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More "Tough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tough baby," pronounced Neale; but after Mabel had wheeled Bubby away Tess confided to Neale that she knew why the Creamer's ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... morning, the air fresh and sweet, the sun comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... years ago, has shown conclusively how the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and unresponsiveness ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... she thought the child answered, but her reply was interrupted by Hapgood's loud voice, saying, "She's an orphan, poor kid. Pretty tough just to have an old bachelor uncle to ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... complete, and a perfect stack of rushes had been raised in readiness. A great number of long rods had been cut from the bushes, and as the most of them were as flexible and tough as willows they were well ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... one who has recently emerged from one of our public schools, one of the sort of young Englishmen for whom all commissions in the Army are practically reserved, who will own some great business, perhaps, or direct companies, and worm your way through the tough hide of style and restraint he has acquired, get him to talk about women, about his prospects, his intimate self, and see for yourself how much of him, and how little of him, his school has made. Test him on politics, on the national future, on social relationships, and lead him if ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... lumbago. And I have the gout sometimes in my knee. I'm cross enough then, and so you'd be. And, among 'em all, I don't get much above half what I ought to have out of my jointure. That makes me very cross. My teeth are bad, and I like to have the meat tender. But it's always tough, and that makes me cross. And when people go against the grain with me, as Lizzie Eustace always did, then ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... dainty things the household of small or moderate means can have just as easily as the most wealthy. Beautiful bread—light, white, crisp—costs no more than the tough, thick-crusted boulder, with cavities like eye-sockets, that one so frequently meets with as home-made bread. ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... gunbearers expressed such horror at the mere thought of our plunging into the mud, that we dutifully climbed them pick-a-back and were carried. The hard shell beach was a hundred feet away, occupying a little recess where the persistent tough mangroves drew back. From it led a narrow path through the thicket. We waved and shouted a farewell to the crews of the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... school law went into effect, or at least before it affected me. I was not, however, a bad boy. I was neither rough nor tough; I had no bad habits other than smoking corn-silk cigarettes, and I soon stopped that as the novelty of the thing wore off. My young mind and body required recreation. Unlike the children of the South, who had three months of school and nine months of play or work in the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... whereas in the company of another it is refined and moralized and spiritualized; and over our earthly victuals (or rather vittles, for the former is a very foolish mode of spelling),—over our earthly vittles is diffused a sauce of lofty and gentle thoughts, and tough meat is mollified with tender feelings. But oh! these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my present experience. When the company rose from table, they all, in my single person, ascended to the study, and employed themselves in reading the article on Oregon in the Democratic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... on his clever "catch" to a third expert in the task of hoodwinking Siva and depriving him of his lawful prey. Sundry cocks and hens, evidently toothsome morsels, are then thrown from one priest to another, and saved for the cooking-pot, but a tough-looking chanticleer of the Cochin China persuasion is finally selected, and cast into the seething pit to propitiate the terrible wrath of the Avenging Deity at the smallest expense and loss to the astute priesthood. ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... without a word, up, and up, and up, climbing over the precipitous sides, with tough root or fibrous vine lending us their aid, till, breathless, we stopped to gaze round or down into ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt to startle the traveller who may be in jeopardy, as if laughing and mocking at his misfortune. It is a harmless bird, and I seldom allowed them to be destroyed, as they were sure to rouse us with the earliest dawn. To this list of Fraser's spoils, a duck and a tough old cockatoo, must be added. The whole of these our friends threw on the fire without the delay of plucking, and snatched them from that consuming element ere they were well singed, and devoured them ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... letters bore the traces, and I cannot but think they must have exercised upon me some kind of influence for good. As to miscellaneous notices, I had a great affinity with the trades of joiners and of bricklayers. Physically I must have been rather tough, for my brother John took me down at about ten years old to wrestle in the stables with an older lad of that region, whom I threw. Among our greatest enjoyments were undoubtedly the annual Guy Fawkes bonfires, for which we had always liberal allowances of wreck timber ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... and hung sprawling over Eternity. The grass, tough as wire, and wound about his hands, stood ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... part sadnesse and melancholy my tender Iuuenall? Boy. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough signeur ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my very best," said I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, as if I were going to wrestle; "but I fear he will prove too tough for me." ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... beggars jumped on that zebra, and bit at him; but the skin was too tough for their little teeth, bless them! It was the funniest sight. But when the old woman and I started in, we did more than that, I can tell you; we tore off great chunks of him, and the little ones ate what they ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... returned to Washington in March, 1897, to take up his duties as a subordinate officer in the National Government, he was thirty-eight years old; a man in the prime of life, with the strength of an ox, but quick in movement, and tough in endurance. A rapid thinker, his intellect seemed as impervious to fatigue as was his energy. Along with this physical and intellectual make up went courage of both kinds, passion for justice, and a buoying sense of obligation ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... too much, my boy," said Father Payne. "You must not get soft. That's the danger of this life! It's all very well for me; I'm tough, and I'm moderately rich. But you would not have cared so much if you had not thought there was something in what he said. It was very low, no doubt, and I give you leave to hate him; though, if you are going ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for keeping him a prisoner," Jack answered. "For that matter, I guess he's nothing but a hired tough. The Washington police can find and take care of him ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes and stews seasoned with chiles or red-pepper pods. Item, we had a huge pavo, a turkey,—a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of this pavo was like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream. There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... to withhold its annual subsidy of $130 million - roughly one-third of the islands' budget revenues - unless the Faroese make significant efforts to balance their budget. To this extent the Faroe government is expected to continue its tough policies, including introducing a 20% VAT in 1993, and has agreed to an IMF economic-political stabilization plan. In addition to its annual subsidy, the Danish government has bailed out the second largest Faroe bank to ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... constructed before the first trip across the island, had been through some tough places, and the wheels and axles were in bad condition. These needed replacing, and that was a task which ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... many waterbuck, because there is no excuse for doing so except to secure the heads as trophies. The meat is so coarse and tough that even the porters, who seldom draw the line at eating anything their teeth can penetrate, do not care for waterbuck meat except under the stress of great hunger. They do like the skin, however, for it is of the waterbuck skin that their best sandals are made. Consequently, when a ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... the Free Library. I have two cards, my mother's an' mine, an' I draw 'em out all the time, after school, before I have to carry my papers. I stick the books inside my shirt, in front, under the suspenders. That holds 'em. One time, deliverin' papers at Second an' Market—there's an awful tough gang of kids hang out there—I got into a fight with the leader. He hauled off to knock my wind out, an' he landed square on a book. You ought to seen his face. An' then I landed on him. An' then his whole gang was goin' to jump on me, only a couple of iron-molders stepped in an' saw ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... in white wine; cutting it in small pieces, and putting it into a glass jar with wine enough to cover it well. Either the wine or the rennet will be found good for turning milk; but do not put in both together, or the curd will become so hard and tough, as to be uneatable. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Tough old Experience gives us many a hard floggin', before we learn the day's lessons. And we find the benches hard, long before sundown. And it makes our hearts ache to see the mates we love droop their too tired heads in sleep, all round us before ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... over the porch in safety, depending more upon the tough vine branches than the trellis-work during my ascent. My next employment was to pull up the pruning-ladder, as softly as possible, by the rope which I held attached to it. This done, I put the ladder against the house wall, listened, measured ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... been on guard at Miletus, five of which were Thurian, four Syracusans, one from Anaia, one Milesian, and one Leon's own. Accordingly the Chians marched out in mass and took up a strong position, while thirty-six of their ships put out and engaged thirty-two of the Athenians; and after a tough fight, in which the Chians and their allies had rather the best of it, as it was now late, retired ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... another Spiritualism Surfeits of pathological piety Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of thought Talked as if I believed what I said The dead-living Took it for granted that he and his crowd were right Torturing of dying people Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble Truth never goeth without a scratcht face Way the pseudo-sciences go to work Wholesale moral arrangements are so different from retail Whoso offers me any article of belief for my signature Wider the intellect, the ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... without an attempt at mitigation. He asked frankly for a place in the troop, the lowest, as his chance of redemption, or rather demanded it as a grace due from man to man. Drake was taken by his manner, noticed his build, which was tough and wiry, and conceded the request. Nor had he reason to regret his decision on the march out. Gorley showed himself alert, and vigilant, a favourite with the blacks, and obedient to his officers. He ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... from their tendency to wear unevenly. The Chicago Varnish Company of Chicago supplies a varnish under the name of "Supremis," which has proved by years of use under trying conditions, such as those of asylums, hospitals, and public buildings, to be of exceptional merit. It is elastic, tough, and gives a fine waxy surface which can be rubbed and will preserve its finish. It has the additional merit of being easily applied. It dries quickly and is remarkably durable. Wax should be carefully applied ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 05, May 1895 - Two Florentine Pavements • Various
... They have so many girls to choose from, you know. Young Powell, who married Norma Gale, was the same sort. She was twice his age, but he married her just the same, and his people made a fine settlement to get rid of her. She was—tough, too. Mrs. Wharton is a great club—woman and the head of a ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... cage, where they adjoined those of the tiger's place, and prodded the Wolfhound's side as he stood erect. The thing seemed to come from the tiger's cage, and Finn was upon it like a whirlwind, his fangs sinking far into the tough wood, till ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... pretend you're so infernal green, Perry! The 'Thunderbolt' is a fighting man from Lambeth, a tough customer who's won a fight or so lately and thought he could beat anything on two pins. So we were bringing him down here, hoping to match him with Jessamy, or, failing him, some other good man. But the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... hours—the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent stuff it is, wouldn't ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... cried George Wyndham. "We boys must be boys to the end of the chapter; and I tell you, some of us are pretty tough subjects! The only hope is that we may turn out not quite so horrid, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... eh? Women particularly. I can imagine," Rutherford drawled. "Tough luck, all right. People don't take very much stock in fellows that got smashed. Not much of a premium on disfigured ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... boxes piled one atop the other to form a crude table on which were laid eating utensils. As soon as Cazi Moto saw that his master was ready, he brought the meal. It consisted simply of a platter of curry composed of rice and the fresh meat that had been so recently killed that it had not time to get tough. This was supplemented by bread and tea in a tall enamelware vessel known as a balauri. From the simplicity of this meal one experienced would have deduced—even had he not done so from a dozen other equally significant nothings—that this was no sporting ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... glad of it," she responded, grimly. "I hope I look so blame tough that woman won't say a civil word to us. You can bet I ain't going to strain myself to please the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... have proved equally difficult, for, struggle as he might, the tough old Arab, no longer troubling himself about the control of his camel, had twisted his sinewy fingers under the midshipman's dirk-belt, and held the latter in juxtaposition to his own body, supported by the hump of the maherry, as if his very life depended ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Ever since that tough old soldier Charles, first Earl of Monmouth and third Earl of Peterborough, hauled down his flag before the battery of Anastasia Robinson's charms, and made a Countess of his victor, a coronet has dazzled the eyes of many an actress with its rainbow allurement, and has proved the passport ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... if you were delicate, and I said no, you were as tough as fencing-wire. She said you looked rather pale and thin, and asked me if you'd had an illness lately. And I said no—it was all on account of the wild, dissipated life you'd led. She said it was a pity you hadn't a mother or a sister to look after you—it was a pity that something couldn't ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed— Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote, {30} (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind) We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss— Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... he could land three blows to the Dutchman's one. It was here that the boy's days of alert watching on the line, the perpetual swinging of the heavy cudgel, and the endurance of all weather stood him in good stead; for he was tough, and agile. He skipped, ducked, and dodged. For the first five minutes he endured fearful punishment. Then Wessner's breath commenced to whistle between his teeth, when Freckles only had begun fighting. He sprang back with ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is in the right, my lord governor," answered the physician, "and therefore I am of opinion you should not eat of these stewed rabbits, as being a food that is tough and acute; of that veal, indeed, you might have taken a little, had it been neither roasted nor stewed; but as ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... was going to be a tough job, so I took a good rest—an hour, I should think. And then I started to walk back. I found that I had come a devil of a way—I must have gone at Marathon pace. I walked and walked, and at last I got into Paris, ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... plan, but it was evident he had thought it all out. First he made a simple but effective gag; then he selected a long piece of thin but tough rope, several strips of hide, a large rug, and ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... popular," I smiled. "I think it would do me good to use my mind, to chew on something. Besides, you can help me over the tough places." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... engagement, we soon succeeded in subduing them, and passed off the field in triumph. After this we were perpetually engaged with small bands of the enemy, no longer extended in line of battle, but in small detachments of two, three, and four in company. We had some tough work here, and now and then they were too many for us. Having annoyed us thus for a time, they began to form themselves into close columns, six or eight abreast; but we had now attained so much address, that we no longer found ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Sometimes I keep so near—under the shadow of his huge calf d'ee see—that he don't observe me on lookin' round; an', thinkin' he's all alone, lets fly his French broadsides in a way that a'most sends Antoine on his beam-ends. But Antoine is tough, he is. He gin'rally says, 'I not un'r'stan' English ver' well,' shakes his head an' grins, but the Cappen never listens to his answers, bein' too busy loadin' and primin' for ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not," returned the dame, hastily. "Thou comest of noble blood and long descent, though, as I have told thee often, I know not the exact names of thy parents. But what art thou shaping that tough sapling of oak into?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the top from base to point. It is further strengthened by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was her tongue, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... inquired the cause of their grievance. The cook, it seems, having been served out fresh water to dress vegetables for all hands, had inadvertently used it for some other purpose, and boiled the greens in a copper of salt water, which rendered them so intolerably tough, that they were not fit for use; consequently the sailors had not their expected garnish, and a general murmur taking place, the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... laid by in the garden of his house in King Street, Covent Garden, some planks sent to him by his brother, a West Indian captain, asked the joiner to use a part of the wood for this purpose; it was found too tough and hard for the tools of the period, but the Doctor was not to be thwarted, and insisted on harder-tempered tools being found, and the task completed; the result was the production of a candle box which was ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... didn't miss you," said Casey. "I'm blame sorry about that arm, Tom. It'll be a tough ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... whale! How the tough ash bends!" cried Uncle Sam, panting like a boy, and doing nearly all the work himself. "Martin, lay your chest to it. We'll grass him in two seconds. Californy never saw a sight like ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... time, where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as within us; and that prolonged occupation of the jaws goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the better when the substance is indigestible. Tramps of the philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious, prefer tough grain for the teeth. Woodseer's munching of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the picture of his father's dinner, seen one day and little envied: a small slice of cold boiled mutton-flesh in a crescent of white fat, with a lump of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... establishing for himself the title of the "Moralist of the Main." The letters were reprinted in San Francisco and widely read. Now and then some one had the temerity to answer them, but most of his victims maintained a discreet silence. In one of these letters he told of the Mexican oyster, a rather tough, unsatisfactory article of diet, which could not stand criticism, and presently disappeared from the market. It was a mistake, however, for him to attack an Alta journalist by the name of Evans. Evans was a poet, and once composed an elegy ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with seemingly geometrical precision. The hardy little horses could be hired very cheaply, and the justly extolled natural beauties of the island in the vicinity of Funchal were fully explored. The greater portion of it is quite inaccessible except on foot, but the tough little native ponies which are as sure footed as goats perform wonderful feats in the way of climbing, and are quite equal to the double duty of carrying their riders, and dragging along their owner who holds by one hand to the pony's ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... as queer as his master in appearance, being a large, raw-boned animal, with patches of hair upon him, a long tangled mane and tail, and he was unshod, though his hoofs looked as tough as iron. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... so used to it, he won't go noways without it; feels kind o' lonesome, I 'xpect. It don't hurt him none, nuther; his skin's got so thick an' tough, that he wouldn't know, if you was to put ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... He knew not how it was. He had never been treated so before. He was not proof against entreaty and submission; but I had neither supplicated nor submitted. The stuff that I was made of was at once damnably tough and devilishly pliant. When he thought of my impudence, in staying in his house after he had bade me leave it, he was tempted to resume his passion. When he reflected on my courage, in making light of his anger, notwithstanding his known impetuosity and my personal inferiority, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... in any trance," answered the dark girl, "and I think it's pretty tough for him to take up with a rank outsider, and expect us to warm up to her as though he'd married one of our own folks." She tossed her head, the pride of class distinction welling ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... frightened. She advanced slowly, waving the long, draped arms, and moaning. All at once something came down on the head of George Baker, just as he had raised his club to hurl it at the ghost. The something was a long tough stick in the hand of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... debtor in the Iayle that lies, Yet cannot this his Creditor suffice Doth woe thee oft with many a sigh and teare, Yet thou art coy, and him thou wilt not heare. The Captiue slaue that tuggeth at the Oares, And vnderneath the Bulls tough sinewes rores, Begs at thy hand, in lieu of all his paines, That thou wouldst but release him of his chaines; Yet thou a niggard listenest not thereto, With one short gaspe which thou mightst easily do, 20 But thou couldst come to ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." - "There!" said ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... go off and try to catch some fish," I said. "Our friends will be much obliged to us if we can offer them some fish instead of the ducks, which, to say the best of them, are rather tough and strong-tasted." ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... wish all the fellers in your stories didn't have such tough old names!) 'most dis-as-ter-ous triumphs he had when playing at Lord Holland's.' (Who was Lord Holland, uncle Tony?) 'Some one asked him to im-provise on the violin the story of a son who kills his father, runs a-way, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... creatures, my flame is also spent. But I do not intend, like you, to lie by the roadside in the wind, and keep myself warm with memories. Now I am going where I can be of use to others. For I am brisk and tough, and do not hope to gain by my efforts more than ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... firm enough for the purpose—the thin broad laths of the same wood with which these are inclosed, and the broad sheets of birch-bark, impervious to water, which sheathed the outside, all firmly sewed together by the tough slender roots of the fir-tree, and when I considered its extreme lightness and the grace of its form, I could not but wonder at the ingenuity of those who had invented so beautiful a combination of ship-building and basket-work. "It cost me twenty dollars," said the half-breed, "and I would ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... "lassies" were not deemed worthy to touch the classics, and the classics were everything to him. In America it is reported that the best specimens of university students often come from remote schools in which no external advantages have been available; but the tough unyielding habit of study has been developed in grappling with difficulties without much support ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Maenalian lays. Now let the wolf turn tail and fly the sheep, Tough oaks bear golden apples, alder-trees Bloom with narcissus-flower, the tamarisk Sweat with rich amber, and the screech-owl vie In singing with the swan: let Tityrus Be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest-glade, Arion 'mid his ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... of a fortune is tough," wrote Pond, "but there are other resources for another fortune. You and I will make ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wise guy, an' don't ye forget it, Jack. Only I'm sorry for poor Buster, becase, ye say, he really don't hanker afther goin' on the thrip at all, it sames. And sure, it must be pretty tough balancing in that cranky ould boat all ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... trailed out beside the slimy carcass of his captor, and into the tough armour the ape-man attempted to plunge his stone knife as he was borne to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the most quiet way, in meats, and vegetables, and huxter's wares. Nature has denied to the butcher of hot climates the privilege of salting meat, but he makes amends for this defect by cutting his tough beef into strips, which he rubs over with salt, and offers to sell to you by the yard. Vera Cruz is now as venerable a looking town as when I was here before, although the houses, and the plastered walls, and tops of the stone churches seem to have had a new coating of Spanish ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... think better, and then beat these together in a Mortar; or sometimes work them in your hands, (your hands being very clean) and then make it into a ball, or two, or three, as you like best for your use: but you must work or pound it so long in the Mortar, as to make it so tough as to hang upon your hook without washing from it, yet not too hard; or that you may the better keep it on your hook, you may kneade with your Paste a little (and not much) white or ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... face, Siddhartha watched the leaving monk. The sleep had strengthened him much, but hunger gave him much pain, for by now he had not eaten for two days, and the times were long past when he had been tough against hunger. With sadness, and yet also with a smile, he thought of that time. In those days, so he remembered, he had boasted of three three things to Kamala, had been able to do three noble ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... from this came every week the indispensable Graham cakes, which are the despair of all the cooks. Of course, on this point it is impossible, without seeing their experiment, to say why it failed; but all the given conditions being met, if the cakes were tough, there was probably too much meal; if soggy, too little. Also the latest improvement is not to cut them in diamonds, but to roll them into various forms. After scalding, the dough is just too soft to be handled easily; it is then to be dropped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... hills; but the best, and also the most convenient, were those upon Entrance Island, some of them being fit to make top masts for ships. The branches are very brittle; but the carpenter thought the trunks to be tough, and superior to the Norway pine, both for spars and planks: turpentine exudes from between the wood and the bark, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... use the epithet within his hearing. People were afraid of him. One day in the street a tough, swaggering bully, fearless in the consciousness of his powers as a first-class boxer, lurched up against him, deliberately, and with offensive intent. Those who witnessed the act stood by for the phase of excitement dearest of all to their hearts, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... only, perhaps not so faultily, leave Emerald Uthwart and the like of him [227] essentially what they are. "He holds his book in a peculiar way," notes in manuscript one of his tutors; "holds on to it with both hands; clings as if from below, just as his tough little mind clings to the sense of the Greek words he can English so closely, precisely." Again, as at school, he had put his neck under the yoke; though he has now also much reading quite at his own choice; by preference, when he ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... all my family was not worth one piece of silver. You think you are worth many pieces of gold, I suppose. No one likes you. Your own master would not eat you. And the market people would never buy a thing so old and tough as you are. But I suppose you will have to stay here in our yard a thousand years or so, until you die. Then they will carry you to the wilderness and throw ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... up that he'd given in!" Jake remarked. "The fellow's a blamed obstinate old tough. I wonder whether he felt curious ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... "Some tough!" remarked a Canadian when he saw the Australians for the first time marching along a French road. They and the New Zealanders were conspicuous in France, owing to their felt hats with the brim looped up on the side, ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... across. And—listen, little river—again at the same old place I shall cut me the willow wand, and down the long slope to the certain place I knew I am going to hurry, running the last quarter of a mile in sheer expectation, but forgetting not the binding on of the tough linen line. And now I cast my gaudy float on that same swinging, wimpling, dimpling eddy, and let it swim in beneath the bank. And—No! Can it be? Have I here, now, again, plainly in my hands, the strange and wonderful creature, the gift of the little stream? ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... fighting.... Fraulein.... Some said it was true... some not. They could not both be right. It was probably true... only old-fashioned people thought it was not. It was true. Just that—monkeys fighting. But who began it? Who made Fraulein? Tough leathery monkey.... ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... blowed!" exclaimed Brakeman Joe, using Conductor Tobin's favorite expression, when the boy had finished. "If that isn't tough luck, then I don't know what is. But I'll tell you what we'll do. I can't get you a place on the road, of course; but I believe you are just on time for a job, such as it is, that will put a few dollars in your pocket, and keep you for a day or two, besides giving you a chance to pick up ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... "It's tough on you, I know, but think of all them poor sufferin' females that's settin' up nights and worryin' for fear they won't be picked out. Why, say, when you make your ch'ice you'll have to let the rest know right off; 'twould be cruelty to animals ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... adapted to environment than the malamute dog. His coat, while it is not fluffy, nor the hair long, is yet so dense and heavy that it affords him a perfect protection against the utmost severity of cold. His feet are tough and clean, and do not readily accumulate snow between the toes and therefore do not easily get sore—which is the great drawback of nearly all "outside" dogs and their mixed progeny. He is hardy and thrifty and does well on less food than the mixed breeds; and, despite Peary to ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... was of tough buckskin, and when the lynx set her teeth in the collar she imagined that she was wreaking vengeance upon flesh and blood. And the sound she made was enough to ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... erected around the tree at a height several feet above the buttresses of the tree or at such a point as is considered expedient. Trees are cut down high above the base because the wood at the bottom of the tree is usually exceedingly tough. Standing on his perch at a distance of about 8 feet from the ground, the feller plies his native axe[11] until the tree yields and crashes down in its fall such of its fellows as may stand in its way. It may be observed here that the Manbo as a rule ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... time for the hunter to look out for his precious skin. If the man is armed with a gun, he must take the best of aim, and his bullets must be like young cannon-balls, for the Elephant's head is hard and his skin is tough. If the hunter is on a horse, he need not suppose that he can escape by merely putting his steed to its best speed. The Elephant is big and awkward-looking, but he gets over the ground in a very ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... 1999. Growth then rose to 6% to 7% in 2000-02 even against the background of global recession. These numbers mask some major difficulties in economic performance. Many domestic industries, including coal, cement, steel, and paper, have reported large stockpiles of inventory and tough competition from more efficient foreign producers. Since the Party elected new leadership in 2001, Vietnamese authorities have reaffirmed their commitment to economic liberalization and have moved to implement the ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... dear,' said he, with a smile, 'I don't know how it is. I've tried experiments on my brains. I have gone through half-a-dozen tough calculations. I have read over a Greek play, and made out a problem or two in mechanics, without being the worse for it; but, somehow, I can't for the life of me hark back to the opinions that ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tore the fibres, Tore the tough roots of the Larch-tree, Closely sewed the bark together, Bound ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... They were dressed exactly alike, in shapeless garments with petticoat-like skirts. The imperfect thing that lived within them moved those beings to howl at us from the top of the bank, where they sprawled amongst the tough stalks of furze. Their cropped black heads stuck out from the bright yellow wall of countless small blossoms. The faces were purple with the strain of yelling; the voices sounded blank and cracked like a mechanical imitation of old ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... interested. I am feeling very unwell to-day, and this note is badly, perhaps hardly intelligibly, expressed; but you must excuse me, for I could not let a post pass, without thanking you for your note. You will have a tough job even to shake in the slightest degree Sir H. Holland. I do not think (privately I say it) that the great man has knowledge enough to enter on the subject. Pray believe me ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... butter.' Letters, iv. 401. Goldsmith, in 1770, wrote from Paris:—'As for the meat of this country I can scarce eat it, and though we pay two good shillings an head for our dinner, I find it all so tough, that I have spent less time with my knife than my pick-tooth.' Forster's Goldsmith, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... not so with No. 2, and with the large middle class who all live in the same way. The usual female cook at 12s. a week is not even capable of sending up a plain meal properly. Her meat is tough, and her potatoes are watery. Her pudding-range extends from rice to sago, and from sago to rice, and in many middle-class households pudding is reserved for Sundays and visitors. A favourite summer dish is stewed fruit, and, as it is not easy to make it badly, there is a great deal to ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the type. A smooth surface may be an element of beauty, as with the paper employed by Baskerville, but it must not be a shiny surface. The great desideratum in modern paper from the point of view of the book-buyer is a paper that, while opaque and tough, shall be thin enough to give us our books in small compass, one more akin to the dainty and precious vellum than to the heavier and coarser parchment. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... resolved this season to be his own head man; and appointed Lucas Springer the second in command, with a posse of labourers to execute his decrees. It did not work well. Mr. Rossitur found he had a very tough prime minister, who would have every one of his plans to go through a kind of winnowing process by being tossed about in an argument. The arguments were interminable, until Mr. Rossitur not unfrequently quit the field with, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... that was wandering amongst the hills, killed, skinned, and put it into a pot to boil, baked some fresh tortillas, and brought us the spoil in triumph! One penknife was produced—the boiling pan placed on a deal table in the room off the bath, and every one, surrounding the fowl, a tough old creature, who must have chuckled through many revolutions, we ate by turns, and concluded with a comfortable drink of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... as he termed it, and after gathering some berries, would wander away over the hills in search of game and to explore the neighbouring hills and valleys, and sometimes it was sunset before he made his appearance. Hector had made an excellent strong bow, like the Indian bow, out of a tough piece of hickory wood, which he found in one of his rambles, and he made arrows with wood that he seasoned in the smoke, sharpening the heads with great care with his knife, and hardening them by exposure to strong heat, at a certain distance from the fire. The entrails of the woodchuck, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... them, as they act as foreign bodies in bearing down upon the sensitive lower layers of the skin. Continued irritation often leads to inflammation of the skin around and beneath the corn with the formation of pus. Ordinarily, corns are tough, yellowish, horny masses, but, when moistened by sweat between the toes, they are white, and are ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... be glad enough t' get back t' th' river tilt, an' when he is gettin' back he'll be findin' it fine. He'll be thinkin' o' th' tough cruisin' with th' Injuns instead o' th' grub at his college place, an' that'll make he think 'tis fine in th' tilts. That's the way it mostly is with folks. They always wants somethin' they ain't got, an' when they gets un ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... to and fro. The focal point of their destination was the figure at the center of the disturbance. Most of the blows found other marks. Four or five men could have demolished Clay. Fifteen or twenty found it a tough job because they interfered with each other at every turn. They were packed too close for hard hitting. Clay was not fighting but wrestling. He used his arms to push with rather than ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... are but tough morsels, and 't were well If we had found the FRESH more eatable; Garrick! I do not say 't were well for HIM, For we had pluck'd ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... sinewy hands of an Indian in full war-paint. Arkwright showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at the gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport—the kind that wins only where the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure had the solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold, wet hardship of ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... wondered," Arthur said, when they were discussing the details of the mission to Livingstone, "how your tough fiber ever generated beings so tender and beautiful as Mona, and Louis, and the Trumps. And now I'm wondering why Sullivan associates you and me in this business. Is it his plan to sink the Mayor ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... None have a right to make them save our craft. This is one of the rascaille Spaniards who have poured into the city under favour of the queen to spoil and ruin the lawful trade. Though could you but have seen, Ambrose, how our tough English ashwood in King Harry's hand—from our own armoury too—made all go down before it, you would never uphold strangers and their false wares that CAN only ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the old man, and he looked out again on Niles and his audience. "The tough part of it is, Presson, those men out there are right—at bottom. They're playing traitor to me and acting like infernal fools, and I wouldn't let them know that I thought them anything else. But I'd like to step out there, Luke, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... mighty slick if you want to do that, they watch you so close. But do you know what's going on in this country right now, Mr. Popple? There's a regular organized band of law-breakers operating from one end of the nation to the other. We're tryin' to bust it up, but it's a tough job. The best way to reform a reformer is to rob him. The minute he finds out he's been robbed he turns over a new leaf and begins to beller like a bull about how rotten the police are. Ninety nine times out of a hundred he quits his cussed interferin' with the law and becomes a decent, law-observin' ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... could not catch him in the act however. He was too sharp for that, and if disturbed, when he had but half demolished [Footnote: Demolished: destroyed.] a pullet he would hastily sit on the remainder and look as innocent as could be. He was discovered at last, however, by the cackling of a tough old hen which he had failed ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... greatly in the different species of Mollusca—the group to which the snail belongs. In some there may be as few as sixteen; in others, in some relatives of our garden snail, for example, there may be as many as forty thousand! The working portion of this ribbon is fixed to a sort of tough cushion, which, by means of muscles, can be drawn forward and protruded from the mouth, where it is worked backwards and forwards with a licking or rasping action that effectually scrapes away, in a fine pulp, the edge of the cabbage leaf on which ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Smokeless Powder Factory, Tonbridge, Kent. It consists of a mixture of nitro-cellulose, paraffin, barium, nitrate, and some other ingredients. It is claimed for this powder that it combines hard shooting with safety, great penetration, and moderate strain on the gun. It is hard and tough in grain, and may be loaded like black powder, and subjected to hard friction without breaking into powder, that it is smokeless, and leaves no residue in the gun. The charge for 12 bores is 42 grains by weight, and 1-1/8 oz. or 1-1/16 ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... angry rows. A chap named Isaiah Rhynders, a fierce politician of those days, with a band of robust supporters, would attempt to contradict the speakers and break up the meetings. But the Anti-Slavery, and Quaker, and Temperance, and Missionary and other conventicles and speakers were tough, tough, and always maintained their ground, and carried out their programs fully. I went frequently to these meetings, May after May—learn'd much from them—was sure to be on hand when J. P. Hale or ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... anything else. Plates are formed of them by sewing them together, when required; and they become as pliable as leather, even after being kept for a year or more, by having a little water sprinkled over them. They are long, wide, and tough, and well suited to the purpose. All kinds of food are put upon them, and served up to the family and guests. The cattle do not eat them, as they do leaves of the peepul, bur, neem, &c. The sakhoo, when not preserved, is cut down, when young, for beams, rafters, &c., required in building. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... failure of his harvest. Neither has any capital, yet the Irishman obtains an amount of credit which would strike Hodge dumb with amazement. He is allowed to owe, frequently one year's, sometimes two years' rent. Indeed, I know of one particularly tough customer who at this moment owes three years' rent—to wit, 24l.—and will neither pay anything nor go. Now for an English labourer to obtain credit for a five-pound note would be a remarkable experience. His cottage and his potato patch cost him from one to two shillings per week; but who ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the answers," Freddy bragged. "Like I said, this is just exercise. Mental gymnastics. Like this last one; it was pretty tough compared to most of them. Had some questions about things I hadn't even thought about since college, things I'd forgotten I knew. What good's an education if you forget what things ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble
... his character were of tough fibre, there was also a chance that he might render service to his king. At times of danger the government was glad to call on him for aid. When Tracy or Denonville or Frontenac led an expedition against the Iroquois, it was fortunate that Canada could muster a cohort of men who knew ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Kings word is a Statute graven in Brasse, And if he breakes that Law I will in Thunder Rouze his cold spirit. I long to ride in Armour, And looking round about me to see nothing But Seas and shores, the Seas of Christians blood, The shoares tough Souldiers. Here a wing flies out Soaring at Victory; here the maine Battalia Comes up with as much horrour and hotter terrour As if a thick-growne Forrest by enchantment Were made to move, and all the ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... protect your garden; and that"—she embraced it with her glance—"is not so very big. You could teach your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though no doubt they are), as ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? Or Darwin?... They are ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... the devil has given him. In this condition, the loulerous run upon four legs, pass the night in ranging over the country, and in biting and devouring all the dogs they meet. At break of day they lay aside their goatskins and return home. Often they are ill in consequence of having eaten tough old hounds, and they vomit up their undigested paws. One great nuisance to them is the fact that they may be wounded or killed in their loulerou state. With the first effusion of blood their diabolic covering vanishes, and they are recognized, to ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... agreeable impression. Loud and thundering sounds, such as the ringing of heavy bells, beating of drums, and firing of cannon, and the gothic hourra are requisite to move the phlegm that surrounds the tough heart of old ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... abundant among the older rocks of all parts of the globe. Popular names for them are "whinstone," "greenstone," "toadstone" and "trap." They form excellent road-mending stones and are much quarried for this purpose, being tough, durable and resistant to wear, so long as they are not extremely decomposed. Many of them are to be preferred to the fresher dolerites as being less brittle. The quality of the Cornish greenstones appears to have been distinctly improved by a smaller amount of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... sewn thickly, forming a sort of chain armour, while permitting perfect freedom of the limbs. The archers also wore steel caps, which, like those of the men-at-arms, came low down on the neck and temples. They had on tough leathern frocks, girded in at the waist, and falling to the knee; some of them had also iron rings sewn on the shoulders. English archers were often clad in green cloth, but Sir Eustace had furnished the garments, and ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... also hanging from the roof, but with a sigh he determined to reserve that delicacy for the morrow, remembering that two days would elapse before a fresh supply was due. His dog, Sibi—a starved looking mongrel greyhound—lay at his feet and gazed up with expectant eyes, waiting for the handful of tough mealies which would be flung to him when his master had ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... edge of the balcony and looked over; it was not very far from the ground, but it was too far to jump. How about the wistaria boughs? They looked pretty tough—he decided to try, and if he fell—well, he had smashed himself up before this more than once, and no doubt would do so again. A few tumbles more or less wouldn't make much difference to him, especially, he reflected, as he was bound to get ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... she moved; but I could recall none of that sort. She had been too unhappy, here in Tempe, to make friends. So I sat there shivering until morning, unwilling to go away, altogether bewildered, quite at my wits' end, steeped in despair. The world seemed too hard and tough for me. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Hume paid no heed to the question. His lips quivered, his nostrils twitched, and his eyes shot strange gleams. He caught the back of his chair with both hands in a grasp that tried to squeeze the tough oak. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... delicious fruit is the part of the plant known in Manila. The peel is at the present time almost universally employed in medicine. The fruit is about the size of a small Manila orange, the pericarp a dark red or chocolate color, tough and thick, crowned with the remains of the calyx. On breaking it open the edible portion of the fruit is seen, consisting of 6-18 seeds covered by a white, sweet pulp, cottony in appearance, of a ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... resembled an antique and dilapidated baboon; his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself, but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring. Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot with a rifle especially when he used a little single-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun of mine made by Purdey which he named ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... "He made a proposition." In current slang almost anything is a proposition. A difficult enterprise is "a tough proposition," an agile wrestler, "a slippery proposition," ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields." We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman, describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage." [Footnote: Discovery of the Great IV, [misprint] 1869.] Golden, in his Five Nations, writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass made of pieces of wood joined together." [Footnote: Dix, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... which the swamps of the Philippine Islands produce is one called the 'bejuco,' or 'jungle rope.' This is a vine of no great size, but of tremendous strength, which, near the end, divides into several slender but very tough branches. Each of these branches is surrounded by many rings of long, wicked, recurved thorns, as sharp and strong as steel fish-hooks, and nearly as difficult to dislodge. The hunter who encounters ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gentleman, when carving a tough goose, had the misfortune to send it entirely out of the dish, and into the lap of the lady next to him; on which he very coolly looked her full in the face, and with admirable gravity and calmness, said, "Madam, may ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... time of it in Moscow," he said. "I am very glad for your sake. . . . I'm an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon give up the ghost and set you all free. And the wonder is that my hide is so tough, that I'm alive ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be accurate! [Obviously their nerves are now on edge.] He said we should find him tough to ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... more to kill a tough man than you London chaps think," said Mat. "I was found before my head got cool, and plastered over with leaves and ointment. They'd left a bit of scalp at the back, being in rather too great a hurry to do their work as handily as usual; and a new skin growed over, after a little—a babyish ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... his apprehensions disappeared. Before him stretched a wide, grassy savanna and upon it was grazing a herd of wild cattle, at least fifty in number, stocky beasts with long horns. Robert looked at them with satisfaction. Here was enough food on the hoof to last him for years. They might be tough, but he had experience enough to make them tender when it came ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... put upon the market, or old goods with new names. Standard goods, such as serges, cashmere, Henrietta cloth, and covert cloth, are always to be found in the shops. These are all twilled goods. The serges are woven of combed wool and are harsh, tough, springy, worsted fabrics of medium and heavy weight, with a distinct twill, rather smooth surface, and plainer back. There are also loosely woven serges. Cashmere and Henrietta cloth have a fine, irregular twill—the finest made. They are woven with silk, wool, and cotton warp, but the latter ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of his gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a bluish grey—violent in its colours once, but sobered now by age and dinginess—and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in colour blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to his chin. His cravat ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... generally follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man, should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no use to ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... pain to come upon him, the second and third, use it in like manner; it allaies all pain the first day how great soever it be, and prevents Swelling; the second day it causes Sweat, which is very nasty, tough and thick, very soure in taste, and of an evil sent, and most of all in those parts where the Members are united and joined together by the Joints; and if you should give none in the third day, yet will there be a purgation of the Veins, and of the Excrements, without any molestation or ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... hippopotamus, or boiled rhinoceros. But she met with none of these, and day after day was rejoiced to find her native turkey appearing on the table, with pigeons and chickens (though the chickens, to be sure, were scarcely larger than the pigeons), and lamb that was really not more tough than that of New Hampshire and ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... language of the country to which he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the "tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of the family life because the children have to become the interpreters and representatives of the family ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... knife he cut the tough withes that held the bamboos in their places, and pulled out three of ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the fellow had a charter, he would be compelled to pay; otherwise he would not, as probably the charges were exorbitant. Brown argued they might have some trouble with the ranchman if pay was refused, as they generally had a pretty tough crowd around them who were ready for any kind of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing out again; my body ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sign of grit, that, when it appears, t' other fellow or t' other opinion must give way. Its power comes from its tough hold on the real, and the surly boldness with which it utters and acts it out. Thus, in social life, it puts itself in rude opposition to all those substitutes for reality which the weakness and hypocrisy and courtesy of men find necessary for their mutual defence. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... soul. Be not misled by worldly-wisemen to take advice of the doctor's boy, but go direct to Jesus; he is ready—he is willing to cure and save to the uttermost. His medicine may be sharp, but merely so as to effect the cure 'where bad humours are tough and churlish.' 'It revives where life is, and gives life where it is not. Take man from this river, and nothing can make him live: let him have this water and nothing can make him die.' The river of water of life allegorically represents the Spirit and grace of God; thus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The thick mustaches and pointed beards with which the lips and chins of most of them were decorated, gave to their physiognomies a manly and determined air, fully borne out by their unrestrained carriage and deportment. To a man, almost all were armed with a tough vine-wood bludgeon, called in their language an estoc volant, tipped and shod with steel—a weapon fully understood by them, and rendered, by their dexterity in the use of it, formidable to their adversaries. Not a few carried at their girdles the short ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was ignorant, the mysteries of the human mind were a sealed book to me as yet, and I stupidly looked upon myself as a tough and unforgivable criminal. I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole disgraceful affair, implored him in impassioned language to believe that I had never intended to commit this crime, and was unaware that I had committed it until I was confronted with the awful evidence. I have lost ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... physique than most giants. He wore a full beard. His features were thick and heavy, coarsely modelled, like those of a wooden carving; but his eyes, small and black, sparkled with the fires of intelligence and audacity. His hair was short, black, and bristling. Nightspore was of middle height, but so tough-looking that he appeared to be trained out of all human frailties and susceptibilities. His hairless face seemed consumed by an intense spiritual hunger, and his eyes were wild and distant. Both men ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... almost entirely closed by a membrane called the hymen. The vulgar name for hymen is "maidenhead." The hymen may be of various shapes, and of different consistency. In some girls it is a very thin membrane, which tears very readily; in others it is quite tough. On the upper margin or in the center of the hymen there is an opening which permits any secretion from the vagina and the blood from the uterus to come through. In rare cases there is no opening in the hymen, that is, the vagina is ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... when pigs spoke rhyme, And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... mask of cheerfulness—with the desperate resolution of an actor, amusing his audience at a time of domestic distress. He astonished the keeper's wife by showing that he really knew how to use her frying-pan. Cecilia's omelet was tough—but the young ladies ate it. Emily's mayonnaise sauce was almost as liquid as water—they swallowed it nevertheless by the help of spoons. The potatoes followed, crisp and dry and delicious—and Mirabel became more popular ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... as the same solitude whence he had just emerged; therefore he followed Peter, who over his shoulder carried a bag containing various bodies of minks, fishers, and other furry animals, snared in his traps, and subsequently knocked on the head by his tough service-rod. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... lunched upon a shoe, and for my own part, whenever I go upon another voyage, I shall take the precaution of providing myself with pliable French boots—your Kilmarnock leather is so very intolerably tough! Towards evening, to our infinite joy, we descried a boat entering the Sound. We shouted, as you may be sure, like demons. The Celtic Samaritans came up, and, thanks to the kindness of Rory M'Gregor the master, we each of us went to sleep that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... when the trudging is heavy, and the wind pierces our worn garments. The others, all of them, are unendingly cheerful when in the tent. We mean to see the game through with a proper spirit, but it's tough work to be pulling harder than we ever pulled in our lives for long hours, and to feel that the progress is so slow. One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to carry enough water and supplies to make it. Say, Juan, who was that big Portuguee with Professor Gurlone? He's blind, ain't he? His eyes were white as milk, and his face tanned black as river mud. Surely is a great big guy, and tough looking, too." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... on them—the officers seemed to be consulting together—and then they made up their minds to attack us, and came on altogether in a line. If our crew had consented to fight it would have been pretty tough work, I must own that, and maybe we should have got the worst of it. In a few minutes the boats were alongside, and their crews were clambering up on deck, some on our quarters and some amidships and for'ard, shouting and jabbering, and waving their ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... monsters. I own that I shouldn't much like to have to fight one of them with a suit of armour on, and a spear or battle-axe in my hand. I suspect even Saint George who killed the dragon would have found it somewhat a tough job, and yet these naked fellows make no ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... spurned the furniture was a symbol of him; it was some such thing that prevented him and his heirs from sitting as quietly on their throne as the heirs of St. Louis. He thrust again and again at the tough intangibility of the priests' Utopianism like a man fighting a ghost; he answered transcendental defiances with baser material persecutions; and at last, on a dark and, I think, decisive day in English history, his word sent four feudal murderers ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... dey tell me. Dat was a pretty rough time wid de people den. I don' recollect so much bout de times back dere cause in dat day en time chillun didn' have de heap of knowledge dey have dis day en time, but I remembers seein de Yankees en de people gwine to de war. Oh, dat was a tough time cause dey use de whip in dem days. Oh, yes'um, my Massa whip my gran'mammy wid a leather strap. You see she had a knack of gwine off for some cause or another en meetin de boat what run up en down dat big Pee Dee river en bring fertilizer en all kind of goods to de peoples. Massa Randall ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... sensation; whence great arterial energy is produced, and the pulse becomes strong and full, as well as quick; and the coats of the arteries feel hard under the finger, being themselves thickened and distended by inflammation. The blood drawn, especially at the second bleeding, is covered with a tough size; which is probably the mucus from the inflamed internal surface of the arteries, increased in quantity, and more coagulable than in its natural state; the thinner part being more perfectly absorbed by the increased action of the inflamed absorbents. See Sect. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... black-bearded face rose silently above the iron partition between his room and that of the German. A hand gripping a small electric flashlight followed. A white ray searched the room, halting on the khaki shirt lying over a box. A tough withe with a barb at one end came over like a slender tentacle, hooked the shirt neatly, drew it stealthily up to the top. Shirt, stick, lamp, hand, face all ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... creature through college, and had a high opinion of him, and a great delight in his company. They were both much given to books, and according to their lights zealous archaeologists. They had got hold of Chapelizod Castle, a good tough enigma. It was a theme they never tired of. Loftus had already two folios of extracts copied from all the records to which Dr. Walsingham could procure him access. They could not have worked harder, indeed, if they ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... digging of graves. He "had a rule from his father to know when not to dig a grave." That was "when he found a certain plant about the bigness of the middle of a tobacco-pipe, which came near the surface of the earth, but never above it. It is very tough, and about a yard long; the rind of it is almost black, and tender, so that when you pluck it, it slips off and underneath is red; it hath a small button at the top, not much unlike the top of an asparagus; of these he sometimes finds two or three in a grave." ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... kept very sharp. The line is attached to the middle of the spear-head, the near end being slanted, so that when the line is tightened it lies cross-wise in the wound, like a harpoon, and it is almost impossible for it to draw out after once passing through the tough hide of the animal. When the line is nearly run out, the end of the spear-shaft is passed through a loop in the end of the line and held firmly by digging a little hole in the ice for the end of the spear to rest in, the foot resting upon the line and against the spear to steady it. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in the morning with the will that, smooth or rough, You'll grin. Sink to sleep at midnight, and although you're feeling tough, Yet grin. There's nothing gained by whining, and you're not that kind of stuff; You're a fighter from away back, and you won't take a rebuff; Your trouble is that you don't know when you have had enough— Don't give in. If Fate should down you, just get up and take another ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... and river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... so-called aluminum bronze with a fine golden color, which it retains for a long time. The tensile strength of this alloy is usually given as 100,000 pounds to the square inch; but castings of our ten per cent. bronze have stood a strain of 109,000 pounds. It is a very hard, tough alloy, with a capacity to withstand wear far in excess of any other alloy in use. All grades of aluminum bronze make fine castings, taking very exact impressions, and there is no loss in remelting, as in the case of alloys containing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the noise, but others never. Every time a battery fired simultaneously one of the men who were with me, a hard, tough type of mechanic, shrank and ducked his head with an expression of agonized horror. He confessed to me that it "knocked his nerves to pieces." Three such men out of six or seven had to be invalided home in one week. One of them had a crise de nerfs, which nearly killed him. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... carry arms. Those who could afford it were to provide themselves with a complete coat of mail. The rest were to wear helmets and breast-plates only. The horses were also to be protected as far as possible by breast-plates, either of iron, or of leather thick and tough enough to prevent ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the half-cooked ham, The rich ragout and the charming cham., I've got to mix my liquor; Give me a gander's gaunt hind leg, Hard and tough as a wooden peg, And I'll keep it down with a hard-boiled egg, 'Twill ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... you're so infernal green, Perry! The 'Thunderbolt' is a fighting man from Lambeth, a tough customer who's won a fight or so lately and thought he could beat anything on two pins. So we were bringing him down here, hoping to match him with Jessamy, or, failing him, some other good man. But the fool, not knowing Jessamy, get's himself thrashed, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... will turn before long," answered Adair; "and if the boats get aground we may find these same Arabs rather tough customers. However, we must look out to avoid the contingency, and if we can take the fellows by surprise, we may manage to get hold of a good ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... off the hoof," groaned Marty. "Unless they pound it like they say they do the boarding-house beefsteak, that pullet will sure be tough." ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... Hard lifted Scott gently into the car. "Don't worry about him. He's had this coming to him for some time by all accounts and the worst of it is his hide's probably so tough he won't know it's been ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... bleached, fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb. There are long, dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn clings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at night the turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white eggs with tough, rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off to nowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great, blind worms, to finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few miles ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... shrewdly, and confessed the truth of the charge without an attempt at mitigation. He asked frankly for a place in the troop, the lowest, as his chance of redemption, or rather demanded it as a grace due from man to man. Drake was taken by his manner, noticed his build, which was tough and wiry, and conceded the request. Nor had he reason to regret his decision on the march out. Gorley showed himself alert, and vigilant, a favourite with the blacks, and obedient to his officers. He was advanced from duty to duty; a week before the force began its homeward march from Boruwimi ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Russia, and were now following a horse-path which winds up to the Kurdish encampments on the southern slope of the mountain. The plain was strewn with sand and rocks, with here and there a bunch of tough, wiry grass about a foot and a half high, which, though early in the year, was partly dry. It would have been hot work except for the rain of the day before and a strong southeast wind. As it was, our feet were blistered and bruised, the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry. But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must have cracked, had ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... fought for mastery in Hampton Roads. The ironclad vessel was not then a new idea in naval architecture, but its efficiency as a fighting machine was then first demonstrated. Iron for armor soon gave way to thick and tough steel, while each improvement in armor led to a corresponding improvement in guns and projectiles, until now a battle at sea has grown to be a remarkably different affair from the great ocean combats of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... off in a jiffy. And our coffee is just ready, too—I rather guess that'll warm you up some. Eli, it's lucky you made an extra supply, after all. Looks as if you expected we'd have company drop in on us. I'll carry the paddle—good you hung on to it, for it's a tough job to whittle one out, I know. Here we are, old chap, and believe me, you're a thousand ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... him another horse, just as docile as the mare. The obedient creature, at a signal, reared suddenly, and seated Mr. Little on the sawdust behind him. A similar result was attained several times, by various means. But Henry showed himself so tough, courageous, and persistent, that he made great progress, and his good-humor won his preceptors. They invited him to come tomorrow, at an earlier hour, and bring half a quid with him. He did so, and this time there was an American rider rehearsing, who showed Henry what ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Count of Holland, and would not release him until the Duke of Brabant offered to become prisoner in his place, and found himself obliged, in order to obtain his liberty, to pay his father-in-law a tough ransom. It was not long before Guy himself suffered from the same sort of iniquitous surprise that he had practised upon his sons-in-law. In 1293 he was secretly negotiating the marriage of Philippa, one of his daughters, with Prince Edward, eldest ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... then Elizabeth gave a great start, and stood still and looked up at him. "Wait a moment, please," he continued hurriedly; "this branch is so tough and my knife is small. There, I have secured it;" and then, waving the festoon of honeysuckle triumphantly, he scrambled down the bank and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for Chris, like the rest of the sailors in the tropic heat, wore only his breeches. His bare chest and shoulders were tanned and healthy and the soles of his bare feet as tough as shoe leather. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... he could easily reach the lower end of the iron bars closing the cell window, and he at once began work on them. At first he seemed to produce about as much effect as would the gnawing of a mouse, but after a while his tiny saw was buried in the tough iron. Then footsteps approached, and Ridge had barely time to fling himself on the vile-smelling pallet before a sentry was peering in at the grating. A ray of light fell where he lay, but fortunately failed to reach the side on which the barred aperture was located. ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Water. The Water being settled, they pour it off gently by degrees, they dry the Colour in the Shade that fell to the bottom of the Vessel; and this is the true Roucou, without any Mixture. The Physicians in these Parts prescribe it to cut and attenuate thick and tough Humours, which cause difficulty of Breathing, Retension of Urine, and all sorts ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... and moralized and spiritualized; and over our earthly victuals (or rather vittles, for the former is a very foolish mode of spelling),—over our earthly vittles is diffused a sauce of lofty and gentle thoughts, and tough meat is mollified with tender feelings. But oh! these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my present experience. When the company rose from table, they all, in my single person, ascended to ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us round in a wide sweep to open the ships, and every eye and glass was glued to them. As we rounded the Indiaman's great gilded stern, about a mile away, it did not need John Ozanne's emphatic—"It's him!" to tell us we were in for a tough fight, and that three prizes lay for our taking. We gave John another cheer, tightened our belts, and perhaps—I can speak for one at all events—wondered grimly how it would be with some of us a couple of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... was in two tin canisters, each one carefully sewn up in stout sailcloth. Mrs. Getchell had fastened a stout strap to each bag of powder and a bag of shot. These straps went over the girls' shoulders, and made them easier to carry than in any other way. It was of course a tough job for each girl to carry ten pounds for the long distance that lay before them, but they ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... laughed. "We're climbing mountains before we come to them. It will be tough work ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... sometimes pronounced like o soft, as court; sometimes like o short, as cough; sometimes like u close, as could; or u open, as rough, tough, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... thither, and often travel vast distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... perfectly insane. Witness the lengths they go, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen to set their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have the love of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding, high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons," who have inherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without having inherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to be ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... interrupted the other;—'we shall receive the thanks of Aurelian, though they be not spoken, as heartily as Varus. That was a tough old fellow though. They say he has served many years under the Emperor, and when he left the army was in a fair way to rise to the highest rank. Curses upon those who made a Christian of him! It is they, not Varus, who have put him ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... typical young Englishman, for example, one who has recently emerged from one of our public schools, one of the sort of young Englishmen for whom all commissions in the Army are practically reserved, who will own some great business, perhaps, or direct companies, and worm your way through the tough hide of style and restraint he has acquired, get him to talk about women, about his prospects, his intimate self, and see for yourself how much of him, and how little of him, his school has made. Test him on politics, on the national future, on social relationships, and lead him ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... you a clam and so you try to live up to your reputation. I know you, Kent. You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is too early. But I am excessively hungry. I had only a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, and the brute was tough. In reply to your question, may I put another—Did you lay in plenty ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by hail. Lastly the urban quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be presumed, of the general condemned three years before,(8) and like his father a vehement antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans dispersed the comitia by violence. But the tough soldiers of Marius, who had flocked in crowds to Rome to vote on this occasion, quickly rallied and dispersed the city bands, and on the voting ground thus reconquered the vote on the Appuleian laws was successfully brought to an end. The scandal ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was ready to go on, Snake refused to budge. Tough as he was, he had at last reached the limit of his energy and ambition. Al yanked hard on the bridle reins, then rode back and struck him sharply with his quirt before Snake would rouse himself enough to move forward. He went stiffly, reluctantly, pulling ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... his spine moved sinuous as a bow, Till all his weight hung poised on flank and loin. And e'en as, when a chariot-builder bends With practised skill his shafts of splintered fig, Hot from the fire, to be his axle-wheels; Flies the tough-rinded sapling from the hands That shape it, at a bound recoiling far: So from far-off the dread beast, all of a heap, Sprang on me, hungering for my life-blood. I Thrust with one hand my arrows in his ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... have dragged him away quick enough if he had a-come! Now don't you get tearful over Joe, you can't call him no prodigal; his veal's tough old beef by this time! But I never had nothing in particular against him more than I thought he ought to be kicked clean off the face of the earth!" said Mr. Shrimplin, rolling his drooping flaxen mustache fiercely between his stubby thumb and its ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... when I was at liberty, was dim and gloomy. I walked hurriedly along, fearing darkness would overtake me; and looking about me as I went, was snatching a hasty pleasure from the contemplation of Nature's beneficence, when my foot caught in a projecting root of some tough ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed— Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote 30 (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind) We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss— Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... reeds, and the Scythian Sacae, with their hatchets and painted crests. There, too, were the light-clothed Indians, the Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, and the Dadicae. There were the Caspians, clad in tough hides, with bows and cimeters; the gorgeous tunics of the Sarangae, and the loose flowing vests (or zirae) of the Arabians. There were seen the negroes of Aethiopian Nubia with palm bows four cubits long, arrows ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw her embarrassment, for he hastened to enlighten her. "I know all about young Guy. Nobody's enemy but his own. I helped Burke dig him out of Hoffstein's several weeks back, and a tough job it was. How has he behaved himself lately? Been on ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Billy Brackett spun the skiff around, and with the energy of despair pulled back towards the raft. The stout oars bent like whips. If one of them had given way nothing could have saved our raftmates from destruction. Had the tough blades been of other than home make, and fashioned from the best product of the Caspar Mill, they must have yielded. With each stroke Billy Brackett rose slightly from his seat. Arms, body, and legs made ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... lad. He's the boneless wonder. He's as gentle as a spring lamb, and not hardly as tough. Signer Anaconda, the Human Snake, that's what he's called on the bills. Ed Casey ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... was briefly unprintable. "Lord! you'll have to keep that dark," said Mr. Blendershin. "But you have got a tough bit of hoeing before you. If I was you I'd go on and get my degree now you're so near it. You'll ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... him who has not learned woman, Mademoiselle sat at the window each day and spread her nets for the ignominious game. Once she kept a grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for half an hour while she battered in vain the candy man's tough philosophy. His rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... with the cook as to whether we are going to have a cut of pastry that fairly melts in your mouth or a tough doughy mass that is unfit ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... part her cookies, but don't you get carryin' on with her little basket, 'cause it was her pa's, an' she's goin' to set great store by it. Tell him it's half-past nine if it's a minute, an' them old fowls what we're killin' off first is ruther tough. I ought to have her in the pot right now, an' there she ain't caught yet, runnin' 'round the hen-yard at loose ends, an' I'll try to catch her an' that'll help, an—My suz! if that boy ain't half 'crost the pastur' an' me not done talkin' to him. The sassy thing! If I'd had my way makin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but these colonials are practical above all else, and they went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few moments to pull themselves together and to get rid of their packs, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... necessary to extract the strength from the meat. If boiled fast over a large fire, the meat becomes hard and tough, and will not give ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Mr. Rossitur, disgusted with his first experiment, resolved this season to be his own head man; and appointed Lucas Springer the second in command, with a posse of labourers to execute his decrees. It did not work well. Mr. Rossitur found he had a very tough prime minister, who would have every one of his plans to go through a kind of winnowing process by being tossed about in an argument. The arguments were interminable, until Mr. Rossitur not unfrequently quit the field with, "Well, do what you like about it!"—not conquered, but wearied. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... interpreter of the 'honest grey hills.' Scott's poetical faculty may, perhaps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels we feel ourselves transported to the 'distant Cheviot's blue;' mixing with the sturdy dalesmen, and the tough indomitable puritans of his native land; for their sakes we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded romance which he attempted with less success to galvanise into life. The pleasure of that healthy open-air life, with that manly companion, is not likely to diminish; and Scott ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the short, tough turf of the camp a little way without speaking, and then Purvis began, in his smooth thin voice, riding a little nearer to his companion so as to make himself heard without undue exertion, 'I wanted to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... eighth son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. Jesse would seem to have been a landholder, as his fathers had been before him, a man of substance, with fields and flocks and herds. We first meet David, a ruddy, fair-haired lad, tough of sinew and keen of eye and aim, keeping the sheep ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... went to sell her husband's fish, was a very important stronghold of Black Prigord in the Middle Ages, and the chief place in that Sarladais which the English kings of Norman and Angvin descent found such a tough bone to pick. The way to it from Beynac leads up steep valleys and gorges, covered with dense forest. Here wolves are to be seen occasionally in winter, but the wolf country begins a little to the north of Sarlat, and stretches ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... long claws, and in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff Which did him round environ." ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... fought like a mule. But I had my own way. It was tough work. I crocked up myself afterwards. And then it was his turn." Max jerked up his head. "After that," he said, "we became pals. He was only my patron before; since, we have ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of which the Romans really did fall in with a serpent as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the River Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls, and only succeeded with much difficulty ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like a Dutch shrubbery. The roots which connect them with mythic antiquity, and the fresh leaves and flowers of the growing present, have been generally cut off with care, and the middle part only has been allowed to be used—too often, of course, a sufficiently tough and dry stem. This method is no doubt easy, because it saves teachers the trouble of investigating antiquity, and saves them too the still more delicate task of judging contemporaneous authors—but ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads; and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the soles ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... leg had a decisive effect upon the career of Matthew Flinders. So fine a sailor and so tough a fighting man would unquestionably, if not partially incapacitated, have had conferred upon him during the following years of war commands that would have led to his playing a very prominent part in fleet operations. As it was, he did not go to sea again, though he was promoted through ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... cried: "You shall not escape me!" He leaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Eya!" The vizard broke and remained in his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in terror, "How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft of your neck is!" And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each his ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... carrying, and gave Barker one of the most satisfactory castigations he had ever undergone; the boys declared that Dr. Rowlands' "swishings" were nothing to it. Mr. Williams saw that the offender was a tough subject, and determined that he should not soon forget the punishment he then received. He had never heard from Eric how this boy had been treating him, but he had heard it from Russell, and now he had seen one of the worst specimens of it with his own eyes. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... she washes and scrubs, and is by turns a midwife, a matchmaker, or a beggar. It is true she, too, is not disinclined to drown her sorrows, but even when she has had a drop she does not forget her duties. In Russia there are many such tough old women, and how much of its welfare rests ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... at this I knew, and he knew; but he held me with the hold of his despair, and I could not loose myself. Both of us together, he meant; but not I. Yet I only freed myself just as he rolled exhausted, but clutching at the tough, short bushes wildly, toward the brink, and partly over it.... Only the hold of his hands between him and his death. And I knelt above him, with the knife in my hand that was stained with ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... settled the matter in less than a minute. But, Judge, let me tell you, that buck was dangerous; and if Crop hadn't been around, may be ther'd have been the bones of man and beast bleachin' on the sandy beach of Mud Lake! I bound up my wounds as well as I could—but it was tough work backin' my bark canoe over the carryin' places on Bog River, and across the Ingen carryin' place, and from the Upper Saranac to Bound Lake, with them holes in my leg and arm, and the other bruises I received. When I got out to the settlements I was mighty glad ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... like that. It would mean having to exercise authority and getting tough with people, and he hated anything like that. He ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... they must have acted unfairly by the English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... all the yaks that had been grazing till the end of September at the higher elevations, and the Phipun presented our men with one of a gigantic size, and proportionally old and tough. The Lepchas barbarously slaughtered it with arrows, and feasted on the flesh and entrails, singed and fried the skin, and made soup of the bones, leaving nothing but the horns and hoofs. Having a fine day, they prepared some ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the long poles for her home occupied all of the daylight hours that were not engaged in the search for food. These poles she carried high into her tree and with them constructed a flooring across two stout branches binding the poles together and also to the branches with fibers from the tough arboraceous grasses that grew in profusion near the stream. Similarly she built walls and a roof, the latter thatched with many layers of great leaves. The fashioning of the barred windows and the door were matters of great importance and consuming interest. The windows, there were two ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... brightly expressed it, "Those are things that no decent man monkeys with. Besides, smatter fact, I'll tell you confidentially: it's a protection to our daughters and to decent women to have a district where tough nuts can raise cain. Keeps 'em away from our ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... beyond the north line. I thought you'd moved from this land of strife, lizards, and mosquitos, and staked out a claim in the celestial regions. Did not know you at first. You must have seen some pretty tough times before I found you if this is how you look after undergoing a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... "If, with that tough Friesian skull of yours," Frederick once said to him, "you succeed for twenty years in propagating the idea of artificial selection as applied to man, and if the idea of race hygiene, of a teleologic improvement of human types is sufficiently spread, it will undoubtedly ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... claimed, he had been spending the afternoon in the fascinations of poker. One by one the ladies of the —th had learned to trust Mr. Gleason as little as did their lords, but there was no snubbing him. "Snubs," said the senior major, "are lost on such a pachydermatous ass as Gleason," and however tough might be his moral hide, and however deserved might have been the applied adjective, the major was in error in calling Gleason an ass. Intriguing, full of low malice and scheming, a "slanderer and substractor" he certainly was, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... curiously while Rad built a fire, and when the colored man was trying to break a tough stick of wood with the axe, one of the giants picked up the fagot and snapped it in his fingers as easily as though it were a twig, though the stick was ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... better part of which they were unwilling to lose. Mr. Brougham said, he consented to it as the price, the almost extravagant price, of the inestimable good which would result from emancipation; and it was described by Sir James Mackintosh as one of those tough morsels which he had scarcely been able to swallow. It was opposed by Mr. Huskisson and others as a measure uncalled for by any necessity, and not fitted to gain that object which alone was held out as justifying it. It was absurd, it was said, to allege as a pretext for it, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... survivor, which was subsequently gratified—to the enrichment of these pages. Long after that again, in the Place Dolorous—Molokai—I came once more on the traces of that affectionate popularity. There was a blind white leper there, an old sailor—an "old tough," he called himself—who had long sailed among the eastern islands. Him I used to visit, and, being fresh from the scenes of his activity, gave him the news. This (in the true island style) was largely a chronicle of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... portions for the purpose of making points, mats, swabs, gaskets, sinnet, oakum, and the like (which see). Also, a dense cellular tissue in the head of the sperm-whale, infiltrated with spermaceti. Also, salt beef, as tough to the teeth as bits of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... enough to go the whole length, and the end of the carpenter's bench, where the funniest papa sat, was bare, and all through dinner-time he kept making fun. The vise was right at the corner, and when he got his help of turkey, he pretended that it was so tough he had to fasten the bone in the vise, and cut the meat off with his knife ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... nearly to madness they were fed in an almost miraculous manner. Several enormous sharks had been swimming about the brig for some hours, and the hungry sailors were planning various projects for the capture of them: tough as a shark is, they would willingly have risked life for a few raw mouthfuls of the same. Somehow, though the sea was still and the wind light, the brig gave a sudden lurch and dipped up one of the monsters, who was quite secure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... misgivings, though I was very proud of my steed. My misgivings were fully realised, for Traveller would not walk a step. He took a short, high trot—a buck- trot, as compared with a buck-jump—and kept it up to Fredericksburg, some thirty miles. Though young, strong, and tough, I was glad when the journey ended. This was my first introduction to the cavalry service. I think I am safe in saying that I could have walked the distance with much less discomfort and fatigue. My father having thus given me a horse and presented me with one of his swords, also ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off, too. "You have to work all day ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... now, what are you travelling for?"—"Health and pleasure." "Well, now, I guess you're pretty considerable rich. Coming to settle out west, I suppose?"— "No, I'm going back at the end of the fall." "Well, now, if that's not a pretty tough hickory-nut! I guess you Britishers are the queerest critturs as ever was raised!" I considered myself quite fortunate to have fallen in with such a querist, for the Americans are usually too much taken up with their own business to trouble ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... whirlwind has uprooted it in its prime, and it has brought down to the ground a dozen small ones in its fall. Its bark has already begun to drop off! And that heart of mora close by it is fast yielding, in spite of its firm, tough texture. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... dream, and woke. Later in the day she met her neighbour, who complained of a pain in the arm, just where the farmer's wife seized it in her dream. The place mortified and the poor lady died. To return to Montezuma. An honest labourer was brought before him, who made this very tough statement. He had been carried by an eagle into a cave, where he saw a man in splendid dress sleeping heavily. Beside him stood a burning stick of incense such as the Aztecs used. A voice announced that this sleeper was Montezuma, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... poked like the rest. The ground was new, and during two days gold was obtained in this way, from a particle the size of a pin's head to a lump of nearly an ounce. When the surface was exhausted, digging commenced; but the soil was too tough for the common cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... tumbler of whiskey-toddy. But this is an exceptional case of longevity. All the evidence favours the opinion that tobacco, like alcohol, shortens life. It is certain that abstinence is beneficial, as shown by the long lives of some of our hardest brain-workers. It is worthy of note, too, that all the tough old Frenchmen still in the enjoyment of unimpaired mental faculties never smoked. M. Dufaure, M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Victor Hugo, M. Etienne Arago, brother of the astronomer, Abbe Moigno, belong ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... Then The Chief told the children briefly about road materials; how soft limestone makes too weak roads for loads, how easily they wash and wear; how granite, because of its being made up of several materials, is poor, too; how flint and quartz, while hard, are brittle, and are not sufficiently tough; and that sandstone was impossible. Then he told them that good gravel, tough limestone and trap-rock were good road materials. Roads need materials having ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... heroes, excited with rage and taking up another bow of greater impetus, pierced Bhagadatta in that battle with many sharp arrows. That mighty bowman, viz., Bhagadatta, then deeply pierced, began to lick the corners of his mouth. And he then hurled at his foe, in that dreadful battle, a tough dart, made wholly of iron, decked with gold and stones of lapis lazuli, and fierce as the rod of Yama himself. Sped with the might of Bhagadatta's arm and coursing towards him impetuously, Satyaki, O king, cut that dart in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... are all upon the wing. I'm not the fellow to be scared, Old Death, by you and those pale awnings: I have a right to my three warnings." And Death, who saw that of the jobs on His hand, just then, tough was this Dobson, Agreed to go and come again; So, as he re-adjusted awnings About his brows, agreed three warnings Should be allowed; and Dobson, fain To go back to the feast, agreed Next time to do as was decreed: And so they parted, with by-byes, And "humble servants," "sirs," and "I's." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... all so strange; it seemed as if her father must both get down with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... critical lawsuit, a dinner at their favourite hotel, comprising fish and pears and meat and hypocras (no less!) and ginger and sugar and a hundred oysters. Not in that order let us hope, though the bowels of men of law are traditionally tough, and the hospitality of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... my natural rest, I hope may bring me round after the persecutions I have undergone from the dustman with his head tied up, which I just now mentioned. The tough job being ended and the Mounds laid low, the hour is come for Boffin to stump up. Would ten to-morrow morning suit you, partner, for finally bringing Boffin's ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... some cranny under the door to creep out at, but there was none. And he felt so hungry that he could almost have eaten the cat, who kept walking to and fro in a melancholy manner—only she was alive, and he couldn't well eat her alive:— besides he knew she was old, and had an idea she might be tough; so he merely said, politely, "How do you do, Mrs. Pussy?" to which she answered ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. Tod is a tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. I've seen them much worse. It will soon be ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the old days are gone, there are wanting the landlord's bow and the kindly smile of his stout wife. Who now knows the landlord of an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no there be a landlady? The old welcome is wanting; and the cheery, warm air, which used to atone for the bad port and tough beef, has passed away—while the port is still bad and the beef ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... from the white men bits of steel and iron, ground them to sharp points, and with them replaced their arrow-heads of flint. Has-se, with great pride, displayed to Rene his javelin or light spear, the tough bamboo shaft of which was tipped with a keen-edged splinter of milk-white quartz, obtained from some far northern tribe. Guests began to arrive, coming from Seloy and other coast villages from the north, and from the broad savannas of the fertile Alachua land, ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... same moment, and, as I have often known to happen at such sudden encounters, the very movements made to prevent the collision brought it about. We both moved to the same side, and jostled each other, and I, being the more weighty of the two, gave him a tough shoulder and well ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... splendidly mounted on horses inured to the miasmic climate, "led" animals carrying their necessary equipment. Each man knew how to take care of himself. He knew only the elementary principles of drill, but was none the less a very tough proposition for a Hun to tackle. Skilled in woodcraft and travelling, able to cover great distances with the minimum of fatigue, and capable of going on short rations without loss of efficiency the Rhodesians were ideal ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... strong to do and dare: If a host had withstood him there, He had braved a host with little care In his lusty youth and his pride, Tough to grapple though weak to snare. He ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... going to France soon, and will be fighting them Germans. If they find thee as hard to deal wi' as I have, they'll have a tough job. But they are a bad lot, and I don't ask you to ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... specified and duly handled exactly four hundred and twenty-eight grades of this particular grain. Even straight Northern wheat, without the taint of weed-seed, may be classified in any of the different numbers up to six, and also assorted into "tough," "wet," "damp," "musty," "binburnt" and half a dozen other grades and conditions, according to the season. But since I'm to be a wheat-grower, it's my duty to find out all I ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... acknowledges that he was owned by William Dorsey, Perry by Robert Dade, Sam and Isaac by Thomas Owings, all farmers, and all "tough" and "pretty mean men." Sam and Isaac had other names with them, but not such a variety of clothing as their master might have supposed. Sam said he left because his master threatened to sell him to Georgia, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... shall have some pretty hot work. Of course the Serpent cannot get up that creek, though she can place herself at the entrance and prevent their getting away; but there still remains the work of capturing or driving them down the creek, and that is likely to be a very tough job." ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... have seen the shepherd sitting by the marsh-side plaiting something with his fingers. Round him, the ground was strewn with rushes, some loose, and some in bundles, but for every one the workman chose he threw away a hundred, because it was not tough and strong. And as he plaited, and twisted, and knotted, and tested, there was fire in the shepherd's eye, and ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... a philosophic mood, I placed my propositions in order, and, by the inductive system applicable in such cases, read his history like a book, right back to the time when, according to a popular, though rather tough, assumption, he had lain helpless and imbecile on his mother's knee, clad in a white garment about four feet long, and with a pulsating soft place on the top of the bald head which wobbled on his insufficient neck like a rain-laden rose on a weak stalk. Little dreamed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a non-heading member of the cabbage group, used as greens, both in spring and winter. It is improved by frost, but even then is a little tough and heavy. Its chief merit lies in the fact that it is easily had when greens of the better sorts are hard to get, as it may be left out and cut as needed during winter—even from under snow. The fall crop is given the same treatment as late cabbage. Siberian kale is sown ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... delicate cambium a perfect protective covering. Like the cambium the bark is composed of cells, as in fact are all animal and vegetable structures. But the cells of the bark have thick walls of a tough, corky substance, and each cell contains air instead of protoplasm. The corkiness of the bark makes it an impervious, waterproof covering that does not allow the cambium to be dried out or to be washed by external moisture. The ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... much about it as you three fellows do," said Franz, "but it sounds as though you'd have to. Tough luck, but ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... through Mastang, and may contain one thousand houses. The Narayani is no where fordable below this place, and is crossed in some places on wooden bridges, (Sangga,) and in others on jholas or bridges of ropes made of rattans connected by cords of tough grass. Thakakuti is situated in a fine valley extending from Dhumpu to Kaga Koti, which is compared to the valley of Nepal, but is not so wide, and the hills around are covered with perennial snow. The plain is sandy. Danakoti, some way below Dhumpu, is a place of some trade. There is there ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... starboard side-house was gone, the port side of her bridge had been started and the iron railing warped, her decks still seemed dank from the remorseless washing, her funnel was brown with rust, and the tough craft looked a hundred years old. Remembering what these vessels had gone through, how they had but two days since topped a long series of merciful and dangerous errands by as brilliant an act of heroism and humanity ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... a tree a score of long, blunt thorns, tough and black as whalebone, and drove them through a strip of wood in which I had burnt a row of holes to receive them, and made myself a comb, and combed out my long, tangled hair to ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... "Well, if she'd been poor he would never have left her, and then they wouldn't have lost five years—think of it, five years of life with the man you love lost to you!—and there wouldn't be this tough ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the bars of Finn's cage, where they adjoined those of the tiger's place, and prodded the Wolfhound's side as he stood erect. The thing seemed to come from the tiger's cage, and Finn was upon it like a whirlwind, his fangs sinking far into the tough wood, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... old. He was, as his father said, not likely to set the Thames on fire in any way. He was as undistinguished in the various sports popular among boys in those days as he was in his lessons. He was as good as the average, but no better; had fought some tough fights with boys of his own age, and had ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... husks and compare the tough, hard husks that are found on the outside with the soft paper-like husks found close to the cob. Show how each kind is fitted for ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... but the weight of the animal is enormous, and you must remember that the horns are driven with the whole of the brute's bulk for lever and sledge-hammer. Such force as is exerted, would be almost sufficient to push a crowbar through a stone wall, and, tough though they are, the hardest of old bull buffaloes is not proof against the terrible pressure brought to bear. The bulls show wonderful activity and skill in these fencing matches. Each beast gives way the instant that it is warned by the touch of the horn-tip that its opponent ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... showed itself in a dozen incidents of little more than nervousness—his warning to a taxi-driver against fast driving, in Chicago; his refusal to take her to a certain tough cafe she had always wished to visit; these of course admitted the conventional interpretation—that it was of her he had been thinking; nevertheless, their culminative weight disturbed her. But something that occurred ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... snares from the long tough fibers of a certain plant, and they were even more successful than the traps. Rarely a day passed without some rabbits from the warren being caught. It was always rabbit, but Neb knew how to vary his sauces and the settlers ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... be tough," he observed, "and I'd be the last one to claim that it possessed one grain of culture; but at that, I can't remember having a pitched battle with a girl during my care-free ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... but it was a tough job, there is no question about that. There was not a friend to the measure in the House committee when I began, and not a friend in the Senate committee except old Dil himself, but they were all fixed for a majority report when I hauled off my forces. Everybody here ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... it from a Swedish viking the last fight I had off the coast. We had a tough job of it, and left one or two stout men behind to glut the birds of Odin, but we brought away much booty. This was part of it," he added, buckling on a long hunting-knife, which was stuck in a richly ornamented sheath, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... graceful forms aloft, and the ground beneath their spreading branches was strewn with the store of nuts which gave a portion of food for many of the beasts and for man as well. The ash and the yew were there, tough and springy of fiber and destined in the far future to become famous in song and story, because they would furnish the wood from which was made the weapon of the bowman. The maple was there with all its ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... sense, but it ain't logical—not on her terms. Mary Folsom was raised by a big, tough, tight-lipped authoritarian of a father who believed in bringing kids up by the book. By the time she got tumbled out into the world, all big men were unquestionable authority and all young men were callow ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... as the paper process. A uniform sheet of soft matter is formed by pasting together sheets of thin, tough tissue paper. The types are oiled, and the soft, moist sheet is placed on them and beaten down with a stiff brush until it receives an impression of the type-form. Both are then run through a press, and on being taken out the paper is found to form a perfect ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... alert to comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to tea at some ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... openly wait upon him. An arrest was an easy matter then. It was only necessary to swear to a debt and take out a writ and you could arrest anybody at a moment's notice, whether they actually owed you anything or not. There used to be tough swearing in olden times. Mr. Wainwright went to the house indicated and there, as he anticipated, found Theophilus Smith. Mr. Wainwright concluded that Smith was about to make some disclosures relative to his affairs and that was the reason he had sent for him. But Smith only produced a ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... has suggested a variety of very simple precautions, which we need not here explain in detail, by which the drawbacks of the system are reduced to a minimum. It is recommended to use slips of uniform size and tough material, and to arrange them at the earliest opportunity in covers or drawers or otherwise. Every one is free to form his own habits in these matters. But it is well to realise beforehand that these habits, according as they are more or less rational and practical, have a direct influence ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... from certain species of willow that the largest supply of basket-making materials is produced. Willows for basket-work are extensively grown on the continent of Europe, whence large quantities are exported to Great Britain and the United States; but no rods surpass those of English growth for their tough and leathery texture, and the finest of basket-making willows are now cultivated in England—in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and the valleys of the Thames and the Trent. In the early part of the 19th century, considerable attention ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... three men diverged from each other and selected their animals. Henri, being short-sighted, naturally singled out the largest; and the largest—also naturally,—was a tough old bull. Joe brought down a fat young cow at the first shot, and Dick was equally fortunate. But he well-nigh shot Crusoe, who, just as he was about to fire, rushed in unexpectedly and sprang at the animal's throat, for ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... fair, our boys are tough, Our old folks wise and healthy; And when we've every thing we want, We count that we are ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... what? Yah! tough beef, woolly mutton and stringy chicken. And to think that but for the Boers, the beastly Boers, we should have had the finest teal, wild duck, venison, goslings, asparagus, French beans, best Welsh mutton, and real turtle soup ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... political tangles that help to perpetuate them—which will be mentioned again—are dealt with, the sheer mathematics of possibility in a great city, plus the frequent difficulty of fixing responsibility, make the overall problem of these miscellaneous leaks and dribbles a very tough one, not likely to be resolved with the wave of anyone's hand. Except in visible and well-defended watercourses like Rock Creek, they will probably persist for a long while, even though in reduced quantities, together with some ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... fortune is tough," wrote Pond, "but there are other resources for another fortune. You and I will make ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of a bed, and you'd better attend to it now, while your mind is still occupied with the shelter problem. Fell a good thrifty young balsam and set to work pulling off the fans. Those you cannot strip off easily with your hands are too tough for your purpose. Lay them carelessly crisscross against the blade of your axe and up the handle. They will not drop off, and when you shoulder that axe you will resemble a walking haystack, and will probably experience a ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... somewhere—neither of them could ever remember where—on very tough cold ham and insufficiently cooled beer, but they were both too happy to mind, or even to observe the faults of the menu. And as neither of them had ever before set eyes on the Heath, it was full of surprises, as well as of beauties. Yielding to some ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... This was not an easy matter. It cost us no little thought to invent some contrivance that would prevent the leg from sinking, but at last we thought of a plan. We cut a square piece of bark off a tree, the outer rind of which was peculiarly tough and thick. In the centre of this we scooped a hole and inserted therein the end of the leg, fastening it thereto with pieces of twine that we chanced to have in our pockets. Thus we made, as it were, an artificial foot, which when ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... between the brigantine and ourselves narrowed very rapidly. Nevertheless there was time, when all was done, to say a few words to the men; so, as I anticipated that the struggle upon which we were about to engage would be a tough one, I called ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... or carelessly, but this is sneaking away from a problem instead of facing it. High-class offices have comparatively little trouble this way. In the first place, they do not attract the frivolous, light-headed, or "tough" girls; in the second place, if such girls come, the atmosphere in which they work either makes them conform to the standards of the office or leave and go somewhere else. If a girl in his office dresses in a way that he considers ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... that the absorption is well commenced abroad, and that probably her poet will at last reach America by way of those far- off, roundabout channels. The old mother will first masticate and moisten the food which is still too tough for her offspring. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... with me Maenalian lays. Now let the wolf turn tail and fly the sheep, Tough oaks bear golden apples, alder-trees Bloom with narcissus-flower, the tamarisk Sweat with rich amber, and the screech-owl vie In singing with the swan: let Tityrus Be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest-glade, Arion 'mid his ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... bracing himself to meet it on the bridge. He was facing the fire cloud with both hands gripped hard to the bridge rail, his legs apart and his knees braced back stiff. I've seen him brace himself that same way many a time in a tough sea with the spray going mast-head high and green water ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... became her state: this Minos well Could prove; whose head in crested helmet hid, Most beauteous helm'd appear'd: whose arm, adorn'd With brazen shield refulgent, well became The brazen shield: whose hand the tough lance whirl'd, And back withdrawn, the virgin wondering prais'd Such strength and skill combin'd: to fit the dart When to the spreading bow his strength he bent, She vow'd that Phoebus in such posture stood His arrows ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the outer crust on the windward side of the big snow-dune. He did not break through this crust, which was as tough as crystal-glass, but lay quietly for a time and listened to the sweep of the wind outside. It was warm, and very comfortable, and he had half-dozed off before he caught himself back into wakefulness and returned ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... streams it was necessary to construct suspension bridges, as they are termed, made of the tough fibres of the maguey, or of the osier of the country, which has an extraordinary degree of tenacity and strength. These osiers were woven into cables of the thickness of a man's body. The huge ropes, then stretched ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... he was to return through well-known roads, yet he should with all speed pass the causeway called the Long Bridges. It is a narrow causeway, between vast marshes, and formerly raised by Lucius Domitius. The rest of the country is of a moist nature, either tough and sticky from a heavy kind of clay or dangerous from the streams which intersect it. Round about are woods which rise gently from the plain, which at that time were filled with soldiers by Arminius, who, by short cuts and quick marching, had arrived there before our men, who were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... have a long journey before them, and constantly grounding as they do, no ropes would hold them together through all the wear and tear of their weeks upon the water, so instead of ropes rattan is used. This is a peculiarly long, tough, and flexible cane, which grows all over the forests, and is often a hundred yards or more in length. The logs are mostly of teak (about which I will tell you more presently) and pyingado or iron-wood, which is so heavy that it sinks in the water, and consequently rafts of bamboo are first ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... of its small parts, caused by the Incubation of the Hen, an Animal produced, some of whose parts are opacous, some red, some yellow, some white, some fluid, some consistent, some solid and frangible, others tough and flexible, some well, some ill-tasted, some with springs, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... was soon joined by the collector, who with characteristic promptitude had torn and hewed some broad slats of bamboo from his howdah, and with a little pulling and wrenching, and the help of my long, tough turban-cloth, a real native pugree, we set and bound the arm as best we could, giving the poor fellow brandy all the while. The collar-bone we left to its own devices; an injury ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... I don't look like it, do I? There ain't nothing buccaneering about my cut. I looks just what I am, a tough old sergeant in a queen's regiment; but for all that I have been a pirate. The yarn is a long one, and I can't tell it you now, because just at present, you see, I have got to go below to look after the dinners of the company, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... broad, sharp spear-head, to which is attached a stout cord, often made of twisted hide or hair. Into the socket of the spear is thrust a bamboo pole or shaft, tough, pliant, and flexible. The cord is wound round the spear and shaft, and the loose end is then fastened to the middle of the pole. Having thus prepared his weapon, the herdsman mounts his buffalo, and guides it slowly, warily, and cautiously to the haunts of the pig. These are, of course, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... liberty was lost under the Caesars, style very naturally assumed greater and greater importance. Bornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates of the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the orators sank back in lassitude on the remaining harmless but unreal occasional oratory and on the fictitious declamations of the schools.[98] In these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such imaginary questions ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... died. Joshua went West, and I don't believe his father has heard a word from him, these fifteen years. The girls scattered after their mother died, and then the deacon married again, Abby Sheldon, a pretty girl, and a good one; but she never ought to have married him. She was not made of tough enough stuff, to wear along side of him. She has changed into a grave and silent woman, in his house. Her children all died when they were babies, except William, the eldest,—wilful Will, they call him, and I don't know but he'd have better died too, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the hour's run the unfortunate Kramenin was more dead than alive. In succession to the anecdote of the Arizona man, there had been a tough from 'Frisco, and an episode in the Rockies. Julius's narrative style, if not ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... look at this," she said. "If it's cooked too much, it gets tough and—" She straightened suddenly and stood staring ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said to me, "when this grandfather business looks to me about as big and tough as anything that any human being was ever called on to swallow. But then I consider that you and Mrs. Colesworthy have looked into these matters, and I haven't, and that knowin' nothin' I ought to say nothin'; and if it ever ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... reins wound around his tough hands, and with a look in his face that should have given courage even to the Hart boys, Dab strained at his task as bravely as when he had stood at the tiller of "The Swallow" ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... hatched, it is placed on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper; the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the basis ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... former narrative of House-Hunting in Wales. The weather on that occasion was very bad, and the inn we lunched at a very poor and uncomfortable one. When a person's principal acquaintance with a town consists in his experience of its wet streets and tough beef steaks, it is no wonder that his impressions are not of the most agreeable kind. On the present occasion we drove to the Beaufort Arms, and, in imitation of the Marquis of Exeter, "we pulled at the bell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... sign it. And I am going to say here and now that there are points in the narrative which I am in a position to substantiate. What I can't prove you must take my word for. But I warn you that the story is tough. ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the brownstone region of New York. He rescued me from that and we bought a farm with our combined savings. We became real farmers, up with the sun and to bed with the same. Andrew wore overalls and a soft shirt and grew brown and tough. My hands got red and blue with soapsuds and frost; I never saw a Redfern advertisement from one year's end to another, and my kitchen was a battlefield where I set my teeth and learned to love hard ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... A poor educational system, in particular, has been an obstacle to greater productivity and growth. Portugal has been increasingly overshadowed by lower-cost producers in Central Europe and Asia as a target for foreign direct investment. The government faces tough choices in its attempts to boost Portugal's economic competitiveness while keeping the budget deficit within ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... had such a very tough, uncomfortable time with life," said Kate, "that in the very nature of things joy ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... smelting operations, that the cost of freight to Europe on very rich silver ores works out at a relatively insignificant figure, when compared with the cost of smelting operations in that country. This rich ore is consequently selected very carefully, and packed up in tough rawhide bags, so as to make small compact parcels some 18 in. to 2 ft. long, and 8 in. to 12 in. thick, each containing about 1 cwt. Two of such bags form a mule load, slung ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... That tough old lion went away from there a good deal tamed and civilized—not to say softened and sweetened, for perhaps those expressions would hardly fit him. Noel and I believed that when he was away from Joan's influence his old aversions would come up so strong in ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the trail that led over the Sardarbulakh pass into Russia, and were now following a horse-path which winds up to the Kurdish encampments on the southern slope of the mountain. The plain was strewn with sand and rocks, with here and there a bunch of tough, wiry grass about a foot and a half high, which, though early in the year, was partly dry. It would have been hot work except for the rain of the day before and a strong southeast wind. As it was, our feet ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... little bit tough on Garrison, eh?" laughed Garrison idly. "Now that you mention it, it seems as if ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... to bring your treaty of truce, but some old dotards from Acharnae(1) got scent of the thing; they are veterans of Marathon, tough as oak or maple, of which they are made for sure—rough and ruthless. They all started a-crying: "Wretch! you are the bearer of a treaty, and the enemy has only just cut our vines!" Meanwhile they were gathering stones in their cloaks, so I fled and ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... possess a dark brown-red or snuff color. They also vary remarkably in weight and consistency. Some are compact, destitute of fibres or other traces of the vegetation from which they have been derived, and on drying, shrink greatly and yield tough dense masses which burn readily, and make an excellent fuel. Others again are light and porous, and remain so on drying; these contain intermixed vegetable matter that is but little advanced in the peaty decomposition. Some peats are almost entirely free from mineral matters, and on burning, leave ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... guess she'd like me to be a mommer's pet in lace collars an' a velvet suit, an' soft an' pretty in me talk. She's made me promise t' cut out d' tough-spiel, an' so ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... and not for an hour or more did she get up to find her. Then she searched in vain, for the spoor of the child's feet led from the sand between the rocks to the pebbly shore above, which was covered with tough sea grasses, and there was lost. Now at the girl's story I was frightened, and Jan was both frightened and so angry that he would have tied her up and flogged her if he had found time. But of this there was none to lose, so taking with him such Kaffirs as he could find he set ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... doubly unkempt by swordlike, ashy-yellow dead leaves that double back on the trunk but refuse to fall to the ground. At a height of from twelve to twenty feet each arm of the many-branched candelabrum ends in a stiff rosette of gray-green spiky leaves as tough as hemp. Equally bizarre and much more imposing is a desert "stand" of giant suhuaros, great fluted tree-cacti thirty feet or more high. In spite of their size the suhuaros are desert types ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... hang'un (only he used the same wicked word). Will brandy and water never kill him? He's as tough as old whatdyecallum—old Methusalem." ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stands the hermit, horridly austere, Whom clinging vines are choking, tough and sore; Half-buried in an ant-hill that has grown About him, standing post-like and alone; Sun-staring with dim eyes that know no rest, The dead skin of a serpent on his breast: So long he stood unmoved, insensate there That ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... is a tough hardness, not a brittle hardness, like that of glass or flint, which will splinter violently at a blow in the most unexpected directions; but a grave hardness, which will bear many blows before it yields, and when it is forced to yield at ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... a dangerous man this fellow would be if he had nerve! Oh, yes, people will wonder what you have in the hollow of your hand, and sooner or later, they will find that you are carrying three shells and a pea. Get out, Kittymunks. I'm afraid of you—too tough for me." ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... garden; and that"—she embraced it with her glance—"is not so very big. You could teach your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though no doubt they are), as well ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... resort to arms. Officers and men at my request had done the same. Subsequently we had both attacked and been attacked. Five hundred of us had for two months to face the attacks of eight thousand Tibetans. Later, again, we had had a long, tough, diplomatic contest ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... second time. Roger Seaton's own words—"I'll be master of the world" knocked repeatingly on his brain with an uncomfortable thrill. He gathered up the straying threads of his common sense and twisted them into a tough string. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the edge of the blade through the tough fiber of the envelope, drew forth the enclosed sheet and unfolded it. In the middle of the top was a replica of the wood cut upon the outside, only minus the "If not delivered in five days return to." Then ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the Sierra, cross the road a few miles above Plasencia, then make for the mountains, and come down on the head of the river Coa. Beresford is probably in the valley of that river. We are more likely to find a guide, that way, than we are by going through Banos. We shall have tough work of it whichever way we go, even if we are lucky enough to get past without running against ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... and beams he ravages the wood, And the tough bottom extends across the flood." —Eng. Poets: ib., B. ii, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... little success. That unfortunate first admission of his, he felt it throughout, like a millstone round his neck, and could not help admitting to himself, when he left, that there was a good deal in Hardy's concluding remark,—"You'll find it rather a tough business to get your 'universal democracy' and 'government by the wisest' to pull together in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... and took the bird in his hand, dropping the gun meanwhile. He carefully took off the gelatine capsule, and from it extracted a delicate piece of tough paper, which he spread open. There were a series of strange marks on the paper, of which neither of the air ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... cold in her head, and who has already deceived you.' 'Deceived me!' cried La Brede, waving his long arms. 'Deceived me! and with whom?'—'With me.' As he knew I never lied, he panted for my life. Luckily my life is a tough one." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had many moments," said he to me the other day, "when I have been tempted to make friends with the devil. War is not precisely the school for rural virtues. By dint of burning, destroying, and killing, you grow a little tough as regards your feelings; 'and, when the bayonet has made you king, the notions of an autocrat come into your head a little strongly. But at these moments I called to mind that country which the lieutenant ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... they dug up earth and gathered leaves with which to fill the gaps in Morano's garments when they should hang on Rodriguez, they plucked a geranium with whose dye they deepened Rodriguez' complexion, and with the sap from the stalk of a weed Morano toned to a pallor the ruddy brown of his tough cheeks. Then they changed clothes altogether, which made Morano gasp: and after that nothing remained but to cut off the delicate black moustachios of Rodriguez and to stick them to the face of Morano with the juice of another flower that he knew where to find. Rodriguez sighed ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... a long, light but very tough line from his pocket. It had a series of running nooses in it, and he slipped one of these about the wrist of each native, drawing it tight. Then he half-led, half-dragged them out of the stockade, to the mine entrance, and down the drift to the rise they had to climb to get to the stope ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... much to do with women, but I've seen 'em and I've watched 'em an' she's never goin' to drudge like the rest. If she'll let me, I'm even goin' to do the cookin' an' the dish-washing and scrub the floors! I've done it for twenty-five years, an' I'm tough. She ain't goin' to do nothin' but sew for the kids when they come, an' sing, an' be happy. When it comes to the work that there ain't no fun in, I'll do it. I've planned it all out. We're goin' to have half an arpent square of flowers, an' she'll love to work among 'em. ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... a man well under thirty, tall and spare of form, with the lithe and active limbs that are capable of hard and prolonged action, had stood for a time by the tough door of his little shack. It was a single-roomed affair, quite large enough for a lone man, which he had carefully built of peeled logs. Within it there was a bunk fixed against the wall, upon which his heavy blankets had been folded in a neat pile, for he was ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... included; and of course, it was trick and trick at the helm. Notwithstanding all this, we did very well, having a good run, until we got on the coast, which we reached in the month of January. A north-wester drove us off, and we had a pretty tough week of it, but brought the ship up to the Hook, at the end of that time, and anchored her safely in the East River. The Clyde must have been a ship of about three hundred tons, and, including every one on board, nine of us sailed her from the eastward of ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... physiology that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives for ever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, inciting him to incessant ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... or racquets made of hickory wood. Rods of this tough wood, about 7 feet long, are dressed to the proper shape, the ends having a semicircular section, the middle part being flat. Each is bent and the ends united to form a handle, leaving a pear-shaped loop 6 inches in ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... the work on my new house to help me repair the hut. We had to make a hearth. For this I found stones by the brook. We stopped the chinks between the logs with heavy, tough clay. We mended the holes in the roof. We repaired the floor. I bought beds and bedding, utensils for cooking, a rifle, an ax, and some other tools. I stocked the house with provisions. And in a week I was installed, listening at night to the cry of the wild animals, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... her, the SP man nearest Mike, a tough-looking bozo wearing an ensign's insignia, ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the officer, wiping the perspiration from his brow, 'and strong as a bear, but I've tackled as tough hands as him in my day, and so has poor Bill Maddox there. I hope the Earl will settle a good pension on his widow—it will be sad news for her and her four poor children:—stone dead. He took the famous highwayman, Jack Blount summut ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... these words of my heart-beloved Ursula ring in my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I lie a-dying. And her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child! hearts do not break; life is very tough as well as very terrible. But I will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all; and thou shalt bear the burden of choice. I may be wrong; I have little wit left, and never had much, I think; but an instinct serves me in place of judgment, and that instinct ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... close to the Carter house and the retrenchment across the Columbia road had been levelled, but the principal defences were as we had left them. The osage orange-trees which we had used for abatis had been evenly cut away by the bullets, and the tough fibres hung in a fringe of white strings, the upper line quite even, and just a little lower than the top of the parapet. The effect was a curiously impressive one as we looked down the line we had held and thought what a level storm of lead was indicated by this long white fringe, and what ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... who empty these pockets of ore are inured. Life down there is normal to them. After a few years' work, the skin becomes calloused and tough. The hands become claws or talons—broken and disfigured. The muckers laughed at us. They saw we were concerned about trifles. Bloody sweat and hot oil held the red dust around us like a tight-fitting garment. Our scanty clothing was glued to our bodies. Our shoes were filled with water, but ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... their clothing and their weapons, had a worn and dingy aspect, as if they had seen hard service of late. At the rear of the party was an old man, who, as he came up, stopped his horse to speak to us. He rode a little tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and I fell to thinking what a wondrous sword this was which Carl the Great had given me. It shore the spear shafts, and the brass-studded shields seemed to split before it touched them, and the tough leather jerkins of the forest men could not hold its edge back. The wild song of Kynan never ceased, and he seemed to sing of it. He was getting nearer, but the Mercians thronged between ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... to be pretty tough, sir, to tell you—some of this," stammered Herrick, frowning at the carpet. "Penelope got awfully angry and said she was going to leave. I apologized and tried to square myself, but she wouldn't have it. She said I had insulted her and she refused to stay in my ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... together to see their father-in-law; but, on their arrival, Guy de Dampierre seized the person of the Count of Holland, and would not release him until the Duke of Brabant offered to become prisoner in his place, and found himself obliged, in order to obtain his liberty, to pay his father-in-law a tough ransom. It was not long before Guy himself suffered from the same sort of iniquitous surprise that he had practised upon his sons-in-law. In 1293 he was secretly negotiating the marriage of Philippa, one of his daughters, with Prince Edward, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... shoulder, fastened beneath his right arm in such a manner as to leave the arm free and unobstructed, and then hung loosely behind him, almost touching the ground as he sat upon his horse. The animal was a rough looking little pony, that bore evidence of being both tough ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... "Say, that's tough, ain't it?" she exclaimed. "The janitor was here again for the rent. He says they'll serve us with a dispossess. I told him to chase ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... the party worked on the cougar skin that afternoon. The gristle at the base of the neck, where it met the shoulders, was so tough and thick we could not scrape it thin. Jones said this particular spot was so well protected because in fighting, cougars were most likely to bite and claw there. For that matter, the whole skin was tough, tougher than leather; and when it dried, it pulled ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... interview saying, "I am waiting now to hear the call of God to the promise land." He once was considered as a candidate for senator after the Civil war but declined to run. He says that the treatment during the time of slavery was very tough at times, but gathering himself up he said, "no storm lasts forever" and I had the faith and courage of Jesus to carry me on, continuing, "even the best masters in slavery couldn't be as good as the worst person in freedom, Oh, God, it is good to be ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... angry at this, and said: "I would that Odysseus might come this very moment to chastise these atrocious fellows. Woe to them if he should appear at the door with his helmet and shield and two tough spears, just as he looked when I first beheld him in my own home. Then these suitors would find a bitter marriage-feast and a speedy end. Vengeance, however, rests ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... after the great trial of the flesh she had been through, likewise pleasant after her long abstinences. She grew happy in the tide of new blood flowing in her veins, and might easily have abandoned herself in the seduction of these carnal influences. But her moral nature was of tough fibre, and made mute revolt. Such constant mealing did not seem natural, and the obtuse brain of this lowly servant-girl was perplexed. Her self-respect was wounded; she hated her position in this house, and sought consolation in the thought that she was earning ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... continued the old trapper, "my one reason for asking this is to keep you from ruining good pelts. It would be pretty tough now if after I caught that black fox I found that his skin had been so badly torn by birdshot that it wasn't ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... him a tough nut, though," he added, with a smile, as he followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. "But I see you're in earnest. Good luck go ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... straight away from Middelburg to try and trade some of it. It was a risky thing to go into the country so early, on account of the fever; but I knew that there were one or two others after that lot of ivory, so I determined to have a try for it, and take my chance of fever. I had become so tough from continual knocking about that I did not set it ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... find he has never missed a meal in his life, I know his education has been neglected. For I believe that experience is the foremost teacher. I have learned something from every experience I ever had, and I hold that Providence has been kind to me in favoring me with a lot of rather tough adventures. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... the Wagon-Tire House liked the girl; Frosty was offensively polite or aggressively insulting; Mrs. La Rue was, as Troy Gilbert said, "a pretty tough specimen"; or, if one would rather follow Aunt Huldah's cheerful and charitable lead, "She looked a heap nicer, and appeared a heap better, in the show than out of it"; the Aerial Wonder was something of a terrestrial ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... from other men. The oldest was called Iwar. He grew up to be tall and strong, though there were no bones in his body, but only gristle, so that he could not stand, but had to be carried everywhere on a litter. Yet he was very wise and prudent. The second gained the name of Ironside, and was so tough of skin that he wore no armor in war, but fought with his bare body without being wounded. To the people this seemed the work of magic. There were two others who ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... lad. It will be tough work, you know; for the Spaniards fight well, that cannot be denied. But as you stood against them when they have been five to one in the breaches of Haarlem and Alkmaar, to say nothing of our skirmish with them, you will find it a novelty to meet them ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... soil. Gigantic lavenders, juniper bushes, patches of rank herbage swarmed over the church threshold, and scattered clumps of dark greenery even to the very tiles. It seemed as if the first throb of shooting sap in the tough matted underwood might well topple the church over. At that early hour, amid all the travail of nature's growth, there was a hum of vivifying warmth, and the very rocks quivered as with a long and silent effort. But the Abbe failed to comprehend the ardour of nature's painful labour; he simply ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... I can say I am anxious, even—to go into battle," he continued, while Dr. Paul Denslow laid plasters of simple cerate on the abraded palms, and then swathed them in bandages. "Anything is preferable to this chopping tough stumps with a dull ax, and drilling six hours a day while the thermometer hangs ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... wings, and curved keel of greenish yellow tinged with rose; petals clawed; 10 stamens (9 and 1); calyx 5-toothed. Stem: Hoary, with white, silky hairs, rather woody, 1 to 2 feet high. Leaves: Compounded of 7 to 25 oblong leaflets. Root: Long, fibrous, tough. Fruit: A hoary, narrow pod, to 2 in. long. Preferred Habitat - Dry, sandy soil, edges of pine woods. Flowering Season - June-July. Distribution - Southern New England, westward to Minnesota, south to Florida, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... from her, they to set me upon the thing that should supply our need; for I stoopt sudden to the grass that did grow oft and plenty in this place and that, and was so tall as my thigh, and to my head in the middle of the dumpings where it did sprout. And lo! it was wondrous tough. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... of spirits to-day;' began the magpie, bending down a very inquisitive eye to her friend's face; I am afraid you are not well; but I'm not surprised: that old sparrow I saw you eating for dinner must have been as tough as leather; it is no wonder you are ill after it! You should really be more careful, and only catch the ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... but too much self-indulgence; never had any discipline. He's pretty well broken in now, and as we seemed to need each other we follow the long trail together. Manage to hit it off first-rate. He's still mooning over the girl; tough that he can't have the only thing in the world he wants! Obstreperous parent adumbrated in the foreground, shotgun in hand. I don't allow Cassowary to carry any money—would rather risk contamination myself ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... for thee, Dick, for thee and that fair little maid who is dabbling her pretty fingers in that flaming pudding with which only the tough ones of a man should meddle," said Captain Tabor. "And as for risk for me, my sailormen be as much in the toils for Sabbath-breaking as their captain, should yesterday's work leak out; and not a man of them knoweth the contents of those cases, though, faith, and ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... that boat, depend on it," answered Captain Rendall, laughing. "However, take care he is not too much for you; for those bears are cunning fellows, remember; and I should advise you to take a couple of muskets, and some tough lances." ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... are hard upon me, when you have a morsel to swallow that is too tough for you, you put it into my mouth; but," added the old man kindly, "there is not much that I would refuse to do for ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... returning from England, must creep into the corner, and lie quiet, toothless (moneyless),—all this let the lover of Figaro fancy, and weep for. We here, without weeping, not without sadness, wave the withered tough fellow-mortal our farewell. His Figaro has returned to the French stage; nay is, at this day, sometimes named the best piece there. And indeed, so long as Man's Life can ground itself only on artificiality and aridity; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Neither has any capital, yet the Irishman obtains an amount of credit which would strike Hodge dumb with amazement. He is allowed to owe, frequently one year's, sometimes two years' rent. Indeed, I know of one particularly tough customer who at this moment owes three years' rent—to wit, 24l.—and will neither pay anything nor go. Now for an English labourer to obtain credit for a five-pound note would be a remarkable experience. His cottage and his potato patch cost him from one ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... which the tree after which I am named is not good. It is not good to eat. It has no sap that Injins can drink, like the maple. It does not make good brooms. But it has branches like other trees, and they are tough. Tough branches are good. The boughs of the oak will not bend, like the boughs of the willow, or the boughs of the ash, or the boughs ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... about Carmen. Ana bent sobbing over her tiny babe. Don Jorge and Rosendo remained mute and grim. Jose knew that those two would cast a long reckoning before they died. Juan and Lazaro went from door to window, steadying the props and making sure that they were holding. The tough, hard, tropical wood, though pierced in places by comjejen ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was the most objectionable "tough" that Frosty Hollow could boast. He was a bad-tempered bully, cruel in his propensities, and delighting to interfere in all the innocent amusements of the village youngsters. He was a loutish tyrant, and Ted had suffered various petty annoyances at his hands for several ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Jeffreys was tough and hardy; and the night's rest had done more for him than twenty doctors. He got up, shook himself, and behold his limbs were strong under him, and his head was clear and cool. He dressed himself quietly and descended to the kitchen, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... and forthwith gave orders to a Bridgeport manufacturer to begin experiments. A young expert named Thomas B. Doolittle was at once set to work, and presently appeared the first hard-drawn copper wire, made tough-skinned by a fairly simple process. Vail bought thirty pounds of it and scattered it in various parts of the United States, to note the effect upon it of different climates. One length of it may still be seen at the Vail homestead in Lyndonville, Vermont. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... and several more men were brought down. I expressed my fears aloud to the surgeon. A poor fellow already on the table about to undergo amputation overheard me. "Don't think of that, sir," he exclaimed; "they are tough ones, those mounseers, but we'll go down with our colours ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... very low. It had been some thirty-six hours since I'd first noticed it. This was one of those things, of course, that were not supposed to happen in space, and often did. Every precaution had been taken against it. The outer shell of the ship was tough enough to stop medium-velocity meteoroids, and inside the shell was a self-sealing goo, like a tubeless tire. Evidently the goo hadn't worked. Something had got through the hull and made a pinhole leak. In fact the hole was so small that it had taken me nearly thirty-five hours to compute ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... poor educational system, in particular, has been an obstacle to greater productivity and growth. Portugal has been increasingly overshadowed by lower-cost producers in Central Europe and Asia as a target for foreign direct investment. The coalition government faces tough choices in its attempts to boost Portugal's economic competitiveness and to keep the budget deficit within ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lost in the woods," she observed, "and have everybody out hunting me while I had to eat berries and roots. I don't believe I'd like roots, though: they look so big and tough. And I wouldn't touch a persimmon! Nor Injun turnip. You's a bad boy that time you give me Injun turnip to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... seen. I ran up against a short right hook. I put him out next round, ma'am, mind you, but that didn't help me any with mother. Directly she seen me blue eye she said: 'That'll be all from you, Steve. You stop it this minute.' So I quit. But gee! It's tough on a fellow to have to sit out of the game and watch a bunch of cheeses like this new crop of middle-weights swelling around and calling themselves fighters when they couldn't lick a postage-stamp, not if it was properly trained. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... so, a third ingredient would be added to the sak-sak, namely, brains. I need hardly say that for the next two days of my stay I did not taste sak-sak, though my men made no secret of doing so. The flesh in the ovens had to be cooked for three days, or until the tough leaves in which it was wrapped were nearly consumed. When taken out of the ovens the method of eating it is as follows. The head of the eater is thrown back, somewhat after the fashion of an Italian eating macaroni. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... preparing for departure. The escort has arrived at Tesaoua, and will be here on Saturday at latest. As the Germans are still at Tuggerter, we shall proceed on the Ghat route together, after all: it will be a tough piece of work, whichever way performed. The heat continues intense—from 100 deg. to 104 deg., and 130 deg. in the sun. Cooler weather is expected in August; but at present all the natives complain, and fevers are becoming ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Seas? Would you choose a world so small as to leave room for only you and your satellites? Would you ask for problems of life so tame that even you could grasp them? Would you choose a fibreless Universe to be "remoulded nearer to the heart's desire," in place of the wild, tough, virile, man-making environment from which the Attraction of Gravitation ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... the skin as mainly owing its existence to the need for the protection of the delicate vessels, nerves, viscera, and muscles underneath. Undoubtedly it performs, and by its tough and elastic texture is well fitted to perform, this extremely important service. But the skin is not merely a method of protection against the external world; it is also a method of bringing us into sensitive contact with the external world. It is thus, as the organ of touch, the seat ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he haven't, sir. Breeches was a bit too tough for him, but he has nipped me finely. Wonderful power in his jaw. No, no, Master George, don't you touch him; he'll have to go in the copper first. Ah, would you! Why, he's like a fish, only ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... confidence wants to know if I am an "Ingilis lut;" at the same time placing his forefingers together as an intimation that if I am we ought by all means to form a combination and travel the country together. About ten o'clock the khan-jees make me up quite a comfortable shake-down, and tired out with the tough journey over the mountains and the worrying persecutions of the afternoon, I fall asleep while yet the house is doing a thriving trade; the luti singing, the mandril grunting, kalians bubbling, and people talking, all fail ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the soile is an ash-coloured gray sand, and very naturall for the production of good turnips. They are the best that ever I did eate, and are sent for far and neere: they are not tough and stringy like other ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... of the time. I'm tough and hardy, or I should have been dead afore this time. We've been half starved and half frozen in the camp; but I managed to live through it, hoping and expecting to get away ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... to us than game, and the flesh, containing less nitrogen, is not so stimulating as beef or mutton. Old fowls are often tough and indigestible, and have often, also, a rank flavor like a close hen-house, produced by the absorption into the flesh of the oil intended by ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... companion. "You need not flatter yourself on that score. Bah, man! there's not a tiger in all the State that would be fool enough to prefer a carcass tough and black as yours, to the flesh of a young colt or heifer, either of which they can have at any time. Ha, ha! If the jaguars only heard what you've said, they would ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... later English common law. It may be that the dusky races of Africa and of the islands of the sea, as well as our Aryan cousins of India, may pass more easily through the stages of attachment of man's responsibility to the family life than we, with our tough fiber of character, were able to do. If so, in the name of justice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... "Now listen to me. This thing is big. The two you ran up against yesterday were not good samples. We're dealing with some tough professionals. I don't know who they are, but from what I've seen I can tell you they're dangerous. So you two are to stay out of this case. That is an order. Stay on Clipper ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... it to you plump, isn't this hatful enough to make a man beside himself, so as not to stick at a white lie or two? Dear Maria there is no more going to become a Mrs. Clements than you are; she cut the fellow dead long ago: so mind, that's a tough old bird, you don't say one word to her about him; it would be just raking up the cinders again, you know, and you might be fool enough to raise a flame. No, governor, if it's any consolation to you, that pauper connection has been all at ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... rough warrior, miserable in appearance, tough in skin, thickly bearded, always uttering angry words, always busy hanging people, always in the sweat of battles, or thinking of other stratagems than those of love. Thus the good soldier, caring little to flavour the marriage ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... paper has an even texture suggestive of cloth. Like cloth it may show no grain when held to the light or it may have the appearance of interwoven threads. The paper ordinarily used for books and newspapers is wove. There is a very thin, tough wove paper, much like that familiarly known as "onion-skin," which is called pelure by philatelists. On a few occasions a wove paper, which is nearly as thick as card board, has ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... little earlier than in their wild state—how many scenes they recall to memory! We found them on the tops of the glorious Downs when the wheat was ripe in the plains and the earth beneath seemed all golden. Some, too, concealed themselves on the pastures behind those bunches of tough grass the cattle left untouched. And even in cold November, when the mist lifted, while the dewdrops clustered thickly on the grass, one or two hung ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the front end. Along about ten o'clock this morning Davidson, the manager of the Copperette, came down to see Mr. Brewster. He gave the president a long song and dance about the tough trail and the poor accommodations for a pleasure-party up at the mine, and the upshot of it was that Mr. Brewster went out to the mine with him alone, leaving the party in ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... himself to you as having been dying for twenty-four hours past, slept so soundly that they went into his cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor had sent, without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his pulse, he left him to sleep—which proves that his conscience is as tough as his health. I shall accept this feigned illness only so far as it may enable me to study my man," ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... while," he reasoned shrewdly. But all the while his eyes were shiny, and when he winked, his lashes became unaccountably moist. He stopped and looked out at the blackened coulee. "Shut into this hole, week after week, without a woman to speak to—it must be—damned tough!" he muttered. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... be a good subject for a sermon to the soldiers, but a bad argument in a council chamber," said Bonchamps. "We shall find the cuirassiers tough fellows ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... in the kitchen, our orderlies discussed the incident, and discovered in course of conversation that Biggs had never killed a man. All the others were tough old warriors, and ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... "Rather a tough bit of climbing," he cried, after a few minutes' silence; "but I've had worse to do: for I've gone over pieces like this when there has been a fall of a thousand feet or so beneath me, and that makes one mind one's p's and ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... by-the-way—tried the pipe. In five weeks of faithful practice he so enlarged his chest that when his lungs were full he could scarcely button his vest. He says that in severe running he finds his throat and bronchial tubes do not tire as easily as before, but are tough and equal to their work, and so help him to more ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the bitterest tongue and the kindest heart in Four Winds. Wherever there's any trouble, that woman is there, doing everything to help in the tenderest way. She never says a harsh word about another woman, and if she likes to card us poor scalawags of men down I reckon our tough old ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his fore-paws, nibbling, to begin with, at the pointed end, which is the best way into most things. Once, as the family were grubbing together, a nut turned up at the back of the pile. After a desperate conflict, he secured it, but, the tough shell was too much for him. It takes a red vole's training ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... he observed, "and only need real juice when they're workin'. This here's a play-back recorder they had over in Recreation. Some guys trained it to switch frequencies—speed-up and slow-down stuff. They laughed themselves sick! There used to be a tough guy over there,—a staff sergeant, he was—that gave lectures on military morals in a deep bass voice. He was proud of that bull voice of his. He used it frequently. So they taped him, and Al here—" the name plainly referred to the machine—"used to play it back switched up so he sounded ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... declare I had forgotten there were any ladies in the case—I can't go near them in this pickle, I'm all over mud and pheasant feathers, they'll take me for a native of the Sandwich Islands, one of the boys that cooked Captain Cook—precious tough work they must have had to get their teeth through him, for he was no chicken; I wonder how they trussed him, poor old beggar. No! I'll make myself a little more like a Christian, and then I'll come down and be introduced to them if it's necessary, but I shall not ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and had watched the pretty fireworks in the small piazza, and had wandered on with them afterwards in the moonlight to the ruin of the Cyclopean fortress which overlooks the two valleys. Then back to the house of her friends, who kept the principal inn, and more tough chicken and tender salad and red wine for supper. And on the next day they had all gone down to the meagre vineyards, half way to San Vito and just below the thick chestnut woods which belong to the Marchese and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... matters. On the other hand, he showed himself an expert in horseflesh, found fault with my mount—not a difficult affair—and gave me a pedigree of his own, which had come from the famous stud at Cordova. It was a splendid creature, indeed, so tough, according to its owner's claim, that it had once covered thirty leagues in one day, either at the gallop or at full trot the whole time. In the midst of his story the stranger pulled up short, as if startled and sorry he had ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... held his tongue, only relieving his feelings by making a grimace after Reuben, as the latter passed on. In the various contests among the boys of the village, Reuben had proved himself so tough an adversary that, although Tom Thorne was heavier and bigger, he did not care about entering upon what would be, at best, a doubtful ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... (Diospyros Virginiana). Small to medium-sized tree. Wood very heavy, and hard, strong and tough; resembles hickory, but is of finer texture and elastic, but liable to split in working. The broad sapwood cream color, the heartwood brown, sometimes almost black. The persimmon is the Virginia date plum, a tree of 30 to 50 feet high, and 18 to 20 inches in diameter; ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... sought to hold against the attack of the British forces. It was the first real battle of the war, and it resulted in a defeat so overwhelming that it might well have decided the fate of America had not Washington, as soon as he saw how the day was going, bent all his energies to the tough task of saving his army. It narrowly escaped complete destruction, but ultimately a great part succeeded, though with great loss and not a little demoralization, in ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... surroundings. Save for the lawlessness of a primitive state of society which gave free play to the workings of the passions, the story might have passed in Yorkshire or New England. A book like "Wuthering Heights," or "Pembroke," occasionally exhibits the same obstinate Berserkir rage of the tough old Teutonic stock, operating under modern conditions. For the men and women of the sagas are hard as iron; their pride is ferocious, their courage and sense of duty inflexible, their hatred is as enduring as their love. The memory of a slight or an injury is nursed for a lifetime, and when ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... through sparse patches of rush-grass. Grasping these rushes firmly near the root, he pulled up what resembled a young onion-sprout no larger than a shingle-nail. It was tender, and his teeth sank into it with a crunch that promised deliciously of food. But its fibers were tough. It was composed of stringy filaments saturated with water, like the berries, and devoid of nourishment. He threw off his pack and went into the rush-grass on hands and knees, crunching and munching, like ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... in it, and I could see that they were pretty tough looking. Both of them wore sweaters and one had on one of those peaked caps like tough fellows in the movies always wear. They waited just a minute and spoke to each other very excited like. Then they both looked around, back ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... generally call it when on the spree, casting the lead—presumably to know their whereabouts. A sailor belonging to the Hebe got to know where they were, and persuaded a man belonging to another vessel to go with him and bring them back. They had a tough job, but at midnight of the second day they succeeded in getting them to retrace their way to the ship, the plan being to get aboard when nobody was about. Munroe was a typical sailor, full of devilment, especially when he had had a few glasses of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... so funny, that the boy became, for a while, quite famous, and had his photograph taken, with the mark of the bite on his nose. This may seem a very tough story, but it is true. The thing took place only a few miles from where ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... among the lowest in the world. Because of these restrictive economic policies, Belarus has had trouble attracting foreign investment, which remains low. Growth has been strong in recent years, despite the roadblocks in a tough, centrally directed economy with a high, but decreasing, rate of inflation. Belarus receives heavily discounted oil and natural gas from Russia and much of Belarus' growth can be attributed to the re-export of Russian ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... sharp-fashioned buttons of red gold on its slashes and breast-borders; a [9]green[9] mantle, pieced together with the choicest of all colours, [10]folded about him;[10] [11]a brooch of pale gold in the cloak over his breast;[11] five circles of gold, [LL.fo.99a.] that is, his shield, he bore on him; a tough, obdurate, straight-bladed sword for a hero's handling hung high on his left side. A straight, fluted spear, flaming red [12]and venomous[12] in his hand." "But, who might that be?" asked [W.5342.] Ailill of Fergus. "Truly, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... through the underbrush in the direction Carlos had taken the day before. Fighting his way through the tangled shrubbery, he kept his eyes constantly on the needle of the magnetic compass he had wrenched from the direction finder. It was tough going through the thicket, and just as bad across a swampy clearing where he was mired to the knees before he got across. Up the hill and into the woods he forged, keeping doggedly to the direction he ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... rye. Whether the latter will head up will depend upon the number of the flock. It will be best to work the houses across to the far side and let that portion near the middle fence head up. As the old grain gets too tough for green food strips of ground should be broken up and sown in oats. The grain that matures will not be cut, but the hens will be allowed to thresh it out. The straw may be cut with mower or scythe for use as ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... said he, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. "I have been looking for you, and I have had tough work of it. I saw you go into the woods, and I went in also, although some distance below here, and I have had a hard and tiresome job working my way up to you; but I have found you. I knew I should, for I had bent my mind to ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... "So he does. But somehow I've managed to keep in shape. I inherit from my father a fairly tough constitution, and also the love of work, the seeing my job through to the finish without loss of time. I suspect that's what ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... girl and poetry can get a tough nut like me. I wonder what the guys that used to hang out in back of Kelly's 'ud say if they seen what was goin' on in my bean just now. They'd call me Lizzy, eh? Well, they wouldn't call me Lizzy more'n once. I may be gettin' soft in the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him none. He's jest like a dog with a hurt paw—wants ter crawl inter his kennel and lick his wounds. It's a tough propersition, ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Truth is tough; it will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... wheat raised in the different sections of the Union must be taken into consideration. Wheat may be divided into two classes, spring and winter, the latter generally being more starchy and easily pulverized, and at the same time having a very tough bran or husk, which does not readily crumble or cut to pieces in the process of grinding. It was with this wheat that the mills of the country had chiefly to do, and the defects of the old system of milling were not ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, so strongly had the telepathic ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... the head"—Vicia Caroliniana—Vetch: Decoction drunk for dyspepsia and pains in the back, and rubbed on stomach for cramp; also rubbed on ball-players after scratching, to render their muscles tough, and used in the same way after scratching in the disease referred to under [^u][n]nagei, in which one side becomes black in spots, with partial paralysis; also used in same manner in decoction with K[^a]sduta for rheumatism; considered ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... warrior's throat compress'd: Then had Atrides dragg'd him from the field, And endless fame acquir'd; but Venus, child Of Jove, her fav'rite's peril quickly saw. And broke the throttling strap of tough bull's hide. In the broad hand the empty helm remained. The trophy, by their champion whirl'd amid The well-greav'd Greeks, his eager comrades seiz'd; While he, infuriate, rush'd with murd'rous aim On Priam's son; ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... none; and equally unlike them, perhaps, because they had no earthly object, they were all, as I have said, poor men—either students, like Tyndal, or artisans and labourers who worked for their own bread, and in tough contact with reality, had learnt better than the great and the educated the difference between truth and lies. Wycliffe had royal dukes and noblemen for his supporters—knights and divines among his disciples—a king and a House ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... not be afraid," Beric said. "The creature has probably been dead hundreds of years. You see his skin is all decayed away, and it must have been thick and tough indeed. By the way the bones are piled together, he must have curled up here to die. He was probably the last of his race. However, we will search the island thoroughly, keeping together in readiness to encounter anything that we ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... as I expected, a tough, sagacious, long-headed Scotchman, and a collector of news both from choice and profession. He was able to give me a distinct account of what had passed in the House of Commons and House of Lords on the affair ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hardy irregulars, men of the stuff of the defenders of Mafeking. Such men are too shrewd to be herded into an untenable position and too valiant to surrender a tenable one. The force was commanded by a dashing soldier, Colonel Dalgety, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, as tough a fighter as his famous namesake. There were with him nearly a thousand men of Brabant's Horse, four hundred of the Cape Mounted Rifles, four hundred Kaffrarian Horse, with some scouts, and one hundred regulars, including twenty invaluable Sappers. They were strong in ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he could not move. "Come on!" cried his guide, with terror in ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... it certainly was tough. He was glad they were to land, being very sure that if an Indian did shoot him he would not feel it, so thoroughly ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... task, the scale of which we have been brought by inquiry to estimate at its true magnitude. At the same time we will spare such sympathy as the dignity of the matter demands for the sufferers from tough beef, tub butter, smoked puddings, cold potatoes, and congealed gravy, and not mislead any refugee schoolmaster of the future into the belief that he can dine in the wilderness as comfortably as ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... conductor of the cord. This central core of steel is carefully insulated from the outer shell of the plug by means of hard rubber bushings, the parts being forced tightly together. The outer shell, of course, forms the other conductor of the plug, called the sleeve contact. A handle of tough fiber tubing is fitted over the rear end of the plug and this also serves to close the opening formed by cutting away a portion of the plug shell, thus exposing the ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... of heaven beating on his brow would not have altered its dinginess by a shade, nor penetrated one of the earthy layers that had thickened there; a thunder-shower must have glanced off, as water will do from tough, hardened clay. Rough patches of hair, scanty and straggling, like the vegetation of waste, barren lands, grew all over his cheeks and chin (a negro with an ample, honest beard is an anomaly), and a huge bush of wool—unkempt, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... bayonets, and hatchets were set to work, and in a few moments, the upper surface of sand and earth being removed, the explorers came upon a large bow, strong, tough, and beautifully carved ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the way home to get the recipe for prune whip from Sahwah. Sahwah was not at home, but her mother gave Migwan the recipe and added many directions as to the proper mixing of the ingredients. "Is—is there any way of making tough round steak tender?" she asked timidly, just a little ashamed to admit that they had ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... are exceedingly abundant among the older rocks of all parts of the globe. Popular names for them are "whinstone," "greenstone," "toadstone" and "trap." They form excellent road-mending stones and are much quarried for this purpose, being tough, durable and resistant to wear, so long as they are not extremely decomposed. Many of them are to be preferred to the fresher dolerites as being less brittle. The quality of the Cornish greenstones appears to have been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... was delivered, in a paternal manner, by the youngest surgeon in the hospital, a kind-hearted little gentleman, who seemed to consider me a frail young blossom, that needed much cherishing, instead of a tough old spinster, who had been knocking about the world for thirty years. At the time I write of, he discovered me sitting on the stairs, with a nice cloud of unwholesome steam rising from the washroom; a party of January breezes disporting themselves in the halls; ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... was brought in. The Dominican, after muttering the benedicite, to which scarcely any one knew how to respond, began to serve the contents. But whether from carelessness or other cause, Padre Damaso received a plate in which a bare neck and a tough wing of chicken floated about in a large quantity of soup amid lumps of squash, while the others were eating legs and breasts, especially Ibarra, to whose lot fell the second joints. Observing all this, the Franciscan mashed up some pieces of squash, barely tasted the soup, dropped ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... are looking tough, O Diogenes," quoth Socrates. "Now, by the dog, what have you been doing?" "I have been searching for an honest man in the Chicago City Council," replied the grim philosopher mournfully, "With what result?" inquired the other. "Well, you see," said Diogenes ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... in sight o' them. A ole boar wuz in charge o' them, an' he wuz a hard-lookin' citizen, I want ter tell yer. He hed tushes five inches long an' both o' 'em ez sharp ez razors. I took a shot at him, but his hide wuz so tough thet ther ball just glanced off him, an' he made a break fer me. I turned an' fled. Ther river wuz not fur erway, an' I knowed thet if I beat them hawgs ter it I ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... boys! the half-cooked ham, The rich ragout and the charming cham., I've got to mix my liquor; Give me a gander's gaunt hind leg, Hard and tough as a wooden peg, And I'll keep it down with a hard-boiled egg, 'Twill make ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... the base, and a prominent ridge, or keel, runs down the top from base to point. It is further strengthened by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was her tongue, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must sit tight indeed which this ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... theory upheld by many persons, that habitual intemperance is favorable to longevity." "No, no," replied the Chief Justice, with a smile, "this old man and his brother merely teach us what every carpenter knows—that Elm, whether it be wet or dry, is a very tough wood." Another version of this excellent story makes Lord Mansfield inquire of the elder Elm, "Then how do you account for your prolonged tenure of existence?" to which question Elm is made to respond, more like a lawyer ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... make it up ourselves, and app'ints our own judges and juries, and pass judgment 'cordin' to the case. Ef it's the first offence, or only a small one, we let's the fellow off with only a taste of the hickory. Ef it's a tough case, and an old sinner, we give him a belly-full. Ef the whole country's roused, then Judge Lynch puts on his black cap, and the rascal takes a hard ride on a rail, a duck in the pond, and a perfect ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... main impression which the slight record here presented will convey, the impression of a man quite unlike the many statesmen whom power and the vexations attendant upon it have in some piteous way spoiled and marred, a man who started by being tough and shrewd and canny and became very strong and very wise, started with an inclination to honesty, courage, and kindness, and became, under a tremendous strain, honest, brave, and kind ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... deep, with an average slope of 15 deg.. It is a magnificent sight, as seen from the surrounding paramo—a stream of dark, ragged rocks coming down out of the clouds and snows which cover the summit. The representative products of Antisana are a black, cellular, vitreous trachyte, a fine-grained, tough porphyroid trachyte, and a coarse reddish porphyroid trachyte. An eruption, as late as 1590, is recorded in Johnston's Phys. Atlas. Humboldt saw smoke issuing from several openings in ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... and as much bound to the rites and forms of the Church as he had been before his conversion to his "medicines," or practices of heathen superstition, one day ordered him to make the sign of the cross, and on his refusal, tried to force him. But as the minister was tough and muscular, the Indian could not guide his hand. Then, pulling out a crucifix that hung at his neck, he told Williams in broken English to kiss it; and being again refused, he brandished his hatchet over him and threatened to knock out his brains. This ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... of the recent march, they had, in fact, refreshed themselves, and washed down the dust of the track. They thought that this siege was likely to be a very tough business, and congratulated themselves that it was not thirty miles to Aisi, so that so long as they stayed there they might, perhaps, get supplies of provisions with tolerable regularity. "But if you're over the water, my lad," said the old fellow with the can, picking his teeth ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... us consider the railway beef. It promises little. But it cannot be so tough and indigestible as the memory of a mistake—I tell ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... on, not long their riches eyed, Nor did he aught with so great weight incline, His wonted sword upon his thigh he tied, The blade was old and tough, of temper fine. As when a comet far and wide descried, In scorn of Phoebus midst bright heaven doth shine, And tidings sad of death and mischief brings To mighty lords, to ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... have done a wiser thing. But it was a tough problem at best, and he had only a moment in ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Jupiter Zeus, Who play'd the deuce, A rampant blade and a tough one; But Denis bold, Stole his coat of gold, And rigg'd him out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... before plowing time, they scatter abroad those Beat-boroughs, & small Sand heaps vpon the ground, which afterwards, by the Ploughes turning downe, giue heate to the roote of the Corne. The tillable fields are in some places so hilly, that the Oxen can hardly take sure footing; in some so tough, that the Plough will scarcely cut them, and in some so shelfie, that the Corne hath much adoe to fatten his roote. The charges of this Beating, Burning, Seeding and Sanding, ordinarily amounteth to no lesse then twentie shillings for ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... this," she said. "If it's cooked too much, it gets tough and—" She straightened suddenly and stood staring out through ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Lewes and John Fiske—both of which he appreciates,—although the strain of studying philosophy in English is no small one. Happily he is so strong that no amount of study is likely to injure his health, and his nerves are tough as wire. He is quite an ascetic withal. As it is the Japanese custom to set cakes and tea before visitors, I always have both in readiness, and an especially fine quality of kwashi, made at Kitzuki, of which the students ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... word is a Statute graven in Brasse, And if he breakes that Law I will in Thunder Rouze his cold spirit. I long to ride in Armour, And looking round about me to see nothing But Seas and shores, the Seas of Christians blood, The shoares tough Souldiers. Here a wing flies out Soaring at Victory; here the maine Battalia Comes up with as much horrour and hotter terrour As if a thick-growne Forrest by enchantment Were made to move, and all the Trees should meete Pell mell, and rive their beaten bulkes in sunder, As petty ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... and you can never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcerated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer. The greedy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... branches and pieces of bark collected, and by the time Dio pronounced the meat "done," we had our hut up, resting against the trunk of a tree. Had we not been so busily employed, we could not have waited so long without food. Tough as was the meat, it greatly restored our strength, while we quenched our thirst with handfuls of snow. I had not before felt sleepy, but scarcely had I swallowed the food, than I became almost overpowered by drowsiness, and had just sense enough to crawl into the ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'You needn't shake! Do you suppose I would eat such a little tough, bony fellow as you for supper? No! When do your ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... part of the holes should be filled loosely and the ground kept from surface compacting. The maintenance of such a condition during the coming summer will probably allow the trees to overcome the mistake made at their planting, unless the soil should be a tough adobe or other soil which has a disposition to ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... purpose of keeping my papers in order, I have prepared thin laths of tough wood dressed with the draw knife to a thin edge, the back being one fourth of an inch thick, leaving the lath one and a quarter inch broad; these are cut in lengths to suit the paper they are intended to hold. Take for instance THE PRAIRIE FARMER. I cut the lath just ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... half over, that it was "better than rain, at all events;" to be sure that was cold comfort, but any comfort is better than none. O'Donahue's request for McShane to come inside was disregarded; he was as tough as little Joey, at all events, and it would be a pity to interrupt the conversation. About four o'clock they had changed their horses at a small village, and were about three miles on their last stage, for that day's journey, when ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... vital lines is a very tough job. It is a job which requires tremendous daring, tremendous resourcefulness, and, above all, tremendous production of planes and tanks and guns and also of the ships to carry them. And I speak again for the American people ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... it'll be tough fer you," he went on, kindly. "There was a gurl tenderfoot heah two years ago an' she had a hell of a time. They all joked her, 'cept me, an' played tricks on her. An' on her side she was always puttin' her foot in it. I was shore sorry ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... all gone mad that yer sitting out there wi' the rain drippin' on yer, when yer might be dry an' comfortable, and have a bit o' breakfast ready for a feller when he comes home after a tough job such as ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... Finally, they can all endure thirst for long periods together; and the camel, the most inveterate desert-haunter of the trio, is even provided with a special stomach to take in water for several days at a stretch, besides having a peculiarly tough skin in which perspiration is reduced to a minimum. He carries his own water-supply internally, and wastes as little of it ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... heard her cry In the Land of Pie, And sent her dozens and dozens, Both tender and tough, Till she'd had more than enough For her sisters, her aunts ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... old captain, the pilot of the wheezy ferry-boat Edgar, was our sworn friend, and allowed us to ride free as often as we could get away. Charles intended crossing the river to get pawpaws. A pawpaw is an easily mashed fruit, three or four inches long, with a tough skin inclosing a very liquid pulp full of seeds, and about as solid as a cream puff, when it is dead ripe. It grows on a ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... hate 'good, pious, sanctified souls,' such as that marble man upstairs, who has come back to usurp my kingdom, and lord it over this heritage. After to-day a new regime. The potter's hands are fair and shapely, courteous and deft, but potter's hands nevertheless. Tough kneading he shall find it, and stiffer clay than ever yet was moulded, or my name is not Salome Owen. After all, how much better are we than the lower beasts of prey? In the race for riches there is but one alternative,—to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... on the shore, and a perfect hail of bullets dimpled the water around the Americans as they worked. When a man in the boats was hit, another took his place. Sturdy arms at the oars held the boats against the strong current, while others hacked away the tough wires. ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... a lot of tough characters in the West and I lived a fast life. Then I drifted East, lost what money I had and went to work for Mr. Appleby. I didn't know Tom was going to school here or I wouldn't have run the chance ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... black in the drawing are absolutely clear and transparent in the negative, but the rest of the negative is black. From the photographer, the negative goes to the "negative-turning" room. Here the negative is coated with solutions of collodion and rubber cement, which makes the film exceedingly tough—so tough that it is easily stripped from the glass on which it was made, and is "turned" with the positive side up on another sheet of glass. If this were not done, the plate would be reversed in printing—that is, a line ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... thou part sadnesse and melancholy my tender Iuuenall? Boy. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough signeur ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... give light, but the light is dim, and to anoint the hoofs of horses. It blooms in November, the flowers growing in bunches of seven or nine each; and its leaf is oval and tapering. The wood is light, exceedingly tough, and reddish in color. It is very plentiful in the Visayas, and generally grows close to the water. It is known by a number of different names, among them being bitanhol or ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... he began, "ease yerself a bit, for ye have had a tough pull and it's good seven miles to the rapids. The fire is sartinly comin' in arnest, but the river runs nigh onto straight till ye git within sight of 'em, and I think we will beat it. I didn't feel ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... last, when all the way was spent, 160 The Latin towers and roofs aloft, and drew the walls anigh: There were the lads and flower of youth afield the city by Backing the steed, or mid the dust a-steering of the car, Or bending of the bitter bow, hurling tough darts afar By strength of arm; for foot or fist crying the challenging. Then fares a well-horsed messenger, who to the ancient king Bears tidings of tall new-comers in outland raiment clad: So straight Latinus biddeth them ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... nest in two hours, I can make two more in four more, and then I will have time for the rest of the things," I assured myself as I again looked at my wrist-watch, and began to saw with my knee holding the tough old plank in ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... whose fore-teeth have been consumed almost down to the gums, though no two of them were exactly of the same length or thickness, but irregularly corroded, like iron by rust. The loss of teeth is, I think, by all who have written upon the subject, imputed to the tough and stringy coat of the areca-nut; but I impute it wholly to the lime: They are not loosened, or broken, or forced out, as might be expected if they were injured by the continual chewing of hard and rough substances, but they are gradually wasted like metals that are exposed to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... a pitiable figure. His body, brown as an Indian's, was bare almost to the waist. He wore only one garment, a sort of a shirt, made from the skin of one of his own sheep. His legs and feet were as brown as the rest of his body, and as tough as those of ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... fighting the vipers they have been coddling for forty or fifty years. Some are in the regular army, some in the navy, and some in the plucky, fighting little navy, patrolling England and her brood of coastwise islands. They are a tough, rough, hard lot, but I love them all better than anything else in this world. There are a good many Vedder houses in Orkney, and they are all full of little squabbling, fighting, never clean, and never properly dressed little brats, from four to eleven years old. So I don't worry about there ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... with cryin', he'll have a tough time a shuttin' on it," responded Jim, in a whisper so loud that he ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... effect as the passing breeze. The chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... riding-whip which he happened to be carrying, and gave Barker one of the most satisfactory castigations he had ever undergone; the boys declared that Dr. Rowlands' "swishings" were nothing to it. Mr. Williams saw that the offender was a tough subject, and determined that he should not soon forget the punishment he then received. He had never heard from Eric how this boy had been treating him, but he had heard it from Russell, and now he had seen one of ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... de ole cunjuh man wuz settin' dere noddin' in de corner. Dan le'p' in de do' en jump' fer dis man's th'oat, en got de same grip on 'im w'at de cunjuh man had tol' 'im 'bout half a' hour befo'. It wuz ha'd wuk dis time, fer de ole man's neck wuz monst'us tough en stringy, but Dan hilt on long ernuff ter be sho' his job wuz done right. En eben den he did n' hol' on long ernuff; fer w'en he tu'nt de cunjuh man loose en he fell ober on de flo', de cunjuh man rollt his eyes at Dan, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... with our fare. Particularly the Cigarette, for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the adventure, tough beefsteak and all. According to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should have been flavoured by the look of the other people's bread-berry. But we did not find it so in practice. You may have a head-knowledge that other people live more poorly than yourself, but ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the island. The boys caught them by means of snares made of a kind of tough creeper. And bonny Flossy caught as many fish as would have kept ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... prompted him to remark the other negresses more particularly than before. He was gratified with their manners: like most uncivilized women, they seemed at once tender of heart and tough of constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for them. Unsophisticated as leopardesses; loving as doves. Ah! thought Captain Delano, these, perhaps, are some of the very women whom Ledyard saw in Africa, and gave such ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... "it flashed into my mind that these tough fellows might have dogged us up here, to play some of their tricks on us when in camp; and that holding Bumpus was meant to draw the rest off, so they could run away with our haversacks, which they knew must contain lots of things we couldn't well ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... affects the lining of the air-tubes, travelling from the larger towards the smaller, and in bad cases extending even to their termination in the minute air-cells. The inflammation leads to the pouring out of a secretion, which by degrees becomes thick like matter, or even very tenacious, almost as tough as though it were a thin layer of skin. If this is very extensive, and reaches to the small air-cells, it is evident that air cannot enter, while that elasticity of the lung which I have already spoken of tends to drive out from the cells the small quantity of air they ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... man of erect military carriage. His features were crisscrossed with radiation scars and his voice boomed out like a military drum. Yet when one got to know him, he wasn't so gruff. On the base, he commanded two thousand military personnel and half that many scientists and techs: a tough job, and one that he ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... thee? I will seize thee, Hold thee fast, And thy nimble wood so tough With my sharp axe split ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... me a spear from a tough ashen sapling that he had treasured for a long time, because that which I had used in the wolf hunt was sprung by the weight of one of the beasts, and while his hurts kept him away at his own house he wrought it, and at last brought it up to the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... Minor, 1879. A bushy shrub of vigorous habit, with trifoliolate and petiolate leaves of a pale green colour, thick and tough, and brightly polished on the upper surface. Flowers bright yellow, the calyx being helmet-shaped and rusty-red. It is a beautiful but uncommon shrub, and succeeds very well in chalky or calcareous soil. Flowers ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock's letter. His good nature checked his resenting the young minister's lofty admonitions, and his tough, inelastic sense of humor forbade his taking them seriously. He wrote no answer at all but a day or two afterward he found in a curiosity shop a grotesque little statuette in ivory, of the sixteenth century, which he sent off to Babcock without a commentary. ...
— The American • Henry James
... two gentlemen most interested, because he did not give a thought to the matter that that particular train stopped at the next station, some three miles away from Fetchworth. And even if he had and could have seen the two tough-looking sailormen who descended from the first-class compartment there and stepped on to the tiny platform among one or two others, he would never have dreamed of associating them with the Mr. Headland and his man Dollops who had such a short ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... record with accuracy the daily disputes which used to take place between mother and son; until the latter, from habits of intoxication, falling into a state of almost imbecility, was tended by his tough old parent as a baby almost, and would cry if deprived of his necessary ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away and broken from the ground, drops of black blood trickle, and gore stains the earth. An icy shudder shakes my limbs, and my blood curdles chill with terror. Yet from another I go on again to tear away a tough shoot, fully to fathom its secret; yet from another black blood follows out of the bark. With many searchings of heart I prayed the woodland nymphs, and lord Gradivus, who rules in the Getic fields, to make ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... a crew for 'em," said Brisket. "A man here and a man there. Biddlecombe men ain't tough enough. And now, what about that whisky you've been ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... horn of an antelope. In another, Scyths, with their loose spangled trousers and their tall pointed caps, dealt death around from their unerring blows; while near them Assyrians, helmeted, and wearing corselets of quilted linen, wielded the tough spear, or the still more formidable iron mace. Rude weapons, like cane bows, unfeathered arrows, and stakes hardened at one end in the fire, were seen side by side with keen swords and daggers of the best steel, the finished productions of the workshops of Phoenicia and Greece. Here ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... prodigious rate with swift and long strides, which reminded Waverley of the seven-league boots of the nursery fable. He was a tall, thin, athletic figure; old indeed, and grey-haired, but with every muscle rendered as tough as whip-cord by constant exercise. He was dressed carelessly, and more like a Frenchman than an Englishman of the period, while, from his hard features and perpendicular rigidity of stature, he bore some resemblance ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... "Tough work trying to get a few winks of sleep when one is quivering all over with excitement," ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... one of them came up and asked, "Feeling better? You had a tough job here all alone. We came ashore on the other side, and were hurrying towards the firing lower down there when we heard the gun begin, and your friend here brought us down this road on the jump. He doesn't speak much, but he's got mighty good ears ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... supply our need; for I stoopt sudden to the grass that did grow oft and plenty in this place and that, and was so tall as my thigh, and to my head in the middle of the dumpings where it did sprout. And lo! it was wondrous tough. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... "A tough hide and some facility of expression"—to quote the author's modest estimate of his qualifications—have enabled Rear-Admiral Sir DOUGLAS BROWNRIGG to make his Indiscretions of the Naval Censor (CASSELL) the liveliest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... and rest here a while till it gets cooler," observed Pete. "Might as well, now. We can start in an hour and get in to the wagon by dark. Reckon Frank Boland was glad to see them two fires! I bet that boy sure hated to be left behind. Pretty tough—but it had to be done. This has been a thunderin' hard trip on Frankie and he's stood up to it fine. Good stuff!" He turned to the boy: "Well, Bobby, you had a hard time wranglin' them to-day—but you got 'em, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... is the first little treat I've allowed myself since my christening. Besides, Caroline's income is very considerable, and as her ideas of economy are quite on a par with mine, it ought to turn out well. Bless her tough old heart, she's a mean little darling! Oh, here she is, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... courses—meat, meat, meat, and so tough that our teeth bounced off, and we were compelled to bolt the morsels whole. One course tired us out, weary as we already were with our journey, but Mike, making up for his former abstinence, wolfed all his own share and what remained ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... has designated by this term a peculiar condition of the anthers in certain plants, in which they are shrivelled, or become brown and tough, and contain no good pollen. When in this state they exactly resemble the anthers of the most sterile hybrids. Gaertner,[406] in his discussion on this subject, has shown that plants of many orders are occasionally thus affected; but the Caryophyllaceae and Liliaceae suffer most, and to these orders, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... reached the door at the end of the passage, it was closed, and he could only stand outside and listen. A lamp of pottery, burning wanly on a stone shelf jutting from the wall, showed the door, low, metal-bound, of tough black oak. He could see nothing, but his ears caught fragments of sound at intervals from within; a clank of chains, a scraping as of a heavy object dragged across the floor. He leaned against the wall of the passage, the lamplight on his face, his figure tense with expectation, his hands ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... woody portion. The same difference of durability of bark and wood exists in modern trees, and was first pointed out to me by Dr. Dawson, in the forests of Nova Scotia, where the Canoe Birch (Betula papyracea) has such tough bark that it may sometimes be seen in the swamps looking externally sound and fresh, although consisting simply of a hollow cylinder with all the wood decayed and gone. When portions of such trunks have become ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... hope you never will set eyes on it. I was born in Glasgow. And there's a smelly old river there, called the Clyde, where they launch big ships ... a bit bigger than the Minerva. The Minerva was built in Holland. Well, my old father was a tough old chap—not a Scotchman, though my mother was Scotch—with a big business in Glasgow. He was as rich as—well, richer than anybody you ever met. Work that out! And he was as tough as a Glasgow business man. They're a special kind. And ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
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