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More "Straining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost exhausted companion, to whom its scenery was familiar, waited not to look back upon its beauty or its richness. Not so Raymond, who, from the moment they began to ascend the elevation, kept constantly looking back, and straining his eyes in one particular direction. At length he started, and placing his right hand upon the priest's shoulder, said in a suppressed but ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... wretched track several times, but as she was not running much faster than a man could walk, the worst consequence to us was a severe jolting. She was small, and was easily pried back upon the track, and sent again upon her wheezy, straining way. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... destiny, made one stream of passion which welled forth in the deep rich tones of her voice. She had a rare contralto, which Lady Cheverel, who had high musical taste, had been careful to preserve her from straining. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... island, and resumed the warfare against their hereditary foes. Success at sea and on land resulted in the capture of richly laden prizes, multitudes of captives, and booty of enormous value. The captives became slaves laboring on the fortifications or straining at the oars. The booty adorned the churches and enriched the people. But as power and wealth increased, the desire for spoils took possession of the hearts of the Knights and the original vows of humility, kindness, and charity were ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... said he was imprudent. Steadying himself with one arm about the mast, the captain stood firmly in his elevated position, and, as the sun came slowly up and the golden radiance spread over the sky and sea, he swept the arch of the horizon to the south, east and west, straining his keen vision for the first ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... seat so that he could look out of the car window, and the other passengers observed that at intervals the little fellow would wave his hand and smile. Following the direction of his glances, the passengers saw the other boy running along the sidewalk, straining every muscle to keep up with the car. They watched his pantomime in silence for a few blocks, and then a gentleman asked the lame boy who the other boy was: 'My brother,' was the prompt reply. 'Why does he not ride with you in the car?' was the next question. 'Because he hasn't any money,' answered ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... into the night; the straining of the taut ropes and the creaking of the pulleys might have been heard at the lake's edge as he applied the multiple power of leverage against some stubborn log and hauled it up the slope. Then he would notch and trim it, and ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... casually, the crew, six of them, carried Number Nine to the water's edge, saw paddles and everything in order for a quick launching, and lolled about carelessly on the sand. They were guilty of not advertising that anything untoward was afoot, although they did steal glances up to their captain straining through the binoculars. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... not riding; the fact being that he had no longer courage enough to get into the saddle. His riding days were over. Even the stable mastiff, an old favourite with Brian, gave him a painful shock when the great tawny brute leapt out of his kennel, straining at his chain, and baying deep-mouthed thunder by way of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... here and there, while he complacently fingered his Punch, flacking over the leaves with brisk slaps of the hand. At this moment he was as comfortably-minded a householder as any in London, engaged solely in digestion, at peace at home and abroad, so unconscious of the fretting, straining, passionate lost soul in the room with him, hovering, flicking about it like a white moth, as to be supremely ridiculous—to any one but Lucy. It is difficult to hit off her state of mind in a word, or ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... he could, Mainwaring snatched up the empty weapon and struck once and again at the bald, narrow forehead beneath him. A third blow he delivered with all the force he could command, and then with a violent and convulsive throe the straining muscles beneath him relaxed and grew limp ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... She hurried on, straining her eyes at the barrier of gloom that rose a few yards ahead. And out of it kept springing faint grotesque shapes that changed themselves slowly, resolving into dim rocks and bushes, telegraph poles and high embankments, finally melting away behind her and losing their identity ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... centuries which are as a breath in the workings of the Infinite, and which must yet elapse before this world, as we know it, comes to an end—God has taken pity on the few, very few souls dwelling here, pent up in mortal clay, who have blindly tried to reach Him, like plants straining up to the light, and has established a broad stream of sympathetic electric communication with Himself, which all who care to do so ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... sometimes went on field-work: a railed opening was made in the hedge, because the upland with its bordering wood and clump of ash-trees against the sky was a pretty sight. Presently there came along a wagon laden with timber; the horses were straining their grand muscles, and the driver having cracked his whip, ran along anxiously to guide the leader's head, fearing a swerve. Rex seemed to be shaken into attention, rose and looked till the last quivering trunk of the timber ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... heed, but swung himself to and fro, straining out his neck to peep round the mate and get a look at ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... window the canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who transacts a serious affair with due seriousness, she spread the bill before her, smoothing it out with a practiced wipe of the hand, took her ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... of one smooth, juicy lemon, and squeeze out the juice, straining it on the rind. Put one cup of sugar and a piece of butter the size of an egg in a bowl, and one good-sized cupful of boiling water into a pan on the stove. Moisten a tablespoonful of corn starch, and stir it into the water; when it boils, pour it over the sugar and butter, and stir in the rind ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... leather, take a quart of skimmed milk, pour into it one ounce of sulphuric acid, and, when cold, add four ounces of hydrochloric acid, shaking the bottle gently until it ceases to emit white vapors; separate the coagulated from the liquid part, by straining through a sieve, and store it away till required. Clean the leather with a weak solution of oxalic acid, washing it off immediately, and when dry apply the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... draw from slates. Poor Seraphim! They mean to spoil our sleep, and do, but all their gains Are curses for their pains!' Now who but knows That truth to learn from foes Is wisdom ripe? Therefore no longer let us stretch our throats Till hoarse as frogs With straining after notes Which but to touch would burst an organ-pipe. Far better ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... said again, raising her from the floor, and straining her to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana. "Answer ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... people to look into it dispassionately. They were bound to no set of opinions, but regarded everything as an open question, accepting nothing save as the conclusion of a logical argument. I joined the Society—straining my clerical conscience somewhat to do so—and eventually formed one of the committee appointed by the Society to inquire into the matter, and having a sub-committee sitting at my own house. This, however, broke up suddenly, for I found even ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... gone into her mouth, whereupon the child ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit, and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And at other times the elder child declared unto ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... strength. Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining his ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... his neck, his great bowed body straining in an effort of attention, he looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled bandages, the worn, thin face, and his own wooden visage laboured under the stress of all ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... approaching clamour and the shout, The rattle and the clatter, and the roar, The whistle, and the thunder, and the tramp, The clanking discord of the missive shields, The clang of swords, the hissing sound of spears, The tinkling of the helmet, the sharp crash Of armour and of arms, the straining ropes, The dangling bucklers, the resounding wheels, The creaking chariot, and the proud approach Of the triumphant champion of the Ford. Clutching his master's robe, the charioteer Cried out, "Ferdiah, rise! for lo, thy foes Are on thee!" Then the Spirit of Insight fell Prophetic on the youth, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... looks o'er all those broad domains, And hears no heavy clank of servile chains, Here man, no matter what his skin may be, May stand erect and proudly say "I'M FREE!" No crouching slaves cower in our busy marts, With straining eyes ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... to himself a thousand times: "I will write a tale, that shall constitute an epoch in the mind of the reader, that no one, after he has read it, shall ever be exactly the same man that he was before." The effort, and straining after effect which this confession implies, are evident throughout the work. The reader's curiosity is continually excited by the promise of new interest and new developments, but he is as continually disappointed. The main idea of the story is certainly a striking ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... rampageous river that runs the devil knows where; My hand is athrill on the paddle, the birch-bark bounds like a bird. Hark to the rumble of rapids! Here in my morris chair Eager and tense I'm straining — isn't it most absurd? Now in the churn and the lather, foam that hisses and stings, Leap I, keyed for the struggle, fury and fume and roar; Rocks are spitting like hell-cats — Oh, it's a sport for kings, Life on a twist of the paddle . . . there's ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Morning Prayer. If this is an unjust criticism we ought not to let ourselves be troubled by it. On the other hand, if it is a just criticism it will be much wiser of us to heed than to stifle the voice that tells us the truth. It might seem to be straining a point were one to venture to explain the present very noticeable disinclination of Churchmen to attend a second service on Sunday, by connecting it with the particular infelicity in question; but that the excuse, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... Bill halfway up I saw Mendoza come out of the hut where we all lived. Mendoza thought that Bill was away buying groceries. But he wasn't: he was in the bucket. And when Mendoza saw Luke hauling and straining on the rope he thought he was pulling up a bucketful of gold. So he drew a pistol from his pocket and came sneaking up behind Luke ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... mile after mile. On each side of the village street are straw thatched houses, and along the roads coolies bend under great loads, carried on poles across their shoulders. Black bulls drag giant loads on two wheeled carts, their masters straining beside them. The bulls' mouths are open, their tongues hang out, and saliva drools out in streams. It leaves a wet, irregular wake, in the dust of the roadside, behind the carts. By and by, the men will stop for food and drink. They cannot choose what it shall be. They cannot afford ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... flakes of light. Lamar watched only the square block of shadow where Dorr's house stood. The door opened at last, and a broad, cheerful gleam shot out red darts across the white waste without; then he saw two figures go in together. They paused a moment; he put his head against the bars, straining his eyes, and saw that the woman turned, shading her eyes with her hand, and looked up to the side of the mountain where the guard-house lay,—with a kindly look, perhaps, for the prisoner out in the cold. A kind look: that was all. The door ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Now his straining eyes perceived a tiny bit of light, and simultaneously he became conscious of a deathly stench. The damp earth padding his footsteps, he advanced swiftly toward the source of light, which now seemed to lie in stripes across his line of vision. He soon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... blur of speed between the slightly slanted rudders. Somewhere, miles away, a splintered amphibian plane was slipping down to her last landing, and above, perhaps, the white hell of storm which had brought her low still bowled over the trackless wastes; but here were only shadows and shifting gloom, straining the alert eyes to soreness and tensing the watcher's brain with alarms that, one ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... the mouth, and form a most complete strainer, so that only the most minute animals can enter. This is necessary, as the swallow is too small to admit even the smallest fish. When a black whale feeds, it throws up millions of small animals at a time with its thick lower lip, into the straining apparatus I have described; and as they are scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when its vast size is considered some slight notion may be formed of the prodigious number it ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gallons of it into a half Tub, as they call it, of Wood, and straining a Canvas over it, to keep out Dust and Insects, and letting it stand in some shady room for three weeks or a month, it did of itself putrefy and stink exceedingly, and let fall to the bottom a black ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... whistle sounded, and amid the farewells that followed, Reginald went out into his new world, leaving them behind, straining their eyes for a last look, but little dreaming how and when that little family should ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... muffled steersman sails with that Norland gloom; The Snowflake in the offing is neck and neck with doom. Ha, ha, my saucy cruiser, crowd up your helm and run! There'll be a merrymaking to-morrow in the sun. A cloud of straining canvas, a roar of breaking foam, The Snowflake and the sea-drift are racing in for home. Her heart is dancing shoreward, but silently and pale The swift relentless phantom is hungering on her trail. They scour and fly together, until across the roar He signals for a pilot—and Death puts out from ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... through the bars and held my face between them. She looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... stick touched the hondo, the two stopped and panted for a minute; then Diego grasped his end of the stick and signaled the return trip. Again it took practically every ounce of strength they had in their muscular bodies, but they could move steadily now, instead of in straining, spasmodic jerks. The rawhide sizzled where it curled around the stick. They reached the end and stopped, and Jack commanded them to sit down and have a smoke before ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... be sprung with unnecessary force, for fear of injuring the corners of the grooves; and, in stacking arms, care should be taken not to injure the bayonets by forcibly straining the edges against ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... sun-lit spires of mountains, shadowed valleys, and mysterious crevasses from which clouds of steam and yellow vapor curled. Still it seemed they must crash against one of those slender pinnacles. Nearer it came like a flash; a dizzying blur, now, that drove directly in their straining faces. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... we march on Agpur, they daren't leave the city undefended with us in their rear. They have no military genius to see that the only chance lies in snapping us up before we can unite, and straining every nerve to do it, and we can get together a large enough force to give a very good account of anything less than the whole Agpur army. If we find ourselves faced with that, and luck's against us, we shall probably go down, but we shall have done it more damage than Sher Singh can repair ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... ran riot to my head And still I held my madness thrall, My lips repressed the frenzied shriek, My straining heart was stout as teak; But, when he kissed her mantling cheek, I broke—and two attendants led ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... the parapet, and with his feet carelessly dangling on the other side, sat gazing off upon the sea, now straining his eye to make out the rig of some dark hull in the distance, and now following back the moon's glittering wake until it met the shore. At this moment the hound, leaving his mistress's side, put his fore paws upon the top of the parapet and his nose into one of the boy's hands, causing him ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... milk cheese, but a vegetable one, made by boiling and straining the pulp of the cactuslike prickly pear fruit to cheeselike consistency. It is chocolate-color and sharp, piquantly pleasant when hard and dry. It is sometimes enriched with nuts, spices and/or flowers. It will keep for a very long time and has ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the gigantic, unwieldy man, who had grown gray stooping over his work, had gained a certain majestic dignity. His cheeks glowed, and the gray eyes, which had long since acquired a fixed look from straining over the gemcutting, now beamed with a blissful radiance. Something wonderful must have happened to him, and, without waiting to be questioned by the lady, he poured out to her the news that he would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... necessity of action in relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike, men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the Analogy and of the three sermons ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Greeks said and wrote to the Entente powers. And the chief newspapers of the Allies are full of articles trying to prove that the Bulgarians, under the guidance of Germany and Austria, are endangering the Balkan situation. According to what we learn, Germany is straining every nerve to incite an armed conflict between Greece and Bulgaria. In this way Germany hopes to guarantee Turkey against any possible attack from Bulgaria, and thus promote her own interests. To this fact we most earnestly call the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Everything is dependent upon their rowing together in absolute rhythm come what may, and giving instant obedience to orders. The trireme is in one sense like a latter-day steamer in her methods of propulsion; but the driving force is 174 straining, panting humans, not insensate ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... idea that any importance would be attached to his statements. Many mistakes were probably made in the work of dictating the narrative to a fellow-sailor. If Rutherford had been bent upon making a romantic story, he would have told it in a different form. There is no straining after effect in the manuscript reproduced by Craik. The faults are inaccuracies, not exaggerations. Some excuse may be found for Rutherford's mistakes in the description of the battle Te Ika-a-rangi-nui in the fact that modern Maori scholars cannot agree on important ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... now and then at my watch and by straining my eyes was surprised to see how early it was yet. The minutes ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... grew suddenly serious. Leaning forward with eyes straining hard to the horizon, she said: "Flip, I've had a hard life, in spite of the success. Shall I run?... or... shall I stay, and snatch joy, while there ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... not hear much of gold in the earlier times, but in 237 B.C., when Ts'in was straining every nerve to conquer China, the (future) First August Emperor was advised that "it would not cost more than 300,000 pounds weight in gold to bribe the ministers of all the states in league against Ts'in." Yet in 643 B.C., on the death ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... occupation every joy of the domestic hearth. The public acknowledged with favour the exertions of the labouring man; pronounced him worthy of his sire; vouchsafed him their respect and confidence. Bravely the youth proceeded on his way—looking ever to the future—straining to his object—prepared to sacrifice his life rather than yield or not attain it. Noble ambition—worthy of a less ignoble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... watch in hand, he awaited the fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more to go—half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve—and nothing happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the watch with a deep sigh of relief, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... mind. My wife had a feeling that Margaret, thus early, was conscious of a drift, of a widening space, and was making an effort to pull the two parts of her life together, that there should be no break, as one carried away to sea by a resistless tide grasps the straining rope that still maintains his slender ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... snow was faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... center rigid as a post, with outstretched hands and head thrown backward. On his right are his wife and daughter straining toward him. Back of them the Postmaster, turned toward the audience, metamorphosed into a question mark. Next to him, at the edge of the group, three lady guests leaning on each other, with a most satirical expression on their faces directed straight at the Governor's ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... heard: Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining themselves to make the boat glide down ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... GEORGE, ever thoughtful for the welfare of others, arranged with the Military authorities to give a change of scene to six members of the Clyde Workers' Committee, who have been recently over-straining their vocal chords. This was the impression I got from Dr. ADDISON, who, like his great namesake, is a master of the bland style; but Sir EDWARD CARSON thrust aside official euphemism and bluntly inquired whether these men were not in fact assisting the KING'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious comparison can never become so favourable to the individual making it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher relatively ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... back, according to the work and exercise which they use, we can't judge of a man's strength by lifting only; but a method may be found to compare together the strength of different men in the same parts, and that too without straining the ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... earth. It is needless to say that he grew careless, and on this particular morning leaped into the car and demanded the cables to be let out with all speed. I saw with some surprise that the flurried assistants were sending up the great straining canvas with a single rope attached. The enormous bag was only partially inflated, and the loose folds opened and shut with a crack like that of a musket. Noisily, fitfully, the yellow mass rose into the sky, the basket rocking like a leather in the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... smell of ripening in the air, a smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and slender branches stretching themselves under the returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in their bark. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... should make a "train;" that is, bind all the sleds together, and so go down: it would be more delightful than ever by moonlight. No sooner said than done. Only Pussy's sled was not tied to her brother's, for he feared lest the straining and shocks that often took place in this kind of coasting might prove dangerous to her. She followed, therefore, as usual; but Otto could not stop his sled if she was delayed, for he had to go on with the "train." Off they went, and the long chain reached the bottom safely ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... overmuch in life, Straining at ends of hard accomplishment, And goaded onward by poor discontent, We build our little Babels up through strife, And bitterness of soul, and motions rife With passions that oft slay the innocent, Like Priests of Lust plunging the ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... she would, even through storm and darkness. It was then, she said, that the cry sounded loudest and nearest, as if her pretty boy were frightened by the tempest. What wild, terrible rovings we had, she straining forward, eager to overtake the dream-child; I, sick at heart, following, guiding, protecting, as best I could; then afterwards leading her gently home, heart-broken because she could not ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... then; and regardless of my resistance one motherly body after another seized me, kissing my cheeks roundly, straining me to her bosom, and calling me her "brave lad!" or her ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... employment of women in industry seems likely to increase. Women are employed, on the whole, on the lighter and more routine stages of the process of production. They have shown capacity, endurance and steadiness upon monotonous and nerve straining work both upon machine and hand tasks. It seems likely that they will continue to displace men in many of the simpler mechanical jobs. Many individual women wage earners have risen to tasks of responsibility and direction. This number will be greatly added to by improvement ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... away with that quick, nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on either hand and along the seats above them, they come straining up the home stretch. Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would come curvetting back, now pacing sidewise as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high into the air, and anon vaulting up and springing through the air, with legs well under her, as if in the act of taking a five-barred ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... so many skilled women journeyed to New Bethel that week, coming with the glow of crusaders, eager to write their names on this momentous page of woman's history, that Mary's worry turned into a source of embarrassment. However, by straining every effort, accommodations were found for the visitors and the work of re-organization was at ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... was undoubtedly ambiguous; to give a kiss may mean: 1. What it literally says—to bestow a kiss. 2. To offer one's self to be kissed. 3. To accept willingly a proffered kiss; and, without much straining of words, 4. Merely to refrain from angry expostulation and a rupture of acquaintance when one is kissed—this last partaking rather of the nature of the ratification of an unauthorized act, and being, in fact, the measure of Dora's criminality. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... fortress one views a wide bay, bounded to the north by the dark flanks of Sila (I was in sight of the Black Mountain once more), and southwards by a long low promontory, its level slowly declining to the far-off point where it ends amid the waves. On this Cape I fixed my eyes, straining them until it seemed to me that I distinguished something, a jutting speck against the sky, at its farthest point. Then I used my field-glass, and at once the doubtful speck became a clearly visible projection, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... worthy gentleman to the office of Sheriff's or private Chaplain or to some similar position of confidence, by which he gained the poet's respect and gratitude. The whole allusion, however, might, without straining be regarded as a merely complimentary one. The tone of the passage affords at any rate a very pleasing glimpse of the mutual regard entertained by the poet and his ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... pitch at all during the process, do not seem to know how; but the majority do know, and know well! The colt is roped in a corral by the forefeet, jerked down, and his head held till bridled; or he is roped round the neck, snubbed to a post and so held till he chokes himself by straining on the running loop. As soon as he falls a man jumps on to his head and holds it firmly in such a way that he cannot get up, and someone slips on the Hackamore bridle. Thus you will see that a horse lying on its side requires his muzzle as a lever to get him on his feet. Then he ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... that wherever he was, he was unwatched, Mr. Grimm was on the point of concluding that further inaction was useless, when his straining ears caught the faint grating of metal against metal—perhaps the insertion of a key in the lock. His hands grew still; his eyes closed. And after a moment a door creaked slightly on its hinges, and a breath of cool air ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... old things are beginning to totter and fall, and ideas rendered sacred by years of observance are being brushed aside with a startling display of irreverence. Under the surface of our civilization we may hear the straining and groaning of the ideas and principles that are striving to force their way out on to the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... opinion as to their legality or illegality. The government, therefore, were of opinion that if the several penal statutes already in force did not contain clear enactments against this offence, it was not proper for them to seek some meaning in the law, which would be construed by others into a straining of the provisions of the law, and make it doubtful whether they had not forced the meaning of an enactment, in order to procure a condemnation of the societies in question. Even if they could have discovered that, although the Orange societies had contrived to evade the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to the springboard and the leap, always, after the take-off, in mid-air, they had to encounter an assistant who stood underneath, an extraordinarily long buggy-whip in hand, and lashed them vigorously. This made them leap from the springboard beyond their normal powers, hurting and straining and injuring them in their desperate attempt to escape the whip-lash, to beat the whip-lash in the air and be past ere it could catch their flying flanks and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... trumpeting impatiently for inspection. Their compound is a series of roofless walled enclosures, and a visitor notes with grateful appreciation the strength of the chains anchoring the beasts to mother earth. A leviathan is straining at his tether in a mad effort to reach a vagabond who is tantalizing him with a pike, and your guide—one of the official messengers with sword and shield—says: "He no like Hindu people; last week he kill two." Beasts ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... effective agent of the propagandism of slavery. The transition is easy from such a theory to the fulfillment of the boast of Senator Toombs, 'that the roll of slaves might yet be called at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument.' But no straining of the language of the Constitution can make it mean the recognition of the natural right of slavery, The guarded manner in which the provision was made for the rendition of slaves, and all the circumstances connected with the adoption of the Constitution, show conclusively that slavery ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... is the grey goat of old Hawk and Buckle, And what of pretty Nanny this hot summer weather? She stays not contented with little or with muckle, Straining for daisies at the ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... younger traveller looked back with straining eyes to catch another glanco of the vanished object, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... sat their camels. These, indeed, now that they were free of the long desert grass, trotted at their quickest pace. And at sunset that evening they stopped and rested for an hour. All through that night they rode and the next day, straining their own endurance and that of the beasts they were mounted on, now ascending on to high and rocky ground, now traversing a valley, and now trotting fast across plains of honey-coloured sand. Yet to each man the pace seemed always ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Day; the rope was run round the schoolhouse, and the building was promptly hauled back into shape and fastened down with long timbers running from its sides to a convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus it remained for many years, bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and straining at its tethers like an eager hound ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... stood, and her breath came straining hot and heavy through her white teeth, and she smiled and ogled him archly. He felt her take hold of him, and it was as though a ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... Politics as well as the other diseases Press, which had kindled, proceeded to extinguished Presumptuous belief Ready is the ardent mind to take footing on the last thing done She was not, happily, one of the women who betray strong feeling Shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of posturing Straining for common talk, and showing the strain Style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation The people always wait for the winner The system is cursed by nature, and that means by heaven The tragedy of the mirror is one for a woman ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... authorities. The Nineteen were in no way surprised to hear of great preparations being made by the King of Spain to retake the town, and they on their part were determined to maintain their conquest by meeting force with force. Straining all their resources, three squadrons were equipped; the first two, numbering thirty-two ships and nine yachts, were destined for Brazil; the third, a small flying squadron of seven vessels, was despatched early to watch the Spanish ports. The general-in-chief ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... matter to those who have written about this to Your Highness that the recovery of Goa should have been so many times attempted, how much harder must it have been to gain the country from so powerful a sovereign as the King of Bijapur, Lord of so many armies, who is not likely to refrain from straining every nerve to recover the possession of it and striking a decisive blow at our prestige, if he could do so? And whenever any one of his captains shall come up against this city, are we to surrender it immediately without ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... it. His hand was on the horse's mane, when just above its head he noticed a clean patch of granite, and across that space he saw a huge grey baboon leap, and then another, and another. He turned about, and looked across to the opposite wall, straining his eyes, and a second later to the wall on his right. Then he understood; the twisted rifle, the finger marks, this thing which he held under his coat, he understood them all. The walls of the hollow were ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... sunset. She watched until she had seen the distant vessel put about, making for the open sea. Ah, now she knew that he was safe aboard,—no need had they to come farther into shore. Yet still she waited, straining her eyes to see the ship sink slowly beneath the horizon. One last glint of sunlight against a white sail, and it ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... the frightful condition of affairs in San Francisco; the straining of public patience ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... drawing around to the fateful cleft. Would it win past once more? No; it was too far out! It felt the grasp of the outward suction, soft and insidious at first, then resistless as the falling of a mountain. With straining nerves and pounding heart Henderson strove to hold it back by sheer will and the wrestling of his eyes. But it was no use. Slowly the head of the log turned outward from its circling fellows, quivered for a moment in the cleft, then shot smoothly forth into the sluice. With a groan ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... abdomen, and a particular one to the umbilicus. The last point is one of great importance, where there is any tendency to a rupture at this part of the body—a tendency which very often exists in feeble children. And without some support of this kind, crying, coughing, sneezing, and straining in any way, might greatly aggravate the evil, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... went into action; face glued to the visiplate, hands moving faster than the eye could follow—the left closing and opening the switch controlling the zone of force, the right swinging the steering controls to all points of the sphere. The mighty vessel staggered this way and that, jerking and straining terribly as the zone was thrown on and off, lurching sickeningly about the central bearing as the gigantic power of the driving bar was exerted, now in one direction, now in another. After a second ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Island was deciding to come in, Nova Scotia was straining every nerve to get out. There was no question that Nova Scotia had been brought into the union against its will. The provincial Legislature in 1866, it is true, backed Tupper. But the people backed Howe, who thereupon went to London ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... the east and west, Frae Indus to Savannah! Gie me within my straining grasp The melting form of Anna. There I'll despise imperial charms, An Empress or Sultana, While dying raptures in her arms I ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... in and found a youth of about thirteen straining his eyes in the fading light over one of those halfpenny humorous journals which, thanks to an improved system of education, at least eighty per cent. of our juvenile population are now enabled ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... the cruel tension of the gin testified to his anguished and futile struggles for freedom. The wire had cut into his shoulder, and his bolting eyes were wild with terror. It was no easy task to loosen the trap, and there was blood on Toby's hands as she strove to release the straining, frenzied creature. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... fiercely. "What is all other fate as compared to the death of terror? What, when the coldest sage, the most heated enthusiast, the hardiest warrior with his nerves of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread Progress,—thinkest thou that this weak woman—from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the colour—could ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... both branches of Congress—John Quincy Adams leading those of the Representatives, and Daniel Webster and Henry Clay of the Senate. The entire self-possession of Mr. Prentiss, then only twenty-nine years of age, never forsook him in such an august presence. There was no straining for effect, no trick of oratory; but, from the first to the last sentence, everything in manner, as in matter, seemed perfectly natural, as if he were addressing a jury on an ordinary question of law. This feature of his speech—this evidence ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... opened out, was a glimpse of the Seine; and with a turn of my head I could see, huge and vast, the enormous keep of the Louvre, built by Philip Augustus, and evilly known as the Philippine. But although my eyes, straining through the twilight, rested on these and more, my thoughts were far away. At a puff my pyramid of cards, the little life I had built up for myself, had come down, and all my labour and ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... the door, which he opened a few inches. The rain had now stopped, and he could hear, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the sound of horses moving cautiously through the mud, along the river bank. In a twinkling Watson and Macgreggor were at his side, straining their ears. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... over my notes and jotting down some ideas which were still fresh in my mind. Suddenly I became conscious of that sense of alarm which is always aroused by the sound of hurrying footsteps on the silence of the night. I stopped work and looked at my watch. It was after eleven. I listened, straining every nerve to hear above the tumult of my quickening pulse. I caught the murmur of voices, then the gallop of a horse, then of another and another. Now thoroughly alarmed, I woke my companion, and together we both listened. After a moment he put ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... and thine only. To live for thee shall satisfy both my heart and my ambition. If thou wilt be kind, no softer loveliness shall be desired by me. George Robinson has never been untrue to his vows, nor shalt thou, O my chosen one, find him so now. For thee will I labour, straining every nerve to satisfy thy wishes. Woman shall henceforward be to me a doll for the adornment of whose back it will be my business to sell costly ornaments. In no other light will I regard the loveliness of her ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... stuffed their mouths so full of peas that conversation was impossible and waited for the first victim. A low, heavily laden lumber wagon, drawn by straining horses, creaked down the street. They concentrated their fire upon the driver by tacit consent, for each of the marksmen had had an aversion to causing runaways drilled into him by the hair ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... They were all straining their eyes, but the distance was so great that they could only be sure that they were camel-men and ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faded, the first ghostly light came stealing from the east. The blood began to leap once more in his veins. Already it was almost light enough to shoot. Then his straining eyes saw Bill emerge ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... (names which I can never separate),—not indeed peculiar to these, for it is the same in the Psalms, Ezekiel, and throughout the Scriptures, but which I feel most in Paul and Luther, —there is one fearful blank, the wisdom or necessity of which I do not doubt, yet cannot help groping and straining after like one that stares in the dark; and this is Death. The law makes us afraid of death. What is death?—an unhappy life? Who does not feel the insufficiency of this answer? What analogy does immortal suffering bear to the only death which is ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sincere good will and much straining of eyes that the hunt started. It proved to be slow work. Every now and then some seeker came across what he thought might prove a clue, ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... characterization, but also a lowering of moral tone, which results largely from the closer identification of the drama with the Court party. There is a lack of seriousness of purpose, an increasing tendency to return, in more morbid spirit, to the sensationalism of the 1580's, and an anxious straining to attract and please the audiences by almost any means. These tendencies appear in the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, whose reputations are indissolubly linked together in one of the most ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... and tried to dance with another girl, and the dance music still went on. But she could not help straining her ears and trying to catch the subject of Rosamund's conversation. Why, she was absolutely laughing, and the Professor, who was generally so grave and quiet, was laughing also. ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... more he moved about, and clomb Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw, Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand, Or thought he saw, the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges, They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Egyptian race—upon keen-eyed travelers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day—upon all and more this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... heaving and straining and splitting and scattering and narrowing and broadening along the red, wet sands, and over and between the tangled tree-roots, and through and among the bushes, and in and out of the grass clumps; for even now the ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the words apparently, for her attitude changed. She parted her straining hands as though by great effort, and moved ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... This system, besides aiding the natural restlessness of the American character, gives rise to a good deal of spurious religion, and shortens the lives and impairs the usefulness of the ministers by straining ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... not laugh, but took his pipe from his mouth, and stood up a moment, straining his sight once more against the distant horizon, where the green-blue water of the wide estuary melted into the blue-green of the sky with hardly a line of demarcation. Then he sat down and took a dry tobacco leaf lying on a stool beside him and crushed ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... was on the phone. Her voice was excited; she was obviously straining to keep it at a low level. "I'm telling you, he's here! Right in our living room. And he insists I know somebody named Carolyn ... Yes, that's right. But do hurry ... Please. He's acting much ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... that now, senor. I think it will be of advantage to talk, for I am sure if I were to lie with my eyes straining, and thinking of nothing else, they would soon begin ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... last. Three violent blasts ripped over us like projectiles, and the "song of the dead men" was twanged upon the straining ropes. The Waif stopped for an instant, as if debating whether she would run or cower before the onslaught, then she dipped her nose into the mad lather that rose around her and plunged forward. That ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... be seen affecting horses that are in service, more often at heavy draft work where they are exposed to severe straining of joints; where stabling is insanitary; and where they are obliged to lie down (if they do not remain standing) upon cold and wet ground or upon hard ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... time the sea proved very beneficial to Kate's health, but the never-ending surprises and expectations she was exposed to finished by so straining and sharpening her nerves that the stupors, the assuagements of drink, became, as it were, a necessary make-weight. Her love for Dick pressed upon and agonized her; it was like a dagger whose steel was being slowly reddened in the flames of brandy, and in this subtilization of the brain ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... even too descriptive, too imitative of things, and seems to out-run the province of words, somewhat as that did the province of notes. But, though this hunting, and checking, and floating, and flying in metre may be to strain the arts of prosody and diction, with how masterly a hand is the straining accomplished! The spear, the arrow, the attack, the charge, the footfall, the pinion, nay, the very stepping of the moon, the walk of the wind, are mimicked in this enchanting verse. Like to programme-music we must call it, but I wish the concert-platform had ever justified this slight perversion ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... of physics and electronics, and entered the field of psychology. Instead of retiring, he applied for a beginner's status in his new profession. It had taken considerable bending and straining of the Commonwealth's rules—but for a man of Leoh's stature, the rules could be flexed somewhat. Leoh became a student once again, then a researcher, and finally a Professor ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... sprang to his side, and kneeling down, searched with straining eyes in the bleached and bony face, fringed with matted hair and long unkempt gray beard, for some trace of the full and ruddy countenance which she remembered. She would still have hesitated, but ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... through my mind. The sad loss of the gallant Lieutenant Gore and a whole boat's crew a short time before, about the same locality, was present to my thoughts. To add to the chances of our not finding the man, it was now growing rapidly dusk. As we reached the spot, every eye on board was straining through the gloom to discern the object of our search, but neither Miles nor the life-buoy were to be seen. Still, I could not bring myself to leave him to one of the most dreadful of fates. He was a good swimmer, and those who knew him ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the north with sleet on its back. Raw shuddering gusts whipped the sea till the ship lurched and men felt driven spindrift stinging their faces. Beyond the rail there was winter night, a moving blackness where the waves rushed and clamored; straining into the great dark, men sensed only the bitter salt of sea-scud, the nettle of sleet ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... are straining every nerve to employ enormous masses of men from the first moment of hostilities, in order thus to gain an advantage whilst their enemy is still concentrating, and when we further consider how these exertions must increase the strain throughout ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson." Certainly the last two sentences could be united into a compound sentence, nor would it be straining the structure to put all three sentences into one. This example is not exceptional. Many similar cases may be found in all prose writers; and in Macaulay's writings there are certainly occasions when it would be better to unite independent ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... had managed to accompany them thus far, and now, as the great ship is slowly leaving the wharf, and Mrs. Douglas, Malcom, Margery, Barbara, and Bettina are clustered together on her deck, waving again and again their good-bys, and straining their eyes still to recognize the dear familiar form and face among the crowd that presses forward on the receding pier, we will take time for a full introduction of the chief personages of ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... Christine asked. There was a touch of vexation in her voice; her eyes were straining through ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... noises; shouts; men and boys running down steep places towards the pier: all more bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces; got alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us along the gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship - and leaped upon ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... to the window and leant his arms unseeingly on the high narrow sill that looked out over the neighbouring housetops, straining to hear the faintest sound from the inner room. It seemed to him that he must have waited hours when at last the door opened and shut quietly and the American came leisurely toward him. He faced him with swift unspoken inquiry. The doctor nodded, moving ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Harris sat straining his ears to catch every word, and Akkomi's assumption of bland ignorance brought a rather sardonic smile to his face, while his lips moved in voiceless mutterings of anger. Impatience was clearly to be read in his face as he waited for Overton to question further, and his ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed. He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar. Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down and take them. Directly the same hands let down the filled pail ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... four when he had slipped noiselessly up to the front of the store on his soft-soled slippers, led by a newly formed habit, of which, to be fair, he was rather ashamed, of spying upon the young man clerk, he looked casually out of the front window, straining his faded eyesight to reach the street. A limousine, large, portentous, impressive, had drawn to the curb, and the chauffeur, after dismounting and holding some sort of conversation with persons in the interior ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... first-hand knowledge of his subject, a student were to read the "Works of Margaret Fuller":—"Life Within and Without," "At Home and Abroad," "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," "Art, Literature, and Drama,"—he would be prepared to find eccentricities of style, straining for effect, mystical utterances, attempts at profundity, and stilted commonplace. He would, however, find nothing of this sort, or of any sort of make believe, but simply a writer always in earnest, always convinced, with a fair English style, perfectly intelligible, intent ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... business scheme?" he asked, in a preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look me over. "You are dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... in St. Paul's, yet left without bread his surviving 'housekeepers' and natural children—of the tenderness of heart which permitted that his father, moved from the shop, should play a servant's part in the gallery in Queen Anne Street, straining canvases, varnishing pictures, and showing in visitors, with a suspicion that he cooked the dinner even if he did not take the shillings at the door. 'Look'ee here,' said the poor old man, who, it is right to state, saw no humiliation in acting lackey to his prosperous ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... tell; that the Champion would be taken, she did not believe possible. But, alas! many of those on board might be killed or wounded; several days might pass before the Champion could come into Cork harbour. With straining eyes she gazed towards the two ships gradually become less and ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the dogs repeated the growl, and then I could hear the clicking of a pair of sabots on the road. The noise approached, and my guardians looked towards me, every muscle in their bodies straining, waiting for the ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... wings of the Confederates. The opportunity was still supremely favorable for McClellan, but prompt decision was not easy for him. Nothing but reconnoitring was done on Monday afternoon or on Tuesday, whilst Lee was straining every nerve to concentrate his forces and to correct what would have proven a fatal blunder in scattering them, had his opponent acted with vigor. The strongest defence the eulogists of the Confederate general ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... other, a lack of profitable works outside to meet expenses; need you longer wonder if the field-works create a deficit and not a surplus? In proof, however, that the man who can give the requisite heed, while straining every nerve in the pursuit of agriculture, has speedy [30] and effective means of making money, I may cite the instance of my father, who had practised ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... rising and sinking, swaying from side to side, a slender figure poised in the swinging bucket, steadied by a white hand that grasped the rim of steel. She turned from the window resolved to see no more. Her resolution fled. She was again at the window with upturned face and straining eyes, white lips whispering prayers that God might be good to the girl who was risking her life for another. The slender threads even then had vanished. There was only a fleck of black floating high above the rambling town, above the rocks mercilessly waiting ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... say stories, at heart with frenzied fantasy burning, Pour'd she, a deep-wrung breast, clear-ringing cries of oppression; 125 Sometimes mournfully clomb to the mountain's rugged ascension, Straining thence her vision across wide surges of ocean; Now to the brine ran forth, upsplashing freshly to meet her, Lifting raiment fine her thighs which softly did open; Last, when sorrow had end, these words thus spake she lamenting, 130 While from a mouth ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... breathed from the wide scene; from its mere depth below her; from the spacious curve of the river, the mountains half shown, half hidden, the great race of the clouds, the fresh beating of the wind. The north spoke to her and the mountains. It was like the rush of something passionate and straining through her girlish sense, intensifying all that was already there. What was this thirst, this yearning, this physical anguish of pity that crept back upon her in all the pauses of the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all that, and above all the happy consciousness of his own health, strength and freedom from care. His lungs, straining his tight-fitting fur coat, inhaled the frosty air; the trees, grazed by the shaft, sent showers of white flakes into his face; his body was warm, his face ruddy; his soul was without a care or blemish, or fear or desire. How happy he was! But now? ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... days Duallach went hither and thither trying to raise a bodyguard, and every man he met had some story of Costello, how he killed the wrestler when but a boy by so straining at the belt that went about them both that he broke the big wrestler's back; how when somewhat older he dragged fierce horses through a ford in the Unchion for a wager; how when he came to manhood he broke the steel horseshoe ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... hands John Aldous set to work. Five minutes and he knew that it was madness to continue. Hands alone could not clear the tunnel. And yet he worked, tearing into the rock and shale like an animal; rolling back small boulders, straining at larger ones until the tendons of his arms seemed ready to snap and his veins to burst. For a few minutes after that he went mad. His muscles cracked, he panted as he fought with the rock until his hands were torn and bleeding, and over ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... ideas of this. There is a violence, an impossibility about men who have ideas, which makes one suspect that they could never be the type of any widespread life. Society could not be conformed to their image but by an unlovely straining from its true order. Well, in this nature the idea appears softened, harmonised as by distance, with an engaging naturalness, without the noise of ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... ability as a "carpet-duster," [Footnote: See Aurora Leigh.] as Mrs. Browning calls the agitator, he is merely unsettling society,—for what end? He himself will soon have forgotten—will have become as salt that has lost its savor. Nothing is more disheartening than to see men straining every nerve to make other men righteous, who have themselves not the faintest appreciation of the beauty of holiness. Let reformers beware how they assert the poet's uselessness, our singers say, for it is an indication that they themselves are blind to the light ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... necessary; the Duke of Newcastle particularly would do anything. These were the men who were so squeamish that they could not be brought to support amendments even, unless they were permitted to turn the schedules upside-down, straining at gnats out of office and swallowing camels in. It is remarkable that after the sacrifice Wharncliffe made to re-ingratiate himself with the Tories, incurring the detestation and abuse of the Whigs, and their reproach of bad faith, the former have utterly neglected him, taking no notice of him ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... steps, and in another moment had gained the farther side of the cellar; then, skirting around the ruck of cases, he stooped suddenly and passed in through the opening in the wall. And now he halted once more. He was straining his eyes down a long, narrow passage, whose blackness was accentuated rather than relieved by curious wavering, gossamer threads of yellow light that showed here and there from under makeshift thresholds, from ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... been relied upon in vain, and Parma's seven months of patient labour had been annihilated in a moment. Sainte Aldegonde and Gianibelli stood in the 'Boors' Sconce' on the edge of the river. They had felt and heard the explosion, and they were now straining their eyes through the darkness to mark the flight ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... collection. The prompt answer of Peter may indicate that he knew that in other years Jesus had paid this tax, as it is altogether probable that he did. The question, however, implies official suspicion that Jesus was seeking to evade payment, and exhibits further the straining of the relations between him and the Jewish leaders. The conversation of Jesus with Peter served to show his clear consciousness of superiority, and was a further summons to the disciples to choose between ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... moment the horses received the signal to start, the danger of the enterprise was apparent. Both animals immediately reared, straining in opposite directions at the reins, and it was certainly more than a minute before Mansana could steer them through ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... it increased. In the twilight and the darkness that followed it assumed new aspects of the weird and uncanny. Despite the torches that flared up, the darkness was mainly in control. Now the dancers, whirling about the pole and straining on the cords, were seen plainly, and now they were only shadows, ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... I tell? It might come to that, at last; and yet—" She ceased, and there came over her face a strange, dead look at the sea before her—a straining gaze, as though she would fix her eyes far beyond, in another hemisphere, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... found a youth of about thirteen straining his eyes in the fading light over one of those halfpenny humorous journals which, thanks to an improved system of education, at least eighty per cent. of our juvenile population are now ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... common with scores of others, were straining forward to watch every detail of the task. They wanted to see whether the locomotive would take to the rails, or slip off the inclined irons, and again settle down ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... gazed down on the viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes's street Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight upward from Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold hunter watch ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... for us, and that we would take two or three days to do the trip, but that the ox-waggons would be at least seven, which was death to our romantic dream of toiling laboriously up almost inaccessible mountains at the head of straining ox-carts, sleeping by the roadside, brigands, ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... and paced the floor with nervous, uneven strides. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the letter again. He re-read it, with hot eyes and straining thought. Every word seemed to sear itself upon his poor brain, and drive him to the verge of distraction. Why? Why? And he raised his bloodshot eyes to the roof of his hut, and crushed the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... suppose. No—only her uncle? Well, I'll be her uncle now," and so saying he led the way to the deck. Loring saw the lively party come surging forth from the companionway—senoras, senoritas, gray-haired men and gay young gallants. There was a moment of clasping, clinging embraces, of straining arms and lingering kisses, of crowdings and murmurings here and there, some little sobbing and many tear-wet eyes as the father was finally hurried down the ladder, and then there was further delay and shouts for Escalante, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... claim in the most peremptory terms the performance of this engagement. It would be very offensive to his Majesty that a request made so repeatedly on his part should be neglected; but it is infinitely more so to see that, when this country is straining every nerve for the common cause, a body of troops for the want of which Toulon may possibly at this moment be lost, have remained inactive at Milan. You will admit of no further excuses." Grenville ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... No straining is needed in order to fit this great prophetic picture of the world-Conqueror to Jesus. Even that, at first sight incongruous, picture of a victor leading long lines of captives, such as we see on Assyrian slabs and Egyptian paintings, is historically true of Him who 'leads ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... scars; When I stood up for age-long wars And held the very Fiend at grips; When all my mutinous body rose To range itself beside my foes, And, like a greyhound in the slips, The Beast that dwells within me roared, Lunging and straining at his cord.... For all the blusterings of Hell, It was not then I slipped and fell; For all the storm, for all the hate, I kept my ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Straining his eyes, as he partly lifted his head, Paul believed he could just make out a shadowy form stretched upon the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... in that canvas-crowd for one of those devoted men who, ill-paid, half-starved, and overwrought, toil night and day in that most awful work on this earth, the attempt to rescue and raise the lapsed masses of our large populations? Was there no room for the man who penalizes body and soul to straining-point for words and thoughts that shall inspire and hearten men to steer their lives by the higher stars, those eternal principles of truth and right? Was there no room for a woman of the Salvation Army who is out of some hideous slum for a moment's breathing, before ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... eagerness, too, as one who looks for a new meaning in an old friend's face. Something of his zest was communicated to me, and stilled the shuddering thrill that had seized me. The protecting land was still a comforting neighbour; but our severance with it came quickly. The tide whirled us down, and our straining canvas aiding it, we were soon off Cuxhaven, which crouched so low behind its mighty dyke, that of some of its houses only the chimneys were visible. Then, a mile or so on, the shore sharpened to a point like a claw, where the innocent dyke became a long, low fort, with some ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... any one," remarked Nort, straining his eyes to pierce the gloom and shadows into which the face of the tunnel and the locked gate were thrown ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... should be able to stand the racking of half a dozen cyclones, m' lord, without straining a bottom plate. No; it's far more probable she shook off her screw, or something went wrong with the steering gear or in the engine room. I've recharted her probable course and that of the cyclone. It was as well for us to begin our search at the Zambezi, as I told your ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... to shelve the IMF program, stop most debt payments, and suspend rescheduling negotiations. Aid from Gulf Arab states, worker remittances, and trade contracted; and refugees flooded the country, producing serious balance-of-payments problems, stunting GDP growth, and straining government resources. The economy rebounded in 1992, largely due to the influx of capital repatriated by workers returning from the Gulf, but the recovery was uneven in 1994-96. The government is implementing the reform program adopted in 1992 and continues to secure rescheduling and write-offs ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... certain they were now close on the discovery of what they sought, and on the other hand (with the return of darkness) infected with the fear of Indians. Mountain was the first sentry; he declares he neither slept nor yet sat down, but kept his watch with a perpetual and straining vigilance, and it was even with unconcern that (when he saw by the stars his time was up) he drew near the fire to awaken his successor. This man (it was Hicks the shoemaker) slept on the lee side of the circle, something farther ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flap vigorously as gusts of wind tear through the camp, carrying clouds of sand across the island. Through the darkness comes the sound of the lashing of the date palms and the tamarisks as they swing to the gale. Within a straining, war-worn tent, lit by a flickering candle, stuck in a grease-streaked bottle, sit several mounted men of the old Brigade, their faces brown and weather-beaten from long campaigning in the Sinai Desert and amid Palestine hills. The gear and stuff scattered ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... business, if not anxiety, in it. Fleda instinctively held her breath to listen. Presently she heard Watkins reply; but they were round the corner, she could not easily make out what they said. It was only by straining her ears ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... against the varying fortunes of political warfare, but against the irreversible decrees of Fate. It is the old story of the Rutulian hero; and now, in the very crisis and agony of the battle, while the Cotton King is summoning all his resources and straining every nerve to cope successfully with its more apparent, but less formidable adversary, in the noisy struggle for temporary power, if it would listen for a moment to the voice of reason, and observe the still working of the laws of our being, it, too, might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... on all right. Keohane is the only weak spot, and he only, I think, because temporarily blind. But Evans' party didn't get up till 10. They started quite well, but got into difficulties, did just the wrong thing by straining again and again, and so, tiring themselves, went from bad to worse. Their ski shoes, too, are out ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... dismissed for taking part in a strike. The shop was frequented by syndicalists. There were five or six of them who used to sit in a room at the back, looking on to an inclosed courtyard, narrow and ill-lit, from which there arose the never-ceasing desperate song of two caged canaries straining after the light. Joussier used to come with his mistress, the fair Berthe, a large coquettish young woman, with a pale face, and a purple cap, and merry, wandering eyes. She had under her thumb a good-looking boy, Leopold Graillot, a journeyman ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... to the breaking strain, there was no man on board who even dreamt of surrender; all the guns were charged to the muzzle with bullets and broken stone, the artillerists match in hand stood grimly awaiting the order to fire, straining their eyes and their ears in the gathering darkness; in a few minutes at most they knew that the fate of the Galleon of Venice must ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... fleeting glimpse of sun-lit spires of mountains, shadowed valleys, and mysterious crevasses from which clouds of steam and yellow vapor curled. Still it seemed they must crash against one of those slender pinnacles. Nearer it came like a flash; a dizzying blur, now, that drove directly in their straining faces. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... Greek papyri in a kindergarten. Thus have we grown avaricious and vulgar and in their weariness of things as they are, have our women grown base. They know that their lives miss something, they know that their fierce rivalry and feverish straining for precedence bring them no nearer the Mecca that closes its austere gates to their aching eyes. And for the dignity and pride their lives have lacked, they give their fortunes and sell their bodies and exchange, for a title, the name of which they have grown ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... closed in mass by regiments, the 61st on the left. The waiting for a battle to open is always a trying time for troops. When a movement, or action, is under way the dread leaves. So now, while we were standing with arms in hand watching for the first sign, and straining to catch the first sound we were ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... a cabin, and over this there rose a slender staff from which floated the black and white pennant of St. Pierre. The raft was alive. Men were running between the tents. The long rudder sweeps were flashing in the sun. Rowers with naked arms and shoulders were straining their muscles in four York boats that were pulling like ants at the giant mass of timber. And to David's ears came a deep monotone of human voices, the chanting of the men ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... animal milk cheese, but a vegetable one, made by boiling and straining the pulp of the cactuslike prickly pear fruit to cheeselike consistency. It is chocolate-color and sharp, piquantly pleasant when hard and dry. It is sometimes enriched with nuts, spices and/or flowers. It will keep for a very long time and has been a dessert or confection ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... up a position a few hundred yards from the trail and followed its course, straining her eyes to see before and behind her, husbanding her strength with frequent rests, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... that would mighty near wake a dead man. If there's anybody alive around that camp they sure heard me this time," he thought, as he looked and listened with straining eyes and ears. But there was no movement about the fire, and another whinny was the only sound that came from its direction. "Mighty queer!" was his inward comment, as his hand sought the revolver ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... charge is measured by the units of quantity, such as the coulomb. The charge that a conductor can retain at a given rise of potential gives its capacity, expressible in units of capacity, such as the farad. A charge implies the stretching or straining between the surface of the charged body, and some complimentary charged surface or surfaces, near or far, of large or small area, of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... seemed to have fallen upon them. The trees all around them rocked in the wind; they heard the branches creak; and they heard the hissing of the leaves. They were in the midst of a hurricane. And they felt the earth sway as it resisted the straining roots of great trees, which seemed to be dragged up by the force of the furious gale. Whistling and roaring, the wind stormed all about them, and the doctor, raising his voice, tried in vain to command it. But the strangest thing of all was that, where they stood, there was ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... simply knocked the pins from under them. It took 'em quite a while to come back with inquiries about the name off the yacht, Varney's air of mystery and all that line of slush. My response was vigorous, yet gentlemanly, straining the truth for all she'd stand, and even bu'sting her open here and there, I gravely fear. However, it was a clincher. It crimped them right. Not a peep have we had from ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... something else, the sand does not. These agents liberate a force in the germ that is not in the grain of sand. The warmth of the brooding fowl does not spend itself upon mere passive, inert matter (unless there is a china egg in the nest), but upon matter straining upon its leash, and in a state of expectancy. We do not know how the activity of the molecules of the egg differs from the activity of the molecules of the pebble, under the influence of warmth, but we know there must be a difference between the interior movements ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... to the Elysee Montmartre, and Alphonsine lent her a couple of louis, pour passer sa soiree, and we all went away in carriages, the little horses straining up the steep streets; the plumes of the women's hats floating over the carriage hoods. Marie was in one of the front carriages, and was waiting for us on the high steps leading from ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... was so dark that it was only by glancing up at the tops of the bordering trees, outlined against the sky, that the driver of the car was able to keep well in the middle of it. She was straining her eyes, peering into the ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... wind pinned her skirts to her slender body as she leaned against the gale, gripping her hat tightly with one hand and straining under the weight of the bag in the other. The ends of a veil whipped furiously about her head, and, even in the gathering darkness, he could see a strand or two of ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the tide having risen, the ship was once more perfectly upright. The capstan palls were shipped, away we tramped round and round, straining every nerve. In vain we hove, the cable was strained to its utmost, but not an inch did we move. I saw the captain and his mates making long faces as if they thought that the ship was irretrievably lost. Uncle Jack cheered on the men. Already all the water had been started, ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... passing round her body, and employed in toying with her enchanting breasts. As soon too as she felt him at home as he could reach, she lifted her head a little from the pillow, and turning her neck, without much straining, but her cheeks glowing with the deepest scarlet, and a smile of the tenderest satisfaction, met the kiss he pressed forward to give her as they were thus close joined together: when leaving him to pursue his delights, she hid ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... With straining eyes they watched the strange, stealthy approach of the mysterious object. Every now and then it would totally disappear from sight and then, a moment or two afterwards, could again be dimly seen, crouching along beside some big rock or emerging behind the thick branches ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... ran in all haste to the door to get into the house again, shrieking out in a most terrible manner. Whereupon this deponent made haste to come to her; but before she could get to her the child fell into her swooning fit, and at last, with much pain and straining herself, she vomited up a twopenny nail with a broad head; and being demanded by this deponent how she came by this nail, she answered that the bee brought this nail and forced it into her mouth. And ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... keys. Behind, sullen and dejected, followed a band of Hudson's Bay men. Grant stepped up to meet the sheriff. The terms of capitulation were again stated, and there was some signing of paper. Of those things my recollection is indistinct; for I was straining my eyes towards the groups of settlers inside the walls. When I looked back to the conferring leaders the silence was so intense a pinfall could have been heard. The keys of the fort were being handed to the Nor'-Westers ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... my uncle, when he informed me of the result of the family council held on my case, "as I'm only a poor man, I'm straining a point and crippling my means in order to send you to school; but I am doing it so that you may be educated to earn your own living, which you'll have to do as soon as the three years expire for which I have contracted with Dr Hellyer; ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the movement was done, the boat was some twelve yards below the rock as she came round with her nose just in the lower edge of the eddy behind it, while from either side the current closed in on her. Straining every nerve the three paddlers worked as for life. At first Tom thought that the glancing waters would sweep her down, but inch by inch they gained, and drove the boat forward from the grasp of the current into the back eddy, ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... flashed into his mind that set every nerve tingling. As though the old desk exerted some strange and subtle fascination, he drew near it; slowly, hesitatingly, almost on tiptoe, yet steadily. His heart beat like a trip-hammer, and his ears were straining to catch the slightest sound of any one's approach. The house was wonderfully quiet. He seemed to be quite alone in it; and presently he found himself close beside the desk. Although open, the inner lids were still shut, and ere Bert put out his hand to lift the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... laborious preparation which this science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than the astronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... about a minstrel to hear his story fell hearkening also round about the silenced and hearkening tale-teller: some of the dancers and singers noted them and in their turn stayed the dance and kept silence to hearken; and so from group to group spread the change, till all were straining their ears to hearken the tidings. Already the men of the night-shift had heard it, and the shepherds of them had turned about, and were trotting smartly back through the lanes of the tall wheat: but the horse-herds were now scarce seen on the darkening ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... letter together in the darkened room, that was more than the words seemed to say. There was an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in my father's letters before. I cannot tell how I knew it. I felt a stirring, a straining in my father's letter. It was there, even though my mother stumbled over strange words, even though she cried, as women will when somebody is going away. My father was inspired by a vision. He saw something—he promised us something. It was this "America." And "America" became ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... find either my love for my friends or my love of literature in the least failing. I enjoyed even when flattest in my bed hearing Harriet Butler reading to me till eleven o'clock at night. Sir Henry Marsh prescribed some book that would entertain and interest me without straining my attention or over-exciting me, and Harriet chose Madame de Sevigne's Letters, which perfectly answered all the conditions, and was as delightful at the twentieth reading as at the first. Such lively pictures of the times and modes of living in country, town, and court, so interesting ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... father had received the pardon we have spoken of. And there she had been watching the Mier Expedition through every step of its progress, eagerly collecting every scrap of information relating to it published in the Mexican papers; with anxious heart, straining her ears over the lists of killed and wounded. And when at length the account came of the shootings at El Salado, apprehensively as ever scanned she that death-roll of nigh twenty names—the decimated; not breathing freely until she had ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to time a sporty-looking man standing beside a ticker, shouted the odds and read off the returns. Felix heard with straining ears: ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... running waters of the other side of the pool; and the next second there was a slight wave along the surface, a dexterous jerk with the butt, and presently the line was whirled out into the middle of the pool, running rapidly off the reel from the straining rod. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the thickly gathering dusk, Caroline Holland and Sarah Spencer were at the dairy, straining the milk into creamers, for which Christopher was sullenly pumping water. The house was far from the road, up to which a long red lane led; across the field was the old Holland homestead where Caroline lived; her unmarried sister-in-law, Electa Holland, kept ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ravens, crows, bats, buzzards and every species of owl. They believe that swallowing gnats, flies and the like, always breed sickness. To this that divine sarcasm alludes 'swallowing a camel and straining at a gnat.'" Their purifications for their Priests, and for having touched a dead body or other unclean thing, according to Mr. Adair, are quite Levitical. He acknowledges however, that they have no traces of circumcision; but he supposes ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... a well-regulated library should be unprovided with book-supports, in order to prevent the volumes from sagging and straining by falling against one another, in a long row of books. Numerous different devices are in the market for this purpose, from the solid brick to the light sheet-iron support; but it is important to protect the end of every row from strain on the bindings, and the cost of book ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... began to feel a vague uneasiness which increased as the sun set and night began to fall. Walter, who alone knew the real object of the captain's trip, was greatly worried. Long after the others had retired to the wigwam for the night, he sat alone straining eye and ear for sight or sound that would herald the absent one's return. As the night wore away, anxiety deepened into certainty with the troubled lad. Something must have happened to the captain. Impatiently the lad waited for daylight, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... no creature of flesh and blood was this that clung to him, but some mysterious bodiless horror of the Supernatural, unguessed at by the outer world of men! The dews of death stood thick on his forehead; there was a straining agony at his heart, and his breath came in quick convulsive gasps; but worse than his physical torture was the overwhelming and convincing truth of the actual existence of the Spiritual Universe, now so suddenly ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... of 40 feet, as represented in Fig 2, Pl. I. Now instead of running the braces from A C until they meet in a point, as before we stop them at a, and c, and place the straining beam, a c, between them to prevent those points from approaching, suspend the points B and D from them, and start the braces B b and D b—and, if the truss were longer, would continue on in the same manner as far as needful. To prevent the. truss from altering its form, ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... had the power to speak or to resist come back to her, so instant and terrible was her surprise. But at the first touch of his lips upon her cheek the very despair brought back to her tenfold her own strength. She pushed against him with her hands, straining him from her by the rigid tension of her arms, setting her face far from his, but she was still unable to break the clasp of his arms ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... been so great, and which had stood so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... visit paid to the five captives, among whom was a female with a yearling about the size of a half-grown calf. The tame elephants went straight to the captives straining at the ropes, and bound their fore-feet tightly together. This was not done without furious resistance on the part of the betrayed beasts; but this resistance was overcome in a most brutal way by strokes of the trunk and by bites. Thereupon the merciless captors busied themselves removing from within ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... regiment, and was not above fishing for compliments upon it: I therefore dutifully did what was manifestly expected of me, and immensely gratified His Majesty by being as complimentary as I possibly could be without unduly straining the truth. But when all was said and done I had a very shrewd suspicion that while Moshesh might perhaps be credited with a genuine desire to show me some honour by inviting me to witness the review of his troops, he was principally animated by a ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... ceased, and without moving from her crouching position she listened with straining ears to the sounds that reached her from the stable. In a moment the clatter of horses' hoofs going at a furious pace swept by, then a dead silence fell. The intense quiet seemed to rouse her, and going ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... take a quart of skimmed milk, pour into it one ounce of sulphuric acid, and, when cold, add four ounces of hydrochloric acid, shaking the bottle gently until it ceases to emit white vapors; separate the coagulated from the liquid part, by straining through a sieve, and store it away till required. Clean the leather with a weak solution of oxalic acid, washing it off immediately, and when dry apply ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... force of its own natural expansion, would either shatter the band or allow it to cut deep into its own stem. The growing consciousness of Humanity has long been encircled by a rigid and inadequate conception of God. The gradual secularisation of the West means that the soul of man is straining that particular conception of God to breaking-point: and it is infinitely better that it should be broken to pieces than that its iron should be allowed to sink deep into ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... violently thrown. A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A uniform pushing through. A crowbar and the hard breathing of men straining to lift. A sob in the dark. Stand ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay—just released—congratulating him ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... was no room to wheel. One desperate practibility alone remained. Turning his horse's head towards the edge, he compelled him, by means of the powerful bit, to rear till he stood almost erect; and so, his body swaying over the gulf, with quivering and straining muscles, to turn on his hind legs. Having completed the half-circle, he let him drop, and urged him furiously in the opposite direction. It must have been by the devil's own care that he was able to continue his gallop along that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... departure Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, ever thoughtful for the welfare of others, arranged with the Military authorities to give a change of scene to six members of the Clyde Workers' Committee, who have been recently over-straining their vocal chords. This was the impression I got from Dr. ADDISON, who, like his great namesake, is a master of the bland style; but Sir EDWARD CARSON thrust aside official euphemism and bluntly inquired whether these men were not in fact assisting the KING'S enemies, and ought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... the paper walls were extended to their uttermost size, the wondering spectators saw a huge ball of some one hundred and ten feet in circumference, swaying uneasily to and fro with every breath of air, as though straining at its fetters. At last came the word. The ropes were released, and the great body rose rapidly into the air, followed by a thunder of applause. With straining eyes the crowd followed that wondrous flight. Higher and higher, nearer ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... pain here," said Chester, with a sad smile, pressing one hand upon his breast. "It seems, Mary, as if an iron girdle were about me, straining tighter and tighter. Sometimes it troubles me to ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... could say no more. His arms went round her, straining her to him. His face was close to hers. But his eyes were the eyes of ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... absolute silence, Murphy leading, every nerve on edge, straining eye and ear for a sign of the enemy's scouts, now doubtless swarming forward and to ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... lips; then snatching off his bonnet, hid it there, and bent among the shrubbery and was gone, as swiftly and silently as a wolf. Frances flew to the house and up the stairs to her room. There she threw up the window and sat panting in it, straining, listening, for sounds from the ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... or chair. The standing position assists in the birth. The bladder should be emptied frequently, as a distended bladder retards labor and may even stop the womb contractions. The pains become more frequent and severe as the end of this stage approaches and each contraction is now accompanied by straining or a bearing down effort on the part of the woman, and as a rule the membranes rupture spontaneously about this time. An examination of the vagina should now be made with the woman in bed, and if the membranes have not broken and the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... of home, the tired coachman letting it go almost at its own pleasure, the broad moonlight fields, with their dark fringes of hedge, spinning past. Then the village went past him, with all its sleeping houses, the church standing up like a protecting shadow. He looked out again at this, straining his eyes to see the dark spot where his father was lying, the first night in the bosom of the earth: and this thought brought him back for a moment to himself. But the next, as the carriage glided on into the shadow of the trees, and the overgrown copses of the Warren received him into their shadow, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... find yourself riding for dear life—perhaps to escape, perhaps after the Germans. You then realize that you have been whipped and that the charge has failed, or you see the backs of the fleeing enemy, feel your horse straining in pursuit and know that you ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... again, raising her from the floor, and straining her to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana. "Answer ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... canoeman snorted. He would like to see any of them catch him. They were straining after him, and half a dozen canoes shot down that glassy slide which ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... still carries its point against counterpoint. "How could he who improves us, help being better than we?" man has ever thought thus. Let us therefore improve mankind!—in this way we shall become good (in this way we shall even become "classics"—Schiller became a "classic"). The straining after the base excitement of the senses, after so-called beauty, shattered the nerves of the Italians: let us remain German! Even Mozart's relation to music—Wagner spoke this word of comfort to us—was ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... him!" cried Ned, for he saw that his chum had rushed to the rear of the auto, and was endeavoring to drag one of the powder boxes across the lowered tail-board. Tom was straining and tugging at it, but did not seem able to move the case. It was heavy, as Ned learned later, and was also held down by the weight of other express packages on ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... followed, I saw that Mr. Royce was studying him, too, was straining to find a ray of light for guidance. ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... well have laid down and gone to sleep on that pinnacle for all the good my waiting and eye-straining did me. One hour slipped by and then another, and still I did not abandon hope of their appearance. Naturally, I argued with myself, they would turn back when I failed to overtake them—especially if they had thoughtlessly followed some depression in the prairie where I could not easily see them. ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and gentlemen)—the great audience craned forward like one man, straining eyes and ears towards the speaker,—Kun granda plezuro mi akceptis la proponon... The crowd drank in the words with an almost pathetic agony of anxiety. Gradually, as the clear-cut sentences poured ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Gardner out, and she was squirting death out of her five barrels into the flank of the rushing stream of savages. "Oh, this bloody gun!" shouted a voice. "She's jammed again." The fierce metallic grunting had ceased, and her crew were straining and hauling at ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... exclaimed Marillac, as he looked at his watch a second time; "I should like to know what this little miniature rose takes me for? It was hardly worth the trouble of over-straining this poor horse, who looks as wet as if he had come out of the river. It is enough to give him inflammation of the lungs. If Bergenheim were to see him sweating and panting like this in this bleak wind, he would give me a sound blowing-up. Upon my word, it is becoming comical! There are no more young ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... out on the starboard, that is the southward, rail of the spar-deck, and Michael, straining his eyes to the utmost, saw him take a round flat object from under his coat, and then look round stealthily to see if he was observed. As he did so Michael whipped a pistol out of his pocket, levelled it at the man, and said ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... of things upon their names.... His understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction. Till his Fall, he was ignorant of nothing but sin.... There was then no struggling with memory, no straining for invention. His faculties were ready upon the first summons.... We may collect the excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious remainders of it now: and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins.... ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... thousand eager watchers in the Square when he arrived. The afternoon paper had evidently been digested well. Each watcher was straining his eyes at the brownstone mansion on Fayette street. From the windows of several Carey-street houses curious persons leaned out, and even on the west, at the Franklin-Square Hospital, there were ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... in a Straight Line through Forests.—Every man who has had frequent occasion to find his way from one place to another in a forest, can do so without straining his attention. Thus, in the account of Lord Milton's travels, we read of some North American Indians who were incapable of understanding the white man's difficulty in keeping a straight line; but no man who has not had practice can walk through trees in a ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... all were either conquerors or subdued except Gall and Roman Nose. The pair seemed equally matched. Both were stripped to the breech clout, now tugging like two young buffalo or elk in mating time, again writhing and twisting like serpents. At times they fought like two wild stallions, straining every muscle of arms, legs, and back in the struggle. Every now and then one was lifted off his feet for a moment, but came down planted like a tree, and after swaying to and ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... now into a hundred furrows, shattered and shell-swept, and blasted in a thousand places into deep pits and craters—watched first as those small advance-parties, sent by the enemy to reconnoitre the situation, were shot down or driven back to shelter; and watched now with straining eyes and with many an exclamation as a horde of grey-coated infantry debouched from the evergreen woods encircling the eastern and northern slopes of the approaches to their position, and, forming up there, advanced steadily to attack them. They were still ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves. He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... reach the battle area, but through all the fighting after they had closed with the enemy. The carefully worked-out plans for directing everything from the shelter of the conning tower were thrown aside without a thought. So there we see them, grouped in the most exposed positions on their ships, straining their eyes through the haze for the first glimpse of friend or foe, and urging those below, at the fires and the throttle, to squeeze out every fraction of a knot that boilers and turbines could be ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... and straining to look in at the windows, and rattling the doors which had been hurriedly locked by the keepers who had rushed to ascertain the cause of the tumult, whilst the tiger made the place resound with its terrific roars as it hurled its huge weight ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... the matter in German. Bulba, in spite of his straining ears, could make nothing of it; he only caught ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... upon the workmen that one of the primary secrets of successful enamelling is absolute cleanliness; consequently all precautions must be taken to ensure that the enamel is perfectly free from grit and dust, and it must be so kept by frequent straining through fine muslin, flannel, or similar material. The work having been thoroughly cleaned and freed from all grease and other foreign matter, it must be suspended or held immediately over the pan elsewhere referred to, and the enamel poured on with an ordinary ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... six new settlements that have been called into existence, two, Bowen and Townsville, have been incorporated, and are now, together with Mackay, straining in the race to secure the trade of the western interior. Cardwell has experienced a check, in consequence of an undue haste in the adoption of a line of road over its Coast Range, which is too difficult to be generally adopted, and ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... therefore, frequent use of this retirement, therein to refresh your virtue. And to this end be always provided with a few short, uncontested notions, to keep your understanding true. Do not forget to retire to this solitude of yours; let there be no straining or struggling in the matter, but ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... straining topmasts, Hanging tangled in the shrouds. And her sails were loosened and lifted, And blown ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... broken ground. It was Stapleton with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Henry suddenly drew Miss Stapleton to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Stapleton was the cause of the interruption. He was running ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... regenerate one, in very ancient times called the Brahma-kalpa, the high-souled Rishis of the regenerate order, when they assembled together, felt this very doubt about the creation of the universe. Re-straining speech, they remained immovable, engaged in (ascetic) contemplation. Having given up all food, they subsisted upon air alone, and remained thus for a thousand celestial years. At the end of that period, certain words as sacred as those of the Vedas simultaneously reached the ears of all. Indeed, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... patriotism, and civilization are on their knees before the men of the South, and with clasped hands and straining eyes are begging them to become ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... current setting westward like a mighty river. Furthermore, a small boat, by the wind and bucking into a big headsea, does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets nowhere. Her sails are full and straining, every little while she presses her lee-rail under, she flounders, and bumps, and splashes, and that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs ker- chug into a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill. So, with the Snark, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... that his name had been mentioned aloud at that time; he recalled the fact that Goron, in rising to shake hands with him, had called him by name plainly enough. It was evident that she also remembered that much of the facts, and was now straining every energy she possessed to recall what ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... I must marry him. I controlled myself. I smiled; I waited. I wished him to go on, but he was peering into my straining ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... apples. Not many now remained; she had evidently sold them nearly all. Across her shoulder she carried a sack full of shavings. She must have picked them up near some new building, and was taking them home with her. It was plain that the sack was straining her shoulder. She wanted to shift it on to the other shoulder, so she rested the sack on the pavement, placed the apple-basket on a small post, and set about shaking down the shavings in the sack. Now while she was shaking down the sack, an urchin in a ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the Etruscans, whose ranks were crowded in a narrow space. Then, having abandoned the plan of fighting, which they had directed with equal effort in every quarter, they all turned their forces toward one point; straining every effort in that direction, both with their arms and bodies, and forming themselves into a wedge, they forced a passage. The way led to a gradually ascending hill: here they first halted: presently, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... to him Gilbert a Beckett is prone upon his face, leaving his barrister's wig upon the "block-head." Jerrold, as a wasp, is gazing ruefully at the baton which has dropped from Punch's feeble hands; and Mark Lemon, dressed as a pot-boy, is straining himself in the foreground to reach his pewter-pot. Around float many of Punch's butts, political and social. Wellington on the left and Brougham on the right play cup-and-ball with him. Louis Philippe ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... bitter toil an' straining— But truce with peevish, poor complaining! Is fortune's fickle Luna waning? E'en let her gang! Beneath what light she has remaining, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the display of this false virtuosity. The picture was one of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it—it represented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of the circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, at every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because she was tired of being painted "sweetly"—and yet not to lose an ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... what seemed a summons from the unknown—the prolonged morning whistle of the shoe factory. For a while he lay as one benumbed, and the gradual realization that ensued might be likened to the straining of stiffened wounds. Little by little he reconstructed, until the process became unbearable, and then rose from his bed with one object in mind,—to go to Horace Bentley. At first—he seized upon the excuse that Mr. Bentley would wish to hear the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sometimes a gleam of sunlight on the wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would bring the thought to me. Only to make me miserable, for it was a waste of golden time while the rich sunlight streamed on hill and plain. There was a wrenching of the mind, a straining of the mental sinews; I was forced to do this, my mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion, nerve-illness often ensued. The insults which are showered on poverty, long struggle of labour, the heavy pressure of circumstances, the unhappiness, only stayed the expression ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... most terrible thing to witness was the last, straining, anxious look which the mother gave her daughter through the grating. She had seen her child pressed to the arms of strangers and welcomed to her new home. She was no longer hers. All the sweet ties of nature had been rudely severed, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Lady Landale with much asperity, "not come in person!" She had been straining her eyes to make out something of her interlocutor's form, unable to reconcile her mind's picture with the coarse voice that addressed her—And now all her high expectations fell from her in an angry rush. "Have I come all this way to be met by ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... sadness round the sky was cast, Where clouds seem'd hurrying with unusual haste; Winds urged them onward, like to restless ships; And light dim faded in its last eclipse; And Agitation turn'd a straining eye; And Hope stood watching like a bird to fly, While suppliant Nature, like a child in dread, Clung to her fading ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... They rose on tiptoe, straining their ears; even the skylarking gamins who had occupied the stage top behind them, and the driver, who had reappeared, drunk, and resumed his reins and seat, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... seems to have been much followed by their immediate successors. Decker wrote conjointly with Webster and Middleton, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish his work. His power of invective was well known; and in his humour there is such straining after strong words and effective phrases, as to seem quite unnatural. His "Gull's Hornbook" is written against coxcombs, and he says their "vinegar railings shall ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... on a stool at her feet, and told stories. They were funny stories of his life abroad, and now and again there came bursts of laughter from the kitchen, where they were straining their necks to catch his words through the doors, which they kept ajar. But Kate hardly listened. She showed signs of impatience sometimes, and made quick glances around when the door opened, as if expecting somebody. On ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a ball of thin string, one end of which was attached to a tiny brad awl. Going into one corner of the room she fixed the brad awl into the woodwork; then, unwinding the ball, proceeded to the other end of the room, straining the string tightly, and tied a knot to mark the length. Then she went back and crossed the room, and again make a knot to mark the width. Then she hastily gathered up the string, pulled the brad awl from the woodwork, and put them in her pocket. While she had been carrying this out she ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... ample room besides in her mind for the thought of William Farrell—her friend. Her most faithful and chivalrous friend! She thought of Farrell's altered aspect, of the signs of a great task laid upon him, straining even his broad back. And then, of his loneliness. Cicely was ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the pad drop from Locke's hands; he saw the mute wheel as he felt the vibrations and stare at the window, his eyes puckered and straining. He also saw Miss Vale rise, saw her hands thrown out in a gesture much like despair; and also he heard the cry that she uttered, muffled by the confines of the room, but full of fear. Then the room was plunged into darkness; ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... now again stood still, straining her eyes which were growing more accustomed to the darkness, to discover one of the temples at the end of the alley of sphinxes, suddenly and unexpectedly at her right hand a solemn and many-voiced hymn of lamentation fell upon her ear. This was from the priests of Osiris-Apis ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... empurpled in the afterglow of the sunset. Still farther, where the mouth of the street opened out, was a glimpse of the Seine; and with a turn of my head I could see, huge and vast, the enormous keep of the Louvre, built by Philip Augustus, and evilly known as the Philippine. But although my eyes, straining through the twilight, rested on these and more, my thoughts were far away. At a puff my pyramid of cards, the little life I had built up for myself, had come down, and all my labour and toil ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... one may twist it into something like that without straining it unduly, I think. My mother and I shall be very glad to see you. I'm sorry she is not here ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... boatmen were at work. One of their largest boats was launched through the wild surf, as if by magic, and its stout crew were straining at the oars as if their lives depended on ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... of greyish green ne'er shed one ray Of kind benignity or holy light On aught beneath the sun. Childhood, youth, beauty, To it had all one hue. Its rays reverted Right inward, back upon the greedy heart On which the gnawing worm of avarice Preyed without ceasing, straining every sense To that excruciable and yearning core. Some thirteen days agone, he comes to me, And after many sore and mean remarks On men's rapacity and sordid greed, He says, "Gabriel, thou art an honest man, As the world goes. How much, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... out of the tide, which for miles flows up the river, our vessel grounded three times, but after puffing and straining for a considerable time, she got off without damage and pursued her onward course. Most of my fellow-voyagers were disposed to be distant and taciturn, and so I enjoyed the grandeurs of the scene in solitary musings, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... it comes on we're lost," cried the captain, seizing one of the long poles with which the men were vainly straining every nerve and muscle. They might as well have tried to arrest the progress of a berg. On it came, and crushed in the starboard quarter bulwarks. Providentially at that moment it grounded and remained fast; but the projecting point that overhung them broke off and fell on the deck ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Some of this unique body looked as if they had seen hard usage and lean pay. Others were grey with thinking, instead of moving. Be not surprised either when I say that the gravity of their countenance left no visible room for anything else. Hard at it were they, straining their antiquated imaginations over a secret game of thimble-rig, which seemed of momentous importance. Only five, however, could play at the game; and Sawny Dablerdeen, who always played on two small pipes, and paid sundry small pipers to do a deal of blowing, seemed in ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... This was the more difficult as it was by no means clear what had already been done. Even while I supported her drooping figure I was straining my eyes across her shoulder for succor of some kind. Suddenly the figure of a rapid rider appeared upon the road. It seemed familiar. I looked again—it was the blessed Enriquez! A sense of deep relief came over me. I loved Consuelo; ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he had never expressed before. And God revealed himself. We may not understand the psychology, nevertheless one soldier saw, or thought he saw, Christ in a shell-hole stretching out his hands in forgiveness and blessing. Another saw God the Father giving absolution as his straining eyes caught a glimpse of the crucifix. Another felt "The Presence" as the inward quietness which follows action crept over him. Whatever the form, the effect was the same. Men met God face to ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... of Boston brown bread; and by how few of our girls is it considered a matter of any moment that the opposite trouble exists for days. Ought they not to be educated to know that they can devise no surer way of poisoning the whole system, and then of straining all the contiguous organs, than by wilful neglect in this direction? When some facts are obvious, and some are latent, the blame, if trouble exists, is not unnaturally laid on the visible facts. It is evident to the physician that the girl has attended school. It ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... what to do, and yet loth to hold back from one who might need his aid. So intent were they upon each other that neither took note of his approach; until, when he was close upon them, the man threw his arm roughly round the damsel's waist and drew her towards him, she straining her lithe, supple figure away and striking fiercely at him, while the hooded hawk screamed with ruffled wings and pecked blindly in its mistress's defence. Bird and maid, however, had but little chance ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "do not despond;" and seizing my arm, we moved with speed in the direction where lights streamed from the gay and pleasant mansion which we had so madly left. Ah, how with mingled hope and fear our hearts beats, as with straining eyes we looked toward that beacon. In an instant, even as we sped along, the ice opened again before us, and ere I could check my impetus, I was, with the lantern in my hand, plunged within the flood. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... them then from the Stalks, and stone them carefully, without breaking much of the Skin, save the Juice; then take the weight of them in fine Sugar powder'd, and boil your Sugar with some Water, wherein Pippins have been boiled before, first straining your Water, and boil them to Syrup, taking off the Scum as it rises. And when the Scum rises no more, put in your Grapes, and boil them quick till they are as clear as Crystal, I mean the white Grapes; but the red Sorts, let them boil ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... favorable, we commenced the advance; slowly at first, but gradually increasing our speed, until the horses were straining every muscle in their headlong race. Lances were slung, and bows and arrows got in readiness with an ease and expertness that was truly wonderful, considering our rapid riding. The bridles were dropped on the necks of the mustangs, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... and gun, Little treasures, houses,—nay, Guerdons of our dearest fight, Now are fuel for his sun, And the dreams that lit the night Burn as candles in the day. Yet we made thee, Man of Right, As our being plead to rise; Of our straining arm thy might; Even as we prayed for sight, Lo, afar thou hadst thy ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... swayed the stout Norse rowers; tighter and tighter pulled the cables; fast down upon the straining war-ships rained the Danish spears and stones; but the wooden piles under the great bridge were loosened by the steady tug of the cables, and soon with a sudden spurt the Norse war-ships darted down the river, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... touch any more of her things," he said to himself; "I can't so much as look at 'em, somehow, without its making me—" he stopped to tie up the box; straining at the cords, as if the mere physical exertion of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. "I'll open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I'm away from the old place here," he resumed, jerking ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... owner will not give in. He bears away from the course of the boat that has passed him, to seek their common object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond some light craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while. He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at his sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on board. He might ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Like statues on appointed pedestals: Yet we may choose since choice is given to shun Servile contentment or ignoble fear In the expression of our attitude; And with far straining eyes, and hands upcast, And feet half raised, declare our painful state, Yearning for wings to reach the fields of truth, Mourning for wisdom, panting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... filled with water, so that Pele and her brothers had to drink it dry, lest the fires should be quenched. When they had done this they resumed the attack on Kamapua, emptying the mountain of its ash and molten rock, and hurling tons of stone after the wretch, who was now straining every muscle to force his boat far enough to sea to insure his safety. He did not retaliate this time, but was glad to make his escape; for Pele had come ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... we heard Mr. Black's horse, which was tied at the front gate, snort and make crazy horse noises, and even before I could imagine what was going to happen, it had happened. There was a noise like a leather strap straining, and then a cracking and splintering sound. I looked just in time to see the little wooden gate to which the horse had been tied, break in two or maybe three, and part of it go galloping down the road being dragged by a scared wild-eyed brown saddle horse, and at the same time I saw ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... glance shows you that Daudet's study is a real work room; there is no straining after effect; the plain, comfortable furniture, including the large solid writing table covered with papers, proofs, literary biblots, and the various instruments necessary to his craft, were made and presented to him by a number of workmen, his military ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a seat at the other side of the car, and as if utterly oblivious that such a creature as Edestone existed, produced and deliberately adjusted the two parts of a very long and handsome cigarette holder, and with much straining of his very tight uniform restored the case to the place provided by law for its concealment on his glittering person. He then took out his cigarette case, and after selecting a cigarette, he gently tapped it on the gold cover, glaring all the time quite through and beyond ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... listening. No sound. Surely she was asleep. In spite of all the violence she had shown in their after-talk, the memory of her speech to Mrs. Watton lingered in the young fellow's mind. It astonished him to realise, as he stood there, in this morning silence, straining to hear if his wife were moving overhead, how, pari passu with the headlong progress of his act of homage to the one woman, certain sharp perceptions with regard to the other had been ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... catching at the seat, she tried To speak, but only gurgled in her throat. At last, straining to hold herself, she cried To him for pity, and her strange words smote A coldness through him, for she begged Gervase To leave her, 'twas too much a second time. Gervase must go, always Gervase, her ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... imperialists know! It is their empire that would fall away as a garment so soon as the Near East realized that they no longer ruled in the Imperial City. Enver Pasha and the Committee were amply justified in straining the resources of the Ottoman Empire to cracking-point, not merely to retain Constantinople but also to recover Adrianople and a territory in Europe large enough to bulk as Roum. Nothing that happened in that war made so greatly ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... pardon we have spoken of. And there she had been watching the Mier Expedition through every step of its progress, eagerly collecting every scrap of information relating to it published in the Mexican papers; with anxious heart, straining her ears over the lists of killed and wounded. And when at length the account came of the shootings at El Salado, apprehensively as ever scanned she that death-roll of nigh twenty names—the decimated; not breathing freely until she had reached ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... voice, and starts up and stares wildly about him, trying to remember where he is. With a fierce straining of his will he grips the brain that is slipping away from him, and holds it. As soon as he feels sure of himself he steals out of the room ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... moment, wavering on his feet. He slipped miserably in the mud of the park, and suddenly he ran. His grey, straining form disappeared round the end of the dark buildings, and then Throckmorton waved a hand at the grey sky and laughed noiselessly. Thomas Cromwell was making notes in his tablets when his spy re-entered the room, with the rain-drops glistening in ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... leading her to the sofa, "that is, the money was left in that loosely-worded will to 'my daughter.' We all thought it was you, but now this legal wife has come on the scene, the money must go to her daughter. Oh, Sylvia," cried Paul, straining her to his breast, "how foolish your father was not to say the money was left to 'my daughter Sylvia.' Then everything would have been right. But the absence of the name is fatal. The law will assume that the testator meant ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... nonsense, no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But it is full of the romance of subtle and decorous psychology. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... littered with anchors, chains, torpedoes, funnels, ventilators, and what not, you dare not, if you have been so ill-advised as to remain up top, roam about in pitch darkness even in harbour, let alone when the craft is jumping and wriggling and straining out in the open. Having tried the high-up portion of the ship at the front end, where the cold was perishing and the spray amounted to a positive outrage, on the way over, I selected the wardroom aft on the way back and ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... going to pretend," said he, "that I am hovering over the town—like the devil on two sticks—the first night after the armistice. I see innumerable sorrowing hearts behind shutters closed against the shouts in the streets. Hearts straining all through these years towards a victory that would lend meaning to their grief; and now they can let go—or break down, sleep, die, perhaps. The politicians will reflect on the quickest and most lucrative way to exploit the success, or turn a ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... cards; at his left, a forlorn man sang dolorously to himself. Others were behind. From these last, as he sat, a word reached him which woke him from his preoccupation like a thrust of a knife. He sat without moving, straining his ears. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... his own. Finally Teanyi spoke alone, and for quite a while in a low voice; and the governor listened attentively and with growing interest. Though Teanyi's voice was muffled, Shotaye still overheard the word Cayamo several times. Straining her sense of hearing, she caught the words tupoge, tema quio, finally Shotaye also. The tuyo listened, smiled, winked slyly, and at last laughed aloud. At the same time he turned his face to her and nodded most pleasantly; thereupon he said a few words to Teanyi aloud, and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... in horror from the vault. As they glanced back they saw the erect inflexible, shimmering, gold-clad figure of the Empress. Beyond they had a glimpse of the green-scummed lining of the well, and of the great red open mouth of the eunuch, as he screamed and prayed while every tug of the straining slaves brought him one step nearer to the brink. With their hands over their ears they rushed away, but even so they heard that last woman-like shriek, and then the heavy plunge far down in the dark abysses of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... impetus to his backward leap. All the weight of his body, all the strain of his leg muscles snapped the rope taut. It vibrated to invisibility for an instant, then parted with a sound as loud as the fall of the whip. The straining body of Alcatraz, so released, toppled sidewise. He rolled like a dog in the dust, and when, with the agility of a dog, he gained his feet, Cordova was fleeing towards the hotel with ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... these military preparations was not translated into accomplishment before the war ended, it was because the United States was preparing wisely for a long struggle and it seemed necessary that the foundations should be broad and deep. "America was straining her energies towards a goal," said the Director of Munitions, "toward the realization of an ambition which, in the production of munitions, dropped the year 1918 almost out of consideration altogether, which ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... where the gun lay, and lifted it between us, straining under its weight; lurched with it to the side, heaved it up, and sent it over into the second boat with a crash. Prompt on the crash came a yell, and we stared in each other's faces, giddy with our ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... that this change of dress was asked for, and not for the purpose of escaping out of the kingdom, and avoiding his creditors; whether Lord Cochrane was wise or not in acceding to this request, it is not for us to decide to-day; but I am sure you will feel it was straining the English law too much, to say of a good-tempered English sailor, that he is guilty of a conspiracy, because he yields to a request, to which a person more hacknied in the tricks practised on them, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... there all night, an age-long vigil, straining her ears for the things that went on below in the darkness, and keeping motionless lest some stealthy beast should discover her. Man in those days was never alone in the dark, save for such rare accidents as this. Age after age he had learnt the lesson ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... goat of old Hawk and Buckle, And what of pretty Nanny this hot summer weather? She stays not contented with little or with muckle, Straining for daisies at ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... realise that if we were to get the Fleet through the Narrows; or, if it were to force its own way through whilst we absorb the attention of their mobile guns, the game would be up. So they are straining every nerve to be ready for anything. The moral of all these rather contradictory remarks is just what I have said time and again since South Africa. The fact that war has become a highly scientific ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... his life he knew terror. He glared into the cold, malignant eyes of the snake and saw death, certain and horrible. Panic seized him. He writhed and dug his fingers and boot toes into the sand in a frantic attempt to work himself back away from the hideous forward-straining reptile. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... aloud, Hitherto, Lords, what your commands impos'd 1640 I have perform'd, as reason was, obeying, Not without wonder or delight beheld. Now of my own accord such other tryal I mean to shew you of my strength, yet greater; As with amaze shall strike all who behold. This utter'd, straining all his nerves he bow'd, As with the force of winds and waters pent, When Mountains tremble, those two massie Pillars With horrible convulsion to and fro, He tugg'd, he shook, till down they came and drew 1650 The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder Upon the heads ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... new force, the defenders of the castle were not more than twenty, yet so admirable were its defences that they might hold in check an attacking party of more than a hundred. The warder and his men were grouped together at the main gate, straining their eyes against the horizon, where the smoke of some cottages indicated the presence of the foe, when the palmer advanced and asked permission to assist them. This was readily granted, and the recruits were soon supplied with defensive armor and the usual weapons. The palmer wore his ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... depth in a book is often obscurity; and an author whose meaning is got at only by severe mental exertion, and a straining of the mind's eye, is generally weak in the backbone of him. Occasionally it is the dullness of the reader, but oftener ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... further be denied. Through one of the arrow-slit windows of my tree-house I could see far away a great mountain top whitened with perpetual snow, which our Lord the Sun dyed with blood every night of His setting. Night after night I used to watch that ruddy light with wide straining eyes. Night after night I used to remember that in days agone when I was entering upon the priesthood, it had been my duty to adore our great Lord as He rose for His day behind the snows of that very mountain. And always the thought followed on these musings, that from that distant ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... preparing for them. Thus actuated, all discipline was gone, and no connected efforts were further made to protect the ship or render her in any degree safer from the power of the storm. To add still more to the critical condition on board, the ship after straining and laboring so long, now began to leak and rapidly to fill. In this desperate state of affairs several of the crew, whose numbers were already thinned by being washed overboard, got into the spirit ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... begun to tremble. Kano turned directly to it. The filmy, azure angles at the tip were straining to part, held together by just one drop of light. Even as Kano stared the drop fell heavily, plashing on his hand. The flower, with a little sob, opened to him, and questioned him of life, of art, of immortality. The old man covered his ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... might have had if passed. The Insurgents felt themselves to be fully competent to bring about such pacification of the islands as they deemed necessary. At the time the resolutions were presented in the Senate their soldiers were straining at the leash, ready to attack their American opponents upon the most slender excuse. Aguinaldo himself could not have held them much longer, and it is not impossible that they got away from him as it was. They would have interpreted the passage of the Bacon resolutions as a further evidence ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... frightened Blair, who was straining at his oars against the current: "Elizabeth! What is the matter? Shall I stop? Shall we ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemn —awful, even, and depressing to the spirits. At wide intervals his straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning and complaining ghosts of departed ones. So the sounds were yet more dreary than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hard, and expelled in small quantities. In other cases, perhaps, purging will be present from the beginning; the animal will be tormented with tenesmus, or frequent desire to void its excrement, and that act attended by straining and pain, by soreness about the anus, and protrusion of the rectum, and sometimes by severe colicky spasms. In many cases, however, and in those of a chronic form, few of these distressing symptoms are observed, even at the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... her, and would preserve her from such mischievous serpents as you. But, Heaven be praised! I have caught you before your wicked design could Be effected. Oh! Amabel, my child, my child!" she added, straining her to her bosom, "I had rather—far rather—see you stricken with the plague, like your poor brother, though I felt there was not a hope of your recovery, than you should fall into ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... one universal whole, one true and only atom from which alone nothing can be cut off and thrown away on to something else; if, on the other hand, we are in a subtle philosophically accurate humour for straining at gnats and emphasizing differences rather than resemblances, we can draw distinctions, and give reasons for subdividing and subdividing, till, unless we violate what we choose to call our consistency ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... after one has read it, where the executioner chaffers with the villagers as to what price they will give him for putting some young witch to the torture, running them up from a barrel of apples to a barrel and a half, on the grounds that he is now old and rheumatic, and that the stooping and straining is bad for his back. It should be done on a sloping hill, he explains, so that the "dear little children" may see it easily. Both "Sidonia" and "The Amber Witch" give such a picture of old Germany as ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... concealment ears were straining to catch the first guiding sound. He moved very stealthily, burdened, perhaps, by some strange scruple in the presence of the tragedy that he had not feared to contrive, paused for a moment at the bedroom door, then opened it very quietly, and in ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... in varying stages of progress, inhaled with keen enjoyment the mingled odours of pine chips and Stockholm tar, and then hurried after Dick, who was already busily engaged in unmooring a small skiff, in which to pull off to a handsome five-ton lugger-rigged boat that lay lightly straining at her moorings ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... picture—had lent herself in an unusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture was one of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it—it represented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of the circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, at every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because she was tired of being painted "sweetly"—and yet not to lose ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... seems to be, "they shall be possessed of comfort." Donne (i.e."mistresses ) is a rhyme-word, and affords an instance of a straining of the meaning ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... no others to care for her, but she drags on a weary life under a stepmother, who maltreats her continually with ever fresh insults, and as she weeps, her heart within her is bound fast with misery, nor can she sob forth all the groans that struggle for utterance; so without stint wept Alcimede straining her son in her arms, and in her yearning ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... and a taut enough halter to lean on in the tight places. But others rolled over like logs when the full force of the current struck them, threatening to drag the boat under, as it and the horse raced away down stream with the oarsmen straining their utmost. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Arthur Channing read this letter deliberately, as you have been able to read it. He had only skimmed it—skimmed it with straining eye and burning brow; taking in its general sense, its various points; but of its words, none. In his overpowering emotion—his perplexed confusion—he started up with wild words: "Oh, father! he is innocent! Constance, he is innocent! Hamish, Hamish! forgive—forgive me! I ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... can be hardened to it with shocking ease if there seems no other way of getting what he wants. So he usually welcomes that Great Liberator, the Machine. He prefers to drive the tireless engine than to whip the straining horses. He had rather see the farmer riding at ease in a mowing machine than bending his back over ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... forms, I always took the form which seemed most in harmony with reason and the plainest teachings of Scripture. Some writers seemed to take pleasure in presenting such doctrines as the Trinity, the Atonement, Salvation by Faith, Eternal Punishment, &c., in the most incredible and repulsive forms, straining and wresting the Scriptures to justify their mischievous extravagances. Other writers would say no more on those subjects than the Scriptures said, and would put what the Scriptures said in such a light as to render it "worthy ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... aren't we very close in now?" cried Rodd, who had just noticed in the darkness that the sailor he addressed was leaning over the bows and straining his eyes in one ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... wonderful development westwards was thrilling the minds of men, other great discoveries were being made to the East, whither the eyes of the Portuguese were still straining. Portugal had lost Columbus; she could lay no claim to the shores of America discovered by Spaniards, but the sea-route to India by the East was yet to be found by one of her explorers, Vasco da Gama. His achievement stands out brilliantly at this time; for, within a few years of the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... a half of spring water, and strain the pulp through a cullendar. To every pint add a pound of fine sugar, with grated orange or lemon peel, and then boil the whole to a jelly. Or, having prepared the apples by boiling and straining them through a coarse sieve, get ready an ounce of isinglass boiled to a jelly in half a pint of water, and mix it with the apple pulp. Add some sugar, a little lemon juice and peel; boil all together, take out the peel, and put the ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... nothing. The young man opposite was straining his ears to listen to their conversation. Mrs. White caught her eye, and smiled benignly down ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... principles of their art. I do not mean those who learn to draw pictures in the back room of a studio, but conscientious men, if you cannot find sensible men. And let the pulpit itself be situated where the people can hear the speaker easily, without straining their eyes and ears. Then only will the speaker's voice ring and kindle and inspire those who come together to hear God Almighty's message; then only will he be truly eloquent and successful, since then only does his own electricity permeate the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... whole country to them, and urged the necessity of establishing machine- shops in connection with schools of science. The fact that this had already been done, and better done, at Cornell, was loftily ignored. Western New York seemed a Nazareth out of which no good could come. That same straining of the mind's eye toward the East, that same tendency to provincialism which had so often afflicted Massachusetts, evidently prevented her wise men in technology from recognizing any ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... thing to witness was the last, straining, anxious look which the mother gave her daughter through the grating. She had seen her child pressed to the arms of strangers, and welcomed to her new home. She was no longer hers. All the sweet ties of nature had been rudely severed, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Court, and nobody is sentenced, though the eminent specialist of Harley Street who essays the role of villain richly deserves to be. However, as he is left a bankrupt, discredited in his practice and detached from the heroine whom he had sworn to appropriate, it would perhaps be straining a point to cavil at his remaining at large. The idea upon which the story is based, and which enables the author to clothe his characters and their actions with bewildering mystery, is essentially good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... banks of Peking belong to him, and he will not sacrifice his thirty million taels until he is convinced that his head is at stake. The Summer Palace lies but a dozen miles beyond Peking's embattled walls, and from the top, straining your eyes to the west, you can vaguely see the Empress's plaisaunce. A journey in and out is nothing by cart, and this favoured eunuch has the best mules in the Empire—black jennets fifteen hands high—and is using ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than the astronomer who confesses his ignorance ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... far from the gods' realm when he became aware of a pursuer, and, indeed, Suttung, having also assumed the form of an eagle, was coming rapidly after him with intent to compel him to surrender the stolen mead. Odin therefore flew faster and faster, straining every nerve to reach Asgard before the foe should overtake him, and as he drew near the gods anxiously watched ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... at last that no creature of flesh and blood was this that clung to him, but some mysterious bodiless horror of the Supernatural, unguessed at by the outer world of men! The dews of death stood thick on his forehead; there was a straining agony at his heart, and his breath came in quick convulsive gasps; but worse than his physical torture was the overwhelming and convincing truth of the actual existence of the Spiritual Universe, now so suddenly and awfully revealed. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... importance. Even Bruce, his collie dog, sat close beside him, poking him occasionally with his nose, that he might have a share in his master's glory. And as for Granny, she stopped every few moments in her work of straining and putting away the milk ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... some time. About noon, as she was standing by her window, straining her eyes to discover some trace of a human being in the distance, whose attention she perhaps might catch if one could only be seen, she heard the door open and close again. She knew the footstep: it was neither that of the deaf girl nor of the man Stevens. It was ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... because he could not get the path straight, there was a pleat between his brows. He had set up his sticks, and taken the sights between the big pine trees, but for some reason everything seemed wrong. He looked again, straining his keen blue eyes, that had a touch of the Viking in them, through the shadowy pine trees as through a doorway, at the green-grassed garden-path rising from the shadow of alders by the log bridge up to the sunlit flowers. Tall white and purple columbines, and the butt-end ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... the first or second line of waves, the sky and sea appeared to meet in one cataract of rain and spray. A few birds were driving about like spirits of the storm. It was, as Shakspeare calls it, a regular hurly. Add to this the straining of the masts, the creaking of the planks, the shrill whistle of the wind in the ropes and cordage, the occasional crash of a heavy sea as it struck us with a sharp sound, and the rush of water over the decks, down the companion ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... up to their guide, and as they turned into a room, Osterberg fancied he heard a sound proceed from it. As nothing further alarmed him, he put it down to his straining nerves. As soon as they were inside, the door closed sharply behind them, and the ominous click of the lock made them both start. Helmar was about to say ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... youth and in the right direction." "Exuberance is more easily corrected than sterility." "His dialogue reads too often like a catalogue 'raisonne' of his library." The critic finds traces of a scholarly and poetic taste, but withal a straining after novelty and "an affectation of quaintness so marked as to be often unpleasant." He objects to long abstract disquisitions on metaphysics and music. He commends it, however, for being "unmarred by the bad taste of its contemporaries in fanning a senseless ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... me toiled and slowing, Gasping breathing and straining limb,— Rank on rank are the footmen going Forward to fog and ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... Tugging and straining they brought him out of the broken ship into the sunlight of Erb. Varta threw back her hood and breathed deeply of the air which was not manufactured by the wizardry of the lizard skin and Lur sat panting, his nostril flaps open. It was he who ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... deeper, until it really seemed to have no bottom; and all the while, there came a rumbling noise out of its depths, louder and louder, and nearer and nearer, and sounding like the tramp of horses' hoofs and the rattling of wheels. Too much frightened to run away, she stood straining her eyes into this wonderful cavity, and soon saw a team of four sable horses, snorting smoke out of their nostrils, and tearing their way out of the earth with a splendid golden chariot whirling at their heels. They leaped out of the bottomless ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... made the march on a bullock-waggon, which is really a very fine and imposing way of getting along. Your team of twenty strong oxen, in a long two-by-two file, have a most grand appearance, their great backs straining and the chain between taut as a bar, and the view you get over the field from your lofty perch among the piled-up kits and sacks is most commanding. There used to be an old print at home of Darius at the head of the Persian host "o'erlooking ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... a moment that seemed to stretch interminably, and then, the eyes of all, straining in the darkness, saw against the black velvet curtain ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... were the footsteps. All day long they tramped up and down the stairs outside—everyday sounds that he had never heeded before, but now they were warnings to hearken to and shudder at, and he would sit pretending to read but with ears straining for the sound of feet upon the landing or on the stair. Now they were feet that crept—the stealthy steps of one that lurked to catch him unaware; or again, they were the loud tramp of those who came with authority to drag him to doom, and he would watch the door, staring wide-eyed, waiting ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... old home because it had been in his family only so many generations. But there is this of evil in an old house—it is bad to live in, but worse to part from. Sir George, straining his eyes in the darkness, saw the long avenue of elms and the rooks' nests, and the startled birds circling overhead; and at the end of the vista the wide doorway, aed. temp. Jac. 1—saw it all more lucidly than he had seen it since the September morning when he traversed it, a boy of fourteen, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... by the heels and was standing him on his head. Then he rolled him over and pressed his chest, with that oscillation which is helpful in restoring seemingly drowned persons, while the breathless George stood idly by watching everything with straining eyes. He could do ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... of the salt sea. From the moment that the Sea Queen leaves lower New York bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward. The adventures of Ben Clark, the hero of the story and Jake the cook, cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... Navy cheermasters now refrained from inviting din. Those of the spectators who boosted for the Army were now silent, straining their vision and holding their breath. It began to look, this year, as though the Navy could do with the Army as ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... this is an unjust criticism we ought not to let ourselves be troubled by it. On the other hand, if it is a just criticism it will be much wiser of us to heed than to stifle the voice that tells us the truth. It might seem to be straining a point were one to venture to explain the present very noticeable disinclination of Churchmen to attend a second service on Sunday, by connecting it with the particular infelicity in question; but that the excuse, We have said all this once ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... is founded the first colony in Canada, a little palisaded fort of seventy-nine men straining longing eyes at the sails of the vessel gliding out to sea; for Pontgrave has taken one vessel up the St. Lawrence to trade, and Poutrincourt has gone back to France with the other for supplies. A worse beginning could hardly have been made. The island was little better than a sand ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... was bewildered, as if by the confusion of branches in a leafless forest. In the distance the mass of rigging resolved itself into a solid gray blur against the sky. The great hulks, green and black and slate gray, laid themselves along the docks, straining leisurely at their mammoth chains, their flanks opened, their cargoes, as it were their entrails, spewed out in a wild disarray of crate and bale and box. Sailors and stevedores swarmed them like vermin. Trucks rolled ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... a few of the larger industries employ a regular corps of janitors to keep floors, walls, and windows clean. The walls are tinted; the lights are arranged so as to provide the right illumination without straining the workers' eyes. The departments are symmetrically arranged; the aisles are wide; the working space is ample; there is no fear to haunt machine tenders that a mis- step or a moment of forgetfulness will entangle them in a ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... troubles away by the magic of a simple story or by the music and imagery of a juvenile poem. Her story or poem would do more than remove the cause of disorder by giving the pupils relaxation from nerve-straining work: it would help to establish that first essential to all true success in teaching—a relation of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sea to the Pyrenees. He did it, but in a terrible, hasty way. It appeared that every formal act required fretted him to waste, that every violent act allowed gave him little solace. It appeared that he was living desperately fast, straining to fill up time, rather than use it, towards some unknown, but (to him) certain end. His first act in Normandy, after new coronation, was to besiege the border castles which the French had filched in his absence. One of these was Gisors. He would not go near Gisors; but conducted the leaguer from ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... down here on the shore?" asked Mary, who was straining her eyes for a first glimpse of the house they ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... can take him hence, for he is mine now, and I have need of him," adding, "Who could have thought it would be so easy?" and then he smiled very bitterly. And the hunchback went towards himself; and he tried to cry out in warning, and straining woke; and in the chilly dawn he saw the cat sit in his room, but very different from what it had been. It was gaunt and famished, and the fur was all marred; its yellow eyes gleamed horribly, and Roderick saw that it hated him, he knew not ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... travelers—Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day—upon all and more this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... anxiety as long as I could see him, but he was soon lost to sight in the gloom of night up aloft there amid the tightening ropes, the straining mast, and the loosened sail and shattered spar, which kept driving backwards and forwards and round and round with terrific violence. I kept my eyes fixed on the spot where I knew he must be. Now I thought I saw him clinging ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... thin. I'll look afther him, the rale gintleman that he is, while there's a topsail of his ship to be seen, and then I'll send my blessin' afther him, and pray for his good fortune wherever he goes, for he's the right sort and nothin' else." And Barny kept his word, and when his straining eye could no longer trace a line of the ship, the captain certainly had the benefit of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... a shout from the yard outside. Carrie sprang like a hare up the stairs to the window, and looked out with straining eyes. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... young leader began to draw rein, and, turning in saddle, signaled to his single companion, laboring along one hundred yards behind, to hasten to join him. Presently the trooper came spurring up, a swarthy young German, but though straining every nerve the troop was ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... a word of advice regarding the manner of reading this work, which is, that I should wish the reader at first to go over the whole of it, as he would a romance, without greatly straining his attention, or tarrying at the difficulties he may perhaps meet with in it, with the view simply of knowing in general the matters of which I treat; and that afterwards, if they seem to him to merit ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... through air in merriment. This test alone is weak to show If thou be stronger or the foe. By thee a heap of mouldering bone, By him the recent corse was thrown. Thy strength, O Prince, is yet untried: Come, pierce one tree: let this decide. Prepare thy ponderous bow and bring Close to thine ear the straining string. On yonder Sal tree fix thine eye, And let the mighty arrow fly, I doubt not, chief, that I shall see Thy pointed shaft transfix the tree. Then come, assay the easy task, And do for love the thing I ask. Best of all lights, the Day-God ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... other in monosyllables, Kama, for the most part, contenting himself with grunts. Occasionally a dog whined or snarled, but in the main the team kept silent. Only could be heard the sharp, jarring grate of the steel runners over the hard surface and the creak of the straining sled. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken, agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the whiteness of his face still lingering from the hard days of tension, Michael went on, straining every nerve in his work; keeping the alley room open nightly even during hot weather, and in constant touch with the farm which was now fairly on its feet and almost beginning to earn its own living; though the contributions still kept coming to him quietly, here and there, and helped ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... forward to play at being traitor, while Narayan Singh and I kept Mabel company. She fired questions at us right and left for twenty minutes, which we had to answer in detail instead of straining our cars to catch what Grim and Jeremy might be saying to Yussuf Dakmar in the ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
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