"Clutch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for ever in the currents; they billow in the swaying of tides; they toil in the wake of the junks; they shout in the plunging of breakers. 'Tis their white hands that toss in the leap of the surf; their clutch that clatters the shingle, or seizes the swimmer's feet in the pull of the undertow. And the seamen speak euphemistically of the O-'bake, the honourable ghosts, and fear them ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... improvident youths like you, who come to lament their wasted lives. If I could receive him this once as he expects to be received, we cannot doubt that it would mean an income of two thousand francs to me. Prosperity dangles before us—shall I fail to clutch it? Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, his coming to Paris! Why cannot he conduct his business in Lyons? Is there not enough money in the city of Lyons to satisfy him? O grasper! what greed! Nicolas, my more than brother, if it were night when I took him to a sumptuous apartment, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the one over-night, but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. Other chance there was ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... ravings. He fell to the floor and seemed stricken with a fit, and Bob thought the man had gone stark mad. He struck out and grasped those within his reach, and they were glad to escape from his iron clutch. For several minutes this wild frenzy lasted before ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... weeks together we give no thought to our tyrant. We grow gay and young and innocent again. We are free,—so free, we seem to have forgotten that we were ever enslaved. Then suddenly one day we hear the call again. We cry for mercy; we throw ourselves on our knees in prayer. We clutch sacred relics; we conjure the aid of holy memories; we say over to ourselves the names of the dead we have loved: but it is all in vain—surely we are dragged to the feet of that inexorable will, surely we submit ourselves once more to the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... wave came towering up. I was carried along like a straw in a whirlpool. Then there was a crash that pretty nigh knocked the senses out of me. I do not know what happened afterwards. It was a confusion of white water rushing past and over me. Then for a moment I stopped, and at once made a clutch at the ground that I had been rolling over. There was a big strain, and I was hauled backwards as if a team of wild horses were pulling at me. Then there was a jerk, and I knew nothing more, till I woke up and found myself on the sands, out of ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... longer anything to live for, anything to hope, anything to fear. As, one after another, each former bare suggestion of artifice now passed before him clothed in the raiment of certain deceit, he made a desperate clutch at the most improbable, in the wild hope that one falsehood at least might afford him some ray of light, however feeble, to dispel the horrors of this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... had not heard. He was shaking again in the clutch of a heavy chill. Presently, his sentences having trailed off once or twice into peculiar incoherency, he fell to talking wildly of a hut in the Sherrill woods in which he had lived for days in the early autumn, of a cuff in a box buried in the ground ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... as a canivet—but fortunately I had practised crossing it when out one day trying a Napier, and we manoeuvred it pretty fairly. My relief on getting to hospital was tremendous. My back was aching, so was my knee (from constant clutch-slipping over the bumps and cobbles), and my eyes felt as if they were popping out of my head. In fact I had a pretty complete "stretcher face!" I had often ragged the others about their "stretcher faces," which was a special sort of strained expression I had noticed ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud; Under the bludgeonings of chance My head ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... gong rang and I threw in the clutch and felt the launch slide away. The jingle came and I opened her up. 'Twas a powerful machine and whin I felt the jerk and pull of her four cylinders I sint me assistant to find the gasoline tank and see whether we ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... his hands with the oil of extreme unction, he refused to open his right hand, which clutched a few dirty coins, not considering that very soon neither his hand nor he himself would be his own any more. And so we close and clench, not our hand, but our heart, seeking to clutch the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... tongs, forceps, pincers, nippers, pliers, vice. paw, hand, finger, wrist, fist, neaf^, neif^. bird in hand; captive &c 754. V. retain, keep; hold fast one's own, hold tight one's own, hold fast one's ground, hold tight one's ground; clinch, clench, clutch, grasp, gripe, hug, have a firm hold of. secure, withhold, detain; hold back, keep back; keep close; husband &c (store) 636; reserve; have in stock, have on hand, keep in stock &c (possess) 777; entail, tie up, settle. Adj. retaining &c v.; retentive, tenacious. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with the tail of my shirt and a scarf I had on, got her head on my sound knee and my back against a trunk, and settled down to wait for morning. Uma was for neither use nor ornament, and could only clutch hold of me and shake and cry. I don’t suppose there was ever anybody worse scared, and, to do her justice, she had had a lively night of it. As for me, I was in a good bit of pain and fever, but not so bad when I sat still; and every time I looked over to Case I could have sung and ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions above, observing the slide, drew him up. And that, I believe, was the first and last attempt to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... now with his heavy chin silhouetted against the flickering light of the candle on the table. His hand closed suddenly on the handle of the bag with the swift clutch of an eagle's claw. She started at the ugly picture it made in the ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... between her racking inspirations. She pointed to the floor of the cockpit, and there, sliding grotesquely with the motion of the seaway, was Poul Halvard. An arm was flung out, as if in ward against the ketch's side, but it crumpled, the body hit heavily, a hand seemed to clutch at the boards it had so often and thoroughly swabbed; but without avail. The face momentarily turned upward; it was haggard beyond expression, and bore stamped upon it, in lines that resembled those of old age, the agonized struggle against the inevitable ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a man, but how did any man maintain a foothold there? He descended the rock, crying all the time: "Courage! Courage!" Suddenly his hands ceased to clutch the rocks, and he dropped. The water rose to his knees, but tempestuous as was the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... And your heart is nigh burst With the weight of the gloom And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand— Mother, O Mother!— God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinite Peace of ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... degree the Chinaman's natural craving for as much of it as he can secure. At the same time, the abominable system of official extortion must go far to crush a spirit of enterprise which would otherwise most undoubtedly be rife. Everybody is so afraid of bringing himself within the clutch of the law, that innovation is ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... triumphantly. "Yes, yes, I heard it with my own ears, the Voice. The crabbed tree, that is the main line, dying in me; the grafted tree is the Vaufontaine, the interloper and the mongrel; and the sapling from the same seed as the crabbed old tree"—he reached out as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew back, sat erect in his chair, and said with ringing decision: "the sapling is Philip d'Avranche, of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... see my dance order?" He made a defensive clutch at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. She watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and too old ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... is beading on my brow, At mere remembering her pale laugh, and curse. "Ha! ha! Sir Dainty! there must be a nurse Made of rose leaves and thistledown, express, To cradle thee my sweet, and lull thee: yes, I am too flinty-hard for thy nice touch: My tenderest squeeze is but a giant's clutch. So, fairy-thing, it shall have lullabies Unheard of yet; and it shall still its cries Upon some breast more lily-feminine. 580 Oh, no—it shall not pine, and pine, and pine More than one pretty, trifling thousand years; ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... unwonted courage and energy. Jurissa Caiduch himself, forgetting any cause of dislike he might have to Dansowich, joined heart and hand in the plans formed by the pirates for the deliverance of their leader. Every man in Segna, whether young or old, all who could wield a cimeter or clutch a knife, hastily armed themselves, and crowded into the fleet of long light skiffs in which they were wont to make their predatory excursions. Then breaking furiously through the line of Venetian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... You are very kind. Also, you are wise. Wise, because into my clumsy little Personal you read nothing that was not there. You knew it immediately for what it was—the timid tentative clutch of a shy man at the skirts of Romance in passing. Believe me, old Conservatism was with me when I wrote that message. He was fighting hard. He followed me, struggling, shrieking, protesting, to the post box itself. But I whipped him. Glory be! ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... or admirers. More than one of the Virginia delegates, says Adams, were cool on the subject of this appointment; and particularly Mr. Pendleton, was clear and full against it. It is scarcely necessary to add, that Washington in this, as in every other situation in life, made no step in advance to clutch ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... only effect of this was to start her horse into a trot. I had closed my eyes, but I opened them in time to see Aggie give a wild clutch and a ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... conform without a murmur to the ceremonies established for the coronation. Only this concession was made to their susceptibilities: that in the rules the phrase, bear the cloak was substituted for carry the train, "for," as Miot de Mlito says, "Vanity will clutch at ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 'War Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of a landing company, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... and moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... attempt to secure it; but whether he was too sure of his prize, or from some other unexplained reason, certain it is that he gave a practical illustration of the old and well-known adage about the cup and the lip, by failing to clutch the prey. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... powers and formidable proportions,—which he had at first attempted to capture, but which had shown fight, and had nearly captured him in turn. "Weel, weel, let a-be for let a-be," he is made to say; "if thou does na clutch me in thy grips, I'se no clutch thee in mine." It is to this primitive parish that David Vedder, the sailor-poet of Orkney, refers, in his "Orcadian Sketches," as "celebrated over the whole archipelago for the peculiarities of its inhabitants, their singular manners and habits, their uncouth appearance, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... our little promenade I was guilty of impatiently shaking off a sudden seizure of my arm in his big paw. If ever, in an hour, the Elsinore had been less gymnastic than at that moment, I had not noticed it. So I shook off the sustaining clutch, and the next moment the Elsinore had smashed down and buried a couple of hundred feet of her starboard rail beneath the sea, while I had shot down the deck and smashed myself breathless against the wall of the chart-house. My ribs and one ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Clutch at the air several times with both hands. The motion greatly resembles those of danseuses playing the castanets. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... from one to another, I scarcely felt their clutch; I scarcely felt the furtive blows that fell on me. The officer clung to me, fighting the savages ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... thoughts, have set their price On human hecatombs, and sell and buy Their sons and brothers for the shambles. Priests, With white, anointed, supplicating hands, From Sabbath unto Sabbath clasped to Thee, Burn, in their tingling pulses, to fling down Thy censers and Thy cross, to clutch the throats Of kinsmen, by whose cradles they were born, Or grasp the brand of Herod, and go forth Till Rachel hath no children left to slay. The very name of Jesus, writ upon Thy shrines beneath the spotless, outstretched wings, Of Thine Almighty Dove, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... marshal that my father was a Revolutionary soldier; that he served under Lafayette, and fought through the whole war, and that he fought for my freedom as much as for his own; and he would sneer at me, and clutch me with his bloody fingers, and say he has a right to make me a slave! and when I appeal to Congress, they say he has a right to make me a slave, and when I appeal to your Honor, your Honor says he has a right to make me a slave. And if any man, white or black, seeks an investigation ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... explorer know that the criminal clutch of Greed was soon to seize these mighty forests, guard them from the human race with bayonets, hangman's ropes and legal statutes; and use them, robber-baron like, to exact unimaginable tribute from the men and women of the world who need them. Little did the first explorer dream ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... frightened by being put into the tub, spread a bath towel or small thin blanket over it and have someone hold his hands, so that he will not clutch so wildly at everything, then lower him into the water, towel and all, and he will not notice it ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... but allowed her to grasp my hand, which she did with a bony, nervous clutch, and endeavored with some difficulty to keep pace with the long strides—I might well call them bounds, for they seemed the springs of a wild animal rather than the paces of a young girl—with which she covered the ground. Not a word more ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... rest, and a self-acting reversing tackle, consisting of three bevel wheels, one a stud, one loose on the driving shaft, and another on a socket, with a pinion on the opposite end of the driving shaft running on the socket. The other end was the place for the driving pulley. A clutch box was placed between the two opposite wheels, which was made to slide on a feather, so that by means of another shaft containing levers and a tumbling ball, the box on reversing was carried from one bevel wheel to the opposite one." The same James Fox is also said at a ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... "I won't clutch you," cried Mrs. Arnold, pluckily keeping her presence of mind. "I believe I can manage ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... not love Christophe: she could not bear his rough manner, his painful frankness, and, above all, his indifference. She did not love him: but she had a feeling that he at least was strong,—a rock towering above death. And she tried to clutch hold of the rock, to cling to the swimmer whose head rose above the waves, to cling to him ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... discovery; and alone had gone to have it verified. But, in spite of everything, realization was difficult: the realization that, turn whither she would, there was upon her—upon that poor, tortured breast, the relentless clutch of death. Struggle as she might, through the ensuing months—the few, few ensuing months, that clutch must grow tighter and more cruelly tight, until—the end. During the years since her marriage ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... stared at him wonderingly. John Redpath threw in his clutch. "So long," he said. "I've a brother in Tucson, and I'm going to his place until ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... cautiously let itself down, and lifted something after it. Then the arm of the Station Master was raised, the hand of the Station Master fell on a collar, and there was Peter firmly held by the jacket, with an old carpenter's bag full of coal in his trembling clutch. ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... went, and still the West held him in its powerful clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the sweet, new joy of a woman's love and devotion, and into his home came the happy music of children's voices. When his eldest boy was eight years old, his district elected him to the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... a mad hope, but yet it was a hope; and I argued: Is it better to clutch at the veriest shadow of a chance, or to sit down and end my life amongst scoundrels and assassins? Unless the man "Four-Eyes" deliberately deceived me, Black would connive at the murder of fifty British seamen before another ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... quiet in a moment. She felt in the terror of her young heart an almost irresistible desire to clutch at Glynn's neck; but the well-known voice reassured her, and her natural tendency to place blind, implicit confidence in others, served her in this hour of need, for she obeyed his injunctions ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... amid the groans and cries. Turquiette, thrown down by Jocki, a man of immense strength, had received a wound in the shoulder, and he tried in vain to clutch a pistol which hung in the Norwegian's belt. The latter held him as in a vice, and it was ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... or wants to, and likewise a knowledge of many things mechanical, which had heretofore been between closed covers, is in the daily litany of many who had previously never known a clutch from a cam-shaft, or a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... board, each watching with feverish anxiety his companion's movements, each casting, now and again, a gloating eye upon the heap of gold and greenbacks that lay between them, and at times half stretching out his hand to clutch it. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... observe your team is tiring, And wish the call of Time were blown, To Mr. WILSON, where he stands umpiring Gratuitously on his own, You'll look (as drowning men will clutch a straw) To make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... soul. Look up Unto the Lamb of God, for He can save Even to the uttermost." Slight heed obtain'd This adjuration, wild the glazing eye Fix'd on the wall,—and ever and anon The stiffening fingers clutch'd at things unseen, While from those spent lungs came a shuddering sound, "That's he! That's he! The old man! His grey hairs Dabbled with blood!" Then in a loud, long cry, Wrung out by torturing pain, "I struck ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... boy a smart blow on the shoulders. The boy looked at him wofully and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine why the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day I saw a woman suddenly assault a man, clutch at his hair, and cuff him about the ears. The man, who was of decent aspect enough, immediately took to his heels, full speed, and the woman ran after him, and, as far as I could discern the pair, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... line of food, where it could be easily found by a roving man, while out of the reach of foxes, 'coons, and 'possums. This he meant to be in the shape of a bait. If the half-starved marooned convict once got it in his clutch he would undoubtedly make straight for the cabin retreat, there to devour his prize. And it was while the unknown party was engaged in this delightful task that Max expected to slip up and fasten the door by means of the arrangement he ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... a gentleman, in spite of his rough ways. He understood in a moment, when Mattie's answer to this was a very feeble clutch at his arm, as though her strength were deserting her. What with the sudden surprise of these words, and the force of the wind, the poor little woman felt ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... bodies of frantic Germans, slaughtered by the defenders, fell heavily against it; while one huge Brandenburger who had leapt in advance of his friends, and who had been caught by a bullet fired from one of the loopholes, fixed a dying clutch on the summit of the wall, and held on convulsively for a few moments. Then, with a piercing scream, he fell backwards, carrying with him some two feet of the top of the slender defence which Henri ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the psalm of love. The times want scholars—scholars who shall shape The doubtful destinies of dubious years, And land the ark that bears our country's good Safe on some peaceful Ararat at last. The age wants heroes—heroes who shall dare To struggle in the solid ranks of truth; To clutch the monster error by the throat; To bear opinion to a loftier seat; To blot the era of oppression out, And lead a universal freedom on. And heaven wants souls—fresh and capacious souls; To taste its raptures, and expand, like flowers, Beneath the glory of its central sun. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... So strangely at times the vex'd effort at speed, That a keen eye might guess it was made—not for him, But some brawler more stalwart of stature and limb. That it irk'd him, in truth, you at times could divine, For when low was the music, and spilt was the wine, He would clutch at the garment, as though it oppress'd And stifled some impulse that ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... fear, cold as the clutch of a dead hand itself, close on her heart, driving the young blood from her cheeks. "It can't be!" she said to herself. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... very tired, dusty, and perspiring men with aching legs and parched lips, but as an unnatural phenomenon, or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway station, a cornfield, and a village with a single clutch of one of its tentacles. You would as soon attribute human qualities to a plague, a tidal wave, or a slowly slipping landslide. One of the tentacles composed of six thousand horse had detached itself and crossed the river below the bridge, where it was creeping ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it wouldn't vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... through the aperture of the doorway. Then he rang the bell. Twice he raised his hand and clenched it in the now familiar clutch. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... rode gladly on the crest of the surf waves. He delighted to drive his canoe alone out into the storm. He fought with the monsters of the deep, as well as with men. He captured the great shark that abounds in the bay, and he would clutch in the fearful grip of his hands the deadly eel or snake of these seas, the terror ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house or your own heart,—your heart, which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... awful place in which to dwell. There above them towered the great white crucifix; there in the corner were piled the remains of the Portuguese. A skull with long hair still hanging to it grinned at her, a withered hand was thrust forward as though to clutch her. Oh, no wonder that in such a spot Jacob Meyer had seen ghosts! In front, too, was the yawning grave where they had found the monk; indeed, his bones wrapped in dark robes still lay within, for Jacob had tumbled them back again. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... bears his touch, Her lips whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such; Her glance how wildly beautiful—how much Hath Phoebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek, Which grows yet smoother from his amorous clutch, Who round the north for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... a madhouse would be far better. He tried to get hold of his courage. But what was there to inspire it? Nothing! He laughed harshly as he ran, welcoming that bitter, killing cold. Nostalgia had him in its clutch, and there was no answer in his hell-world, lost beyond the ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... fairly big, stirred on the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as peasants ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... destiny. He would have had his Erin famed, The green flag gloriously unfurled, Her statesmen, bards and warriors raised Before the nations of the World. He dreamed (alas, 'twas but a dream!) Of Liberty: but as he strove To clutch that idol, treachery Sundered him from the thing he loved. Shame on the coward, caitiff hands That smote their Lord or with a kiss Betrayed him to the rabble-rout Of fawning priests—no friends of his. May everlasting shame consume The memory of those who tried ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the better," said he firmly. "I thought he was dead. His blood flows; then I will save him. Don't clutch me so, Josephine; don't cling to me like that. Now is the time to show your breed: not turn sick at the sight of a little blood, like that foolish creature, but help ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... spring beneath a careless touch; Endurance hardens with a word; She holds a trifle with a clutch So strangely, childishly absurd, That he ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... leaped into the seat beside Thierry. Gayly she threw out her arms. "To Paris!" she commanded. The handsome eyes of Thierry, eloquent with admiration, looked back into hers. He stooped, threw in the clutch, and the great gray car, with the machine gun and its crew of privates guarding the rear, plunged ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... climb and fight to slip the clutch of the ship's suction, in the middle of a heavy sea he managed to get off his clothes, and set to swimming, whither he did not know, a ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... it over the edge. Grimshaw, trembling violently, watched it fall. I think, from what Doctor Waram told me many years later, that the poet must have suffered the violence and terror of that plummet drop, must have felt the tearing clutch of pointed rocks in the wall face, must have known the leaping upward of the earth, the whine of wind in his bursting ears, the dizzy spinning, the rending, obliterating ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... boys were once climbing about some disused scaffolding in a lonely place, when a beam on which they were standing gave way under their feet. Both fell, the elder a little before the younger. But just in time the elder managed to clutch another beam and hold fast to it. By a providential coincidence, his brother, catching wildly at anything within his reach, seized his legs, and the two hung suspended thus, with all the weight on the elder boy's arms. Before ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and pressing her hand to her heart, where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at her face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before. Partly this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of the plant which they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... was groping for the gate latch when a hand fell on his shoulder, and a clutch that was more than half a blow twirled him about to face the roadway. He was doubling his fists for defense when he saw who his ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... important personage felt some one clutch him firmly by the collar. Turning round, he perceived a man of short stature, in an old, worn uniform, and recognised, not without terror, Akaky Akakiyevich. The official's face was white as snow, and looked just like a corpse's. But the horror of the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... interested in the scene, not from any faintest hope that he would draw a prize, but purely from the novel atmosphere and color of the thing. While his eyes were busiest, and just as the child prepared to draw another ball, he felt a clutch upon his arm, and, glancing down, beheld the glowing black eyes of Senor Ramon ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... considered what we were discussin' last week, and I have decided to give three hundred pounds, twenty acres of rich loamy soil, without a rock, a furze bush, or a cobble stone in it, five milch cows, six sheep, three clockin' hens and a clutch of ducklin's. Provided, of course, that you will give the same. That much should be enough to give my daughter and your son a start in life. And I may tell you that's much more than herself and myself started out with. Well, Sir Denis, is it a ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... and then I saw something come up above the sill, and clutch at the broken window-frame. It caught a piece of the woodwork; and, now, I could make out that it was a hand and arm. A moment later, the face of one of the Swine-creatures rose into view. Then, before I could use my rifle, or do anything, there came a sharp ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... given herself ten months. She had asked for ten months; not a day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the outside. And the check—it was a clutch at the heart that brought her brain up staggering—came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost rim of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... eyes as the beautiful demon, elegantly spurning the roof sods, went at easy, measured bounds toward the open chink—toward its doom. One, two, three—clearing the prickly cedar bush, its forefeet fell on the hidden trap; clutch, a savage shriek, a flashing,—a struggle baffling the eyes to follow, and the master of the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... makes by force his merit known, And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees, And shape ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... still, after she read the letter through, with the clutch of vague pain and shame at her heart. The stiff, stilted words did not seem like Wolf, and the definite casting-off hurt her. Why couldn't they be friends, at least? Granted that their marriage was a mistake, it had never had anything but harmony in it, companionship, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... stead, whom it maketh laugh to-day, to-morrow it maketh weep: Out on it then for a dwelling-place, since it is even so! Its raids and its onsets are never done, nor can its bondsman win To free himself from its iron clutch by dint of stress and throe. How many an one in its vanities hath gloried and taken pride, Till froward and arrogant thus he grew and did all bounds o'ergo! Then did she[FN65] turn him the buckler's back and give him to drink therein Full measure and set her to take ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Jacob's desire was towards Rachel! Let me see this hand." He made a furtive grab at the white taper fingers that played listlessly with the jessamine leaves on the porch, but the girl dexterously withdrew them from his clutch and moved a little further back, her face flushing proudly. "Oh, will it not come to me? Cruel hand!" and he rolled his little eyes with an absurdly sentimental air of reproach. "It is shy—it will not clasp the hand of its protector! Do not be afraid, Froeken! . . . I, Charles Dyceworthy, am ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... down,—and the huge log, loosened from the raft, was upon him, crushing him beneath its rough and ragged sides. All thoughts of self-murder vanished with the presence of actual peril, and uttering that despairing cry which had been faintly heard by Troke, he flung up his arms to clutch the monster that was pushing him down to death. The log passed completely over him, thrusting him beneath the water, but his hand, scraping along the splintered side, came in contact with the loop of hide rope that yet hung round the mass, and clutched it with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... cover everything, however. There's lots of good jobs outside its clutch, and the men that get them are grateful every time. I'm not speakin' of Tammany Hall alone, remember! It's the same with the Republican Federal and State officeholders, and every organization that has or has had jobs to give out—except, of course, the Citizens' Union. The ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... climbed from it, and with a sickening clutch at my heart I recognized who it was. Mary had been aeroplaning with Woods instead of automobiling as I had supposed. At the sight of her, laughing gaily at some witticism that Woods made as they walked across the field toward us, my head spun with hatred and jealousy ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... found I was going first he was rather hurt, but I did not wait for his protests. I swung my feet over the sill and dropped. I made a clutch at the window-frame with my good hand when I found no floor under my feet, but I was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and landed with a crash that seemed to split my ear-drums. I was thoroughly shaken, but in some miraculous way the bandaged ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Virgin's altar who heard a faint sigh and rustle on the steps glanced curiously as they saw a slight black-robed figure clutch the railing and lean her head against it. Miss Sophie ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... was read to the company; and, as all were in sympathy with America, it was received with great applause. Little, however, did any of them then imagine, how invincible was the animal the British government was about to clutch in its talons, supposing it to be a ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... yellow eyes, and wild voice, still frequents the uncultivated downs, unhappily in diminishing numbers. For the private collector's desire to possess British-taken birds' eggs does not diminish; I doubt if more than one clutch in ten escapes the searching eyes of the poor shepherds and labourers who are hired to supply the cabinets. One pair haunted a flinty spot at Winterbourne Bishop until a year or two ago; at other points a few miles away I watched other pairs during the summer of 1909, but in every ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... stimuli. A fly upon the ear is unnoticed. The auditory nerve is anesthetic. There is a swaying of the whole body and an apparent failure of co-ordination, probably the effect of some disturbance in the semi-circular canals of the ear. The hands tremble and then clutch wildly. The head is inclined forward as if to approach some object on a level with the shoulder. The mouth stands partly open, and the lips are puckered and damp. Of a sudden there is a sound as of a deep and labored inspiration, suggesting the upward ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... made a plunge into the capital S hole and came out in triumph with a capital S. Elated by this success, he immediately threw himself upon the little-o box with a blindfold impetuosity—but who shall describe his horror when his fingers came up without the anticipated letter in their clutch? who shall paint his astonishment and rage at perceiving, as he rubbed his knuckles, that he had been only thumping them to no purpose, against the bottom of an empty box. Not a single little-o was in the little-o ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... clutch at the paddle, missed it, and disappeared once more from sight. The shark rushed to the spot and turned in dismay, and driven to desperation, Tom hit the monster over the head with the paddle. Then the ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... consciousness of his awful situation, and the fearful fate which awaited him, every moment drew nearer and nearer to him. The victim reached the chapel door—he felt all the power of that diabolical fascination—another step and he would be in the grasp of the fiend who grinned to clutch him. But the fair boy who spoke from the grave suddenly appeared once more, and, flinging himself between the wretched Count and the ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror through all ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... revolving horizontally on a vertical axis somewhere just below the catches; and this wheel may bear an eccentric pin which hits each catch as it rotates. Alternatively the carbide boxes may be made to revolve horizontally on a vertical axis by the movements of the bell communicated through a clutch; and thus each box in succession may arrive at a certain position where the catch is knocked aside by a fixed pin. The boxes, again, may revolve vertically on a horizontal axis somewhat like a water-wheel, each box having its bottom opened, or, by a different system of ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Marie Baptiste, sitting on the shining new log step of her domicile, "what it is to have a home! Does it not clutch at your heart sometimes, ma cherie, the desire for a home, and that which goes with it, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Rue de Lancry—you know, where they have chamber music. Oh! my boy, some of Schumann's machines! You haven't an idea of them! They clutch hold of you at the back of your head just as if somebody were breathing down your back. Yes, yes, it's something much more immaterial than a kiss, just a whiff of breath. 'Pon my honour, a fellow feels as if he were ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... allez!' so I shoved in the clutch and made off at top speed. In Fifth Avenue I glanced over my shoulder to look at Mr. Hunter, and see whether or not he was struggling, but my friends alone were visible in the back seat, so I believed they had put him on the floor, and did ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... little beyond waiting an eternity of suspense, and then of being assisted into a house, up a flight of stairs to a room where she sank on the nearest thing handy. She opened her frock to clutch, as if for protection, the ring Perigal had given her, and which she always wore suspended on her heart. Then ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... prisoner, extending his arm as if to clutch at a still vague inspiration—"wait a moment. When I arrived in Paris I had with me a trunk containing my clothes. The linen is all marked with the first letter of my name, and besides some ordinary coats and trousers, there were a couple of costumes I used to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Maplin and Gunfleet lights winked in their iron gibbets. Above the shallows of the Burrows Shoal the masts projected awry of the wreck of a three-masted schooner, and they could have been the fingers of the drowned making a last clutch ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... in the water in an effort to release this desperate clutch without altogether loosening his hold upon the lad. Frank's lungs seemed about to burst now and he struggled desperately to push Davis away from him, at the same time maintaining his grip. Things grew blacker than ever beneath the dark ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the congregation—a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child. She was hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced, ordered. When they came out the minister ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... overpowering sweetness of his smile acted like an anesthetic; he saw things waver, even wabble; and his hidden clutch on Lissa's fingers ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... to keep her head straight. But I hadn't the chance of doing even that very long, for just then a big tree came driving along, and hitting my boat full on the quarter, smashed her like an egg-shell. I had just time to clutch the projecting roots, and whisk myself up on to them, and then tree and I went away down stream together, at I don't know ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wildly. "You torture me!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand in a dead man's clutch. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... of the time that he had got his clutch on Crosby's money the bandit was choking to death at the end of his own rope, hung from the limb of an apple-tree, and, having secured the gold, the Cowboys went their way into the darkness. Crosby soon made his appearance in the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking old gentleman opposite. When we see men so distrustful, we shun them. They then call us selfish when we feel only solitary. We protest against such manhood as would lower golden ideals of youth to its own contemptible ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... turn resting on rollers traveling on timbers laid on the ground. The driver was moved along and rotated when necessary by ropes passing around the winch head of the engine. The driver had 50-ft. leads and a 3,100-lb. hammer operated by an ordinary friction clutch hoisting engine. The hammer blow was received by an oak block fitting into a recess at the top of the steel core. This block was so battered by the blows that it had to be renewed about every five or six piles driven. A -in. wire rope ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... great tribulation, there are thousands who work out nothing but blind destruction and utter shipwreck, and who in frantic efforts for salvation drag down those nearest and dearest, as a drowning man may clutch ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... but as I drew near him he gave a yell of terror. This would not do. Taking the gag from the place where I had hidden it in readiness, I came behind him and slipped it over his mouth where I secured it, cautiously evading his attempts to clutch at me. It was a poor gag—having no tongue-piece—but it answered its purpose, for it reduced his shouts to mere ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... dogs lie close. Then in a moment came a fearful crack from a gun he carried, and something gave a great roar and a wild snort, and I nearly lost my senses with the fright. It was all I could do to clutch on by the branch, my legs shook so with fear; and as for my companion, if it hadn't been for falling into a cleft in a branch, he would have gone straight down on to the man's wide-spreading hat. The cry had come from a boar, which ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... field he bravely and laboriously wrought in. But to live to fourscore years, and be found dancing among the idle virgins! to have had near a century of allotted time, and then be called away from the giddy notes of a Mayfair fiddle! To have to yield your roses too, and then drop out of the bony clutch of your old fingers a wreath that came from a Parisian bandbox! One fancies around some graves unseen troops of mourners waiting; many and many a poor pensioner trooping to the place; many weeping ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Her hand was incredibly small, and soft, so that you were afraid of crushing it, until you discovered she had a firm little grip all her own. It surprised and amused you, that grip, as does a baby's unexpected clutch on your patronizing forefinger. As Jo felt it in his own big clasp, the strangest thing happened to him. Something inside Jo Hertz stopped working for a moment, then lurched sickeningly, then thumped like mad. It was ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of guns and started in a hurry after the column. Sergeant Merchant's bicycle—our spare, a Rudge—burnt out its clutch, and we left it in exchange for some pears at a cottage with a delicious garden in Champbreton. Doue was a couple of miles ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... though he twined and twisted like a serpent, I held on while my head seemed almost bursting. The thought of Jacob wrestling through the night sustained me, and now at last 'Brownie's' clutch upon my throat relaxed. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... to me, something in the darkness gripped my waist. I made a desperate clutch at the rigging with my disengaged right hand, and it was well for me that I secured the hold so quickly, for the same instant, I was wrenched at with a brutal ferocity that appalled me. I said nothing, but lashed out into the night with my left foot. It is queer, but I cannot say with ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki's NIGHT LODGING. The social pariahs, forced into poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences these, blighted and ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... In our own country the British land shark has made his appearance. His vile clutch, which our forefathers unwrenched in the strength of their Colonial greatness, has again been fastened upon our throat. The following table will show the extent to which the parasite has insinuated himself into our vital parts. Let the good people of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Maupertius. Voltaire could never forgive him for daring to shine in his presence; for being the president of an academy of which he, Voltaire, was only a simple member. Above all this, the king loved him, and praised his extraordinary talent and scholarship. Voltaire only watched for an opportunity to clutch this dangerous enemy, and the ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... yes, madame," replied Louis XIV., tearing the parchment which Mazarin had not yet ventured to clutch; "yes, I annihilate this deed, which despoiled a whole family. The wealth acquired by his eminence in my service is his own ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... clutch at victory; "for," said he, "it is notorious the ship cannot pass the Castle without a permit from me, and that I shall refuse." On that day the people of Fitchburg pledged their word "never to be wanting according ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... their combined weight for a moment or two, then sinking suddenly, like a punctured indiarubber ball, it collapsed, and they found themselves struggling nearly up to their waists in water. Luckily they were able to clutch at the hazel bushes above, and, by swinging themselves along the branches, to arrive at a firmer foothold, though even there the ground felt very insecure and spongy, and little dark pools came ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... nane in female servant station, (Lord keep me aye frae a' temptation!) I hae nae wife—and thay my bliss is, An' ye have laid nae tax on misses; An' then, if kirk folks dinna clutch me, I ken the deevils darena touch me. Wi' weans I'm mair than weel contented, Heav'n sent me ane mae than I wanted! My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess, She stares the daddy in her face, Enough of ought ye like but grace; But her, my bonie, sweet wee lady, I've paid enough for her ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... close at hand. Anderson had been nearly a month away from Lee, and meanwhile Grant had not only kept Lee on the watch on both banks of the James, as well as for Richmond as for Petersburg, but had taken a fast hold on the Weldon railway. Unable to shake off Grant's clutch either on the James or on the Shenandoah, Lee greatly needed Anderson back with him. Accordingly, on the very day when Sheridan went back to Berryville, Anderson, seeking the shortest way to Richmond, ran into Crook in the act of going into camp, and darkness shortly put an end to a ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the cabin of the doctor opposite, half stunned by the concussion of my skull against the bulkhead and by the avalanche of ponderous tomes that came crashing down upon me as the worthy medico's tier of hanging bookshelves yielded and came down by the run at my wild clutch as I stumbled over the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... table there." Her eyes were wide open now and dilated; the hair fell disordered in golden rings and waves about the oval of her face. She drew her breath heavily; her bosom rising and falling like waves after a storm. One hand pressed her lace as if to clutch the pulsing and steady it; the other held the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... strong and fearless, but she had not Andy's brute strength. With a clutch, now so fierce and desperate that she wondered her arm was not broken, the man, who was half a madman, dragged her deeper into the shade ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... was a long, lean, bony hand reaching down the chimney and groping in the direction of the cot. The fingers were spread out and crooked, all ready to clutch. Slowly the long arm lengthened and drew near the cot. It was about to snatch the child, when Fion darted forward and seized it ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... cannot be helped. Impossible or not impossible; true or false, it is necessary for their very existence, so that, just as a drowning man catches at a straw, though it cannot possibly support him, so do these most unfortunate and hardly-pressed men clutch at and cling to the hollow theory of continuity. Sometimes, when off their guard, and in a less cautious mood, they will confess as much themselves. And what is more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a confession. Many will well remember a well-known and distinguished ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... doze rather, from which he awoke all at once with a start, and, seeing the window shut, rose hurriedly to go and open it for the "Boy." He had done so before at night often when he chanced to forget it. But when he got to it now he had to clutch the frame to support himself, and he looked out stupidly for some seconds, wondering in a dazed way why the sun was shining when it should be dark. Then suddenly full consciousness returned, and he remembered. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... inhumanly hard and grasping as these feverish little mites in her nursery. She tried to think she had been, she tried to think that all children were such little distressed lumps of embittered individuality, and she did what she could to overcome the queer feeling that this particular clutch of offspring had been foisted upon her and weren't at all the children she could now imagine and desire,—gentle children, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... he gritted through his teeth, as he jabbed the key with frantic haste into the lock. "I'll fix you for this!" He made a clutch at her throat, as he swung the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... s-s-smashed, d-d-don't you?" answered back the indignant boy, as he continued to clutch that root, as though he believed it to be the only thing ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... than half convinced that Ben was putting the matter in its proper light, and he would have believed all that had been said if, just at that moment, he had not seen that brown hand reaching through the hole to clutch him ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... Ted realized what was coming off. The hold he had on the back of Shan Rhue was none of the most secure at best, but he got a clutch on the fellow's shirt under the arm, just back of the armpits, and he felt that he had in his fingers great ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... that my first movement was to clutch the cheque which he had left with me, and which I was determined to present the very moment the bank opened. I know the importance of these things, and that men CHANGE THEIR MIND sometimes. I sprang through the streets to the great banking house of Manasseh in Duke Street. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cicely, and she made her way less willingly than usual to the apartments of the Queen, who was being made ready for her bed. "Here comes our truant," she exclaimed as the maiden entered. "I sent to rescue thee from the western seafarer who had clawed thee in his tarry clutch. Thou didst act the sister's part passing well. I hear my Lord and all his meine have been sitting, open-mouthed, hearkening to his tales of savages ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could have offered no greater insult to me than this," said he. And thereupon he rushed under the horses and cut off their lips at the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails {42} close to their backs, and wherever he could clutch their eyelids, he cut them to the very bone, and he disfigured the horses and ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... particularly, however squeamish they were, were never sufficiently so to prevent themselves from being plundered by him. For several months the police were on the look out for this seducing young man, who, changing his dress and abode incessantly, escaped from their clutch at the moment when they thought they had him securely, when I received orders to commence the chase after him, to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... with himself anywhere, in short, far or near—he could only never take himself back. That certitude—that this was impossible to him even should she wait there among her plushes and bronzes ten years—was the thing he kept closest clutch of; it did wonders for what he would have called his self-respect. Exactly as he had left her so he would stand off—even though at moments when he pulled up sharp somewhere to put himself an intensest question his heart almost stood still. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... wave arrived. The fighting became brisker. Dick Prescott felt a weight against his head. He staggered dizzily, felt arms clutch at him, and had only a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... once brutish, terrible, Homeric; the fellow's reserves of strength seemed immense; sheer animal rage drove him; he ran amuck with lust to kill. He beat, rushed, strove to close. His opponent's lithe body evaded a clutch that might have ended the contest. John Steele fought without sign of anger, like a machine, wonderfully trained; missing no point, regardless of punishment. He knew that if he went down once, all rules of battle would ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... it were clutched in a vast white owl's claw; and generally there is a wispy cloud caught on it like a white shirt on a poor man's Monday washpole. Or, huddled together in a nest formation like so many speckled eggs, you see the clutch of little mottled mountains for which nobody seems to have a name. If these mountains were in Scotland, Sir Walter Scott and Bobby Burns would have written about them and they would be world-famous, and tourists from America would come and climb their ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... few Dissentients, or Half-Dissentients excepted,—as Mecklenburg wholly and with a will; foolish Anspach wholly; and the Anhalts haggling some dissent, and retracting it (why, I never knew);—for which Mecklenburg and the Anhalts, lying within clutch of one, had to repent bitterly in the years ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... beside her at that, grasping the back of the sofa as if he wanted something to clutch and throttle. The veins swelled in his temples, and as he pushed back his tossed hair Mrs. Ansell noticed for the first time how gray it had grown on the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there,—weeds and violets together,—not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Augustine says, 'They slew Him that they might possess, and, because they slew, they lost.' So is it always. Whoever tries to secure any desired end by putting away his responsibility to render to God the fruit of his thankful service, loses the good which he would fain clutch at for his own. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren |
