"Bent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ancients who were the most accurate in their Remarks on the Genius and Temper of Mankind, by considering the various Bent and Scope of our Actions throughout the Progress of Life, have with great Exactness allotted Inclinations and Objects of Desire particular to every Stage, according to the different Circumstances of our Conversation and Fortune, thro' the several Periods of it. Hence they were disposed easily ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... We bent over his map, following the line drawn by his finger, listening to details of a grim bit of work, glad that five hundred German prisoners had been taken that day. As he spoke the window rattled, and we heard the boom of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... all falsehood and deception, at another as the source from which science springs, just as at one time he considered magic fundamentally the same as religion and then again as fundamentally different from religion. When Frazer is bent upon identifying magic and science, he attributes to primitive man a theory of causation (that like produces like): magic is based, he says, upon 'the views of natural causation embraced by the savage magician'. On the other hand, according ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Shall you begin to work? Work, or what you understand by work at this moment, means, for a man of Poiret's calibre, an old age in Mamma Vauquer's lodging-house. There are fifty thousand young men in your position at this moment, all bent as you are on solving one and the same problem—how to acquire a fortune rapidly. You are but a unit in that aggregate. You can guess, therefore, what efforts you must make, how desperate the struggle is. There are not fifty ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the girl had bent herself backwards and backwards, till she was nearly doubled into the form of a hoop, so he must try to imitate a hoop by stooping forwards ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... is changed. His old philosophical, speculative, idealistic bent is as completely in abeyance as though stricken with rudimentary palsy. In their stead is an alert, untiring, relentless Nemesis, more pitiless because of intense, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... went for aid to Zal, who, because he was growing old, referred them to Rustem, yet of tender age. Rustem responded gladly, and his father commanded that all the horses from Zaboulistan to Kabul be brought forth that his son might select a steed therefrom. Every horse bent beneath his grasp until he came to the colt Rakush, which responded to Rustem's voice, and suffered him to mount it. From that day to his death, this steed was his faithful companion ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... however, less than their dread of a flogging, and the hustling went on, much, apparently to the amusement of Captain Pigot, who smiled cynically as he silently watched the struggle. The two captains of the to were in the most disadvantageous position of all, as they, bent supposed to be the two smartest hands on the yard, had laid out, one to each yard-arm to pass and haul out the earrings and they would consequently, in the ordinary course of things be the last men off the yard. This, however, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... Littleton rode to Pepperhill, where old Mr Talbot was at that time. Robert declined to accompany them, and Bates excused himself. To obtain sight of Mr Smallpiece, without being seen by Mr Talbot, was the delicate business on which they were bent. Leonard Smallpiece seems to have been an agent or bailiff of Mr Talbot, and a relative of the Winters; he was "exceeding popishe, but very timorous." [Note 4.] The pair of worthies settled that ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... him an iron rod as thick as an ordinary staff, but Hans took it and twisted it round his finger, so that wouldn't do. Then the smith came dragging one as thick as a waggon-pole, but Hans bent it over his knee and broke it like a straw. The smith then had to collect all the iron he had, and Hans held it while his father forged for him a staff, which was heavier than the anvil. When Hans had got this ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... But in all Seasons there will be some Instances of Persons who have Souls too large to be taken with popular Prejudices, and while the rest of Mankind are contending for Superiority in Power and Wealth, have their Thoughts bent upon the Necessities of those below them. The Charity-Schools which have been erected of late Years, are the greatest Instances of publick Spirit the Age has produced: But indeed when we consider how long this Sort of Beneficence ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... all the way to pastur', so't he can have a minute to fish in the brook. An' then he gallops 'em home ag'in, because he's stole a piece out o' the arternoon. I ketched him down there by the brook, one day, workin' away with a bent pin, an' the next mornin' I laid a fish-hook on the rock, an' hid in the woods to see what he'd say. My! I 'guess Jonah wa'n't more tickled when he set foot on dry land. Here comes the wagons! There's the Poorhouse ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... hand of the Venetian ambassador, early in the year 1574, is still more pitiful. His countenance had become sad and forbidding. When obliged to give audience to the representatives of foreign powers, as well as in his ordinary interviews, he avoided the glance of those who addressed him. He bent his head toward the ground and shut his eyes. At short intervals he would open them with a start, and in a moment, as though the effort caused him pain, he would close them again with no less suddenness. "It is feared," ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... instant's pause, in which George Hagar, the host, felt a strong thrill of excitement. To him Mrs. Detlor seemed in a dream, though her lips still smiled and her eyes wandered pleasantly over the heads of the company. She was looking at none of them, but her body was bent slightly toward the window, listening with it, as the deaf and ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... its ally, Dark Disarmament Have compassed me about; Have massed their armies, and on battle bent My forces put to rout, But though I fight alone, and fall, and die, Talk ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... IS BENT THE TREE'S INCLINED."