"Bracing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of bracing or stringing the bow was as follows: Grasping it with his right hand at its center, with the belly toward him, and the lower end on his right thigh, he held the upper end with his left hand while the loop of the string rested between his finger and thumb. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... day. It was as if the common atmosphere had been purified of all grosser particles—as if its component gases had been mixed afresh, for Canadian use only. The cold was hardly felt, though Mr. Holt was sure the thermometer must be close upon zero; but a bracing exhilarating sensation strung every ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... looked back, he could see that they were following him He was puzzled to know what to do. A happy thought now struck him. He had just passed the brow of a small hill; the heavy grape-vines were hanging from the trees all around him. He seized one of these, and, bracing himself against the tree with his feet, threw himself as far as he could. This broke the trail, and he now kept directly on from the spot where he landed, in a different direction. The Indians came up, ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... seized by two of the negroes, and to avoid being roughly handled by them she came at once, bracing herself to bear with dignity whatever might await her. A golden-haired young man beside her, his face haggard and stubbled with a beard of some growth, looked up in alarm as she was taken from his side. Then, with a groan, he made as if to clutch her, but a rod fell ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Saskatchewan, and St. Lawrence; Great Slave, Great Bear, Athabasca, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are the largest lakes; the climate is varied, very cold in the north, very wet west of the Rockies, elsewhere drier than in Europe, with hot summers, long, cold, but bracing and exhilarating winters; the corn-growing land is practically inexhaustible; the finest wheat is grown without manure, year after year, in the rich soil of Manitoba, Athabasca, and the western prairie; the forests yield maple, oak, elm, pine, ash, and poplar in immense quantities, and steps ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... think it is all right; quite bracing; a sort of trial of strength; and quite safe, because we know that madness in that direction is simply and altogether impossible. You have been working too hard; and besides, it will do you good to meet the people. You will see a ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... called down to the judge, "Tell momma I will only stay a minute." But later, tucked into her chair on the lee of the bulkhead, with Breckon bracing himself against it beside her, she showed no impatience to return. "Are they never higher than that" she required of him, with her wan eyes critically on the infinite procession ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... flowering shrubs, mingled with which are some exotics from the North, which droop with a homesick aspect. Plants, like human beings, will pine for their native atmosphere. If it be more rigorous and less genial at the North, still there is a bracing, tonic effect, imparting life and strength, which is wanting in the low latitudes. On one side of this fine square is the government house and barracks, opposite to which is an open-air theatre, and in front is the cathedral with any number of discordant bells. The ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... friend, to whom 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
... in the direction of the hills when, almost without warning, and with a great whistle and roar, a gale of wind swept down upon them. They stood still and looked at each other with startled faces, bracing with their feet against ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... to me," I replied, "you have given the strongest reason why they should be carefully guarded against the slightest pressure. It is very remarkable that kittens and puppies should be so well put together that they need no artificial bracing, and the human family be left wholly to the mercy of a bandage. Suppose a child was born where you could not get a bandage, what then? Now I think this child will remain intact without a bandage, and, if I am willing to take the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... upon the stairs, and an instant later there entered a tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman, whose clear eyes and florid cheeks told of a life led far from the fogs of Baker Street. He seemed to bring a whiff of his strong, fresh, bracing, east-coast air with him as he entered. Having shaken hands with each of us, he was about to sit down, when his eye rested upon the paper with the curious markings, which I had just examined and left ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inhabited the lowlands, the highlands were the seat of the Amorites (Num. xiii. 29). This, again, is in accordance with their European affinities. They flourished best in the colder and more bracing climate of the mountains, as do the Berber tribes of Northern Africa to-day. The blond, blue-eyed race is better adapted to endure ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... daughter of Edward IV., and in order to make the home nest perfectly free from social erosion, he caused his consort, Anne, to be poisoned. Those who believed the climate around the throne to be bracing and healthful had a chance to change their views in a land where pea-soup fog can never enter. Anne was the widow of Edward, whom ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... communications, he mentioned that his yearly resurrection was at hand—his butterfly-month he called it—when he ceased for the time to be a caterpillar, and became a creature of the upper world, reveling in the light and air of summer. He must go northward, he said; he wanted not a little bracing for the heats of the autumnal city. The memories of Burcliff drew him potently thither, but would be too sadly met by its realities. He had an invitation to the opposite coast which he thought he would accept. He did not know exactly where Paradise lay, but if he found it within accessible ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... their meeting. She was accustomed to wonder, when she thought about it at all, how she could ever have fancied him or felt so badly over his sudden marriage. But she had rather liked meeting him again. She had forgotten how bracing and stimulating he could be. No gathering was ever stagnant when Norman Douglas was present. Everybody had been surprised when Norman came. It was well known he never went anywhere. The Pollocks had invited him because he had been ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lived of late, is to breathe little but azote. I believe that all these ill effects would have been, though not obviated, at least early cured, had he been compelled to mingle in active life,—to make his livelihood by a profession. The bracing air of the world would have dissipated these vapors which have gathered over his soul. In very truth, I half wish that he could now be stripped of his all, and compelled to become hedger and ditcher. It would almost be a kindness to ruin him ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... 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 of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... onward Napoleon looked to France for his career. The narrow horizon of his native island was no longer wide enough for him, but from its bracing mountain air and from the quick blood of his race he drew a magnetic force, which imparted to his decisions and actions a rapidity and energy that carried all before them, while at the same time a power of calm calculation, of industry, and of self-control enabled him to employ his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... been out to Malta for a short time, but had come home, Menteith being invalided, and were now at a bracing sea-side place, trying what the air ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... few paces and leaned for support against the gnarled trunk of a scrub pine, watching him with a fascinated gaze as he stood bracing himself against the inward storm under which his own world and hers ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... of sixteen years, not tall, but very thickset and stout built, broad shouldered, deep chested, and strong limbed. His long silky locks were a rich nut-brown, and his sparkling eyes were dark and gentle as those of a fallow deer. The sun and the bracing sea air had made ruddy his fair skin, even to his firm, round throat and his thick arms, that were left bare by his rough coat ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... The bracing air kept the boys moving lively, and directly after breakfast they set to work in earnest. A large quantity of tree branches were cut down, and with these they made the sides and top of the hut or cabin as tight as possible. Around the bottom of the shelter ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... nice remark, but it had the effect of bracing the other up, and moving forward a little more he began anxiously scrutinizing Martin's face. The others now began to press forward, but were warned by the man with a knife not to come too near. Then the bold person who had undertaken to feel Martin's heart doubled back the silk sleeve ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... flinty path of flight, to end perhaps at the gibbet, imparted to the voice of mirth the sound of ingratitude. However, the day was brilliant; above us the clear, blue, unfathomable sky; around us the bracing mountain air, laden with the breath of hare-bell and heather, and far below the calm sea, sleeping in the morning light; and weariness, hunger and apprehension yielded to the influence of the scene. Many a time, ere passed the sunny noon, did we ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... all alcoholic beverages; good nourishing diet; well ventilated rooms; pure, bracing air; mental rest, and proper bodily exercise. * * * Every patient should be required to conform to all rules and regulations which have for their object the improvement of his social, moral and religious condition. He must begin a different ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... for months, been undergoing strict physical training. This means abstinence from all that could be said to weaken the frame, or lower the action of the heart. There are only certain things they may eat and drink. They must have the right amount of sleep, and no more. Exercise of the most bracing kind they must take every day, and eschew every practice that could weaken the nerves or muscles ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... courage, intellectual honesty, scrupulous accuracy, chivalrous fairness, endless docility to facts, disinterested collaboration, unconquerable hopefulness and perseverance, manly renunciation of popularity and easy honours, love of bracing labour and strengthening solitude; these, and many other cognate qualities," says Baron von Huegel, "bear upon them the impress of God and His Christ." What Dr. Inge, who quotes these words, says of Plotinus ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... were fresh, and striking into a canter the two men made for the open country. The excitement and motion combined with the bracing air drove the fumes of the liquor from Cook's head, and before many miles had been passed he was comparatively free from the terrible malady which threatened to ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... think that in the Fifties there was a natural tendency to overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything. Indeed the day was demonstrative; if the now celebrated climate had not yet been elaborately advertised, no doubt there was something hi it singularly bracing. The elixir of it got into the blood and the brain, and perhaps the bones as well. The old felt younger than they did when they left "the States,"—the territory from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean was commonly known as "the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... and as good as bread," says Mr. Howells. "Read 'Eben Holden'" is the advice of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented, fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story of country and town life. * * * If in the far future our successors wish to know what were the real life and atmosphere in which the country folk that saved this nation grew, loved, wrought and had their being, they must go back to such true and zestful and poetic ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... they enjoyed—without having been disturbed by anything. One would have supposed that, after so much hardship, they would have got up somewhat wearied. Strange to say, it was not so, for they arose quite refreshed. This Lucien attributed to the bracing influence of the light dry atmosphere; and Lucien was right, for, although an arid soil surrounded them, its climate is one of the healthiest in the world. Many a consumptive person, who has crossed the prairies with flushed cheek, uttering his hectic cough, has returned to his friends to bear ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... says Charles Dudley Warner, and of no part of the world is this more true than of these apparently desolate plains at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Rich is the reward of the daily stroller, not only in the inspiration of its pure, bracing air, the songs of its meadow-larks, and the glory of its grand mountain view, but in its charming ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... the former being made of four angle-irons, and the latter of one angle-iron. Each pair of arches, longitudinal girders and uprights, is transversely 3 meters (9 ft. 10 in.) from center to center, and is connected by cross and diagonal bracing. On the top of the longitudinal girders are fixed cross pieces of single Barlow rails, upon which again are fastened two longitudinals of wood 12 in. square in section, and which in their turn carry the rails ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... spring morning; the sweet song of the birds pierced through the noise of the rolling river below, the air was fragrant and bracing, and as I left and commenced the rocky ascent leading again to the mountains, the barks of some fierce-disposed canines, who alone objected to my presence among the hill-folk, died away with the rustle of the leafage in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... places with the King of England. The Emperor Joseph pronounced positively that Great Britain was declining, that Parliament was ruining itself, and that the colonies threatened a catastrophe. Catherine of Russia thought that nothing would restore its ancient vigour to the realm, short of the bracing and heroic remedy of a war. Even at home, such shrewd and experienced onlookers as Horace Walpole suspected that the state of the country was more serious than it had been since the Great Rebellion, and declared it to be approaching by fast strides to some sharp crisis. Men ...
— Burke • John Morley
... low mesquite trees at the top of the bank afforded sufficient protection at that hour; we rubbed dry, slipped on a loose gown, and wended our way home. What a contrast to the limpid, bracing salt waters of my own ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... something beautiful that they desired Cecil to see, but it was too late now to send for him, for spring was near. With the spring, came back the cough, and again the medical order was change of climate. This time, a sojourn of some months in Norway was prescribed for Mrs. Vyvyan, bracing air, and much out-door life in the pine woods. After many weeks of slow journeying, the ladies with two of their servants reached Norway, and took up their abode in an old chateau, in the midst of a pine forest so-called, but a forest really composed of many varieties of fir and spruce, as ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... preparation began with the removal of everything heavy from the Maud that was not a fixture. She was a large steam-launch to be hoisted on the deck of a steamer no larger than the Guardian-Mother; but the task was satisfactorily accomplished by lunch-time. The afternoon was used in bracing the craft in her position, and putting everything ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Gerasimus heard a sound unlike any bird he had ever known; a sound which was not a bird's song at all, unless some newly invented kind had a bass voice which ended in a howl. The little donkey stopped suddenly, and bracing his fore legs and cocking forward his long, flappy ears, looked afraid and foolish. Gerasimus stopped too. But he was so wise a man that he could not look foolish. And he was too good a man to be afraid of anything. Still, he was a ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... 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 ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... be complimentary, but they were bracing. Garnet laughed nervously, and consented to sit upon a chair. In about half-an-hour the storm blew over, leaving a clear sky ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eyewater, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one night, a disturbance ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... one mule which Tom had elected to take with him seemed to resent being separated from his companions. Bracing his feet well apart, the animal stubbornly refused ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... asleep. You see, Maurice, I really could not help it, the poor little thing was so sickly, and had never thriven; but when they were a little while in bracing air, Lucy was longing to have him in England, and his father, who never believes in anything but what he likes, would not see it, and what with those Italian servants, and Algernon hunting Lucy about as he does, it would have been the death of him. Susan, good creature, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poet, writing to his wife. But Browning has as many soul-sides as humanity. Hence it has been truly called a new life, like conversion, or marriage, or the mystery of a great sorrow,—a change and a bracing change in our outlook on the whole world, to discover Browning. The college should be our Browning, revealing the motive power of every life, the poetry of good and bad. It is only the "little folk of little ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... steaming on our way. Passing under the guns of Fort Alcatraz, past Angel Island—why so called I know not, as in early days it was inhabited not by angels but goats only—all of us felt the exhilaration of the California sunshine, and the bracing November air, as we stood upon the guards, watching the play of the lazy-looking porpoises, that seemed to roll along, keeping up with the swift motion of the boat in such a leisurely way. The porpoise is a deceiver. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... left the diner and swayed back into the Pullman she experienced a surging rush of energy and wondered if she was feeling the bracing air of which Harry had spoken. This was the ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Bracing herself, and still full of pride in her ability to write this mysterious shorthand, she opened her notebook, and waited with poised pencil. The mien of the two men had communicated to her an excitement far surpassing their own, in degree and in ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... donkeys a reasonable chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way, threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Bertram very cordially. It was such a relief—his cheery, genial companionship! The air, too, was bracing, and all the world lay under a snow-white blanket of sparkling purity. Everything was so beautiful, ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... for the first time drying in the sun, split apart down the back, and a slender form, adorned with two pairs of crumpled, wet wings, struggled three-quarters of its length from the shell. For a short time it clung motionless, gathering strength. Then, bracing its legs firmly on the edges of the shell, it lifted its tail quite clear, and crawled up the weed a perfect dragon-fly, forgetful of that grim husk it was leaving behind. A few minutes later, the good sun having dried its wings, it went darting and hurtling over the pool, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... best work is as bracing, as tonic, as instinct with the spirit of vigorous youth, as the mountain air which has never before been breathed. Woodberry well says: "He created lasting pictures of human life, some of which have the eternal outline and pose ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... when he was helping in my conversion. He sent me off to a health resort for the soul—and the waters were powerful indeed and terrible; now he thinks I no longer need have so severe a treatment inflicted on me, and he is persuading me to stay in a more restful place, a less bracing air—is that it? ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... last," hollered Dave, bolting into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him and bracing himself against it. ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... the heathery moors where the distraught pee-wits were already nesting, and the cool, clean air blew down from the snowy Grampians, bracing the walkers like a draught of iced wine. They even climbed some of the nearer hills, forcing their way through the tangled spruce-branches and undergrowth to the summit, from where the distant North ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... rectory, Hampshire, well out of danger zone, can receive three or four paying guests. Large garden, beautiful scenery, high, bracing. Simple life. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... now sally forth (you will go with me in my heart) and try whether this fine bracing air will not give the vigour to the poor babe, it had, before I so inconsiderately gave way to the grief that deranged my bowels, and gave a turn ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... limitations. And now it is as if Sir Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with the Waverley Novels just begun! In originality, in the conception of action and situation, which, however phantastic, are seemingly within reason, once we breathe the air of his Fancyland; in the union of bracing and heroic character and adventure; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and simple, his gift was exhaustless. No other such charmer, in this wise, has appeared in his generation. We thought the stories, the fairy tales, had all been told, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in cool, dank thickets wild currants were glossy black and lusciously ripe. It was the season which Jolly Roger loved most of all, and it was the beginning of Peter's first September. The days were still hot, but at night there was a bracing something in the air that stirred the blood, and Peter found a sharp, new note in the voices of the wild. The wolf howled again in the middle of the night. The loon forgot his love-sickness, and screamed raucous defiance at ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... memory of her childhood, and its sweet, inspiring friendship with Nature. All the roughness and coarseness of the life was refined in her memory by the exquisite atmosphere of the North, the good sweet earth, the strong bracing wind, the camaraderie of trees and streams and grass and animals. And in it all stood her father, whom she had left alone, in that interminable interval between the old ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... glue and bracing, and fitting iron rings about it. The vibration of the motor and the straining have pulled the nail heads through the holes in ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... a green Christmas in that sunny land, but not the sort of 'green Yule' that makes the 'fat kirkyard.' If the New Englanders who had been transplanted to that shore of the Pacific ever longed for a bracing snowstorm, for frost pictures on the window-panes, for the breath of a crystal air blown over ice-fields— an air that nipped the ears, but sent the blood coursing through the veins, and made the turkey and ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a great storm the weather of the island would become more bracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled with the spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmer disporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watch him. She was fey. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... 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 ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... be no doubt that in these ways the Crusades were for our forefathers in Europe the most bracing and stimulating events that occurred in the whole millennium between the complicated disorders of the fifth century and the outburst of maritime discovery in the fifteenth. How far they justified themselves from the military point of view, it is not so easy to ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... late Autumn Saturday—one of the Saturdays sent from Heaven for the delight of school-children—bracing, but not cold; and brilliant. Little Robert Sully looked pensively out of the window thinking what a fine day it would be for a country tramp, if only he were like other boys and could take them. ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... 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 ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... perfect that the only new bulwark of their rights was an anti-suffrage society. In fact, every one was talking of the valuable social acquisition in the person of this attractive young woman who entertained lavishly and was bracing up an otherwise drooping season. No one knew much about her, but then, that was not necessary. It was enough to accept one whose opinions and actions were not subversive of the social ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... officer to me one day on the Missouri; "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, but the majority come to Minnesota ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... left and bracing himself against it]. Go call them in. Save your poor skin and your husband's if you can. Call them in. You can't save yourself. [Laughs hysterically.] You can't save your miserable skin. Cause if they get me, and ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's shore, I'll think,—So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... London's central stream," and since the ballad first saw the light of day in Scribner's Magazine, Mr. Nutt and Lord Archibald Campbell have been in public controversy on the facts. Two clans, the Camerons and the Campbells, lay claim to this bracing story; and they do well: the man who preferred his plighted troth to the commands and menaces of the dead is an ancestor worth disputing. But the Campbells must rest content: they have the broad lands and the ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had worn heretofore: 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 ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and bracing book, full of suggestion and encouragement, Professor Bailey argues the importance of contact with nature, a sympathetic attitude toward which "means greater efficiency, hopefulness, ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... course in the sky, and rained their holy lights, while the winds were asleep in their caves, and keen frosts came down each night to increase the morrow's run; the days were warm and agreeable with bracing air and kindly sunshine; and the forests were roused from their stillness by the sound of the axe, the shrill reports of the frost escaping from the trees, and the notes of a few birds that carolled of the ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... 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
... eyes. It was on her tongue to tell him she knew what was in his heart, but she stopped; no, not to-night, she said firmly to herself, and shut her lips tight—a way she had of bracing her nerves in ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... illness (iv. 13). It is incredible that he would have chosen the long unhealthy journey to North Galatia when he was ill. But it is extremely probable that he left the damp lowlands of Pamphylia for the bracing air of Pisidian Antioch. The malady was probably the malarial neuralgia and fever which are contracted in those lowlands. (3) The Epistle contains technical legal terms for adoption, covenant, and tutor, which seem to be used not in the Roman but ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... some one of the many congenial texts to be gathered in their 'Holy Scripture.' Non-established priesthoods are but little more disposed to emancipate 'mind' and oil the wheels of political progression than those kept in state pay. The air of conventicles is not of the freest or most bracing description. The Methodist preacher, who has the foolish effrontery to tell his congregation 'the flush lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and, therefore, every person born into the world deserveth God's wrath and damnation,' ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... surface, gilding the summits of the waves, although there was majesty and beauty in the appearance, there was nought to excite terror. The atmosphere, purified by the warfare of the elements, was fresh and bracing. The short verdure which covered the promontory and hills adjacent was of a more brilliant green, and seemed as if to bask in the sun after the cleansing it had received from the heavy rain; while the sheep (for the coast was one extended sheep-walk) studded the sides of the hills, their white ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... had had a spin of about a hundred miles I felt better. The bracing of the wind and the quick, exhilarating motion restored me to myself, and I felt able to cope with Master Ernest, or whatever else chagrinable might come along, without giving myself away. As Teuta had thought ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... 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
... the edge of the seat, bracing her feet against the one opposite, as the cab pitched and swung around corners and past vehicles. She mechanically fingered the pasteboard and stared straight ahead. Then she drew a deep breath and read the ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and nights went by. Once, when he was partially relieved by the opiate, I slept, while Claude watched; and again, in the fading end of the last night, when we had passed at length into the cold, bracing northern air, and breath had come back to him, and with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... its diviner masters—not the poetry of Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles, not, perhaps, even that of the indolent Horace. But the poetry which youth usually loves and appreciates the best—the poetry of mere sentiment—does so in minds already over predisposed to the sentimental, and which require bracing to grow ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... his sowing had done, for by day the bright sunshine shone down on standing wheat and lengthening rows of sheaves. It was in the bracing cold of sunrise the work began, and the first pale stars were out before the tired men and jaded horses dragged themselves home again. Not infrequently it happened that the men wore out the teams and machines, but there was no stoppage then, for fresh horses were led out from the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of Sir John (2 vols.: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown). Sir John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon. His character is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... something else appeared in its stead, she as suddenly recollected that she liked the new dish a great deal better than the one that had failed. Even the weather received at her hands very different treatment from that which it is accustomed to meet with. A black frost she considered wholesome and bracing; a cutting east wind, she described as a fresh breeze; snow, rain, and hail, had each particular merits, in her eyes. When the sun shone, it was fortunate; when it rained, it was a piece of luck, for she had ever so many letters to write; and there was nothing like a rainy day for getting ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... trucks under him start, and an unaccountable depression came over him; the next moment he heard a soft voice directing the porter behind him, and as unaccountably his heart rose. The girl came on through the open door and stopped beside him, bracing herself with one hand on the railing, while she waved her handkerchief to the group she had left. He caught a faint, clean perfume suggesting violets, the wind lifted the end of her veil across his shoulder, and something of her exhilaration was transmitted to the currents in his veins. "Good-by, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... 25 miles to 5000 feet altitude. Hope amoebic dysentery cured. Great province this, only 150 miles from Manila with air as bracing as Adirondacks or Murray Bay. Only pines and grass lands. Temperature this hottest month in the Philippines in my cottage porch at three in the afternoon 68. Fires are necessary night ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... upon the reward, as apart from the qualities by which it is gained. But if he works simply with the desire of making the best of himself, and if the reward is simply such a position as may enable him to be most useful to society, the competition which results will be bracing and invigorating, and will appeal to no such motives as can be called, in the bad sense, selfish. He is discharging a function which is useful, it is true, to himself; but which is also intrinsically useful to the whole society. The same principle applies, again, to intellectual activity in general. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Coutts and Barclay's, Limited. He loved the sea, the sun, and the summer. He was off that day on a projected series of short country runs, in which it was his intention strictly to combine business and pleasure. Dartmoor, for example, as everybody knows, is a most delightful and bracing tourist district; but what more amusing to a man of taste than to go a round of the Moor with its heather-clad tors, and at the same time hunt up the parish registers of the neighbourhood for the purpose of discovering, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... accept as winter, came on apace. For some time past the air had been full of that mild chill and vaporous murkiness, which, not cold enough to be bracing, sensibly lowered the system and depressed the spirits. The careless and jovial temperament of the people, however, was never much affected by the change of seasons—they drank more hot coffee than usual, and kept their feet warm by dancing from midnight up to the small hours of the morning. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the rain-drops on the leaves glittered like diamonds. The air was fresh and bracing, and Gerard steered south, and did not even remember his resolve ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... you see, I had rather entertained a sort of hope that when I had revealed to him the Bassett's mental attitude, Nature would have done the rest, bracing him up to such an extent that artificial stimulants would not be required. Because, naturally, a chap doesn't want to have to sprint about country houses lugging jugs of orange juice, unless ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the rest, had ventured recklessly into the zone of danger. Among them were Ruth Clinton and Madame Olga Obosky, who, disregarding the command of Mr. Mott, were the only women to venture beyond the protecting corner of the deck building. They stood side by side, bracing themselves against the downward slope of the deck. Half-way forward were Trigger and the armed gunners, and beyond them the dense, irresolute mass of humanity. Percival, in rounding the corner to go to the assistance of Captain Trigger, observed with dismay the exposed ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... me, Mabel; whatcher want," answered the Colonel, bracing himself against the courthouse. He always called Acres ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... in your hundreds. Amusing and health-giving. Bracing barrack-square; magnificent pedestrian exercise. Come and be experimented on by Sergt.-Major Whizbang, the great military spellbinder. See the Adjutant put Company Commanders through the hoop. Screams of laughter at every performance. Best places ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... easily laid on 'the "horses" and then came the bolts and the bracing with piano wire. When brought together the fifty-four foot long skeleton was in shape much like a cigar. The main frame was six feet high, tapering to five feet at each end. In depth the dimensions were the same. The engine rested on the floor of the ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... trench, 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 ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... seemed to change. They were full in the mountains now, snow gleaming on the heights, forests blue-black on the slopes; and Ben's response was a growing excitement that at first he could not analyze. The air was sweeter, more bracing, and sometimes he discerned a fleeting, delicate odor that drew him up short in his talk and held him entranced. There was a sparkle and stir in the air, unknown in the cities he had left; and to breathe it deeply thrilled him with an ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... opinion's mine," Foster broke in. Hulton looked from one to the other and a curious steely glitter came into his eyes. It hinted at a pitiless, unchangeable purpose, and bracing himself with an effort he clenched ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... indeed looking. 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
... little while, enjoyed her search. She had had no time to explore the Saunders farm, and though much of it was of a deadly sameness, the three hills, whose shadows rested always on the fields, were beautiful to see, and the air was wonderfully bracing. Shy jack rabbits dodged back and forth between the bushes as Betty walked, and once, when she investigated a thicket that looked as though it might shelter the truant Daisy, the girl disturbed a guinea hen that flew out with a wild ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... soft purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye as with a remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was fresh, and sweet, and bracing. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... tilting back in his chair and bracing his feet against the edge of the table, "civilizin' cowpunchers is worse'n breakin' mustangs. They's some that say it can't be done. But look at this crew. Do they ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills—that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating—he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing, "Me and that ass," he would ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... did not yield. Bracing herself with her feet on the ground, she offered an energetic resistance. Basilio beat the gate with his fists, with his Mood-stained head, he wept, but in vain. Painfully he arose and examined the wall, thinking ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... you, so that 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 wish ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs sweep themselves forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small that the eye cannot follow, for the shock of what lies beneath them, whether rock or rotten wood or yielding moss. The fore feet have followed the quick eyes above, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... might smother her. She had flung out her hands desperately, the dainty tapering fingers working with strenuous, nervous motions—but now they were tightly clenched in the rose-leaf palms, and she stood bracing herself, like a statue of defiance. There was an added pallor on the beautiful ivory face—so still she was she scarcely seemed to breathe—yet all at tension—like some wild thing of the tropical forest, suddenly ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that the bracing influence of a holy cause has been tremendously overrated, for under the laugh I felt myself pass into a status of universal shrinking until I feared that I might entirely disappear, leaving a wonder about the empty saddle. And the blush and the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Chittagong, i.e., in shade in the early morning, but it is bracing, A.1. weather for doing things. Last night I had three blankets and two sleeping suits and felt cold at that. The sides and windows of our cabin being made of open lattice woodwork we fix up some newspapers and a mat or ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the manor on duty as doorkeeper, and in no mood to see strangers. He held his door down by inserting his fangs in two fine holes near the edge and bracing himself, or, rather, herself (as, of course, it is the female), offered a degree of resistance surprising in an insect. If one persists with a needle, there is often danger of breaking the door. But when one has made a crack wide enough ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... were cut off from all the world. England was an integral part of the empire, where, if the proconsul or legionary commander had not the hot sun and blue sky of Italy, there were partial compensations in the bracing air which renewed his wasted strength, the new and peculiar luxuries in the shape of shellfish and wildfowl that enriched his table, and the facilities which his insular authority afforded him for strengthening his political position, and plotting ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... have sufficient strength of character to subject themselves to. Lastly, I would have you consider especially the moral atmosphere in which they have habitually breathed: according to the nature of this the mental health varies as certainly as the physical strength varies in a bracing or relaxing air. A strong bodily constitution may resist longer, and finally be less affected by a deleterious atmosphere than a weak or diseased frame; and so it is with the mental constitution. Minds insensibly imbibe the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... goin' to kill 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. ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... her state of health appeared to be so infirm and shattered that her brother-in-law, Mr. Hoare, offered her the loan of his house at Cromer. She accepted the offer for a couple of months, and found a little benefit for the bracing air. She mentioned in her diary at this time that she had "an undue fear of an imbecile or childish state"—a not unlikely feeling to be cherished by an energetic woman accustomed all her life long to the work of helping ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... spoiled the fair pattern, showed as a blot.—Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa just now. She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts. Patch—whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his calling—short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... turned on cash. Gold dollars were the ball bearings that eased its frictionless revolutions. Pine forests have their charms, no doubt, for those misguided creatures who enjoy the bracing ozone of the balsam-laden air. To Smith the pungent sap of the evergreen tree was a poor substitute for the stimulating essence of greenback, the cologne of greasy bills, and it would take a big pile of them to make the room ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent |
