid, bind the boats sides so hard against the ends of the benches that ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... my lord, my deepest thanks." He unstrung his bow and leaned upon the stave; a fine figure in forest green and velvet bonnet, a black mask over eyes and nose, a generous mouth and strong chin below it. "Will your worship favor me with ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... many people of all these Provinces, and which are rather of a social, or, strictly speaking, political than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honorable gentlemen who are opposed to this description of Union, admit that we must do something, and that that ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the need of ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... thought of trying to stave him off for a few days, but then I thought, 'Why, he'll see through that game and he'll go on with his scheme for sewing us up just the same.' You see, there's no good saying we're afraid. So I told him that we didn't mind him a bit; said he could ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... stalls. At that instant a horse neighed outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never speak again—don't take ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his loves ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... board rises over the wheels for the posterior two-thirds. These bulwarks increase the actual width to 6 ft. 6 in., which corresponds with the gross width occupied by the wheels. One third is covered by a small hood 5 ft. 6 in. in height erected on wooden stave hoops. The latter was often absent in transport wagons. The two hind wheels are large, the fore somewhat smaller. They are attached to very heavy wooden cross-beams bearing the axles, and the two beams are connected by a longitudinal bar, continuous ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... through. I'm an old hand, but when it comes to striking a swamp where I said there'd be a reef, it's time to shift. You're the boss now. I'll be cook and bring along the accordion. A bit of a stave ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... holding forth to the congregation within. Curious to see this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, Mrs Winifred Jenkins, my sister ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... labors and purposes as these, the days passed quickly for two weeks. By that time the fierce rays of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. The interior of the hold and the cabin became free from damp, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... put a good face on the matter, and not let them suspect our intentions," observed Gilbert. "Let us sing them a merry stave. It will make them fancy we are thoughtless about the future, and they will deem it less necessary to watch us closely. No matter the words, provided the tune is such as to take ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston

... tender sound of his own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... blush to let our tears unmeasured fall For one so dear? Begin the mournful stave, Melpomene, to whom the Sire of all Sweet voice with music gave. And sleeps he then the heavy sleep of death, Quintilius? Piety, twin sister dear Of Justice! naked Truth! unsullied Faith! When will ye find ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... that I venture near this gate, for it looks out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair one is ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... was that of drunkenness, "which they exercise for the most part with brandy. This they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do clear fountain water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they stave at the one end, and never cease drinking till they have made an end of it. Thus they celebrate the festivals of Bacchus so long as they have any money left." The island of Tortuga must have witnessed some strange scenes. We may ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... took me some time to run my fingers all over the swelling outlines of that great vessel; to pass them around its ends as far as the heavy boxes would permit; to go over the ground again and again, inch by inch, and stave by stave, with all the careful touch of one who is blind. Yes, it took me minutes to accomplish this, and to become satisfied that the bung was not upon my side of the cask—that it was either upon the top or the opposite side; but, whether one or the other, it was beyond my reach, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... that same week Field left Long at a point on the east side of the lake, to go to Bee; and half an hour after arriving there was out on the Leewell road, on horseback, galloping south, singing a stave of a song as he dashed along. There was a dance that night at the George Hotel, and Field was there, the handsomest and gayest of men; and there was no prettier girl in the rooms than the one he brought and danced so well with, and whom no one else knew. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... hair. His long beard was also gray, and he leaned upon an ivory staff carved with many strange signs. The inquiry was addressed to Captain Hyde. He paid no attention whatever to it, but, gayly humming a stave of "Marlbrook," watched the crush of wagons and pedestrians, in order to find a suitable moment to cross the ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... fainting. At length they got alongside the boat; and now the greatest caution was necessary, lest, in taking him in, the canoe should be capsized. The boat likewise, on being touched, might roll up, and with her mast stave in the fragile side of the canoe. It seemed almost impossible to accomplish their object without upsetting themselves. Those who know what a birch-bark canoe is like will best understand ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... like she was tredin on air. And Mr. Gilley acts like he'd unloded a hull team full of pig led oflfen his mind, cos he knoes Samanthy'll have the noose of the fortune all over town 'fore nite, and then he'll be abel to stave off his bills, and run his cheek for wotever he warnts, for a hull yare to cum. He told me, wen I was cummin home, that I was a born diplermatist, & ort to hire myself out to King Alfonso, of Spain, in case he'd ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... darkness the corvette sped on at a pace of eleven miles an hour, until, just as day was breaking, the cry of "Breakers ahead!" was followed by a heavy blow, indicating that the ship had struck. The force of the blow had not been sufficient to stave in the bottom,—a fortunate fact, for the hold was full of prisoners. Nevertheless, she was hard and fast aground, on a ledge of rock that lifted her bow six feet above her stern. Morris, who had rushed upon deck at the first ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... noble descendant and worthy representative!" This example was followed by all the gentlemen present. The harp struck up a triumphal strain; and, the old squire already mentioned, vociferating the first stave, they sang, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... own carcass. One can always get one's self out of a difficulty, but the others who had households and brats! Rousselet had five. Matters were not going to be very cheerful at home. He must rely on charity or credit, he did not know what, but something to stave off that distress, real and sad distress, since ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... trolling out the stave of a song as he sprang up the companion ladder after his rough breakfast in the galley, but the sound expired at the sight of the distant flutter of a woman's scarf in the stern of the ship. He halted and ran his fingers through his crisp hair with an expressive gesture ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... good to be seen talkin' to me, for both men an' boys hate what are called bosses' pets; but we'll stave off this row till you get used to the ropes, when it's a case of taking ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... gone; and there being no uproar of tempest in the sky to confound the senses, I could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull, with now and again a mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside, weighty enough, you would have supposed, to stave the ship. But though the Laughing Mary was not a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her kind ever launched, built mainly of oak and put together by an honest artificer. Nevertheless her continuing to float in her miserably torn and mangled condition ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... charged with it. He is black, and therefore he is guilty. No colored lawyer would be allowed in the jail, if one should dare to go there. No white lawyer will intervene. He'll be lynched to-night, without judge, jury, or preacher, unless we can stave the thing off for a day ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... sterling qualities. And with this in the hands of Thad Brewster, who was a perfectly fearless chap, according to his churns, who did not know that his boy heart could hammer in his breast like a runaway steam engine, why, they surely ought to be able to stave off any ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... tone about money at different times. When he wanted to raise the wind, everything was so important; haste and superhuman efforts, and men running to and fro with blank acceptances in their hands, could alone stave off the crack of doom; but at other times, when retaliatory applications were made to him, he could prove with the easiest voice and most jaunty manner that everything was quite serene. Now, at this period, he was in that mood ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Etienne rose and leaned ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... and beforehand live in his mind the sea-life of light literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men—always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a hero in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... now some wicked stave, Till thy drooping courage rise, And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... to all ship-masters, let me say, that if your Otard magazine be exposed to view—then, in the evil hour of wreck, stave in your ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... fit of rage seizes him, his face crumples, his little fists clench in fury, he tightens them like knots in string and waves them about. "Alors quoi? Ah, if I had hold of the mongrel that did it! Talk about breaking his jaw—I'd stave in his bread-pan, I'd—there was a whole Camembert in there, I'll go and look for it." He massages his stomach with the little sharp taps of a guitar player, and plunges into the gray of the morning, grinning yet dignified, with his awkward outlines of an invalid in a dressing-gown. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... bain't so many of 'em," said the dairyman. "Howsomever, these gam'sters do certainly keep back their milk to-day. Folks, we must lift up a stave or two—that's the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... the spot was a monstrous watermelon, standing up on end, the thick vine supporting it like a strong round barrel stave. ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory

... A flush ran over her face and down to her neck. Hermione turned away her eyes. But they had read Vere's secret. She knew what her child was doing in those hours of seclusion. And she remembered her own passionate attempts to stave off despair by work. She ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass; Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing 125 A stave that droops and dies 'neath the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... break thy young pate," said Adam, "if thou darest to lift a finger to me." And then, in defiance of the young Drawcansir's threats, with a stout heart and dauntless accent, he again uplifted the stave. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... impecuniosity that, in 775, a decree was issued ordering that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans were reduced and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... spectators at the play, receive the music into their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and walk like strangers through the general rejoicing. But let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of ecstasy and sets ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Royle, the falconer—diet a fighting-cock as well as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... were unbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... I couldn't stave off meetin' Sadie's glance any longer. "Eh?" says I. "Why, that's only Mabel. Cunnin' little thing, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... childhood up, and shown him, through all his years, Great-heart lungeing at Giant Maul, and Apollyon breathing fire at Christian, and every turn and town along the road to the Celestial City, and that bright place itself, seen as to a stave of music, shining afar off upon the hill-top, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... took Marse Chan, an' den he teched me up. He nuver hu't me, but in co'se I wuz a-hollerin' ez hard ez I could stave it, 'cause I knowed dat wuz gwine mek him stop. Marse Chan he hed'n open he mouf long ez ole marster wuz tunin' 'im; but soon ez he commence warmin' me an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin', an' stept right in befo' ole marster an' ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... rose wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to, something that would stave off the pressure ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... hear the scuffle as men made off down the side streets. My first notion was that these were the Turkish police. But I changed my mind when the leader came out into a patch of light. He carried no torch, but a long stave with which he belaboured the heads of those who were too tightly packed ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... to work to cut away the wreckage of our masts and rigging, which, as the ship rolled in the trough of the sea, threatened to stave in the hull as the spars dashed against it with each recoil. Had it not been that the "Golden Seahorse" was a new ship, upon which no expense had been spared in the building, we must have foundered. But it was amid such scenes of storm and stress that the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... another like that and it's home! Pitch into it, Mivins. You're the boy for me. Now, then, Grim, trip him up! Hallo, Buzzby, you bluff-bowed Dutchman, luff! luff! or I'll stave in your ribs! Mind your eye, Mizzle, there's Green, he'll be into your larboard quarter in no time. Hurrah! Mivins, up in the air with it. Kick, boy, kick like a spanker boom in ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... of these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... not descend On that name till a stave hath been sung. The Muse is antiquity's friend, And in praise of the past will give tongue. If CRACKNALL, the Tantivy Whip, Claimed song, they're but parvenu snobs Who say that the lyre should let slip The memory ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... the starboard side of the ship on the lee; that is, this part of the ship was sheltered from the fury of the wind and the waves, and it was the proper situation in which to lower a boat into the water; for on the windward side these two powerful forces would be likely to stave the cutter against ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... sepulchral urns of our ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand, without the assistance of the potter's wheel; and to one of the fragments there stuck a minute pellet of gray hair. From under another heap he disinterred the handle-stave of a child's wooden porringer (bicker), perforated by a hole still bearing the mark of the cord that had hung it to the wall; and beside the stave lay a few of the larger, less destructible bones of the child, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... power, too, according to report, that induced the Italian Socialists and Syndicalists to postpone their proposed revolution to a more convenient season? And was this to give Soviet Russia a chance to put through a temporary peace or truce with Europe to stave off "economic catastrophe?" If so, the twitching revolutionaries in other lands must evidently train their toes ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... Prohibition. It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their neighbourhood. ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... help it. [She looks up affectionately]. Tom made me. [She looks down again quickly to conceal the effect of this blow. He whistles another stave; then resumes]. I had a sort of dread of returning to Ireland. I felt somehow that my luck would turn if I came back. And now here ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... as all that!" said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... for cannon were made up of gunpowder packed in a paper bag or case. For many years after the introduction of cannon the powder was introduced into the bore by means of a scoop-shaped ladle fixed to the end of a long stave. The ladle was made of the same diameter as the shot, and it had a definite length so that it was filled once for the charging of small guns but for larger guns the ladle had to be filled twice or even thrice. The rule was to make the powder charge the same weight as that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... a few weeks like this would enable us almost to complete the courses," replied the engineer. "Easy, lads, easy! If you run her up so fast you'll stave in the planks. Stand by with ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... that intervened between the issuance of the ultimatum and the actual declaration of war by Germany against Russia on Saturday, August 1st, various sincere efforts were made to stave off the world-shaking catastrophe. Arranged chronologically, these events may thus be summarized: Russia, on July 24th, formally asked Austria if she intended to annex Serbian territory by way of reprisal for the assassination ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... in the churchyard, was attracted by the well-known call of "Waiter!" from the Boar's Head, and made its sudden appearance in the midst of a roaring club, just as the parish clerk was singing a stave from the "mirre garland of Captain Death;" to the discomfiture of sundry train-band captains and the conversion of an infidel attorney, who became a zealous Christian on the spot, and was never known to twist the truth afterwards, except in the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... jewels, and their best and richest and most beautiful household stuffs, and burn them to ashes in the great square, lest the enemy should take them and make trophies of them. Also there were men charged to set fire to all the stores and burn them, and to stave in all the wine-casks; others to set fire to every single house, to burn the enemy and us together. The citizens thus were all of one mind, rather than see the bloody knife at their throats, and their wives and daughters ravished and taken by ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... you, Mr. Scarbridge. He's told me all about you. Between the two of us, we might stave it off and keep him going for months. Wish I knew more about the girl—Miss Leslie. If she's the right sort, there's just a chance of something being done that I gave up as being impossible, last time he was with me—he might be straightened out ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... behind him, the young fellow stood at bay, hooting, shouting, and waving his stave in a semicircle, within whose sweep the creatures were not anxious to intrude. Weary at length of trying to surprise the fortress by a flank movement, yet reluctant to abandon the hope of seizing Pike, the wolves finally seated themselves upon their haunches at a little distance ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... church dedicated to Our Lady, in the place where the church of St Mary Redcliff now stands. There is life and force in the details of this tourney; and the songs of the minstrel are good, especially the first, which is a gallant hunting stave in honour of William the Red King, who hunts the stag, the wolf, and "the lion brought from sultry lands." The sentiment conveyed in the burden of this spirited chorus sounds oddly considerate, as the command ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... do about it? We can't stop it, or even keep it within bounds. Our customers will give them, and people who have too much money or too little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills, but fifty dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried to stave off customers who do such things: we believe that in the long run it would pay ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... the first time he had heard the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which, here and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, of passion, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eyes? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave— Unmeet for this desirous morn— That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... pipe, made in sections from 8 to 12 ft. long, with the exterior surface covered with a heavy coat of asphalt, was selected in preference to unprotected, continuous, stave pipe. The diameters were not so great as to ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... the habit of taking them for ballast at a merely nominal rate, owing to the difficulty they experience in procuring return freights from England. The short crops in Canada and the great scarcity of money, forced an unusual number of laborers in that country into the stave and lumber business. Under advices that heavy shipments were in prospect, coupled with the general check upon business on account of the war, prices became depressed. Notwithstanding all this, the shipments hence, being early in the market, sold to advantage, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... any rate better than the abandonment of Khartoum. Nor can Sydney any more than his friends be acquitted of having held the extraordinary notion that you can "rest and be thankful" in politics, that you can set Demos at bishops, but stave and tail him off when he comes to canons; that you can level beautifully down to a certain point, and then stop levelling for ever afterwards; that because you can laugh Brother Ringletub out of court, laughter will be equally effective with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... the next morning's papers, for effect. While I was talking with Captain Folsom, Height came into the room to listen. I admitted that the effect of such a publication would surely be good, and would probably stave off immediate demand till their assets could be in part converted or realized; but I naturally inquired of Folsom, "Have you personally examined the accounts, as herein recited, and the assets, enough to warrant your signature to this paper?" for, "thereby you in effect become indorsers." ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... for when the ship in her course by night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... season, they were again in gayest livery to welcome the long second spring of autumn, lasting from February to May. At the farther end of this wilderness of flowers and fruit trees was an aloe hedge, covering a width of twenty to thirty yards with its enormous, disorderly, stave-like leaves. This hedge was like a strip of wild nature placed alongside of a plot of man's improved nature; and here, like snakes hunted from the open, the weeds and wildings which were not permitted to mix with the flowers had taken refuge. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... sight to see, As step by step, with measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers evading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... Against these falsehoods the English ambassador found it difficult to make headway, although he assured the queen of the immediate punishment of the perpetrators, and the arrest and recall of the Governor of Jamaica. Only by the greatest tact and prudence was he able to stave off, until an official disavowal of the expedition came from England, an immediate embargo on all the goods of English merchants in Spain. The Spanish government decided to send a fleet of 10,000 men with all speed to the Indies; and ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn his thoughts to painting as a means of livelihood. This decided ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow, set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles through her side and stains the yellow paint. But what ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... daughter, she sits within her tepee making beaded deerskins for her father, while he longs to stave off her every suitor as all unworthy of his old heart's pride. But Tusee is not alone in her dwelling. Near the entrance-way a young brave is half reclining on a mat. In silence he watches the petals of a wild rose growing on the ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... Adjutant-General's Office through the walls, pounces upon him with his little bill, and he is arrested if he cannot satisfy his Jewish benefactor. Loans are advanced at a high rate "per shent" by the harpies, and enable him to stave off the temporary embarrassment; the "cap'n" is happy for the moment, but the reckoning is only deferred that it may grow. The arrival of Black Care is adjourned, not averted. The plain truth of it is, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... of her own; she will have to disavow her protege, which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to prevent, mon ami. What's to become of the king and his daughter ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... head, yet I do not see that the measure could have been decently avoided, most certainly not, consistent with the letter and spirit of my instructions. I have endeavored to adapt the mode to the main end I have in view, that is, to stave off any question touching the expediency of the voyage at this time, or prior to my obtaining permission to make it; for the reasons mentioned in my letter of the 24th instant, as well as for others, which it may not be prudent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... come Prince Eitel, when at sight of Louis Raincy the blond hairs of his moustache would bristle like those of an angry cat, while Louis glowered a more sullen defiance. Only Miss Aline managed to stave off the storm, but even with her shepherding of the elements, it was bound to break one day ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... talking to him of my home, and how he might find his relations and friends, and then I bethought me that I would sing a song. I don't suppose that many people have sung under such circumstances, but I managed to strike up a stave, one of those with which I had been accustomed to amuse my messmates in the Naiad's forecastle. It was not, perhaps, one of the merriest, but it served to divert Clem's thoughts, as well as mine, from our ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... the statute book against the bitterest opposition of the best brains of both Houses. A most curious aspect of this singular law is that even the Minister, since deceased, who introduced it, subsequently declared himself against it, adding that he only forced it through in order to stave off something worse. Indeed, it is correct to say that Mr. Sauer, who introduced the Bill, spoke against it repeatedly in the House; he deleted the milder provisions, inserted more drastic amendments, spoke repeatedly against his own amendments, then in conclusion he would ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... flanked by the words "Bon Vin de Macon a 8 et a 10 S." hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot's cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the Cafe or the Trois Freres, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood for a similar amount. It needs a three days' fast or a paviour's appetite to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... young fool? I'm almost sorry I went to the bother of trying to save you from the clutch of the law. What are you complaining about, I'd like to know? Get another fish, if you expect to stave off your hunger; the first of the spoils always goes ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... hope in him as day after day slipped past. Only the ghost of a chance remained that Martin Ryder could fight away death for another fortnight; yet Pierre had seen many a man from the mountain-desert stave off the end through weeks and weeks of the bitterest suffering. His father must be a man of the same hard durable metal, and upon that Pierre staked all ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... and laugh?" "Is that so?" "Tis so, honey! and I jis tuck up de shovel and went for her." Aunt Mary was now on her feet, poker grasped in her hand, and arm lifted above her head. "Laugh agin, says I, laugh agin, Miss Nigger, and I will stave you down, who dar you to laugh at me, you unfogotten, hen-pecken, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various

... laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread Alp-high among the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... of her cousin, but had sat down again when the word presently was spoken. She was by no means averse to having a few words of conversation about Margaret, if Sir John should wish it. Sir John, I fear, had merely used the word through some instinctive idea that he might thereby stave off the ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person she knows, rather than leave the ground clear for him. She should not go for moonlight strolls, nor to look for the Southern Cross on board ship, if she really wants to stave off his proposal. There is no need to be rude, and even if she has to appear unsympathetic, that is better than to humiliate him by a rejection. Some women glory over their hapless suitors as an Indian counts his scalps. This ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... and, after another short prayer, joined us with a face of angelic serenity. Having greeted each of us affectionately, he entered into conversation with us, until we were called, as we soon were, to table. I, who watched his actions most closely and ever found them regular and harmonious as a stave of music, was amazed at the brevity of this preparation and thanksgiving. In the evening, therefore, when we were alone together, I said, using the filial privilege which I knew was mine, "Father, it seemed to me this morning ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... Justina, I have long Kept this secret from your ears, Fearing from your tender years That the telling might be wrong; But now seeing you are strong, Firm in thought, in action brave, Seeing too, that with this stave, I go creeping o'er the ground, Rapping with a hollow sound At the portals of the grave, Knowing that my time is brief, I would not here leave you, no, In your ignorance; I owe My own peace, too, this relief: Then attentive to my ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... to Massieu, she asked him if he had a cross. He had not, nor could one be found; but an Englishman broke his stave into two pieces, and these tied together formed ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... would attempt to provision the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at Montgomery, hesitated—drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide, murder, and will lose ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... bloody field He fell beneath the foeman's glaive, But still reclining on his shield, Expiring sung the exulting stave:- "My life it is my country's right, My heart is in my lady's bower; For love and fame to fall in fight Becomes ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... into a walk, thinking to lag behind. The other did the same. His heart began to sink within him. He endeavored 10 to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... close to the line of march as to bring every one of the company under view while passing. The torches and the lanterns were being borne by servants, each of whom was armed with a bludgeon or a sharpened stave. Their present duty seemed to be to pick out the smoothest paths among the rocks in the street for certain dignitaries among them—elders and priests; rabbis with long beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses; men of the class potential in the councils of Caiaphas and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... other maid," he thought, "would ride on until she dropped? Would meet discomfort at every turn with a jest or a merry stave?" ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... Belzebub at the stave's end as well as a man in his case may do: he has here writ a letter to you; I should have given it you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... something. We must both have money—that's quite evident," he said. "That last five hundred you gave me will stave off ruin for a week or so. But after that we must certainly be well supplied, or else there may be revelations well—which will be as ugly ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... the nicht?" asked Walker in hurried alarm, wondering wildly how he could stave off the chastisement which he knew from Geordie's voice he might expect. "Talk sensibly, man. Try an' ha'e some sense. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... fires assumed a whiter heat. In the Convention the Union men no longer utter denunciations against the disunionists. They merely resort to pretexts and quibbles to stave off the inevitable ordinance. They had sent a deputation to Washington to make a final appeal to Seward and Lincoln to vouchsafe them such guarantees as would enable them to keep Virginia to her moorings. But in vain. They could not obtain even a promise of concession. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... Lawton and the others. He says that they are all flushed with confidence in their own courage and fighting powers and the ability of their leaders. Oh, if only the Army of the Potomac would come! If we could only stave off battle long enough for ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... cut out in the chalk of the hill-side, something comparable only with the Giant of Cerne Abbas in Dorset and the White Horses of Wiltshire. That figure is some two hundred and forty feet in height and holds in each hand a stave or club two hundred and thirty feet long. It would seem impossible to be certain either of its age or its purpose, but we may perhaps be sure that it lay there upon the Downs above Polegate before the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... wicked stave, Till thy drooping courage rise, And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer in thy ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... it. There has been a dreadful scene. I never imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... with his head upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to be ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... Elizabeth was a bad ambassador; and Cousin George, when he took his leave, promising to be ready to meet Sir Harry at twelve on the morrow, could almost comfort himself with a prospect of success. He might be successful, if only he could stave off the Walker and Bullbean portion of Mr. Hart's persecution! For he understood that the success of his views at Humblethwaite must postpone the payment by Sir Harry of those moneys for which Mr. Hart and Captain Stubber were so unreasonably ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... knows very well, dropping prices and the loss of foreign markets have devastated too many family farmers. Last year, the Congress provided substantial assistance to help stave off a disaster in American agriculture, and I am ready to work with lawmakers of both parties to create a farm safety net that will include crop insurance reform and farm ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... scruples were not for such as he, and if she crowded him too far he had an answer to her reproaches which would effectually reduce her to silence. But Billy knew that answer, and the reason for the gleam which played like heat-lightning in his eyes, and she hastened to stave off disaster. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... Company of the North, La Chesnaye became a director. No one knew better than he how bitterly the monopolists of Quebec would oppose Radisson's plans for a trip to Hudson Bay; but the prospects were alluring. La Chesnaye was deeply involved in the fur trade and snatched at the chance of profits to stave off the bankruptcy that reduced him to beggary a few years later. In defiance of the rival companies and independent of those with which he was connected, he offered to furnish ships and share profits with Radisson and Groseillers for a ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... crouch behind him, the young fellow stood at bay, hooting, shouting, and waving his stave in a semicircle, within whose sweep the creatures were not anxious to intrude. Weary at length of trying to surprise the fortress by a flank movement, yet reluctant to abandon the hope of seizing Pike, the wolves ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... the laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... missed. Turning to Massieu, she asked him if he had a cross. He had not, nor could one be found; but an Englishman broke his stave into two pieces, and these tied together ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... the dangers of the northern shore, which was to leeward; towards this broken land, however, and lee-shore, the ship settled very fast, notwithstanding our utmost efforts: In this pressing emergency we were obliged to stave all the water-casks upon the deck, and between decks, to clear the vessel, and to make her carry better sail, and at length, happily escaped the danger which threatened us. After we got clear of those islands, and drew off from the Streight's mouth and the land, we found the sea run more regularly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered woman striving to stave off the inevitable with pitiful ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... in doing lay her safety, and kept her fully employed, so much so, indeed, that from sheer lack of time she was able to stave off the faintness which had threatened to overpower her. After a time her father came to himself, and Erica's face, which had been the last in his mind in full consciousness, was the first which now presented itself to his awakening gaze. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... the eager massed bands set them free with a gesture, and after they had played a stave, a small stentorian choir at the back of the platform broke forth, and in a moment the entire multitude, at first raggedly, but soon in good ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... a "rough-and-ready" hammock, by taking apart a flour barrel or sugar barrel, and in the end of each stave bore a three-quarter inch hole with a heated poker, or bit and auger. Then lace thin rope (clothes line is good) through the holes. This can be accomplished easily by noting method of lacing in figure "A." The stay-blocks "B" should be 12 inches long. Figure "C" shows hammock ready ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... spars, Watkins, and fasten them to float in front of her bows like a triangle. Matthews, catch hold of that boat hook and try to fend off any piece of timber that comes along. You get hold of the sweeps, lads, and do the same. They would stave her in like a ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty

... believe in the cause, whatever it is. What a concatenation now, that you and I should make fools of ourselves in order to stave off the establishment of national education, as if we could, or as if ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... now, on a solitary island, I would mash his Hands with a Club or with my Feet, if he strove to grub up roots; that were I Alone with him, wrecked, in a shallop, and there were one Keg of Fresh Water between us, I would stave it, and let the Stream of Life waste itself in the gunwales while I held his head down into the Sea, and forced him to swallow the brine that should drive him Raving Mad. But this is unchristian, and I must ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... and too little of that. Some of the younger children asked for more when they had done their portion—an application which disturbed William much. While his wife quieted them as well as she could, he left his seat and went to the door. He whistled a cheery stave, which did not, however, prevent a broad drop or two (much more like the "first of a thunder-shower" than those which oozed from the wound of the gladiator) from gathering on the lids of his gray eyes, and plashing thence to the threshold. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... such seasons of repentance are wont to have their end: he patiently waits, till nature faints with the effort of resistance, and lies passive and hopeless under the next access of temptation. What we need then is some expedient or instrument, which at least will obstruct and stave off the approach of our spiritual enemy, and which is sufficiently congenial and level with our nature to maintain as firm a hold upon us as the inducements of sensual gratification. It will be our wisdom to employ nature against itself. Thus sorrow, sickness, and care ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... checked Ted's laughter on the instant, "your tomfoolery has fixed us at last. Out we'll go next spring, as sure as you want a licking. Hand'll foreclose now, for sure; and I can't say I'll blame him. No use me trying to stave ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... follow many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. 'Tis still the fashion as it used to be, Error instead of truth abroad ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... at dusk our Mess carouse, With catches strong and brave, The mules their tuneful hearts arouse, And answer stave for stave. 'Dumb nature' breaks in festive noise, Remembering in this East The mystic bond which knits the joys ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... clamouring and swarming all round the camp, and the French soldiers told off for our protection either could not or would not keep them out. Montcalm, in great anxiety, came over himself seeking to restore order; but the Indians were drunk with blood, and would not listen to him. He begged us to stave in our rum barrels, which was instantly done; but the act provoked the savages, and they pounced upon our baggage, which had been reserved to us by the terms of the treaty. We appealed to the Marquis; but he advised us ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... altissimis Deo and peace on earth to all men of goodwill," persisted Joseph. "It is Christmas morning, mother." And he began to troll out the stave of a carol, "Simeon, that ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... was short lived. Tabitha, now thoroughly aroused, and forgetful of her dignity, swooped down upon the tormentor, wrested his slingshot from his grasp, and before anyone could divine her intentions, seized a barrel stave from the woodpile and gave the surprised boy ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... I would go 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery, come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks pa—well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very much these ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... now in Usui, and so the mace-bearers, being on their own ground forgot their manners, and peremptorily demanded their pay before they would allow us to move one step farther. At first I tried to stave the matter off, promising great rewards if they took us quickly on to Suwarora; but they would take no alternative—their rights were four wires each. I could not afford such a sum, and tried to beat ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... paid for what they had allowed the sailors to take up upon credit. But the first lieutenant would not allow any of them to come on board until after the ship was paid; although they were so urgent that he was forced to place sentries in the chains with cold shot, to stave the boats if they came alongside. I was standing at the gangway, looking at the crowd of boats, when a black-looking fellow in one of the wherries said to me, "I say, sir, let me slip in at the port, and I have a very nice present to make you;" ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: Yet if he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power, (that is,) comes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... A crime has been committed. Sandy is charged with it. He is black, and therefore he is guilty. No colored lawyer would be allowed in the jail, if one should dare to go there. No white lawyer will intervene. He'll be lynched to-night, without judge, jury, or preacher, unless we can stave the thing off for a day ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concluded that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave off poverty no real harm could come ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... about 4 o'clock, the drummers of the regiment began to beat their drums as hard as they could stave, and I saw men running in every direction, and the camp soon became one scene of hurry and excitement. I asked some one what all this hubbub meant. He looked at me with utter astonishment. I saw soldiers ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... would he sing a stave or two of a Dutch drinking song, swaying a short squab Dutch bottle in his hand, while his myrmidons would join in chorus, until the woods echoed again;—as the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... wishes to divide his time, he can do so; but he can only occupy ten minutes in all. We are called to deliberate, as well as to act. We are asked if we wish to stave off final action? I answer, No. I want speedy action. But at the same time let us have deliberation. I wish to give a vote that my constituents ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... struggle against the inevitable fate that was visibly rising like a tide; and the great stroke of reciprocity which was attempted in 1911 was not nearly so much a belated attempt to give effect to a party principle as it was a desperate expedient by an ageing administration to stave off dissolution. The Laurier government died in 1911, not so much from the assaults of its enemies as from hardening of its arteries and from old age. Its hour had struck in keeping with the law of political ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... making of yourself, and return to do what I want you to do. It won't be long! There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty belly. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... they wearied of their toil and asked for a little rest, Frodi answered: "Ye shall sleep no longer than the cuckoo is silent, or while I speak one stave." Then the ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday

... do you much good to be seen talkin' to me, for both men an' boys hate what are called bosses' pets; but we'll stave off this row till you get used to the ropes, when it's a case ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. Ecuador completed its first standby agreement since 1986 ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... in whistling the Black Joke, or singing Black-eyed Susan, or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's end for singing ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... had never spoke in meeting before, and he hemmed and hawed some, but he got on quite well while he was telling about a certain poor boy, and all that, and how the boy when he grew up was out at sea, in an open boat, and saw a great sword-fish making for the boat Hail Columbia, and bound to stave right through her and sink her,—and how this man he took an oar, and give it a swing, and broke the critter's sword square off; and then Uncle Cephas—he 'd begun to git a little flustered—he stops short, and waves his arms, and says ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... desired to know the cause of a metamorphosis so singular and so absolute, Wayland only answered by singing a stave from a comedy, which was then new, and was supposed, among the more favourable judges, to augur some genius on the part of the author. We are happy to preserve the couplet, which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... It is originally just a volumen, that is, a 'roll' of parchment, papyrus, or whatever else the 'book' (i. e., the bark—the 'liber') might be composed of. Nor can we regard as aught other such terms as 'leaf' or 'folio,' which is also 'leaf.' 'Stave,' too, is suggestive of the staff on which the runes were wont to be cut. Indeed, old almanacs are sometimes to be met with consisting of these long sticks or 'staves,' on which the days and months are represented ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... "Yes, but I stave him off. I know what it is right enough, and I don't want to hear it; but I suppose I ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the enterprise if it were all? And, pray, what more has day to offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer oil, say winter-strained, that so we may pursue our idleness with less obstruction. Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... act by which he renounces his seignorial rights of every description "—At Sollier they destroy the mills belonging to M. de Forbin-Janson. They sack the house of his business agent, pillage the chateau, and demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons. They enter the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can be carried, "the transportation taking two days;" all of which cause damages of a hundred thousand crowns to the marquis.—At Riez they surround the episcopal palace with fagots, threatening to burn it, "and compromise with the bishop on a promise ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... on to specify what further measures the South demanded, in sharp, incisive terms, but this extract suffices to show that our leaders used every power of tongue and moral suasion to stave off bloodshed. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. "Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank." The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring harmony among ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and plain and sea and distant Welsh mountains beyond that. Now I thought nothing of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, though they left my feet bound ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... would be a very bad thing for the marquis to remain here any longer!' There spoke the owl. And here the lion, when the bad news came: 'I had asked for my recall after Ticonderoga. But since the affairs of Canada are getting worse, it is my duty to help in setting them right again, or at least to stave off ruin so ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood

... day out, or sun or rain, Or sallow leaf, or summer grain, Beneath a wintry morning moon Or through red smouldering afternoon, With simple joy, with careful pride, He plies the craft he long has plied: To shape the stave, to set the sting, To fit the shaft with irised wing; And farers by may hear him sing, For still his door is wide: "Laugh and sigh, live and die,— The world swings round; I know not, I, If north or ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... with safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! And all under the flag on which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... Mr. Virtue Retreating chin retiring ... home-bird Mr. Holmes High instep high boots ... mud ... peat Mr. Peat Crooked legs broken legs ... crushed Mr. Crushton Apprehension suspension ... gallows Mr. Galloway Sombre sad ... mourning ... hat-band Mr. Hatton Music stave ... bar Mr. Barcroft Violinist violin ... high note ... whistle Mr. Birtwistle Painter paint ... colored cards ... whist Mr. Hoyle Plumber plum-pudding ... victuals Mr. Whittles Joiner wood ... ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... time we speak of, when many deaths among their kith and kin had afforded full proof that the goddess was enraged, they met in solemn conclave and decided to perform every Sunday and Tuesday night for a month such a ceremony as would delight the heart of that powerful deity and stave off further mortality. The limitation of the period of propitiation to one month was based not so much upon religious grounds as upon the fact that a Municipality, with purely Western ideas of sanitation ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... quite true that when one feels in danger one talks like mad to stave it off, even when one doesn't quite want ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... Chan, an' den he teched me up. He nuvver hu't me, but in co'se I wuz a-hollerin' ez hard ez I could stave it, 'cause I knowed dat wuz gwine mek him stop. Marse Chan he hed'n open he mouf long ez ole marster wuz tunin' 'im; but soon ez he commence warmin' me an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin', an' stept right in befo' ole marster, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... managed to stave off the evil day until lunch was half over; but procrastination was not nearly as wholesale a thief of time as they wished ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... to chatter at the beginning, but when you are warmed to the job you are disposed to silence, drop perhaps one behind the other, and reserve your talk for the inn table and the after-supper pipe. An occasional joke, an occasional stave of song, a necessary consultation over the map—that ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... of room, house, surroundings, etc.—Frame house, front porch with two swings. Fence around yard. Chinaberry tree and Tree of Paradise, Coxcomb in yard. Southeast of Norton-Wheeler Stave Mill ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... of relief. The boy was going to show good sense and willingness after all. "I guess you'd better learn barrel-making first," said he. He rose. "I'll take you to the foreman of the cooperage, and to-morrow you can go to work in the stave department. The first thing is to learn to ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... long, thin barrel stave, that was curved up a little on either end. To the middle of the stave he tacked some ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope

... so near that they fired upon him, and one bullet nicked his glove, but he was hopeful that after his long rest he might again stave them off. He sent back no defiant cry, but, settling into determined silence, ran at his utmost speed. The forest here was of large trees, with no undergrowth, and he noticed that the two parties did not join, but kept on as they had come, one on the right and the other on ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best. I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared at last. And he was madly in love with me. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed without looking at me, "don't you think ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues, as minute succeeded minute ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... land, and the Good Luck, having done her duty, went down the river alone. Years after, could Aladdin have met with that log, he would have recognized it like the face of a friend, and would have embraced and kissed it, painted it white to stave off the decay of old age, and set it foremost among ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... to write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much. At all events, they occasionally manifest an ability to 'take a stave' out of the rest of the community. At the court in question a Gipsy woman named Emma Barney was brought to task for 'imposing by subtle craft to extort money' from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver. It seems that Oliver is troubled with pimples on his face, and that ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... equipments, Ben-Hur stepped into the street so close to the line of march as to bring every one of the company under view while passing. The torches and the lanterns were being borne by servants, each of whom was armed with a bludgeon or a sharpened stave. Their present duty seemed to be to pick out the smoothest paths among the rocks in the street for certain dignitaries among them—elders and priests; rabbis with long beards, heavy brows, and beaked noses; men of the class potential in the councils of Caiaphas and Hannas. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... hands of the Air Traffic Bureau. We are prepared to defy the ultimatum of the enemy, whoever he may be. But we want your help, Mr. Jones. Every ship of the Air Navy will be in the upper levels within the prescribed twenty-four hours, and we will endeavor to stave off their attacks until such time as you can fit the Pioneer for a journey ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... with here and there a flickering lamp, that served but to make the darkness visible, and here and there the lighted window of some gin-shop, or drinking-cellar, whence proceeded a mingled clamor of voices roaring the stave of some song, or ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... William Dent!" cried Michael. "There's fire for your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies—a sort of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... can stave him off if he does," added Richard, confidently. "Didn't you see me tumble down when that fellow ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... Heriulf determined to accompany Eric on his voyage to Greenland, and made his preparations to give up his farm. Upon the ship with Heriulf was a Christian man from the Hebrides, he it was who composed the Sea-Rollers' Song, which contains this stave:[47-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... destroyed, and by practically suggesting to them the policy, or rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North Borneo Company, the British Government no longer called for the observance of these provisions of the ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... The Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... significant that during the most critical period of the 1862 campaign, the most glorious to the Confederacy, Lee was Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies. But when Lee left Richmond for the Northern border, Davis once more assumed supreme control, retaining it until it was too late to stave off ruin. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... are rather of a social, or, strictly speaking, political than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honorable gentlemen who are opposed to this description of Union, ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... "Stave the miller off him," said Murray, "or he will worry him dead. The Abbot, my lord, offers us the hospitality of the Convent; I move we should repair hither, Sir Piercie and all of us. I must learn to know the Maid of Avenel—to-morrow I must ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... pursuit of each other, the object of the race being to give blows and avoid receiving them. The staves accordingly are seen flying through the air in all directions. The dexterity with which the combatants manage to elude each other's blows, catch a stave thrown at them, pick up one from the ground, and that without alighting or losing a moment's time, is to the stranger who for the first time beholds the sport truly astonishing. When a horseman who happens to be without ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... old land is thine, And thou a traitor slave of it: Think how the Switzer leads his kine, When pale the evening star doth shine; His song has home in every line, Freedom in every stave of it; Think how the German loves his Rhine And ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... mixed up in my head ... but one thing out-stood: I must do my duty by my barrel stave ... as the farmer leaped into the circle he did not notice me staggering on the outskirts. I rushed up and let him have the barrel stave full across ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... can't you see that it's you I want?" And she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know she gladly will. As for me, of course I go down to Dera to-morrow, and do what ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... another important consideration. Work is at a standstill. Mobiles and Nationaux who apply forma pauperis receive one franc and a half per diem. Now, at present prices, it is materially impossible for a single man to buy sufficient food to stave off hunger for this sum, how then those who depend upon it for their sustenance, and have wives and families to support out of it, are able to live, it is difficult to understand. Sooner or later the population will have to be ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... teeming shores of the Terra di Lavoro; saddled already with children he cannot make up his feeble mind to emigrate; in short, to go a-coralling is his sole chance, if he wishes to keep his home together and to stave off charity or starvation from his young ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... of his colleagues, "in the eastern end of the circuit, annoyed Lincoln once while he was holding court for Davis by attempting to defend against a note to which there were many makers. We had no legal, but a good moral defense, but what we wanted most of all was to stave it off till the next term of court by one expedient ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Of late years there have been a number of theatrical representations of Mendelssohn's "Elijah." I have witnessed as well as heard a performance of "Acis and Galatea" and been entertained with the spectacle of Polyphemus crushing the head of presumptuous Acis with a stave like another Fafner while singing "Fly, thou massy ruin, fly" to the bludgeon which was playing understudy ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... leader was of knowledge great, Either for charge or for retreat. He knew when to fall on pell-mell; To fall back and retreat as well. 160 So lawyers, lest the bear defendant, And plaintiff dog, should make an end on't, Do stave and tail with writs of error, Reverse of judgment, and demurrer, To let them breathe a while, and then 165 Cry whoop, and set them on agen. As ROMULUS a wolf did rear, So he was dry-nurs'd by a bear, That fed him with the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... will, to hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present resistance to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... terrific. The Spaniard was firing her guns as she came on, the Nashville was replying. Captain Long was working to stave off the impending disaster. Hastily the engineer got up steam. The gun-boat was well under ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott

... unfolded every aspect of the science of the management of land, would be assimilated by the intelligent bailiff, and they may even have been influenced by a patriotic desire to reveal to the small holder scientific methods of tillage, which might stave off the ruin that they deplored as statesmen and exploited as individuals. But the lessons were thrown away on the small cultivator; they probably presupposed the possession of capital and labour which were far beyond his reach; and science may have played but little part even in the accumulations ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... wavered and trilled on that word "Salong": the effect was so much to the singer's liking that he sang the stave over again. A bumping and a rattle as of loose objects in an empty box formed the accompaniment to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... I go up to the depot he'll stand right in the middle of the railroad track and go to sleep. I have to whale the timbers out of him to get him awake enough to step ahead so's a train of cars won't stave in his broadside. But get him home here where he can see the barn, the place where he knows I stow the oats, and he wants to run right over top of a stone wall. Can't hardly hold him, I can't. Who-a-a!... Well, Cap'n Sears, here we ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... dairy-maiden, thy smiling; Thy glove[128] there 's a wile in, of white hand the cover; When a-milking, thy stave is more sweet than the mavis, As his melodies ravish the woodlands all over; Thy wild notes so cheerie, bring the small birds to hear thee, And, fluttering, they near thee, who sings to discover. To fulness as growing, so liquid, so flowing, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... inventive skill and knowledge the original patentee may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented structure, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... down to it," he continued, "killing a man, no matter what he's done to you, is a serious business. I propose we make one more attempt to stave this thing off. Let's see if we can't get to talk with the marshal himself; at any rate, warn him of the danger of going any further. Boys, let's not fire the first shot. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... perching himself grotesquely on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her—reading my own poems—anybody's poems—to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... so foul a crime Be guilty? Ah! how nearly, thyself, Reft was the solace that we had in thee, Menalcas! Who then of the Nymphs had sung, Or who with flowering herbs bestrewn the ground, And o'er the fountains drawn a leafy veil?- Who sung the stave I filched from you that day To Amaryllis wending, our hearts' joy?- "While I am gone, 'tis but a little way, Feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed, Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive, Beware the he-goat; with ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... All the morning I felt more ashamed than I cared to own at the thought of how the neighbours, great and small, would laugh at what they would call your folly, when they knew what had happened; so I resolved to take this step to stave it off, if so be 'twas possible. And when I saw Mrs. Garland I knew I had done right. She pitied me so much for having had the house cleaned in vain, and laid in provisions to waste, that it put her into the humour ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... be all hungry and tired. We will go to St. Bertin at once, and you shall be feasted royally. Hearken, villains!" shouted he to the peasants. "This ship belongs to the fair sir here,—my guest and friend; and if any man dares to steal from her a stave or a nail, I will have his thief's hand ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... subscribed in aid of a project to bring the curse of disunion upon our country. You know this to be the fact, and we challenge you as truthful men to deny it, that for many years it has been a favorite idea with some of your statesmen, and not of leaders of the Democratic party only, to stave off the troubles that were rapidly growing out of the slavery question, by having recourse to a 'distraction' based on the acquisition of Cuba. You know, or ought to know, that the very man who is now at the head of the Southern Confederacy was advised, at the North, in 1853, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... nor child, nothing but his own carcass. One can always get one's self out of a difficulty, but the others who had households and brats! Rousselet had five. Matters were not going to be very cheerful at home. He must rely on charity or credit, he did not know what, but something to stave off that distress, real and sad distress, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... has written that their chief vice, or debauchery, was that of drunkenness, "which they exercise for the most part with brandy. This they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do clear fountain water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they stave at the one end, and never cease drinking till they have made an end of it. Thus they celebrate the festivals of Bacchus so long as they have any money left." The island of Tortuga must have witnessed some strange scenes. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... From below there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers wading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the wiry grass; Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... Bacchanalians Boswell had copied the Rabelaisian fay ce que vous voudras of the Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey with Sandwich, Wilkes, and others. At any rate, as their self-constituted laureate, he produced the following extraordinary song, which can be paralleled for inanity only by the stave he sang before Pitt in the Guildhall of London, as a means of attracting the notice of the Premier with a view to Parliament. The ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... hair gleaming between the rusty bars of the prison door, and the worn visage of the wounded Cavalier turning towards it as the flower turns to the sun. And surely Master Wildrake himself, with his glass of sack half-way to his mouth, never put it down to sing a finer Royalist stave than Lovelace's "To Althea, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he now understood ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... he wrote: "Can't you do something to stave off King Ptush? In making up my passenger-list I can't get hold of enough mammals to fill an inside room. I have been through the country with a fine-tooth comb, and as far as I can find out there isn't a prehistoric beast left in creation. If this ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... again, and, after another short prayer, joined us with a face of angelic serenity. Having greeted each of us affectionately, he entered into conversation with us, until we were called, as we soon were, to table. I, who watched his actions most closely and ever found them regular and harmonious as a stave of music, was amazed at the brevity of this preparation and thanksgiving. In the evening, therefore, when we were alone together, I said, using the filial privilege which I knew was mine, "Father, it seemed to me this morning that your preparation ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... good job now, Tom, that we anchored where we did, instead of in the direct line of the tide, for one of those timbers would stave a hole in her bow as if she were ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... this stave they whirled round the fire, dropped and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated. The rippling of the waves upon the pebbly margin where we were seated filled up the pauses ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of 'Spanish Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets a coup ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... suit!" faltered the boy. The light in those peering, bloodshot eyes told him that the longshoreman would mistreat that beloved uniform; and Johnnie wanted to gain time. Something, or some one, might interrupt, and thus stave off—what? ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... answered with a curse and lifted his axe to stave in the door. Before the weapon could descend a report rang out in the twilight, and with a scream the attacker sprang from the ground, and then fell to rubbing his ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... ladies on his right, and now towards the gentlemen on his left! It used to seem to my astonished vision as if his form grew taller, his arm longer, his hair redder, and his little green eyes brighter, with every stave; and particularly when he perceived any falling off of time or discrepancy in pitch; with what redoubled vigor would he thump the gallery and roar at the delinquent quarter, till every mother's son and daughter of them skipped and scrambled into ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire, and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly knows that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Surveyor-General himself—soon after the close of the war of 1812, and it remained intact until a year or two after the town of York became the city of Toronto, when it was partly demolished and converted into a more profitable investment. The new structure, which was a shingle or stave factory, was burned down in 1843 or 1844, and the site thenceforward remained unoccupied until comparatively recent times. When I visited the spot a few weeks since I encountered not a little difficulty in fixing upon ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... they roared out this stave, they whirled round the fire, dropped, and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated."—Travels in Albania, i. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... larger boats than ours; but it was impossible always to avoid concealed dangers, over which the waters did not cause the slightest ripple. The large boat struck on a sharp rock, and with such violence as to stave her bottom; she was immediately unladen, and temporarily repaired without injury to the cargo. Although the river is extremely low, there is a very large body of water in it; the outer banks are nearly a ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... find him. He was ready to pay two hundred pounds for Bertie, to stave off the worst of his creditors, if this marriage had gone on. Bertie must now have the money instead, and go and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... unquestioned and unchidden, the emperor to have done with slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that Cain's children wept about his deathbed, and that the centurions spake in whispers ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... home, and how he might find his relations and friends, and then I bethought me that I would sing a song. I don't suppose that many people have sung under such circumstances, but I managed to strike up a stave, one of those with which I had been accustomed to amuse my messmates in the Naiad's forecastle. It was not, perhaps, one of the merriest, but it served to divert Clem's thoughts, as well as mine, from ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... did not, at the time, tie up with views about the Colorado trip. That was still the guiding star of all her hopes. She must study harder during the spring term and stave off the threatened and unspeakable calamity. It was a hard resolution to put through, especially when she conceived a marvellous idea-a "farce" like one Polly Currier told her about when she was home for her Easter vacation. Missy wrestled ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... time for further words. The four quickly made for the gates. They opened and closed them quickly. Each held a stave that seemed not unlike a young tree, of which a ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... of their steady feet; but from the Dusky Men rose up hideous confused yelling, and those that could free themselves from the tangle of the throng rushed desperately against the on-rolling hedge of steel, and the whole throng shoved on behind them. Then met steel and men; here and there an ash-stave broke; here and there a Dusky Felon rolled himself unhurt under the ash-staves, and hewed the knees of the Dalesmen, and a tall man came tottering down; but what men or wood-wights could endure the ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... thy young pate," said Adam, "if thou darest to lift a finger to me." And then, in defiance of the young Drawcansir's threats, with a stout heart and dauntless accent, he again uplifted the stave. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... state of impecuniosity that, in 775, a decree was issued ordering that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans were reduced and the price they had to pay for relief, it is instructive ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the words, he put his barrel-stave rocker on the embers. It blazed up generously, filling every corner of the shack with light, and giving them more confidence. There were no ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... but of those others who heard the tale there were more than one or two who praised it much, and deemed it marvellous as might well be that a child should have faced and slain those three monsters who had put two stout men to flight. And one man made up this stave, which was presently sung all about the Eastern Mote, and went over the water with the tale ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... but down through the valley, and by Stockbridge and Silvermills as hard as I could stave. It was Alan's tryst to lie every night between twelve and two "in a bit scrog of wood by east of Silvermills, and by south the south mill-lade." This I found easy enough, where it grew on a steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift and deep along the foot of it: and here I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... other hand, whether Elizabeth's policy had been dictated by a most consummate, if by no means elevated, state-craft based upon an abnormally astute calculation of risks and chances, or merely by a desperate desire to stave off an immediate contest, whatever shifts might be involved; whether it was in fact peculiarly long-sighted, or opportunist to the last and lowest degree; it had been actually a complete success. She had given the Provinces ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... while I lay and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June, And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone Seemed to mingle with its burthen in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim struggle in the face of a desperate risk surpassed any remembered exhibition of fencers' skill with the steel. The trunk was bending visibly beneath the hewers, the river frothed more at their feet, and the giant logs were rolling, creeping, shocking close behind, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... conveniently indefinite. When was Lysias coming? His letter said nothing about such an intention, and took for granted that all the materials for a decision would be before Felix. Lysias could tell no more. The excuse was transparent, but it served to stave off a decision, and to-morrow would bring some other excuse. Prompt carrying out of all plain duty is the only safety. The indulgence given to Paul, in his light confinement, only showed how clearly Felix knew himself to be doing wrong, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... this the tender sound of his own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it, Made his eye moist; but Enid feared his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them perilously, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... dare refuse Theophilus Clamp. When she knows—that I know—what she knows, she'll do pretty much what I tell her. I wonder if she hasn't set on foot a marriage between her scapegrace son and Mildred? That would be a mishap, truly! But, as guardian, I can stave that off until the estate is settled, my wedding over, and myself comfortably in possession. Then, perhaps, we'll let the young folks marry,—at least we'll think of it. If my son George, now, had not that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... To stave off the ordeal he saw himself forced to invent a new set of doubts and objections. On his next visit to the house of Mitri, he owned himself convinced of the vanity of the Protestant faith, but hinted at an inclination towards the Catholic. The big priest stared ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... merely nominal rate, owing to the difficulty they experience in procuring return freights from England. The short crops in Canada and the great scarcity of money, forced an unusual number of laborers in that country into the stave and lumber business. Under advices that heavy shipments were in prospect, coupled with the general check upon business on account of the war, prices became depressed. Notwithstanding all this, the shipments ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... interpreted aright by the brothers, who see what her meaning is. Then she goes home to her husband; and here comes in, not merely irony, but an intentional rebuke to sentiment. Her husband is lying helpless and moaning, and she asks him whether he has slept. To which he answers in a stave of the usual form in the Sagas, the purport of which is that he has never known sleep since the death of Olaf his son. "'Verily that is a great lie,' says she, 'that thou hast never slept once these three years. But now it is high time ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... the measure could have been decently avoided, most certainly not, consistent with the letter and spirit of my instructions. I have endeavored to adapt the mode to the main end I have in view, that is, to stave off any question touching the expediency of the voyage at this time, or prior to my obtaining permission to make it; for the reasons mentioned in my letter of the 24th instant, as well as for others, which it may not be prudent to mention just now. Perhaps they are not well founded. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... the platform may give you time to grip yourself, compose your thoughts, and stave off disaster. Perhaps the surest and most practical method is to begin a new sentence with your last important word. This is not advocated as a method of composing a speech—it is merely an extreme measure which may save you ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... to all manner of vices and debauchery, particularly to drunkenness, which they practise mostly with brandy: this they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they stave at one end, and never cease drinking till it is out. Thus sottishly they live till they have no money left. The said bucaniers are very cruel and tyrannical to their servants, so that commonly they had rather be galley-slaves, or saw Brazil wood in the ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... the former were running with twice the speed of the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane. The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead. Marianne cried out in delight. She had forgotten her hope that the mares might not win. All she desired now ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... seethed, sodden shape shaped shaped, shapen shave shaved shaved, shaven shear sheared sheared, shorn smell smelled, smelt smelled, smelt sow sowed sowed, sown spell spelled, spelt spelled, spelt spill spilled, spilt spilled, spilt spoil spoiled, spoilt spoiled, spoilt stave staved, stove staved, stove stay stayed, staid stayed, staid swell swelled swelled, swollen wake waked, woke waked, woke wax, grow waxed waxed (waxen) wed wedded wedded, wed whet whetted, whet whetted, whet work ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... They'll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep 'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps along ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its operations—that of washing and drying the emptied ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn his thoughts to painting as a means of livelihood. This ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... so. I dare say I shall become quite good again. Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its imperfections. They will never keep the race together through shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevitable dissolution. It is beautiful—that old childlike faith in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, I dare say, is a mere symbol." Again ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... integration of the armed forces. The Truman order, the Fahy Committee, even the demands of civil rights leaders and the mandates of the draft law, all exerted pressure for reform and assured the presence of some black marines. But the Marine Corps was for years able to stave off the logical outcome of such pressures, and in the end it was the manpower demands of the Korean War ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... Presently I heard a yell from the camp, which was about three hundred yards away. 'That's mischief,' says I. I had scarce spoken when there was a yelling fit to make your har stand on end, and I heard pistol-shots. 'Quick,' lads, says I, 'catch up a hatchet and stave a hole in the other boats, and push ours a little way out from the bank.' We warn't long in doing that, and then we ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I doubt ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... his hold may be firm and his stab sure; yet the world know not that, and they trust him, and he is singled out as a pattern-man for youth to follow; and so—but we all play parts—all, all! And now for a stave of a song: Hurrah for the free trade!—a shout for the brave Buccaneers!—a pottle of sack!—and now, sir, I am myself again! The brimstone smell of that dark ruffian nearly overpowered me!" So saying, he passed his hand frequently over his brows, attempting at the same time ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... of why it was; and he resolved, in justice to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and, taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes, saw that his feelings in—the old time had been hers. Instantly the old time gave him its breath, the present ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Napoleon. It proved physically impossible for him to extend the Continental System widely and thoroughly enough to gain his point. In many cases, to stave off opposition, he authorized exceptions to his own decrees. If he could have prevailed upon every Continental state to close its ports to British goods simultaneously and for several successive ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... earth's vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, And take ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... urns of our ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand, without the assistance of the potter's wheel; and to one of the fragments there stuck a minute pellet of gray hair. From under another heap he disinterred the handle-stave of a child's wooden porringer (bicker), perforated by a hole still bearing the mark of the cord that had hung it to the wall; and beside the stave lay a few of the larger, less destructible bones of ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... the young scout hastily reloaded his gun. This task completed, he turned once more to his companions and said: "Take the man now and go! Do as I tell you! I shall bring up the rear and do my best to stave off the Indians. They are sure to follow us, though I do not think there are more than eight or ten ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... because his home and its location are dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... distress. She had expected to appear in Grand Opera in London, but, alas! her voice broke down, and serious throat troubles manifested themselves. She had lost all the upper notes of her voice from C in alt. down to D in the stave, and what was left of it was thin, reedy, and tremulous, like that of an old woman instead of a girl of 24. Her master had insisted on clavicular breathing, the result being that when her lung capacity was tested it registered ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke

... had allowed the sailors to take up upon credit. But the first lieutenant would not allow any of them to come on board until after the ship was paid; although they were so urgent that he was forced to place sentries in the chains with cold shot, to stave the boats if they came alongside. I was standing at the gangway, looking at the crowd of boats, when a black-looking fellow in one of the wherries said to me, "I say, sir, let me slip in at the port, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... Taunton when she left the hills. It had not been so safe here, though there was little plunder to bring the Danes to the place now. So I need not say that I was grievously disappointed, though in the dismantled hall sat Osmund, listlessly shaping a bow stave, and waiting for what turn of ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... rewarded, or more kicked about by cruel fate, or you wouldn't find him playing the fiddle and singing songs for your amusement. Howsomdever, that's neither here nor there, and I daresay you wish to hear the end of his stave, and so you shall when each on you has helped to load this here craft with such coppers or sixpences or shillings as you may chance to have in your pockets, and I daresay now a golden guinea wouldn't sink ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston

... yet humbled him. His was a simple soul, and took its responsibilities seriously. He sought not to inquire for what high purpose Providence had so signally intervened to stave off from the East and West Looe Artillery the doom of common men. He only prayed to be equal to it. The Doctor's statistics had, in fact, scared him a little. I am positive that ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... went through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... "I guess I can stave him off if he does," added Richard, confidently. "Didn't you see me tumble down when ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... determined to accompany Eric on his voyage to Greenland, and made his preparations to give up his farm. Upon the ship with Heriulf was a Christian man from the Hebrides, he it was who composed the Sea-Rollers' Song, which contains this stave:[47-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... our posthumous ambition! Meanwhile Mr. Douce, with considerable plunder, had made his way to America: the bank owed nearly half a million; the purchase money for Lisle Court, which Mr. Douce had been so anxious to get into his clutches, had not sufficed to stave off the ruin,—but a great part of it sufficed to procure competence for himself. How inferior in wit, in acuteness, in stratagem, was Douce to Vargrave; and yet Douce had gulled him like a child! Well said the shrewd small philosopher of France—"On peut etre ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... niggardly Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm bolts into the three-mast schooners. He probably saw stave mills arise in which hundreds of youths got employment while their fathers at home fought stumps, wire worms, drought and the devil to get puny crops at small prices. He saw the wagon-works and ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... out of skulls newly torn from the grave, Dancing round them pale spectres are seen. Their liquor is blood, and this horrible stave They how: 'To the health of Alonzo the Brave And his consort, the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... their journey. He whose sword-point is dull should only probe things that are soft and tender. He who has a blunt knife must search out the ways to cut joint by joint. Since, therefore, it is best for a man in distress to delay the evil, and nothing is more fortunate in trouble than to stave off hard necessity, I ask three days' space to get ready, provided that I may obtain from the king the skill of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... with avidity to medical matters, perceiving nothing gruesome in the details at the moment; but afterward developing nerves on the subject, and probably giving the young practitioner good reason to regret unwary confidences. I tried to stave off the topic, but the will-power of the majority was against me, and finally I found myself submitting, and following ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. Ecuador completed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... my boat be storm-toss'd and beating for the bay, They'll be howling and be growling as they drench it with their spray— For they'd like to heel it over to their laughter when it lists, Or crack the keel between them, or stave it with their fists. ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... was indeed strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... impalement in a woman of forty-five who, while attempting to obtain water from a hogshead, fell with one limb inside the cistern, striking a projecting stave three inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. The external labia were divided, the left crus of the clitoris separated, the nymphae lacerated, and the vaginal wall penetrated to the extent of five inches; the patient recovered by ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... turning to the bluff old warrior, "since thou hast shown thy readiness to rebuke, let us see thy willingness to entertain. Sing us a stave or tell us a saga, kinsman, as well thou knowest how, being gifted with more than a fair share ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... radient, cos she walked up the strete like she was tredin on air. And Mr. Gilley acts like he'd unloded a hull team full of pig led oflfen his mind, cos he knoes Samanthy'll have the noose of the fortune all over town 'fore nite, and then he'll be abel to stave off his bills, and run his cheek for wotever he warnts, for a hull yare to cum. He told me, wen I was cummin home, that I was a born diplermatist, & ort to hire myself out to King Alfonso, of Spain, in case he'd ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... of the Air Traffic Bureau. We are prepared to defy the ultimatum of the enemy, whoever he may be. But we want your help, Mr. Jones. Every ship of the Air Navy will be in the upper levels within the prescribed twenty-four hours, and we will endeavor to stave off their attacks until such time as you can fit the Pioneer for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... and ordered him to bring the next day a drapa, or long poem, by the time he went to table; and if he failed to do so, said the king, "he shall be hanged for his impudence in composing such a small poem about King Canute." Thorarin then composed a stave as a refrain, which he inserted in the poem, and also augmented it with several other strophes or ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... again, and to Hardy's apprehensive eyes she seemed on the verge of tears. So he spoke, blindly and without consideration, filled with a man's anxiety to stave ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... duty, went down the river alone. Years after, could Aladdin have met with that log, he would have recognized it like the face of a friend, and would have embraced and kissed it, painted it white to stave off the decay of old age, and set it foremost among his ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... pea-jackets up to the forecastle of the steamer. Having done this, they abandoned the boat, and followed the example of their companions. No one was drowned, or even wet above his knees, for the steamer had struck the boat just hard enough to stave in her side, without carrying ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... and be damned to you. Of course, if you complete your contract eventually, you will force me to pay you for it, but in the interim you will have had to use clam-shells and woodpecker heads for money. I know I can stave off settlement of your judgment for a year; after that, should I acquire title to the Rancho Palomar, I ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... countenance as he sprang to a clear spot of ground and rolled up both sleeves of his shirt to the shoulders, thereby displaying a pair of arms that might, at a rapid glance, have been mistaken for a pair of legs—"that's yer game, is it? won't I stave in yer planks! won't I shiver yer timbers, and knock out yer daylights, bless yer purty faces! I didn't think ye had it in ye; come on darlints—toothpicks and all—as many as ye like; the more the better—wan at a time, or all at wance, it ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... goes on to specify what further measures the South demanded, in sharp, incisive terms, but this extract suffices to show that our leaders used every power of tongue and moral suasion to stave off bloodshed. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... go on to Elizabeth Castle whither they were bound, and await him there, he crossed over to Jean. By the time he reached the doorway, however, Jean had retreated to the veille by the chimney behind Maitresse Aimable, who sat in a great stave-chair ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... dog! Come here to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung beneath the lilacs since ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... them. The buckets were passed rapidly down. The smoke was decreasing. "Hurrah, lads! we shall have it under!" cried the first mate, in an encouraging tone. We breathed more freely. The fire was subdued. The peril had indeed been great. We had now to clear the wreck of the mast, which threatened to stave in the bows. "The gale is breaking," cried the captain, after looking round the horizon; "cheer up, my lads, and we shall do well!" Encouraged by the captain the men laboured on, though from the violent working of the ship it was not without ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... punch flow freely, the great object for which they had come. Toasts and sentiments, according to the fashion of the day, were given. My father tried to sing one of his old songs, but soon broke down. Several of the other gentlemen, however, took up his stave, and soon began to be uproarious. My mother on this got up, and beckoned to my sisters to follow her. They whispered to their husbands, who, however, only nodded and laughed. My uncle's object was rather ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... nonce he was clear of his enemies, several other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... cried Michael. "There's fire for your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies—a sort of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... succeeding seconds, the diapason stop only was opened ... and how sweet and touching was the melody which it imparted! "Oh Dieu! (exclaimed our valet) que cela est ravissant, et meme penetrant." This was true enough. A solemn stave or two of a hymn (during which a few other pipes were opened) was then performed by the organist ... and the effect was, as if these notes had been chanted by an invisible choir of angels. The darkness of the heavens added much to ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... doing lay her safety, and kept her fully employed, so much so, indeed, that from sheer lack of time she was able to stave off the faintness which had threatened to overpower her. After a time her father came to himself, and Erica's face, which had been the last in his mind in full consciousness, was the first which now presented itself to his awakening ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... by our Lady! but you must—What! you have cracked my silver-mounted cocoa-nut of sack, and tell me that you cannot sing!—Sir, sack will make a cat sing, and speak too; so up with a merry stave, or trundle yourself out of my doors!—Do you think you are to take up all my valuable time with your d-d declarations, and then tell ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... dat man," said the elder one. "You 'ten' ter yo' wuk an' finish dat bairl-stave. You spen's enti'ely too much er yo' time stretchin' yo' neck atter other people. An' you need n' 'sturb yo'se'f 'bout dem folks 'cross de street, fer dey ain't yo' kin', an' you're wastin' yo' time both'in' yo' min' wid 'em, er wid folks w'at comes on de street on account ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... room for these good fellows somehow," he said briefly, and room was made. Chester noticed with surprise that each man was armed, not only with a stave, but with a revolver. The French police do not stand on ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... out in the chalk of the hill-side, something comparable only with the Giant of Cerne Abbas in Dorset and the White Horses of Wiltshire. That figure is some two hundred and forty feet in height and holds in each hand a stave or club two hundred and thirty feet long. It would seem impossible to be certain either of its age or its purpose, but we may perhaps be sure that it lay there upon the Downs above Polegate before the landing of Caesar, ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... bitter, bitter shade! Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eyes? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave— Unmeet for this desirous morn— That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... "I s'pose so, but with vessels like we got and the seamen sailing out of Gloucester we'll stave 'em off a long time yet, and even as it is, give me a breeze and a vessel like this one under us and we'll beat out all the steam fishermen that ever turned ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... darkness, seeking to locate the stalls. At that instant a horse neighed outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never speak ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... I am a living sinner, the rosy-faced old boy took up his flute and blew a stave or two ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... would be only too glad to shelve him. If he were shelved here his other two Companies would be sure to follow suit, and bang would go every penny of his income—he would be a pauper dependant on that holy woman. Well! Safe now for another year if he could stave off these sharks once more. It might be a harder job this time, but he was in luck—in luck, and it must hold. And taking a luxurious pull at his cigar, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... you tip us a stave. But I say, Babette, you Dutch-built galliot, tell old Frank Slush to send us another dose of the stuff; and, d'ye hear, a short pipe for me, and a paper ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... funeral," I cried out. A picture of the hearse and the mutes rose up in my mind, and it was at that very moment that the song of the bird broke out again, and just above my head in the larches an ugly, shrilling song of about a dozen notes with an accent on the two last, a stupid, tiresome stave that never varied. "What bird can it be," I cried out, "that comes to interrupt my meditations?" and getting up I tried to discover it amid the branches of the tree under which I had been lying. It broke out again in another tree a little farther away, and again in another. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... the boats away, and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks. Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard—we need nowt but the boards we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at my ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... at me a moment with surprise, and after exclaiming, "How are you, my boy?" gave the bench a salutary kick, and whistled more vigorously than ever "Nix my Dolly;" and having gone through the stave, he turned to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... him to fell him. But even on the threshold Herdegen saw through their purpose, and had no sooner shut the door than he drew his hunting knife. Then the old beldame gripped him by the throat and clawed him tooth and nail; one of the ruffians beat him with a stave torn from the bedstead till he weened he had broken or bruised all his limbs, while the other, whose hands were yet bound, pressed between him and the door. In truth he would have come to a bad end, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... upon a large body of horsemen. Supposing them to be tories, Snipes instantly gave the word to charge; himself leading the way with his usual impetuosity. The supposed tories, wheeling about, took to the sands, and went off, as hard as their horses could stave; and thus, crack and crack, they had ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... grim; his admonitions to the horses were a trifle more emphatic; once he whistled a fragment of a minor stave, but spoke not a word till the coach ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... toy. The ship, the waves, the winds, all play with it, hence its frightful animation. What is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... I find him. He was ready to pay two hundred pounds for Bertie to stave off the worst of his creditors, if this marriage had gone on. Bertie must now have the money instead and go and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... as well as Phil Royle, the falconer—diet a fighting-cock as well as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute himself, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to the depredator ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... or cajoled), perhaps if Brown had been less confident and truthful—if he had had less faith in his old companion's powers as a man of business—it would have come easier to tell the truth. And how futile a thing it was to stave off discovery for a single day! How doubly ashamed he would have to feel after that poor pretence of responsible solidity! If he had only been disposed to be tempted at all—here surely was an added reason for yielding ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... while!" he explained with a chuckle. "They'll hesitate a long time before rushing a dark house infested by a desperate armed man—if I know anything about that mongrel lot!... Besides, when they do get their courage up, the lack of light will stave off discovery of this way of escape.... And now, one ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... copied the Rabelaisian fay ce que vous voudras of the Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey with Sandwich, Wilkes, and others. At any rate, as their self-constituted laureate, he produced the following extraordinary song, which can be paralleled for inanity only by the stave he sang before Pitt in the Guildhall of London, as a means of attracting the notice of the Premier with a view to Parliament. The ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... Reuben's pain and sorrow, mingled with his religious hope, seemed now to terminate in despair, and transformed the inoffensive man into a raging demon. He rushed to a cart which supported a great number of spectators, just opposite the auction block, and tore out a heavy cart stave, made of red oak, and before the panic-stricken crowd could arrest his arm, he struck his master to the ground, and beat his brains literally out. The crowd then tried to close upon him, but Reuben, mounted with both feet upon the dead body of his master, and with his back against the cart wheel—with ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green

... your tart just now," said Ralph, "so perhaps that has given it a flavour. Oh, you needn't distress yourself! Ants are quite wholesome, I assure you. There are a frightful lot of them crawling about here, though. I think we shall have to move on a stave." ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... Alan, "this is the kittle bit. Shall we lie here till it comes night, or shall we risk it, and stave on ahead?" ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... head upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to be near him ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... she had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words, "beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long, endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were advancing in an upright position ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed without looking at me, "don't you think we'd better ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... divine; Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear, Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear; Invites, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... to crouch behind him, the young fellow stood at bay, hooting, shouting, and waving his stave in a semicircle, within whose sweep the creatures were not anxious to intrude. Weary at length of trying to surprise the fortress by a flank movement, yet reluctant to abandon the hope of seizing Pike, the wolves finally seated themselves upon their haunches ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... ambassador; and Cousin George, when he took his leave, promising to be ready to meet Sir Harry at twelve on the morrow, could almost comfort himself with a prospect of success. He might be successful, if only he could stave off the Walker and Bullbean portion of Mr. Hart's persecution! For he understood that the success of his views at Humblethwaite must postpone the payment by Sir Harry of those moneys for which ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... Kingfisher of Australia; see Dacelo. To an Australian who has heard the ludicrous note of the bird and seen its comical, half-stupid appearance, the origin of the name seems obvious. It utters a prolonged rollicking laugh, often preceded by an introductory stave resembling the opening ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... the clerk did remain Twenty years, squalling o'er a dull stave; Yet his mind was so evil, he'd swear like the devil, Nor repented ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese sandwiches, blutwurst ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... numbed and fainting. At length they got alongside the boat; and now the greatest caution was necessary, lest, in taking him in, the canoe should be capsized. The boat likewise, on being touched, might roll up, and with her mast stave in the fragile side of the canoe. It seemed almost impossible to accomplish their object without upsetting themselves. Those who know what a birch-bark canoe is like will best understand ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... in Canada, in 1770, met a native who had 'dead palsy,' affecting the whole of one side. He was dragged on a sledge, 'reduced to a mere skeleton,' and so was placed in the magic lodge. The first step in his cure was the public swallowing by a conjurer of a board of wood, 'about the size of a barrel-stave,' twice as wide across as his mouth. Hearne stood beside the man, 'naked as he was born,' 'and, notwithstanding I was all attention, I could not detect the deceit.' Of course, Hearne believes that this was mere legerdemain, and (p. 216) mentions a most suspicious circumstance. The ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... all I could to stave off the blundering idiot; but I guess you are in for it! The jig is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... their lifetime, and most people have them cut out and sewn by an unmarried girl or a very young woman, wisely calculating that, since such a person is likely to live a great many years to come, a part of her capacity to live long must surely pass into the clothes, and thus stave off for many years the time when they shall be put to their proper use. Further, the garments are made by preference in a year which has an intercalary month; for to the Chinese mind it seems plain that grave-clothes made ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... lips to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... prevented a general assault till the next morning, when Sheridan managed to stand fast till Wright's whole corps came up and the enemy at once desisted. But elsewhere the Confederates did what they could to stave the Federals off from advantageous ground on that day and the next. The day after—the fateful third of June—the two sides closed ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that resembles a warwhoop ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... things which I say?' (Luke 6:46) He cannot abide to be reputed the Lord of those that presume to profess his name, and do not depart from iniquity. (Ezek. 20:39) The reason is, for that such do but profane his name, and stave others off from falling in love with him and his ways. Hence he says again 'Behold, I have sworn by my great name, saith the Lord, that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah.' (Jer. 44:26; Rom. 2:24) 2. He regardeth not their prayers. 'If I regard iniquity in my heart, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as the Gladiateur, with reversed engines, hung against the current above the bridge of Saint-Benezet and slowly drew in to the bank. Our answering cheers went forth to them through the darkness, and a stave or two of "La Coupe" was sung, and there was a mighty clapping of hands. And then the gang-plank was set ashore, and instantly beside it—standing in the glare of a great lantern—we saw our Capoulie, the head of all the Felibrige, Felix Gras, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... preparations, Germany would mobilize. A German mobilization, he said, would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first, notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would have been an avowal that Russia ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... an act by which he renounces his seignorial rights of every description "—At Sollier they destroy the mills belonging to M. de Forbin-Janson. They sack the house of his business agent, pillage the chateau, and demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons. They enter the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can be carried, "the transportation taking two days;" all of which cause damages of a hundred thousand crowns to the marquis.—At Riez they surround the episcopal palace with fagots, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... occupied with the barrels of paraffin, and the first intimation they had of his separation from them was the report of his gun and the whizz of his bullet. "Bang, bang," both barrels, and his first bullet it seems went through the cask of sulphur, smashed out a stave from the further side, and filled the air with yellow dust. Redwood had kept his gun in hand and let fly at something grey that leapt past him. He had a vision of the broad hind-quarters, the long scaly tail and long soles of the hind-feet of a rat, and fired his second barrel. He saw ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... without having to give an account of himself?" Sherm parried, still trying to stave off the mirth that ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... not be misunderstood. I agree with Mr. Williams that these things are desirable, but not for the reason for which he desires them. By him they are put forward as devices to help to stave off the impending ruin of the country. For that purpose they are not needed, for there is not the slightest real evidence that ruin is impending. On the contrary, we are progressing rapidly in trade abroad ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... gate, for it looks out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair one is ardently ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... that leads to the gaol. The place is often crowded at night—there is scarcely room to sit or stand, the atmosphere is thick with smoke, and a hoarse roar of jarring voices fills it, above which rises the stave of a song shouted in one unvarying key from some corner. Money pours in apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... wire to any place at the time, but I had thought of a scheme to stave him off. I took his telegram, went over and monkeyed around the switch board for a while, and then sat down to a local instrument and went through the form of sending a message. My whole salvation lay in the hope that ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... the princess and Brandon. Every now and then her voice came back to us in a stave of a song, and her laughter, rich and low, wafted on the wings of the soft south wind, made the glad birds hush to catch its silvery note. It seemed that the wild flowers had taken on their brightest hue, the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... oakroot, for natural strength. He was always very quiet with it, too; given to digest his victuals, and be peaceable with everybody. He had one rule, that stood in place of many: To keep out of every business which it was possible for human wisdom to stave aside. 'What good will you get of going into that? Parliamentary criticism, argument and botheration? Leave well alone. And even leave ill alone:—are you the tradesman to tinker leaky vessels in England? You ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... are brilliantly scoured every time they are in use. Tin pitchers are used in some places, while pails of wood in cooper-work are employed in others. A pail of oak, having thin staves bound together by bright iron hoops, with a handle formed by a stave projecting upward, is convenient for the purpose, and may be kept clean and sweet. One nine inches in diameter at the bottom, eleven inches at the top, and ten inches deep, with an upright handle or leg of five inches, has a capacious enough ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... beguiling, dairy-maiden, thy smiling; Thy glove[128] there 's a wile in, of white hand the cover; When a-milking, thy stave is more sweet than the mavis, As his melodies ravish the woodlands all over; Thy wild notes so cheerie, bring the small birds to hear thee, And, fluttering, they near thee, who sings to discover. To fulness as growing, so liquid, so flowing, Thy song makes a glow in the veins of thy lover. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... Mencken pointed out to me recently, in his most earnest and persuasive manner, that it was my duty to write a book about the American composers, exposing their futile pretensions and describing their flaccid opera, stave by stave. It was in vain that I urged that this would be but a sleeveless errand, arguing that I could not fight men of straw, that these our composers had no real standing in the concert halls, and ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft—Bildad, I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... confounded upon another point—the prodigious interest manifested by the public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and consummate ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... he works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly rote of his rumbling throat He batters it down ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... all these troubles this new danger of being turned out on the roadside! For where are they to get four dollars, or two, or one even, to stave Conolly off? Certainly his father was away too long; but surely, surely, thought the boy, he would get back in time to save his home! Then he remembered with horror, and a feeling of being disloyal to his father for remembering, that ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... he bath a stave, Latest of the bright bevy. On gentle hearts and spirits brave The toll of love you'll levy. We trust that fortune may prove fair, And life's long pathway rosy, And love attend the Royal pair, The young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... than Clint could; for when that fellow got wound up to talk he was allers going you five better. Some of the boys thought it rather risky, and they wanted Clint to write and say he had the typhoid fever, and so stave it off until he looked fit to go; but he knew that if he crossed his uncle now he'd likely enough lose everything, and so he thought it best to make sure and let Kirby go and see, anyhow. One thing that helped Kirby along was that his first wife had come from ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... promptly at his mate's back. 'Stave him off, Jim,' he said. 'Use your straight left, and if he gets in throw him. He's a dirty in-fighter.' Mike had boxed a good deal with Done lately, and did not tremble ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... for worse to that curious invertebrate person, Algie Wetherby, was the only real friend Claire had made on the stage. A sort of shivering gentility had kept her aloof from the rest of her fellow-workers, but it took more than a shivering gentility to stave ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... of their toil and asked for a little rest, Frodi answered: "Ye shall sleep no longer than the cuckoo is silent, or while I speak one stave." Then the giant-maids grew angry, ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday

... men, you see, like to do a bit of low by way of variety. 'The Night before Larry was stretched' was done by a bishop, they say; and 'Lord Altamont's Bull' by the Lord Chief Justice; and the Solicitor-General is as up to fun as any bishop of them all. Come, Jim, tip us the stave!" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... I venture near this gate, for it looks out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair one is ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... actually trolling out the stave of a song as he sprang up the companion ladder after his rough breakfast in the galley, but the sound expired at the sight of the distant flutter of a woman's scarf in the stern of the ship. He halted and ran his fingers through his crisp hair with an expressive ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... stopped. A flush ran over her face and down to her neck. Hermione turned away her eyes. But they had read Vere's secret. She knew what her child was doing in those hours of seclusion. And she remembered her own passionate attempts to stave off despair by work. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... que vous voudras of the Franciscans of Medmenham Abbey with Sandwich, Wilkes, and others. At any rate, as their self-constituted laureate, he produced the following extraordinary song, which can be paralleled for inanity only by the stave he sang before Pitt in the Guildhall of London, as a means of attracting the notice of the Premier with a view to Parliament. The song is ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... through pipes 3,600 feet long leading to the top of a near-by hill. To reach this hill the water after its diversion from the Mokelumne river at the dam, flows twenty miles through a canal or ditch and then through 3,000 feet of wooden stave pipe. Although California ranks second in water-power development it is easily the first in the number of its stations, and also be it said, California was the first to realize the possibilities of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... or by the blow of a hungry whale (as shall betide ofttimes, for when the ship in her course by night sends a ripple back alongside of the whale, the creature seeing the foam fancies there is something to eat afloat, and makes a rush forward, whereby it often shall stave in some part of the ship). In such case the water that enters the leak flows to the bilge, which is always kept clear; and the mariners having ascertained where the damage is, empty the cargo from that compartment into those adjoining, for the planking is so well fitted that the water cannot pass ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... P. Chamberlain, Chief Engineer, built a number of culverts of concrete pipe with an interior diameter of 4 ft., and 6-in. shells. Fig. 176 shows the forms in which the pipe was molded. Both forms are of ordinary wooden tank construction. The inner form has one wedge-shaped loose stave which is withdrawn after the concrete has set for about 20 hours, thus collapsing the inner form and allowing it to be removed. The outer form is built in two pieces with 25/8-in. semi-circular iron hoops on the outside, the hoops having loops ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... succour have! She will not long your bounty crave, Or tire the gay with warning stave; For Heaven has grace, and earth a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... There's some of our townsfolks now, why some of 'um isn't so good as I, to be sure. There's Tom Forge, the blacksmith, and little Daniel Snip, the tailor, and Roger Peg, the cobbler, and Tim Frize, the barber, and Landlord Tipple, that keeps the ale-house at the sign of the Turk's Head, and Jeremy Stave, the clerk of the meeting-house, why, there an't one of 'um that's a single copper before a beggar, as the old saying is; but what o' that? We isn't all born alike, as father says; for my part, I likes to be friendly, so give us your hand. You mus'n't think how I casts ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... had come a third time, saying, "Your father is unconscious." "Where's the hurry, then?" he had answered, and he sang a stave of the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... factory, with a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its operations—that of washing and drying the emptied sugar bags—is also ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... lengths; a very block of oak, or of oakroot, for natural strength. He was always very quiet with it, too; given to digest his victuals, and be peaceable with everybody. He had one rule, that stood in place of many: To keep out of every business which it was possible for human wisdom to stave aside. 'What good will you get of going into that? Parliamentary criticism, argument and botheration? Leave well alone. And even leave ill alone:—are you the tradesman to tinker leaky vessels in England? You will not want for work. Mind your ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... their onward march; and as they could follow a plain trail for the remainder of the way, they had no further need of their guide's services. They promised to visit Eb at his bark hut on their return journey, to bid him a final farewell, and hear one more stave of:— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... half measure at the time when it was first publicly talked of. They were sure, that it would never of itself answer the end proposed. Mr. Steele also confessed in his letter to Dr. Dickson[1] (of both of whom more by and by), that "the abolition of the stave trade would be useless, unless at the same time the infamous laws, which he had pointed out, were repealed." Neither must the treatment of the Negroes be made to depend upon what may be called contingent humanity. We now leave in this country neither the horse, nor the ass, nor oxen, ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... who has heard the ludicrous note of the bird and seen its comical, half-stupid appearance, the origin of the name seems obvious. It utters a prolonged rollicking laugh, often preceded by an introductory stave resembling the opening passage of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented structure, and with ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm bolts into the three-mast schooners. He probably saw stave mills arise in which hundreds of youths got employment while their fathers at home fought stumps, wire worms, drought and the devil to get puny crops at small prices. He saw the wagon-works and the fanning mill factory and the reaper industry come up out of these timber products. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... land is thine, And thou a traitor slave of it: Think how the Switzer leads his kine, When pale the evening star doth shine; His song has home in every line, Freedom in every stave of it; Think how the German loves his Rhine And worships ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... sudden thought. With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did not. Their course ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... might be attempted in the legislative way is Smoke Prohibition. It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... my hearties! another like that and it's home! Pitch into it, Mivins. You're the boy for me. Now, then, Grim, trip him up! Hallo, Buzzby, you bluff-bowed Dutchman, luff! luff! or I'll stave in your ribs! Mind your eye, Mizzle, there's Green, he'll be into your larboard quarter in no time. Hurrah! Mivins, up in the air with it. Kick, boy, kick like a spanker boom ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... say no; But this piece of task-work off I can stave, O, For Malachi's posting into an octavo; To correct the proof-sheets only this night I have, O, So, Madame Conscience, you've gotten as good as you gave, O But to-morrow's a new day and we'll better behave, O, So I lay down the pen, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the men in the Eastfirth Quarter, and thou must always find something to say against them. At last your talk will come to Rangrivervale, and then thou must say, there is small choice of men left in those parts since Fiddle Mord died. At the same time sing some stave to please Hrut, for I know thou art a skald. Hrut will ask what makes thee say there is never a man to come in Mord's place; and then thou must answer, that he was so wise a man and so good a taker up of suits, that he never ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... receive the music into their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and walk like strangers through the general rejoicing. But let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of ecstasy and sets ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the elder, closely scanning the fragment he held in his hand, "is evidently oak, and looks mightily as if it was once the stave of an oak keg or half-barrel. Yes, and here is another that will settle the question," he continued, pulling from its concealment a larger and sounder fragment. "There! can't you trace the chine across ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... sing anither stave. It was lanesome stan'in' upo' the ootside here, as gin I war ane ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... Their plows, harrows with their wooden teeth, and sleds, were in many instances well made. Their cooper-ware, which comprehended every thing for holding milk and water, was generally pretty well executed. The cedar-ware, by having alternately a white and red stave, was then thought beautiful; many of their puncheon floors were very neat, their joints close, and the top even and smooth. Their looms, although heavy, did very well. Those who could not exercise these mechanic ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... which, fugal imitation. Next we have a fugal movement, like the preceding one, in common time; lastly, one in six-eight time. All three movements are in the same key. The part for each cembalo is written on a separate stave, the one below the other. Only the bass notes are written, and the upper parts are indicated by figures. But this will be clearer presently, for we shall give one or more illustrations. At the close of the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... to shelve him. If he were shelved here his other two Companies would be sure to follow suit, and bang would go every penny of his income—he would be a pauper dependant on that holy woman. Well! Safe now for another year if he could stave off these sharks once more. It might be a harder job this time, but he was in luck—in luck, and it must hold. And taking a luxurious pull at his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to being served on a tray outside the servants' quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns th' englutted ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... sincerity of his devotion to the family he served, he had thought of sacrificing all he possessed in an attempt to stave off final ruin; but a very little reflection had convinced him that all he had would be a mere drop in the flood of extravagance, and would forthwith disappear with the rest into the ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... stout pole, five feet in length, is firmly fixed; to strengthen their hold, a number of supports are nailed round the outside of the former, and also closely round the latter. The tar is then put into the barrel, and set on fire; and the remaining one being broken up, stave after stave is thrown in, until it is quite full. The 'cl[a]vie,' already burning fiercely, is now shouldered by some strong young man, and borne away at a rapid pace. As soon as the bearer gives signs of exhaustion, another willingly takes his place; and should any of those who are ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... or no irregular forms. (1.) The following twenty-nine are omitted by this author, as if they were always regular; belay, bet, betide, blend, bless, curse, dive, dress, geld, lean, leap, learn, mulet, pass, pen, plead, prove, rap, reave, roast, seethe, smell, spoil, stave, stay, wake, wed, whet, wont. (2.) The following thirty-four are given by him as being always irregular; abide, bend, beseech, blow, burst, catch, chide, creep, deal, freeze, grind, hang, knit, lade, lay, mean, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... storm-toss'd and beating for the bay, They'll be howling and be growling as they drench it with their spray— For they'd like to heel it over to their laughter when it lists, Or crack the keel between them, or stave it with ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... Europe was heckling him; the settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the tongue of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the stars at night when the moon is down, Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fate Fares; and but waves a hand as he passes on, Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate, Sings but a boyish stave and his face ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... beauty as being quite as important as expression. With him the voice rises or falls as a man's voice does when he experiences keen sensation; but the wavy line of the melody as it goes along and up and down the stave is treated conventionally and changed into a lovely pattern for the ear's delight; and as there can be no regular pattern without regular rhythm, rhythm is a vital element in Bach's music. So with Purcell, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... repentance are wont to have their end: he patiently waits, till nature faints with the effort of resistance, and lies passive and hopeless under the next access of temptation. What we need then is some expedient or instrument, which at least will obstruct and stave off the approach of our spiritual enemy, and which is sufficiently congenial and level with our nature to maintain as firm a hold upon us as the inducements of sensual gratification. It will be our wisdom to employ nature against itself. Thus sorrow, sickness, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... near that they fired upon him, and one bullet nicked his glove, but he was hopeful that after his long rest he might again stave them off. He sent back no defiant cry, but, settling into determined silence, ran at his utmost speed. The forest here was of large trees, with no undergrowth, and he noticed that the two parties did not join, but kept on as they had come, one on the right and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was become of their comrades, and of the boat, would certainly come on shore in their other boat, to look for them; and that then, perhaps, they might come armed, and be too strong for us: this he allowed to be rational. Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat, which lay upon the beach, so that they might not carry her off: and taking every thing out of her, leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim: accordingly we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... to know at what point to draw the line. These limited enthusiasms may have an educative effect upon the persons who indulge them, but they may also have a stunting effect if they are pursued too long. A boy passes my window whistling shrill a stave of a popular song. He is obviously delighted with and intent upon his performance, and he is experiencing, no doubt, the artistic joy of creation; but if that boy goes on in life, as many artists do, limiting his musical aspirations ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavoured to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... pile, tore the blankets into strips, made a train of powder a considerable distance from the pile, and then Major James White fired a pistol into the train, which produced a tremendous explosion. A stave from the pile struck White on the forehead, and cut him severely. As soon as this bold exploit became known to Colonel Moses Alexander, he put his whole ingenuity to work to find out the perpetrators ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... be nugatory, and, if so backed, the worst. But even the war is better than the degrading and descending politics that preceded it for decades of years, and our legislation has made great strides, and if we can stave off that fury of trade which rushes to peace at the cost of replacing the South in the status ante bellum, we can, with something more of courage, leave the problem to another score of years,—free labor to fight with the Beast, and see if bales and barrels and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... rayless pit of darkness, swarming with squealing rats, several of which I must have killed in my fall. I felt a troop of them, run over my face and hands before I could regain my feet. Several times I put my hand on them, and once I flung one from my shoulder. Groping around, I found a stout stick or stave, put my back to the wall, and beat about me blindly but ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... provisionally accepted by Congress in June, 1868; and as their Legislatures at once ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and secured its adoption, they were fully restored and their senators and representatives admitted in July. Virginia and Mississippi managed to stave off final action, hoping to escape the excluding clauses, until after Grant's election to the Presidency in 1868; and their hopes were justified when Grant gave his influence successfully with Congress against the excluding clauses; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... admonitions to the horses were a trifle more emphatic; once he whistled a fragment of a minor stave, but spoke not a word till the coach reached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... mate's back. 'Stave him off, Jim,' he said. 'Use your straight left, and if he gets in throw him. He's a dirty in-fighter.' Mike had boxed a good deal with Done lately, and did ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... with a curse and lifted his axe to stave in the door. Before the weapon could descend a report rang out in the twilight, and with a scream the attacker sprang from the ground, and then fell to rubbing his ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead

... like this would enable us almost to complete the courses," replied the engineer. "Easy, lads, easy! If you run her up so fast you'll stave in the planks. Stand ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... he spoke, and the string twanged with a rich deep musical note. Aylward leaned upon his bow-stave as he keenly watched the long swift flight of his shaft, skimming smoothly ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... might be possible to stave death off for a time if a way could be found of setting up a reaction in the lower extremities; but if the symptoms do not abate by to-morrow evening, it will be all over with him, poor old fellow! Do you know what has happened to bring this on? There must ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... master shoemaker was absent, the uninitiated prentice-boy did not feel competent to sell the shoes, but the buyer would not be put off. Thereupon young Jacob set an enormous price upon them, hoping to stave off the trade. The man, however, without any demur paid the price, took the shoes, and went out. Just outside the door the stranger stopped, and in a serious tone called out, "Jacob, come hither to me!" The man, with ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... congregation within. Curious to see this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... modified the spirit of its poetry. Both poverty and a northern climate teach men the love of the hearth and the sentiment of the family; and the latter, in its own right, inclines a poet to the praise of strong waters. In Scotland, all our singers have a stave or two for blazing fires and stout potations:—to get indoors out of the wind and to swallow something hot to the stomach, are benefits so easily appreciated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... Oom Silas. Well, if you want to know, I will tell you what I mean. I mean that I alone can protect you and your place and people in the bad times which are coming. I have more influence in the land than you know of. Perhaps even, I could stave off the war, and if it suited me to do so I would do it. At the least I could keep you from being harmed, that I know. But I have my price, Oom Silas, as we all have, and it must be money ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... ordering that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... promised to mention, and it shall be very briefly, was the revival of the Order of the Bath. It was the measure of Sir Robert Walpole, and was an artful bank of thirty-six ribands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places. He meant, too, to stave off the demand for garters, and intended that the red should be a step to the blue, and accordingly took one of the former himself. He offered the new order to old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married one of her grand-daughters. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... six of 'em!" he uttered, as the cathedral clock rang out the hour, and his boots threatened to stave in the floor. "If I stand this life much longer, I'll be shot! It's enough to take the spirit out of a fellow; to wear the flesh off his bones; to afflict him with nervous fever. What an idiot I was to let my ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... debt to pay. We'll have a lark—'Quelles alouettes!' as it is written in the French translation of Great Expectations, in the passage reporting conversation between Pip and Joe Gargery. Moreover than which, we'll put a spoke in business arrangements of Mr. G., and stave off Home Rule by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various

... sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's end for singing psalms ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... write their names. By certain proceedings which took place at Christchurch Police-court on Tuesday, it would almost seem that some of the dark-faced wanderers already are educated a little too much. At all events, they occasionally manifest an ability to 'take a stave' out of the rest of the community. At the court in question a Gipsy woman named Emma Barney was brought to task for 'imposing by subtle craft to extort money' from a Bournemouth shopkeeper named Richard Oliver. It seems that Oliver is troubled with pimples ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... animation. What is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, backs, strikes right, strikes left, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, has musical notation and is exquisitely ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... very well, dropping prices and the loss of foreign markets have devastated too many family farmers. Last year, the Congress provided substantial assistance to help stave off a disaster in American agriculture, and I am ready to work with lawmakers of both parties to create a farm safety net that will include crop insurance reform ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home, or rather home left me—things just petered out. I was slush cook on an Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the knobs of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M. K. & T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in Cincinnati, Ohio, ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... with woad, whatever woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... it, however, before he heard, from the passage below, a low whistle, followed by the peculiar stave by which a modern low-life Blondel endeavours to attract attention. The hairdresser paid no attention, being used, as a Londoner, to hearing such signals, and not imagining they could be ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... I thought of trying to stave him off for a few days, but then I thought, 'Why, he'll see through that game and he'll go on with his scheme for sewing us up just the same.' You see, there's no good saying we're afraid. So I told him that we didn't mind ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... I lay and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June, And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone Seemed to mingle with its burthen in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... Innisfield that would dare refuse Theophilus Clamp. When she knows—that I know—what she knows, she'll do pretty much what I tell her. I wonder if she hasn't set on foot a marriage between her scapegrace son and Mildred? That would be a mishap, truly! But, as guardian, I can stave that off until the estate is settled, my wedding over, and myself comfortably in possession. Then, perhaps, we'll let the young folks marry,—at least we'll think of it. If my son George, now, had not that unlucky hare-lip, who knows? H'm, well, to business again. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... man, can't you see that it's you I want?" And she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know she gladly will. As for me, of course I go down to Dera to-morrow, and do what I can ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... made in sections from 8 to 12 ft. long, with the exterior surface covered with a heavy coat of asphalt, was selected in preference to unprotected, continuous, stave pipe. The diameters were not so great as to ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... a through wire to any place at the time, but I had thought of a scheme to stave him off. I took his telegram, went over and monkeyed around the switch board for a while, and then sat down to a local instrument and went through the form of sending a message. My whole salvation lay in the hope that he was not an operator and would fail to discover ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... to seek fur my little Em'ly. First, I'm going to stave in that theer boat and sink it where I'd a drownded him, as I'm a living soul; if I'd a known what he had in him! I'd a drownded him, and thought I was doin' right! Now I'm going to seek fur my Little ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... spoke with anger. She would stave off as long as possible the principal question—that of marriage. Sudden proposals, too, emanating from others, always nettled her; it narrowed ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... conclusion there was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more—"Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam"—The singer was in the middle of the stave when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of greensward, sloping up from a slipway on the riverside; a low, cozy-looking inn of red brick covered with a crimson creeper; in front of it a long deal table, and seated at the table ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... magistrate's warrant, granted on the belief of any person that ale, beer, or spirits were sold, to break open the house and seize the liquor; and unless the owner could satisfy the magistrate, the constable was permitted to stave and destroy the vessels. For the sale, not only were heavy penalties imposed, but unless paid the offender was liable to perpetual imprisonment; and even appeal was prohibited, except the penalty was first paid: one-half ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... hands at least, it could be made the vehicle of the most pensive and tender feeling. In an interesting note to the Centenary Burns, edited by Henley and Henderson, it is pointed out that 'the six-line stave in rime couee built on two rhymes,' was used by the Troubadours in their Chansons de Gestes, and that it dates at the very latest from the eleventh century. Burns's happiest use of it was in those epistles which about this time he began to dash off to some of his ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... gone mad with national excesses committed in the name of civilization, in reality the price of our modernization, in a final desperate effort to rally their waning fortunes stampeded their awakening masses into a ruinous interracial war in order to stave off the torch and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes before the dawn whistled down them. In the centre of the Square of the Mosque a man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in by gun-butt or bamboo-stave. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling









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