—Yet the bramble cannot be bent to bear delicious peaches, nor the sycamore to bear grain. Education is something, but parentage is everything; because it "dyes in the wool," and thereby exerts an influence on character almost ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Scipios—that this literature throughout proceeds. The conservative and national tendency, in the nature of the case, accorded better with this prose authorship than with poetry; but here too—and particularly in the most important branch of this literature, historical composition—the Hellenistic bent had a powerful, in fact too powerful, influence ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... "Bent was his bow, the Grecian hearts to wound; Fierce as he mov'd, his silver shafts resound." —Pope, Iliad, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. "Still bent on spending your money, Captain?" he said. "Don't you see that the people who write you these begging ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... Jones lay beneath her lace covered with features contorted, mouth half open and eyes staring wildly. A paroxysm of pain had carried her off, the good doctor well knew; the pain, and the excitement of the moment. Very tenderly he bent down and closed the eyes and pressed the lips together. He smoothed the lines from the cheeks, so that the face became more natural in appearance. Then, with a sigh—for he had become fond of this brave, beautiful patient—he turned away to find Jason Jones and the nurse Janet confronting one ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... the mountains which lay stretched out before me, I thought how often they had been the object of my dearest desires. Here used I to sit for hours together with my eyes bent upon them, ardently longing to wander in the shade of those woods, to lose myself in those valleys, which form so delightful an object in the distance. With what reluctance did I leave this charming ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... any of them galoots forgit how the saloon got a-fire when ev'rybody was asleep—how the chief turned out the camp, and after the barkeeper got out the door, how the chief rushed in an' rolled out all three of the barrels, and then went dead-bent fur the river with his clothes all a-blazin'? Whar'd we hev been for a couple of weeks ef it hadn't ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sensation as if I were undergoing strangulation. How I longed for water! Mounting my horse, I rode slowly along the ridge toward the west, and after proceeding several miles, discovered a small lake to my right. My horse scented it earlier than I, and needed no urging to reach it. Dismounting, I bent over and drank from the edge, which was marked with the tracks of antelopes, and of numerous aquatic birds. The water was brackish and bitter, but I drank it with eagerness. My thirst was satisfied, but the water gave me a severe pain in my stomach, that soon became almost ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the prisoner was brought into court. He walked with shambling gait, bent at the shoulders, hopelessly, with downcast eyes, and took his seat with several other prisoners who had been brought in for sentence. His wife, accompanied by the children, waited behind him, and a number of his friends were gathered in the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Howards were of the Queen's alliance and consanguinity by her mother, which swayed her affection and bent it toward this great house; and it was a part of her natural propensity to grace and support ancient nobility, where it did not entrench, neither invade her interest; from such trespasses she was quick and tender, and would not spare any whatsoever, as ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... stir from her seat, but had continued with her head bent down over some work, only venturing at times to cast a furtive glance at her father and Ronald, to ascertain how they got on together. Mrs Armytage soon afterwards joined her, and continued equally silent, her countenance exhibiting still ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... very affecting sight to see this worthy old Christian taking the Sacrament for the last time. All his family were deeply moved. When we took leave of him he started as he took my wife's hand. He said, 'This is a little one, whose is it?' They told him it was Mrs Hocken's. The old man bent over it and ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... Highness, as indeed I now Must call you—and upon his bended knee Never bent Subject more devotedly— However all about you, and perhaps You to yourself incomprehensiblest, But rest in the assurance of your own Sane waking senses, by these witnesses Attested, till the story of it all, Of which I bring a chapter, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... slowly and unwillingly. I had to bully him, I had almost to shove him to the airship and tuck him up upon its wicker flat. Single-handed I made but a clumsy start; we scraped along the roof of the shed and bent a van of the propeller, and for a time I hung underneath without his offering a hand to help me to clamber up. If it hadn't been for a sort of anchoring trolley device of Cothope's, a sort of slip anchor running on a rail, we should never have ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... in quest of this Governor that Yoosoof bent his rapid steps. Besides all the advantages above enumerated, the town drove a small trade in ivory, ebony, indigo, orchella weed, gum copal, cocoa-nut oil, and other articles of native produce, and a very large (though secret) trade in human bodies ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... left me, my friend," said she. "Everybody else forsakes me, everybody is against me. I can feel it; I am being ruined; folks are bent on annihilating me, as if I had not already lost everything when I lost my child. And since you alone remain to me, you who know my torments, you who have no daughter left you, pray for heaven's sake help me ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... times I went fishing with him from the bank near the Old Mill, opposite Addison's Walk, and he quite entered into my happiness when a small fish came wriggling up at the end of my bent pin, just ready for the dinner of the little white kitten "Lily," ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Eves and Adams should lose their virtue with such a tempter; yet, had you and Dumaresq been less bent on Sir Philip's ruin, and on grasping his powers and profits, if you can pardon my plain speaking, I will be bold to say Sir Philip was no friend to tyranny, and would, under God's pleasure, have been still alive to forward the cause of ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... pins they gave me for nothing!" the Professor added in high glee. "Fifteen of 'em, and only one bent!" ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... sometimes called the Victory, now in the Bargello Palace, was catalogued without hesitation by Vasari among the statues for the tomb. A young hero, of gigantic strength and height, stands firmly poised upon one foot, while his other leg, bent at the knee, crushes the back of an old man doubled up beneath him. In the face of the vanquished warrior critics have found a resemblance to Michelangelo. The head of the victorious youth seems too small for his stature, and the features are almost brutally vacuous, though burning with an insolent ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of the worst, I will, when they come to any bulk, contrive some way to hide them, if I can, that I may protest I have them not about me, which, before, I could not say of a truth; and that made him so resolutely bent to try to find them upon me; for which I might have suffered ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Jeff saw him disappear through the door of the cabin that had been pointed out to him; but he was not looking, that way when Rodney came out a moment later, and with noiseless steps and form half bent directed his course toward Tom Percival's prison. His face wore a determined look, and his right hand, which was thrust into the pocket of his sack coat, firmly clutched his revolver. He knew that he must succeed in what he was about ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... present he could not speak. He gave a short wave of his hand to show that he heard, but could not answer yet, and with his head bent down made his way out through the end of the village on to the moor—Bill following him, wondering and sympathetic, unable to conjecture what ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... drag the calves up close to it; every bit of tie rope in my pocket, thongs cut off the saddle, even my pocket-handkerchief, were all brought into service; as at one time there were as many as four calves tied down at once. I had only the one little branding-iron, a thin bent iron rod, generally carried tied to the saddle alongside the carbine. The branding-iron must be, if not quite red-hot, very nearly so. Then the calf has to ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the poor, bent, meek, old man with a thrill of pity. He observed that many of the negroes were ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the quay? He is making a fool of her and of me. I cannot bear it. Sometimes I feel as if I should go mad. I don't know what those poor creatures in the Bible felt when they were possessed by the devil, but I believe he comes right into me when I think of this business." Then he bent over the boat and covered his face with his arms, and his great broad back heaved up and down, like a boat on the sea. Glenville left him alone, and puffed away vigorously at a cigar he was smoking in order to quiet ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... left behind, and the creature's hoofs struck upon the hard sun-baked plain of yellow earth which lay between the two camps. Looking down at the great, widely spreading cracks in the hungry soil, the result of a seven-months' continuous drought, Harrington almost unconsciously bent his head and thought that surely God would send rain. He was not a religious man in the conventional sense—he had never been inside a church in his life—but the memory of his dead mother's belief in God's mercy and goodness was still ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the scheme as suggested by Mrs. Townsend. Her ideas as to Herbert's clerical studies would have been higher than this. Trinity College, Dublin, was in her estimation the only place left for good Church of England ecclesiastical teaching. But as Herbert was obstinately bent on declining sacerdotal life, there was no use in ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a period after which Grecian beauty is understood to commence its decline. How long she had passed that critical period, was a secret to all but the trusted ward-women of the purple chamber. Enough, that it was affirmed by the popular tongue, and seemed to be attested by that bent towards philosophy and literature, which is not supposed to be congenial to beauty in its earlier buds, to amount to one or two years ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the dummy round, and then laid it on the table before Mrs. Leighton, pushing some of her work aside to make room for it and standing over her while she bent ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of mercury, and the atmospheric pressure is measured by the difference of the heights of the mercury in the tube and the cistern. In the "siphon barometer" the cistern is dispensed with, the tube being bent round upon itself at its lower end; the reading is taken of the difference in the levels of the mercury in the two limbs. The "aneroid" barometer (from the Gr. [Greek: a-] privative, and [Greek: neros], wet) employs no liquid, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... room door had been broken in. Inside stood a strange instrument, resembling a large camera, which had once stood upright on a steel tripod riveted to the floor. The legs of the tripod were twisted and bent. A half-demolished chair near by ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... once been a handsome and healthy boy, but was now little more than a living skeleton. His face still retained its beauty of outline, though these outlines were terribly pinched and sharpened, but the expression of abject terror in the great blue eyes was pitiful to behold, and as Gaston and Raymond bent over the boy, a shrill cry, as of agony or terror, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the womb of the Revolution itself, and in the storm and terror of that wild time, tendencies were hidden away that the artistic Renaissance bent to her own service when the time came—a scientific tendency first, which has borne in our own day a brood of somewhat noisy Titans, yet in the sphere of poetry has not been unproductive of good. I do not mean ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... a minute, and then Miss Balquidder said: "I feel certain there is but one rational way of accomplishing the thing if you are bent upon doing it, if your own judgment and conscience tell you it ought to be done. ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... used his wife well; he had wearied her with jealousies, even while himself unfaithful; he had grudged her clothes and pleasures, while lavishing both upon himself; he had abused her in words; he had bent his fist at her in anger; he had once blacked her eye; and it is one of the oddest particulars in that odd Diary of his, that, while the injury is referred to once in passing, there is no hint as to the occasion or the manner of the blow. But now, when he is in the wrong, nothing ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that dissembleth, that offereth to hold God, as it were, fair in hand, about that which is neither purposed nor intended. It is also a sin that puts a man upon studying and contriving to beguile and deceive his neighbor as to the bent and intent of the heart, and also as to the cause and end of actions. It is a sin that persuadeth a man to make a show of civility, morality, or religion, as a cloak, a pretence, a guise to deceive withal. It will make a man preach ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... little; and there are claimants on claimants rising for that valuable Cleve Country. As indeed Johann Sigismund had anticipated, and been warned from all quarters, to expect. For months past, he has had his faculties bent, with lynx-eyed attention, on that scene of things; doubly and trebly impatient to get Preussen soldered up, ever since this other matter came to the bursting-point. What could be done by the utmost vigilance of his Deputies, he had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... boat is lower'd, the boatmen row, And to the Inchcape Rock they go; Sir Ralph bent over from the boat, And he cut the bell ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... his head. But the faithful Edward Gryme put out his arm, and there received the main force of the blow, so that it only made his master bleed. Another voice from among the knights again called to Thomas a Becket to fly; but, with his blood running down his face, and his hands clasped, and his head bent, he commanded himself to God, and stood firm. Then they cruelly killed him close to the altar of St. Bennet; and his body fell upon the pavement, which was dirtied ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... the abbe continues, 'of a bent glass tube filled with mercury, which rises and falls according to the weather. The shorter leg of this tube is open; the other...the other...well, we'll see. Here, Bastien, you're the tallest, get up on the chair and just feel with your finger if the long leg is open or closed. I can't ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the press of people was tremendous, and besides the numbers bent on amusement, throngs of men stood about under the wind-swept arcades, talking excitedly, some with frightened, furtive face and air, others ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... a sense of unity. None the less, the decade following the Peace of Ghent proved the beginning of a long era in which the point of view in politics, business, and social life was distinctly sectional. New England, the Middle States, the South, the West all were bent upon getting the utmost advantages from their resources; all were viewing public questions in the light of their peculiar interests. In the days of Clay and Calhoun and Jackson the nation's politics were essentially a struggle for power among ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... cannot prevent it, and, without my wish, they are now bent on collecting and printing my books—small honor to me—I shall have to let them put their energy and labor on the venture. I comfort myself with the thought that my books will yet be forgotten in the dust, especially when, by God's grace, I have written something ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... swelled almost to bursting, and he sat with the indignant and disconcerted air of one who has received a mortal insult from a quarter to which he holds it unmeet and indecorous to make any reply. While, with a bent brow and an angry eye, he was drawing in his breath slowly and majestically, and puffing it forth again with deep and solemn exertion, Glossin stepped in to his assistance. 'I should think now, Sir Robert, with great submission, that this matter may be closed. One of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... presente the adventurers aledg nothing but want of money, which is an invincible difculty, yet if that be taken away by you, others without doubte will be found. For the beter clearing of this, we must dispose y^e adventurers into 3. parts; and of them some 5. or 6. (as I conceive) are absolutly bent for us, above any others. Other 5. or 6. are our bitter professed adversaries. The rest, being the body, I conceive to be honestly minded, & loveingly also towards us; yet such as have others (namly y^e forward preachers) nerer unto them, then us, and whose course so farr as ther is any differance, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... scarce, there is a lack of herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his neighbours for help, they take pains not to go. The child weeps, the young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their limbs are bent." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and scientific writer, b. at Stirling, and ed. at Edin., he studied for the ministry of the Free Church. Having a decided scientific bent he gave himself specially to the study of geology, and made a scientific tour in the Rocky Mountains with Sir A. Geikie. Some years later he undertook a geological exploration of Lake Nyassa and the neighbouring country for ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... watching the sea this time. Her eyes, too, were bent down upon the twilight garden. The lamplight fell softly there, and threw into relief the two figures pacing up and down, hand in hand, heart in heart. Miss Vesta could not hear, and would not if she could ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... made Trent's footsteps as noiseless as a cat's. In a few moments he was looking in through the open leaves of the window at the southward end of the house, considering with a smile a very broad back and a bent head covered with short grizzled hair. The man within was stooping over a number of papers ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... gone about with an austere brow and a whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly accompanied by singing and laughing. In truth, Robespierre and Barere might be well compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis the Eleventh. They were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havoc. But, while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted, the other grinned and joked. For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her at the station at Brockenhurst—in the New Forest—didn't we Maude," said Mrs. Slifer, "and it must have been—now let me see—" poor Mrs. Slifer collected her wits, a bent forefinger at her lips. "To-day's Thursday and we got to Mullion yesterday—and we stopped at Winchester for a day and night on our way to the New Forest, it was on Saturday last of course. We'd been having a drive about that part of the forest and we were taking the train ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Thermopylae, and that the fleet lay at Piraeus: on which, judging expedition necessary on every account, he sailed directly forward to Peloponnesus. Having on his passage ravaged Samos and Zacynthus, because they favoured the party of the Aetolians, he bent his course to Malea; and, meeting very favourable weather, arrived in a few days at Piraeus, where he joined the old fleet. At Scyllaeum he was met by king Eumenes, with three ships, who had long hesitated ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... under the clear sunshine of the open prairie, paying rent to no one, for each tills his own land, and though there are drawbacks—drought, hail, and harvest-frost—they meet them lightly, for you see neither anxious faces nor bent shoulders there. Our people walk upright, as becomes free men. Then, through the long winter, when the snow lies firm and white, and the wheat crop has been hauled in, you can hear the jingling sleigh teams flit across the prairie from homestead to homestead under the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... was not misplaced. Not many minutes had elapsed when her door was softly opened, a light step crossed the floor and a sweet fair face, full of tender compassion, bent over the grief-stricken girl. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... his guarded tent, The Turk lay dreaming of the hour When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent, Should tremble at ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Mirah, simply bent on doing what Klesmer desired, and imagining that he would now like to hear her sing some German, went through Prince Radzivill's music to Gretchen's songs in the "Faust," one after the other without any interrogatory pause. When she had finished he rose and walked to ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were in despair, and called in their brothers to their assistance. The boys shot a good many, for the animals were very tame and fearless; but their number was so great that this method of destruction was of slight avail. They then prepared traps of various kinds—some made by an elastic stick bent down, with a noose at the end, placed at a small entrance left purposely in the hen-house, so that, when the skunk was about to enter, he touched a spring, and the stick released, flew into the air carrying the animal with it with the noose round ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... yourself," he concluded, "whether a man bent on prying into your private affairs, with that letter entirely at his mercy, would have been true to ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Ida bent her tall form against the rain and gale, and fought her way through them. At first she had no clear idea as to where she was going, but presently, perhaps from custom, she took the path that ran across the fields to Honham Church. It was a beautiful ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the bottle must be pierced with a red-hot wire for two glass tubes, one of which is bent over for the blowing tube. Both tubes should be pointed at the bottle end so that they may enter the cork easily. Make the top of the cork air tight with sealing-wax. The purpose of the bottle is to catch any mercury that ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... murmured the patient little sufferer, as obedient to her mother's words she again closed her eyes, and lay motionless upon her pillow. Once more she slept, and a sweet smile beamed upon her countenance, and her lips moved as if about to speak. The watchful mother bent ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... old, and he was obliged to use a cane to assist his slow and faltering steps. Several times during the two days I had seen him, sitting in the sun on the rough porch of a house close by, or ambling slowly about, and had been struck with his appearance. Although bent with his years, he was tall, and, in his younger days, must have had a graceful, as well as powerful, figure, traces of it remaining still, in spite of his decrepitude. But his face was the most noticeable thing about him. Notwithstanding the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... our traveller was attracted by the diminutiveness of the feet of the Chinese women, and she had an opportunity of examining one of these tiny monstrosities in natura. Four of the toes were bent under the sole of the foot, to which they were firmly pressed, and simultaneously with which they appeared to have grown, if growth it can be called; the great toe alone remained in its natural state. The fore part of the foot had been so swathed and compressed by tight ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... same way, she could not bring herself to think that Fanny was doing right, in following the bent of her dearest wishes—in marrying this man she loved so truly. She was weak; she was giving way to temptation; she was going back from her word; she was, she said, giving up her claim to that high standard of feminine character, which it should ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... ascended to the chamber where in solitude she had spent the day. Her feelings were those of a child caught in an act of disobedience, and she was angry with herself and her weakness that it should be so. Yet within the room she stood with bent head, never glancing at her companion, in whose eyes there was a look of blended anger and amazement as he observed her. At length in calm, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... after the club luncheon, and while the two young men were on their way to the smoking-room, that some one on business bent stopped Gantry in the corridor. Blount strolled on by himself, and, finding the smoking-room unoccupied, went to lounge in a lazy-chair standing in a little alcove lined with bookcases and half screened by the racks ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... All the vegetation seemed withered, as if in an oven; and the wheat in the ear was brittle, as though roasted. There is a good deal of wheat in this oasis. I observed an old woman reaping, and went to chat with her. Her sickle had a long handle, and the blade itself was narrow, but slightly bent and somewhat serrated. I tried it, and found that it answered its purpose very ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... noise, and the two little girls, with the fresh ribbons in their hair, joined him. Tom's face was drawn and white, though the smitten cheek still blazed, and Saxon wanted to put her arms comfortingly around him, yet dared not. He bent over his wife. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the gun's mouth they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear, man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... on a great picture-hat with light-blue ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. When she bent over me and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear. I think that was why I was so cross. I wriggled away from her and ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... her feet, quivering in every limb; and facing round, found herself confronted by him whose face and form had been the centre of each of her mental pictures, whose name had been on her lips and in her heart each time she had bent her knees in prayer for two long years, and who she knew had come at last to ask the fulfilment of that promise she had given him when last they ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... stabbed with a bitter pang of resentment. For my face was thin and weather-beaten ... my sharp, bent knees never straightened as I walked along, like a man going through snow drifts. Yet I held my head erect, ridiculously erect ... and my chest was enormous through over-development, as my ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... seemed to him that the sky had begun to brighten. "I count upon their being rich," he said at last, "and powerful, and clever, and friendly, and elegant, and interesting, and generally delightful! Tu vas voir." And he bent forward and kissed his sister. "Look there!" he went on. "As a portent, even while I speak, the sky is turning the color of gold; the day is going ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi;[136] that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali,"[137] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... as house carpenters, soon proved themselves to be, with the same tools, (the hatchet and crooked knife,) excellent cabinet makers, and daily added a table, chair, or bedstead, to the comforts of our establishment. The crooked knife generally made of an old file, bent and tempered by heat, serves an Indian or Canadian voyager for plane, chisel, and auger. With it the snow-shoe and canoe-timbers are fashioned, the deals of their sledges reduced to the requisite thinness and polish, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... ethical idea is presented in it with real vividness, but it is an idea which is peculiarly dear to the German heart—the saving power of woman's love. "Fidelio" is a tale of wifely devotion, and Beethoven bent all his energies to a glorification of his heroine's love and fidelity. To represent the character faithfully has been the highest ambition of German singers for a century. In that time not many more than a dozen have achieved high distinction in it; and Marianne ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... especially in latter years, was a mixture of the bear's, the lion's, and the human, for most part of a dull brick-colour; so that many people, particularly children, were afraid to look at him. In figure he was very small, and bent; but, at the same time, had hands and fingers of extraordinary size and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... fearful abyss, and plunged into the foaming whirlpool below. Bewildered and aghast at this sudden act of desperation, Guinessa, uttering a scream of agonized terror, would have thrown herself after him, had she not been restrained by Gryffhod; but she still bent over the precipice, her long golden hair, as it streamed upon the wind, together with her white robes and arms, and her fair features, all shown in strong relief against the dark thunder-cloud, imparting to her the appearance of an aerial spirit, just alighted upon this craggy pinnacle to watch ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... swift turn of his head, he bent his eyes on hers. She turned her head away, and neither spoke. Alicia played nervously with one glove which she had stripped off, while Medland gravely watched her face, beautiful in its pure outline and ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... the children of that peaceful land, like brothers, Lofty of spirit, wise, and ever set to learn The chart of neighbouring souls, the bent and need of others, Thought only of good deeds, sweet ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... nose of England bent closer and closer to its newspaper of a morning. And coffee went cold, and bacon fat congealed, from the Isle of Wight to Hexham, while the latest rumours were being swallowed. It promised to be stupendous, did the case of Witt v. Parfitts. It promised to be one of those ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... incumbent on it to propose a prize for the best essay in support of the thesis: "The useful trades in no way detract from personal honor."(338) During the century in which the country was in its greatest glory, the whole people were bent on being to all Europe what nobles, officers and officials are to a single nation. "Whoever wishes to make his fortune," said Cervantes, "let him seek the church, the sea (i.e., go as an adventurer to America) or the king's ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... upon them; if not in Health, at least in Sickness. If we look narrowly into the Sentiments, as well as Actions even of those that persist in evil Courses for many Years, and spend their whole Lives in Debaucheries, we shall hardly ever find, that it is because they are obstinately bent to be Wicked; but because they want either the Power to govern their Passions, or else the Resolution to set about it; that they have often wish'd, that they could lead better Lives; that they hope, God will forgive them; and that Several Times they have fix'd a Time for their ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... old man came and bent over them both, taking Dolly's arm softly between his withered fingers, and looking down at it with a ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... strapped to the floor. Their beards were already moist with previous libations similarly bestowed, and they received this in sullen stillness; but Farina thought he observed a rapid glance of encouragement dart from beneath the Goshawk's bent brows, as Margarita momentarily turned her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crater had for overpowering reasons become impracticable. The twilight which, in this latitude, as every one knows, is extremely short, having already begun, it was necessary to prepare for our return. The two Indians rolled together the straw mats which they had brought, and bent them in front so as to form a sort of sledge. We sat down upon these, and stretching out our legs, allowed ourselves to glide down on this vehicle. The rapidity with which we were precipitated increased to such a degree, that our descent was rather like being shot through the ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... a Turkish kebob. We wonder if in Australia the long-forgotten Scotch collop has been revived? It requires no cooking-vessels. It may be held to the fire on a twig, or laid on the coals and turned by a similar twig—bent into a collop-tongs—or even ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... it up. She has no bent for literature. There can never have been any great authoress, young or old, who started ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... inflamed by the ardor of his youth and temper: he amused his leisure with building at Adrianople [20] the lofty palace of Jehan Numa, (the watchtower of the world;) but his serious thoughts were irrevocably bent on the conquest of the city of Caesar. At the dead of night, about the second watch, he started from his bed, and commanded the instant attendance of his prime vizier. The message, the hour, the prince, and his own situation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... emptiness or want. Man, neither altogether satisfied with the senses, nor forever capable of thought, wanted a middle state, a bridge between the two states, bringing them into harmony. Beauty and aesthetics supplied that for him. But a good lawgiver is not satisfied with discovering the bent of his people— he turns it to account as an instrument for higher use; and hence he chose the stage, as giving nourishment to the soul, without straining it, and uniting the noblest education of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I was little better than a stranger to her, and still bent on finding the secret of the sympathy that united us, Eunice put a strange question ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on mission and commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy, Illinois, fifteen minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown Delmonico's. Spaghetti and red wine have set New York racing to reserve its table d'hotes. All except the ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes Alive in their obliterated faces! . . . I have tried the saints' names and our blessed Mother's Fra Paolo, I have tried them o'er and o'er, And like a blade bent backward at first thrust They yield and fail me—and the questions stay. And so I thought, into some human heart, Pure, and yet foot-worn with the tread of sin, If only I might creep for sanctuary, It might be that those eyes would let ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... stream, and made the water smooth before Ulysses, so that at last he won his way to the land. His knees were bent under him, and his hands dropped at his side, and the salt water ran out from his mouth and nostrils. Breathless was he, and speechless; but when he came to himself, he loosed the veil from under his breast, and cast it ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... his professional armor, rusty from long disuse, and pluckily began his life over again, in the hope of making some provision for his own declining days, as well as for the honor and welfare of his great brood of children and grandchildren. To this task, accordingly, he then bent himself, with a grim wilfulness that would not yield either to bodily weakness, or to the attractions or the distractions of politics. It is delightful to be permitted to add, that his energy was abundantly rewarded; and that in exactly eight years thereafter, namely ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... had but just time to jump into the boat and get out their oars, when the next wave lifted the boat high on its crest. The lads holding the rope were nearly torn from the rock, but they held on till the strain ceased, then they threw in the rope, and Walter and Larry bent to their oars. ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... came and the sound of their axes rang out over the meadows by the quiet stream. A great many of the older willows were laid low that day, and the young trees bent and whispered among themselves, "Ssshhh, ssshhh, what will become of them? what will they make of them? Ssshhh, ssshhh." This time the kingfisher answered them, for he was just back ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... a thing," whispered the Dean of St. Neot's. But his words were lost in the cheers, and Weston Marchmont's "Bravo" rang out so loud that May Quisante heard it on the platform and bent forward to kiss ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... excitement of battles leaves the brain empty and weary. At such moments the hopelessness of the whole thing appalled and depressed him. The uncertainty of the future hurt him. Nor was he alone in this state of mind. Not a voice was raised to break the throbbing monotony of the march. Heads were bent low. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... late to the government of a house: they whom nature sent into the world before me long eased me of that trouble; so that I had already taken another bent more suitable to my humour. Yet, for so much as I have seen, 'tis an employment more troublesome than hard; whoever is capable of anything else, will easily do this. Had I a mind to be rich, that way would seem too long; I had served my kings, a more ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... disregard of self, he gave up his conquest to his son, who had been brought up to consider himself as belonging rather to England than to Anjou. On the other side of the channel, during this year 1150, Stephen seems to have decided upon a plan which he bent every effort in the following years to carry out, but unsuccessfully,—the plan of securing a formal recognition of his son Eustace as his successor in the throne, or even as king with him. At least this is the natural explanation of the reconciliation which took place near the close ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... Dowdall's Tavern the line made a southerly sweep outwards, like a bent bow, of which the plank road ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... caught me by my collar with his teeth! My feet struck the little two-inch shelf on which he was standing, and I could see Muir, flattened against the face of the rock and facing it, his right hand stretched up and clasping a little spur, his left holding me with an iron grip, his head bent sideways, as my weight drew it. I felt as alert and cool ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... his admissibility to the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him. In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the ministerial office and from the holy communion "until by a sincere repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has brought upon ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... at the gate of the city, more interested in the welfare of his son than in the success of his army. Swift runners approach! In answer to his question, "Is the young man safe?" he hears reply that pierces his heart like a dagger. Up to his chamber over the gate the king slowly passed weeping and bent with grief, and as he went he said, "O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... that I may have been over-candid to Hogarth, and fail his spirit and youth and talent may have hurried him into more real caricatures than I specified . yet he certainly restrained his bent that way pretty early. Charteris(403) I have seen; but though Some years older than you, Sir, I cannot say I have at all a perfect idea of him: nor did I ever hear the curious anecdote you tell me of ' the banker and my father. I was much better acquainted with ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor's hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly raised her; and she stood, when ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... since remained unadorned, yet as it stood there, with its fat green leaves and little bunches of prickles, it had the air of saying to itself, "I have done it once, and if I liked I could do it a second time." Even now as she bent tenderly over it Lilac thought she could make out the faint beginning of ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... choked. She flung herself into her father's arms; his head bent over hers, and for an instant not a soul in the room moved. Then Miss Hughson gave a spring and caught her by the hand. "We are inseparable," said she, and kissed the hand, murmuring, "Now is our ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... at some point in the cylinder, often in a bent flange. Burning on one face, sometimes called "kissing the cheeks", is caused by the too rapid revolution of the cylinder, so that some of the coffee "carries over". In the best practise, crowding of cylinders is avoided; ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers |
