"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful, but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes, which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... groups of four. Two players face each other, clasping hands at full arms' length. The other two face each other in the same way, with their arms crossing those of the first couple at right angles. Bracing the feet, the couples sway backward and ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... his boyhood he had practised on the village green, or in the old Moot Hall, was still harder to give up. "It was a full year before I could quite leave that." But this too was at last renounced, and finally. The power of Bunyan's indomitable will was bracing itself for severe trials yet ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... each other. When Greek meets Greek—!" and the young man laughed while, a little with the air of bracing himself, he folded his ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Bracing himself with his paddle he then began to pull Kazan toward the water. In a few moments Kazan stood with his forefeet planted in the damp sand at the edge of the stream. For a brief interval Sandy allowed the babiche to fall ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... character which will impress itself upon the non-Christian community there must be firm guidance, stern repression of evil and wise inspiration to good on the part of the native pastoral force under the bracing influence of missionary guidance. To those who are conversant with the condition of the native Church in India there is a supreme conviction that its greatest danger lies in the irregularity of the life of its members and in its ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... vaguely discerned activities in which the best women were cooeperating usefully with men—cooeperating equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. There was something mysteriously inviting in this. She had felt a bracing absence of sex in Pond's hectoring catechism and blunt rejection of her. Yes, and in the cool declaration of war from Dr. Vivian, who had grown so hard since May. Busy and serious beings these, who would not be deterred by the flutterings of the doubtless ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... church; and the well-filled meetings, and the warm-hearted earnestness of the converts, all bespoke a future of much promise. At last, however, completely prostrated by repeated attacks of illness, the only hope of restoration seemed to lie in a voyage to England and a brief stay in its more bracing climate; and this necessity, painful though it seemed at the time, proved to be only another opportunity for the manifestation of the faithfulness and loving care of Him "who worketh all things after the counsel ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... it from room to room, so she knew that one of them had awakened for a drink, or with the storm, and they had missed her. Then she could see them at the front door, Adam's sturdy feet planted widely apart, bracing him, as he held up the lamp which flickered in the wind. Then she could hear his voice shouting: "Mother!" Instantly Kate answered. Then she was sorry she had, for both of them began to scream wildly. There was a second of that, then even the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... help in raising a memorial to Carlyle shall be most willingly done. Few men can have dissented more strongly from his way of looking at things than I; but I should not yield to the most devoted of his followers in gratitude for the bracing wholesome influence of his writings when, as a very young man, I was essaying without rudder or compass to strike out ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... she thus wrote, saw how the poor over- taxed system needed bracing, and accordingly sent her a shower- bath—a thing for which she had long been wishing. The receipt of ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... tended inevitably towards a catastrophe. Day by day this drew nearer, and I flattered myself into regarding my own personal fate as interwoven with this universal unrest. Now that the powers of reaction were everywhere more and more openly bracing themselves for conflict, the final decisive struggle seemed indeed close at hand. My feelings of partisanship were not sufficiently passionate to make me desire to take any active share in these conflicts. I was merely conscious of an impulse to give myself ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... day at the end of March, the pay-box with the wind howling round it did indeed look a bracing place to spend the day in, nor was it by any means an object which any would be likely to watch for five minutes at a stretch in a strong north-easter. But that was exactly what a palish girl with freckles on her nose had been doing for that length of time, and ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... sharp and bracing, streamed into the room, making her skin tingle and her eyes water. The sun appeared behind the trees on a crimson sky, and the earth, covered with frost and dry and hard, rang out beneath one's footsteps. In one night all the leaves had blown off the trees, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a clear bracing air!" said Mrs. Rothesay, with the restlessness peculiar to all invalids—and she had been a greater ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... whirled, bracing himself against the rail with both hands, as though prepared to meet an attempt to thrust him overboard. Then— and Harrigan thought his ears deceived him as he listened—McTee said with a great, ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... before Dorothea, requesting her Highness in knightly and errant phrase to be pleased to grant him permission to aid and succour the castellan of that castle, who now stood in grievous jeopardy. The princess granted it graciously, and he at once, bracing his buckler on his arm and drawing his sword, hastened to the inn-gate, where the two guests were still handling the landlord roughly; but as soon as he reached the spot he stopped short and stood still, though Maritornes ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... weather on the whole gets colder and more bracing, sometimes too much so, but by day it is occasionally uncomfortably warm. The Turks and ourselves keep shelling each other as ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... so discreet. One of the Kents of Gracedieu tried to trip me by thrusting his cane between my legs. But! was ready for him, and, pulling up quick and bracing my knees, I snapped the thing short, so that he was left ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... now on to assume that we are a mean people in America, and making larger and more handsome arrangements for being meaner than ever, still mightier engines for bracing against each other, we will turn to all together and make in the next four years a machine together that will express our better natures as well as our present one does our ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... neck to my feet, until I was as helpless as a swathed Egyptian mummy. One end of another rope was fastened in a slip-noose about my body, and a dozen of the men, sitting well back from the edge of the cliff and bracing themselves one against another, paid ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... moors crouched the old farms, which have watched the mills come, and will perhaps see them go; and here and there a grim-looking colliery marked a fold of the hill. The landscape on a spring day has a bracing bareness, which is not without exhilaration. The wind blows freshly, the sun lies broadly on the hills. England, on the whole at her busiest and best, spreads ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... word in answer to the threatening question; and then Black, bracing himself up to ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... a more open country, where I became conscious of a considerable change in the atmosphere. Hitherto the air had been tolerably warm, though bracing; it now grew sensibly cooler. Thick clouds were gathering in the sky. The wind, before a gentle breeze, now rose rapidly, and blew with violence. It soon became icy cold, and flakes of snow began to fall. Without a fire, I felt I should well nigh perish. At all ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... Meanwhile she, bracing herself for a dignified entree, walked slowly up the steps, and faced the others who were just about to move off ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... morning and the bracing air of Colorado made me feel as wild as the young animals that were fast wheeling me over the dangerous trail and possibly into a camp of hostile Indians. I gave no thought to danger for I was too busy keeping the fiery little beasts to the trail. They were going at ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... pair of children, they laughed together, and Phebe suddenly discovered that his eyes were singularly clear and frank. She also discovered that the day was much finer than she had supposed, the sunlight clearer, the air more bracing. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... "And we die fast too," echoed a major from another part of the room. As a matter of course, places possessing salubrious climates are crowded with pallid seekers after health, and as St. Paul enjoys a dry and bracing atmosphere from its great elevation above the sea level, as well as from the purity of the surrounding prairies, its hotels—and they are many—are crowded with the broken wrecks of half the Eastern states; some find what they seek, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... are far more interesting, being addressed to his mother and other friends. I have several other letters concerned with Borrow's Bible Society work in Russia, but they are not inspiring. Borrow's correspondence with Hasfeld, of which Knapp gives us glimpses, is more bracing, and the two or three letters from that admirable Dane that are in my collection I am glad ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... her." He paused and looked at them drowsily. Then, bracing himself up again, he broke out suddenly, "Say, d' ever tell y' 'bout the ol' man? He never stole that money. Know ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... triumph for him. It was to be a day of hardest trial and most bitter sacrifice as well; a trial which, as he knew even now, would strain his moral fibre very nearly to the breaking point. It was a struggle for which he had been bracing himself ever since that last conversation which he had had with Enid. From that day to this he had never clasped her hand or looked ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... and of most of this great province contrasts unpleasantly with the region on the other side of the mountains, warmed by the gulf-stream of the North Pacific, in which the autumn and winter, with their still atmosphere, bracing temperature, and blue and sunny skies, are the most delightful seasons of the year. Thirty-two days of snow-fall occur on an average. The canals and rivers freeze, and even the rapid Shinano sometimes bears a horse. In January and February the snow lies three or four feet deep, a veil of clouds ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... meaning perfectly defined to himself, and then should be able to set it forth clearly in the best words. This is precisely Dryden's praise,[96] and amid the rickety sentiment looming big through misty phrase which marks so much of modern literature, to read him is as bracing as a northwest wind. He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and bluff heartiness of expression, he takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to the body proper by rigid flanges, reinforced by wires running from tip to tip of the planes, passing directly over the body, and not elevated on bracing chandelles. These wires were taut and made a part of the planes, much like reinforcing ribs. Beneath the planes three heavy wires ran from their forward tips to the bottom of ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... would not be my first care?" he demanded, bracing himself as the vessel plunged to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Remember, the sluggard would have been warmer, with a wholesome warmth, at the ploughtail than cowering in the chimney corner. And the things that seem to be difficulties and hardships only need to be fronted to yield, like the east wind in its season, good results in bracing and hardening. Fix it in your minds that nothing worth doing is done but at the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was sweating and swearing. The haze began to clear as they neared the ground, but the ports were too high for Duke to see anything but the underside of the thick clouds. He stood up and headed for the lift, bracing ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... wind, keen and bracing as it came from the sea, filled her with a sense of new strength and energy, and she felt the effect of the invigorating atmosphere in her blood. A scent of burning leaves was in the air, and the indescribable suggestion of coming winter gayety. To-day the ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... he'd rather have me bury him at present." Sewell sat down, and, bracing his elbow on his desk, rested his head ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Bracing herself against the shock, Mrs. Jameson managed to paddle to the side of the river from which she had just before started. She was landed nearly a mile below the point where had been left the cattle, and also the ox-cart in which their journey had been hitherto performed, and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... cried Mickey, waving both hands and bracing on feet wide apart. "Do look! Your age or more, and about half ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Bracing strongly back, with the 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 he had stood at the tiller of the "Swallow" in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... well on that bracing morning air, and quite a crowd of boys and not a few girls followed the students over the first of the hills back of Putnam Hall. But here the crowd dropped gradually away, until the young soldiers had the country road ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... little city. Situated high above sea level, with a climate so bracing and life-giving that the phthisis bacillus can hardly live in it, it seemed to our soldiers, after their long march across the veldt, a veritable City of Refuge. Alas! how soon it was to be turned into a ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... lie over the mountains. There are difficulties. The Christian course is like a Roman road which never turned aside, but went straight up and on. So much the better. A keener air blows, bracing and health-giving, up there. Mosquitoes and malaria ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Nigel found himself at last able to leave his turret chamber and to walk upon the rampart of the castle. There was a brisk northern wind, heavy and wet with the salt of the sea, and he felt, as he turned his face to it, fresh life and strength surging in his blood and bracing his limbs. He took his hand from Aylward's supporting arm and stood with his cap off, leaning on the rampart and breathing in the cool strong air. Far off upon the distant sky-line, half hidden by the heave of the waves, was the low white fringe of cliffs which ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wouldst rejoice To inhale this bracing air; Thou wouldst break thy sweetest sleep To behold ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... like enthusiasm even of that possibility.' We should shrink from calling even this theory dreary, associated as it is with the rigorous enforcement of the heroic virtues of temperance and moderation, and the strenuous and careful bracing up of every faculty to face the inevitable and make the best of it. At bottom it is the theory of many of the bravest souls, who fare grimly through life in the mood of leaders of forlorn hopes, denying ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... Mel changed into swimming trunks and donned hydrolungs. They went out through the air lock, plunged into the bracing salt water, and switched ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... when you repeat it you may feel its meaning. Repeat the words over frequently, when opportunity presents itself, and you will soon begin to notice that they act as a strong mental tonic upon you, producing a bracing, energizing effect. And each time you repeat the words, understandingly, you have done something to clear away the mental path over which you ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... is luncheon all ready." So they sat down on the verge of the slope, and ate their cold chicken and tongue, with the relish imparted by youth, a long ride, and the bracing air. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... industry, and other symptoms of approaching social confusion; and at the same time they show us the government conscious of the momentous nature of the struggle into which it was launched; and with timely energy bracing up the sinews of the nation for its approaching trial. The act against the gipsies especially, illustrates one of the most remarkable features of the times. The air was impregnated with superstition; in a half consciousness of the impending ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... and round the stem and over and under the branch, reefing it, making it taut and trim so that no strain could loosen it; and all the while he was conscious of the power in his arms and hands, the volume of air in his lungs, the flow of blood in his veins, the nervous force bracing and hardening his muscles. The rope was fast now. Now he assured himself that its free length—the part from the tree to the noose—was absolutely correct as to its amount. Nothing remained to do, nothing but to stand upon the branch, fix the noose round his ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with some pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville chewing wineglasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists when they are viewed in the body, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in these regions above mentioned, they are superior to us in health, vigour, and length of life; and they believe that this superiority arises from the fact, that in their food they for the most part abstain from all that is hot; also that the constant dews besprinkle their persons with a cold and bracing moisture, and that they enjoy the freshness of a purer atmosphere; and that they are the first of all tribes to feel the rays of the morning sun, which are instinct with life, before they become tainted ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... had no terrors; it was more than the lead to keep now, there was ground to cover—and the King was losing like Wild Geranium. Cecil felt drunk with that strong, keen west wind that blew so strongly in his teeth, a passionate excitation was in him, every breath of winter air that rushed in its bracing currents round him seemed to lash him like a stripe—the Household to look on and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... continually on his will and nerve. The native fever sapped his energy, and he was sent to recuperate, to Kashmir. He was enthusiastic about the scenery here, and his tramping and shooting trips in the bracing climate soon gave back his ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... a heavy drenching downfall set in, and continued till eleven p.m. After a short lull, wind and rain again raged at midnight; and then the gale gradually blew itself out. The next two mornings were delightfully brisk and bracing; and deep puddles dotted ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... inspirers of young men as these old places! So much strength and youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength and youth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out an inexhaustible potency of bracing influence. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... already wriggling his way down between the smooth rock walls, bracing himself with back and knees. Within a few seconds he had reached the bottom, some ten feet below. It was a sloping, uneven floor of earth, lighted dimly from above and from the south, where the ledge shelved off down the hillside. The dirt was black and damp, undisturbed for years save by the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... society, and in their choice of abode the hand of Providence is distinctly seen laying the foundations of our struggle of to-day, which is to prove the refining fire, the purification and regeneration of our race. Had the Cavaliers landed upon the shores of New England, the bracing winds of that northern clime, the rugged and intractable nature of the soil, the constant presence of dangers from the fiercer Indian tribes of the north, and the absolute necessity of severe and incessant toil to support existence, would have awakened and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of an after life. It is very suggestive that these apparent proofs came contemporaneously with the new knowledge tending to make them safe; and equally suggestive that it is when we have begun to suffer from certain breakdowns in religion, that we have been provided with new material for bracing it up. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... then commenced to ascend the cliffs and on reaching their top the force of the gale almost blew him off his feet. He struck a signal light. This is a light made of chemicals which burns with intense brilliancy. Bracing himself against a rock he held it above his head. The flare lit up the surrounding cliffs. While it was still burning he turned to windward and looked down on the huge breakers that made the cliff on which he stood tremble as they dashed in against it. While gazing down on the ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... he opened the door, Monty would fall out and probably be killed, but he had no choice. He reached up for the handle and tested it gently before swinging down on it to make sure it would open. It gave a little. Then bracing himself, ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... head-quarters at the end of the beach, the Zouave sentinels, the successive anterooms, the lounging aids, the good-natured and easy General,—easy by habit and energetic by impulse,—all had a certain air of Southern languor, rather picturesque, but perhaps not altogether bracing. General Hunter received us, that day, with his usual kindliness; there was a good deal of pleasant chat; Miles O'Reilly was called in to read his latest verses; and then we came to the matter ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thumpers seemed to be overworked in the bracing air of the dam top, and they certainly looked picturesque with their white and blue towels round their heads. Indeed, with all the singing and movement, not to speak of the refreshment stalls, the scene was not unlike a fair. When we got back to the road ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... removed a bottle of brandy from the brown cup-board, found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris—not that he felt he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias had left him elvishly grotesque in mind—gathered the bottles tenderly in his arms like small glass babies and went back to ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... was now "free of bottom," as it is called, with her anchor catted and fished, and her position maintained in the basin where she lay, by the counter-bracing of her yards, and the counteracting force of the wind on her sails. It only remained to "fill away," by bracing her head-yards sharp up, when the vast mass overcame its inertia, and began to move through the water. As this was ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... long-continued exposure, and to insure wakefulness, the uses of coffee and tea have long been practically recognized by all classes. The sailor, the trapper, and the explorer value them even above alcohol; and in high latitudes we are assured of their importance in bracing the system to resist the rigors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... meal in short order and sipping hot bracing coffee, the three cadets took turns in telling Jeff of their conversations with Strong, their escape, and their near encounter with Vidac on ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,—shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,—might furnish a subject ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the whole. The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be glad enough to get back to town. I cannot say much for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I don't see what is to come of it. She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement, which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he is," said Mrs. Scudder; "he thinks it's a great sin, that ought to be rebuked;—and I think so too," she added, bracing herself resolutely; "that was Mr. Scudder's opinion when I first married him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... domination, and particularly (it is pleasant to remember) from the girls. After the slipshod training and the incomplete accomplishments of a girls' school, there was something at first annoying, at last exciting and bracing, in this high standard ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up and braced himself. It had been clear to Bassett for ten minutes that Dick was talking against time, against the period of revelation. He would have it, but he was mentally bracing ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Father Payne; "but you can't turn the light of publicity on evil unless the light is there to turn. The reason why bullying continued was because people believed in it as inseparable from school life, and even, on the whole, bracing. What has got rid of it is a kinder and more tender spirit outside. I don't object to showing up bad things at all. By all means put them, if you can, in a clear light, and show their ugliness. Show your shame and disgust ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as bracing and as serviceable to me as you had led me to expect," he said to his host, "but the sports seemed to me to make a toil of pleasure, and the dancing that went on every night—'twas impossible to sleep! Well! Youthful frivolity, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down the stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow, which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke, leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by waves on the sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning hatefully beautiful. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "They understand balance and center-of-gravity. They're bracing it well, and not ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... to go to work again. Then we went down to the little town in Italy where my story first finds us. My wife had suffered much in mind and body on her son's account, and for this reason I was anxious that she should take outdoor exercise, and enjoy as much as possible the bracing air of the country. I had brought with me both my little machines. One was still in my knapsack, and the other I had fastened to the inside of an enormous family trunk. As one is obliged to pay for nearly every pound of his baggage ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... began to eat some of the food left behind by Clemmer. It was not particularly appetizing, and in the city Dick might have passed it by for something better. But just then it tasted "just boss," to use Dick's own words. A bracing air and hunger are the best sauces in ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... I did well, though the place has its drawbacks. It is a long way from London and the opera. Still, I could not bear to live quite in town; the air there stifles me. After the clear bracing air of Canada, I find London very oppressive. But, M. Lacroix, you must be tired after your long walk up the hill. Do take that comfortable arm-chair and let me give you a cup ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... sailors sung as they passed in the distant lands and noble ships; and a sort of dull and indefinite longing took possession of me and I felt as if I would like to be out of doors myself in search of pleasurable and exciting adventure. I hungered to be in the bracing wintry night air, or in one of those foreign lands where the sun beats down with tropical warmth; I yearned to be out and singing like them, as loud as possible, just for the joy ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... letter and a parcel of yours, Paul: you had better look at them—we hope to start north in a day or two—you must get to a more bracing place." ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... once but busied himself with his ponderous fur coat, which he buttoned, as if bracing himself for the start. Beneath her lashes she looked sideways at the deliberate hands and the lean strong face, burnt to a red-brown by sun and snow, half hidden in the fur collar of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the bracing effect of the fresh sea air, or the sight of his men's most obvious improvement, I know not, but from that day his strength ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... bracing herself. "I've done as you told me—very faithful. I went this morning to get my orders from her. I don't say the voice ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... prevailed. The weaver of Lancashire, who plays out his hunger in London streets, and our seamen who make the weaver wait while they watch three thousand miles of seaboard, are both listening to the rote of the same great truth, as it dashes on the shores of Time, and brings bracing air to the people who are sick with waiting. If we are gaining battles because we love the rights of the common people, our success will include the English weaver, Dissenters will build churches on our corner-stone of Liberty, the taxed will borrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the cultivator soon learns to make many deft applications of ingrafting. Sometimes a piece of bark may be used as a patch. In the bracing of crotches in young trees, the two trunks may be joined by uniting a small branch from either one, twisting them together to form a bridge like a bolt; they can be made to grow together, forming a solid union. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... where the Greek only gave outline. And although Shakespeare's outlines are drawn with more regard to fidelity than to actual beauty, yet, like a great painter, he brings all Nature into sympathy with man. We feel the ghostly shudder of the November night in Hamlet, breathe the bracing Highland air in Macbeth, the air of the woods in As You Like It; the storm on the heath roars through Lear's mad outburst, the nightingale sings in the pomegranate ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... bracing limbs together consists in running a single bolt through them and fastening each end of the bolt with a washer and nut. This method is preferable to the first because it allows for the growth of the ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... Far down below a few cabins appeared like little toy houses, while away beyond could be seen the blue cold waters of the North Pacific. The air was becoming keen. But it was bracing and stimulating. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... upon toasts," says he, bracing immediately, "I give you the immortal Miss Manners! Her beauty has dwelt unfaded in my memory since I last beheld her, aboard the Betsy." Remarking the pain in my face, he added, with a concern which may have been comical: "And she is ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... live in the city and those who do not dislike raw, bracing winds from the ocean pronounce Los Angeles to be the only place worth living in in all Southern California. Each place has its supporters ignoring all other attractions, and absolutely opposite accounts of the weather have been seriously given me by visitors to each. For those who must be ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... through the bracing morning air produced its natural effect, it occurred to me to offer my services, during the remainder of my leave of absence, to Captain Swift, or, should he desire it, join the Diana forthwith, and try to forget my trouble in ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... proposal, I mean Honolulu. You would get the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, would you not? for bracing. And so much less sea! And then you could actually see Vailima, which I would like you to, for it's beautiful and my home and tomb that is to be; though it's a wrench not to be planted in Scotland—that I can never deny—if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bracing myself, I waited until there was a sufficient lull in the blizzard for me to make some use of my eyes. I blinked and peered toward the different points of the compass, but without catching the ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... exploring the muscles among which it rooted, pressing and prodding the adjacent spinal column from which it sprang, and twisting it about in a most daringly intimate way. And Michael was in an ecstasy, bracing his hindquarters to one side or the other against the caressing fingers. With open hands laid along his sides and partly under him, the man suddenly lifted him from the ground. But before he could feel alarm he was back ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... they have rather got me there," said the Drift; "but all the same, don't forget my increase due to the drift of the Struts and their bracing wires." ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... confined for so long a time as the prosecution of this voyage would require, in one posture, was of itself no very agreeable prospect; but the confinement was but a trifling misery when compared with that which arose from the change in the weather. Instead of a constant bracing frost, heavy rains, such as an inhabitant of England cannot dream of, and against which no cloak could furnish protection, began. In the midst of these were the troops embarked in their new and straitened transports, ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... here the shelter trench and there the communicating galleries that joined them, but what were those groups of men working so busily farther down the line? And those other groups swarming at many points in the wide area? They were not digging or bracing side-wall timbers. ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... it was hardened by charring in the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point. With this stake came a heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for breaking the lumps. To me, a doctor's preparations for work of any kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation. They both, however, kept their courage, and ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... very early. The morning air had a delightfully bracing effect; and the grass glittered with a copious fall of dew. The first five miles of road lay over a high down, with pretty patches of woodland interspersed; and the remaining ten over a low plain that stretches to the foot of the peak. Six miles from the latter ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... of Kensington lying to the west of Church Street and extending to Notting Hill Gate was that formerly known as the Gravel Pits, and considered particularly healthy on account of its dry soil and bracing air. Bowack says that here there are "several handsome new-built houses, and of late years has been discovered a chalybeate spring." Swift had lodgings at the Gravel Pits between 1712 and 1713, and Anne Pitt, sister of Lord Chatham, one of the bright bevy ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... suppose I might have starved in that first year if I had not had some twenty pounds in hand at the beginning of it. I had not twenty shillings in hand at the end of it, and yet I had already learned what hunger meant; not the bracing sensation of being sharp set and enjoying one's meal, but the dull, deadening, sickly sensation which comes of sustained work during weeks of bread and butter (or dripping) diet, and none ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... said Claire. "Mr. Flint is sending his car to the train for me. I shouldn't want to change my program and cause confusion. But I'd like nothing better! The air is so bracing!" ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the others, such advice cannot even seem to have an improper motive." Here she paused, feeling the difficulty of her task— aware that she could not conclude it without an admission which no woman willingly makes. But she shook away the impediment, bracing herself to the work, and went on steadily with her speech. "Coming from me, such motive may be imputed—nay, it ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... narrow and contracted, wanting in strength, breadth, and charity. Miss Muloch and Gail Hamilton, while cherishing the sanctity of womanhood, are giving broader views, higher aims, truer delicacy, and greater self-reliance to their plastic sex. Their lessons and examples are bracing as the sea breeze, and soothing as air fresh from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... us, for we were above the scope of many of the showery clouds that haunt a hill-country. There was a very bright star visible, I remember, and we saw the new moon, now a third towards the full, for the first time this evening. The air was cold and bracing. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for daily food, but for that love of a free, untrammelled life, and for those soaring dreams of fancy in which he so ardently delights. Not only is the Swiss determined by the peculiarities of his geographical position to lead a pastoral life, but the climate, and mountain scenery, and bracing atmosphere inspire him with the love of liberty. The reserved and meditative Hindoo, accustomed to the profuse luxuriance of nature, borrows the fantastic ideas of his mythology from plants, and flowers, and trees. The vastness and infinite diversity ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... flying as steady as a rock. All the bracing wires were tuned to a nicety, the wind humming through them and along the smooth sides of the great creature's body with a whistling monotone which arose and fell with bewitching rhythm as the force fluctuated. The varnish and fire-proofing compound glistened brightly ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the wing, bracing themselves against the prop blast. Rick took the suitcase that was handed to him by Dr. Gordon, who leaped lightly to the ground ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... up, and went off to the seaside. The bracing air did for Clemence what the doctor's medicine had failed to accomplish. In spite of the languid interest she took in everything, hope grew stronger each day in the care of her watchful friend. And at last the roses came back ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... welcome us as friends and allies if we went to his assistance, we had heard of his defeat and tragic end. Thus we ourselves were now on our guard night and day. It was a question of either fleeing the country or bracing ourselves for a decisive struggle. Some counselled the former alternative; the others declared their resolve to follow the advice of their dying father and to find a grave under the ruins of the keep. Any ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... rearing of sheep; but the island is totally destitute of mineral wealth. It is highly favoured in climate. The intense heat of a North American summer is here tempered by a cool sea-breeze; fogs are almost unknown, and the air is dry and bracing. Instances of longevity are very common; fever and consumption are seldom met with, and the cholera has never visited its shores. Wages are high, and employment abundant; land is cheap and tolerably productive; but though a competence may always be obtained, I never heard of any ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... influences of necessarily narrow careers and necessarily stunted lives. That is the point which you will see I mean when I ask you to cultivate the imagination. I want to introduce you to other, wider, and nobler fields of thought, and to open up vistas of other worlds, when refreshing and bracing breezes will stream upon your minds and souls. ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... when the Balotsi drew off, and the Zulus could see their enemies massed round them in every direction, and outnumbering them excessively. Both parties paused for a time, each watching the other. The sun rose up over the mountains, the sky was clear as a dewdrop, and a bracing breeze swept down the valley, making music through the quivering reeds. Herds of eland, hartebeests, gnu, and other game, stood on the slopes afar off, and looked down on the dark masses of men standing still in grim silence after ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... to Aberdeen more than any thing we had seen yet, the country is so wild and singular. In the afternoon we came in sight of the German Ocean. The free, bracing air from the sea, and the thought that it actually was the German Ocean, and that over the other side was Norway, within a day's sail of us, gave it ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... with great partiality, and procured for him the use of the Imperial baths. His mind being thus relieved from the restless ecstasy which he had suffered in Rome, and the intensity of interest being diminished by the circumscribed nature of the society of Leghorn, together with the bracing effects of sea-bathing, he was soon again in a condition to resume his study in the capital. But the same overpowering attacks on his feelings and imagination soon produced a relapse of his former indisposition, and compelled him ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... long practice and by bracing the ball of his foot against the knob on the stove door, was able to balance himself on one rear leg of his chair, lost his footing on the nickel knob and crashed to the floor, but he "came up smiling," offering for inspection a piece of ore in ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... tasks of similar sort. One who watches Brother Pope, must do it on the run. One of the fairest spots on the Cumberland Plateau is Grand View. Here the American Missionary Association holds a strategic position. The wild, magnificent scenery and the cool, bracing air, tingling with ozone, make it an ideal spot for a great religious and educational centre. Already eyes are turning upward from the surrounding valleys to this mountain school. The first words I heard on landing at Spring City, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... test and rule of his admiration. But at present turn to his admirable estimation of Dr Samuel Johnson, and the noble regret which he throws over the memory of Burns. A portion of the first we cannot resist extracting. What a keen mountain air, bracing to the nerves, mortal to languor and complaint, blows over us from passages ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... was running free when we first sighted her, but just as she was passing astern of us, she began to come slowly about. I could see a great number of men swaying in unison against the helm that controlled the gigantic rudder. Others were bracing the curious ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... said Professor Bentley to his friend. "That" happened to be Hinpoha, who was momentarily left alone with the fire. The cocoa kettle started to sag as the wood burned away and at the same time the mixture in the other kettle began to boil over. Bracing the cocoa kettle with one foot, she snatched the other kettle from the fire, and stood there on one foot holding the steaming pot. Professor Wheeler sprang to her assistance and propped up the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... of the things Nan had carried in the work of the last years—supplies, babies born on retreats. She had seen the fortunes of war. But there was no need of bracing Dick by telling him he could testify she hadn't any bag. If the boy could be melted into a passion of ruth over Nan, instead of a passion of resentment, so much the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... accesion of your State to the new federal constitution. This is the last I have yet heard of, but I expect daily to hear that my own has followed the good example, and suppose it to be already established. Our government wanted bracing. Still we must take care not to run from one extreme to another; not to brace too high. I own, I join those in opinion, who think a bill of rights necessary. I apprehend too, that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... at each other! and others were fairly asleep, and snoring! Under the circumstances, therefore, the doctor, with much judgment, read very short prayers, and immediately afterwards took his departure for his snug little vicarage. The moon shone brightly, the air was clear and bracing, and he felt as blithe as a bird as he ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... men of the Nineteenth Corps the change from the enervating climate of Louisiana to the bracing air, the crystal waters, the rolling wheatfields, and the beautiful blue mountains of the Shenandoah acted like a tonic. Daily their spirits rose and their numbers for duty increased. The excellence of the roads and the openness of the country on either side ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... sufficient food could be grown for the needs of the population, while the cities with their thick and lofty walls were strongholds difficult to approach and still more difficult to capture. The climate was bracing, though the winters were cold, and it reared a race of hardy warriors and industrious agriculturists. The want of water was the only difficulty; in most cases the people were dependent on rain-water, which they preserved in cisterns cut ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... of the entire circulation, undoubtedly accounts for the tonic effect of cold-water applications such as cold packs, ablutions, sprays, sitz baths, barefoot walking, etc., and for the wonderfully bracing influence of ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... sir. It's been under my pillow all night, and the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of climate to live in; isn't it, sir? Never ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... more than the other, with the result that the two halves present different curves and consequently unequal wind areas. To offset this difficulty, and also to strengthen the skeleton, Mr. Eddy's practice is to add a bracing piece at the back of the cross-stick—a piece about one-fourth of the length of the cross-stick itself, and of the same width and thickness. If the two halves of the kite are already quite symmetrical, he places this bracing stick with its centre directly even with ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... mountains across the lake seemed grander and more awful, their rugged points showing sharp and black against the blue-tinted snow which lay in the drifts and hollows, and their peaks rising in glittering silver against a pale-blue sky. The air was keen and bracing, and his spirits rose as they drove past the grey-green lake, and through the plantations of bright young larches and sombre fir. He arrived at Drigg in good time for the London train, and, as soon as it stopped at a station of importance, seized the opportunity of ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey |
