"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations; insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute mistress of manners and nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the contrary, styled poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible sweetness. But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... act of entering the doorway when a shudder ran through the ship, and she lifted slightly. Clinging to a rail, he waited, rigid as a statue. A second time the great steel hull shook, but much more violently. Then the Kansas ran her nose into a shoal, swung round broadside to the sea, lifted again, struck ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the twins were nowhere to be found, Mr. Hamilton-Wells went peering through his eyeglass into every corner, removed the glass and looked without it, then dusted it, and looked once more to make sure, while Lady Adeline grew rigid with nervous anxiety. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of Bordeaux, that prisoner must be heavily-charged to whom it did not mean at least a smile of pardon—not unfrequently a grant of lands, or sometimes a coronet. But in the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke, it meant rigid justice, as he understood justice. And his mercy, to any Lollard, convicted or suspected, usually meant solitary confinement in a prison cell. What inducement was there for Custance to throw herself on such mercy as that? Nor was she further encouraged by hearing of ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... passes he had behind him in a row at the long tiller—these boats are not steered by a wheel forward, but by a tiller at the stern—two, three, and at one turn four men. He himself, at the extreme end of the tiller, stood firmly posed and a little leaning forward, his body rigid, his face set in resolute lines, his eyes fixedly bent upon the course ahead; behind him the others, elately poised in readiness to swing their whole weight with his on the instant that his tense energy in repose flashed into energy in ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... The idea, however, that he might have an appointment at so strange an hour never occurred to me until a faint sound reached my ears from the veranda outside. Milverton dropped his papers and sat rigid in his chair. The sound was repeated, and then there came a gentle tap at the door. Milverton rose and ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and Astro stood at rigid attention in their dormitory room, backs ramrod straight, eyes front, hands stiffly at their sides. Captain Steve Strong, his face red and voice hoarse, strode up and down in ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... Mary Scott was coming slowly towards them across the thick rugs, into which her feet sunk noiselessly. Her face was very pale, and her large eyes were full of nervous apprehension. But about her mouth were certain rigid lines ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... less, and found fault with. Some thought her nose wuz too long. Some on 'em thought she wuz too religious, and some on 'em thought she wuzn't religious enough. Some on 'em thought she wuzn't sot enough on the creeds, and some thought she wuz too rigid. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... "No admittance except on business." In time he reaches the goal of his hopes; but now insulted Nature begins to claim her revenge. That which was once unnatural is now natural to him. The enforced constraint has become a rigid deformity. The spring of his mind is broken. He can no longer lift his mind from the ground. Books and knowledge and wise discourse, and the amenities of it, and the cordial of friendship, are like words ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Christ, by A Kempis, and Taylor's Holy Living, were their grand text-books, both of which were studied for their devotional spirit. But the Holy Living was the favorite book of Wesley, who did not fully approve of the rigid asceticism of the venerable mystic of the Middle Ages. The writings of William Law, also, had great influence on the mind of Wesley; but his religious views were not matured until after his return from Georgia, where he had labored as a missionary, under the auspices ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... met him once or twice. He is somewhat stiff and rigid in appearance, but he is very courteous—more than courteous, Lady Alice tells me, for he is kind. He wishes to disturb her as little as possible—entreats her to stay at Courtleroy, and so on; but naturally she wishes to have ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... obvious external advantages over others, she opposed to the praises lavished on her reflections of her imperfections, which, though not apparent to any one but herself, she verily believed were uncommonly great, as she beheld them with very scrutinizing and rigid eyes, while she looked on those of others with the greatest lenity. But of all the means she used to preserve her humility, she was the most assiduous in praying to him who made her heart, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... cleared immediately, now served as a bed on which to lay Fifi out, and the four officers made for the window, rigid and sobered, with the stern faces of soldiers on duty, and tried to pierce through the darkness of the night, amid the steady torrent of rain. Suddenly, a shot was heard, and then another, a long way off; and for four hours they heard, from time to time, near ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... world outspread before them for ever, and no more to them for ever than a sight of the eyes, a hearing of the ears, a far-away interest of the inflexible heart, not pausing, not pitying, but austere with a holy austerity, rigid with a calm and passionless rigidity; and I find them none the less women to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... These old books of nature and nature's mind ought to be chained up, free for every man to read in every parish. These are the only books I do not wish to unlearn, one item only excepted, which I shall not here discuss. It is curious, too, that the Greek philosophers, in the more rigid sense of science, anticipated most of the drift of modern thought. Two chapters in Aristotle might almost be printed without change as summaries of our present natural science. For the facts of nature, of course, neither one hundred ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... is to this date, as far as official action can make it so, and it is interesting to conjecture what the results might be were some malicious person, or some "legal-minded stickler for rigid adherence to the law," to bring suit against those whose deeds, titles, leases, or other documents declare it ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Even in prayer, I do not venture to approach her. I am what I have become—a rigid, unfeeling monk. Only in my hands do I carry the rose-wreath, not on my brow. Its fragrance is no more sweet; its thorns ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... the XIVth century a great change came over English Gothic architecture, a change which was to a certain extent a return to classical ideas. The curvilinear tracery gave place to a rigid vertical and horizontal form, with the result that windows and panels instead of being filled with curved bars of stone, were sub-divided by straight perpendicular bars and ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... prostrate on the floor, tearless, speechless, was the miserable Catherine; poor Sidney, too young to comprehend all his loss, sobbing at her side; while Philip apart, seated beside the coffin, gazed abstractedly on that cold rigid face which had never known one ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the people had kept Deborah from earning as much as usual and, for the first time, they had been unable to pay the interest. Indeed it was only by the most rigid economy that they would be able to make their bare living until Denny's garden should again begin to ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... tread down upon, trample down upon; crush under an iron heel, ride roughshod over; rivet the yoke; hold a tight hand, keep a tight hand; force down the throat; coerce &c. 744; give no quarter &c. (pitiless) 914a. Adj. severe; strict, hard, harsh, dour, rigid, stiff, stern, rigorous, uncompromising, exacting, exigent, exigeant[obs3], inexorable, inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron- ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... permitting his mantle to fall upon Mr. Peel, he thought he was assisting to invest with authority one whose views and policy were as narrow as his own, and whose practise in carrying them out would be not less rigid and uncompromising. But, like many others, he lived long enough to be grievously disappointed by the subsequent career of him whom the liberal party have since called "the great minister of progress," and whom their opponents have not scrupled to designate ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... "this gift" of hers, which had astonished people even in her childhood. She agreed that it was inexplicable, unless by the theory that the future, if it did not already exist, was at least somehow prefigured. Yet she believed that this prearrangement of events was not so rigid as to exclude a certain amount of free will. In other words, one who had been forewarned of a special result, if a special course were pursued, might escape the result by pursuing another course. "For as ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... creditably, and, indeed, the mere fact that Sir Sidney Smith should have considered you fit to command the Tigress in so difficult and dangerous a work as cruising among those islands is in itself a better guarantee of your fitness for promotion than the most rigid ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic volume of policy that admits of no pliability ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... be credited with obtaining the final success of the colony. These two stern soldiers of the Dutch wars had found the settlers dispirited, reduced in numbers, fighting a losing battle against pestilence, starvation and the savages. By their rigid discipline and able leadership they had brought unity and prosperity, had taught the people how to resist the sickness, and had secured a long peace with the Indians.[112] Dale left about three hundred and fifty persons in Virginia, most ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... that snaky-headed Gorgon-shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed brute violence With ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... was less rigid. It is somewhat the fashion of the more exclusive of the younger circles of Boston to make a more or less marked display of a democracy which is far more apparent than real. Partly from the genuine and affected respect for culture and ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... other is this extreme vigilance, this incessant observation of one's life and thoughts, this dissecting of one's self, like a piece of mechanism. It is a waste of time, and goes wide of the mark. The man who, to prepare himself the better for walking, should begin by making a rigid anatomical examination of his means of locomotion, would risk dislocating something before he had taken a step. You have what you need to walk with, then forward! Take care not to fall, and use your forces with discretion. Potterers ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled himself to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... also to use our best endeavours to deserve this treatment at the hands of a civilised enemy. Let us be humane in our turn to those whom the fate of war has subjected to our power: let us, in prosecuting our military operations, maintain the most rigid discipline among the troops, and religiously abstain from all acts of violence and oppression. Thus a laudable emulation will undoubtedly ensue, and the powers at war vie with each other in humanity and politeness. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... upon their faces, which were all a trifle grave. In the case of two of the party, at least, their faces were stamped with a certain quiet resolution and a hint of the forcefulness which comes of rigid and continuous self-denial. Men discover in the bush that abstention from most of the little comforts and amenities of life not infrequently tends to vigor of body and clarity of mind. This, however, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... with her bugle, and in a moment the notes of the recall floated out on the still summer air. It was a rigid rule of the camp that the recall should be promptly answered by any girl within hearing, so when, in the silence that followed, no response was heard, Mrs. Royall sent the two girls for the horse ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... held out his hand, but the woman maintained a rigid repose quite in keeping with her general appearance. Not a line of her face softened, not a feature unbent. She looked him straight in the eyes, her own ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... tranquil. Everything has been conducted in accordance with the most rigid rules of honor. The result has been unfortunate for my distinguished principal, but Monseigneur has nothing with which to ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... black veins, and his teeth exposed like those of a snarling wolf. These rangers, who had coolly risked death many times, and had dealt it often, were white as no fear or pain could have made them. Then, on the moment, Yaqui raised his hand, not clenched or doubled tight, but curled rigid like an eagle's claw; and he shook it in a strange, slow gesture which was menacing ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the moon shall shudder As she looks down on the moor, Where the dead of hostile races Slumber, slaughtered in their places; All their rigid ghastly faces ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... that the loss, though at the time a hard blow, should not interfere with the carrying out of my plans. By rigid economy it could, at least partially, be offset, and besides, I felt sure that if the necessity arose it would be possible later to secure silver from Dutch officials on the lower Mahakam River. Bangsul ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... by no means an uncommon state of things," said Kenneth, with some degree of warmth. "It seems to me that until men in power take the matter up, and get a more rigid system of inspection instituted, hundreds of lives will continue to be sacrificed every year. It is an awful thing to think that more than a thousand lives are lost annually on our shores, and that because of ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... Alcando, to Americanize his name, did not faint. After reeling uncertainly for a moment, he obtained command of his muscles, straightened up, and stood rigid. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... that the hot sun was beating full on her face. I dared not leave her there, for her first unconscious movement might be such that she would fall over the edge. But I saw that she must have shade and water, or die. Every instant she grew whiter and her lips looked more rigid. I shouted aloud, and only the echoes answered me, as if in mockery. A little lark suddenly flew out from a tuft of yellow wall-flower close by, and burst into a swift carol of delight as he soared away. At last, with great efforts, I succeeded in dragging her, by her feet—for I dared not venture ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... evidence; and it may be purely a mental set or bias on my part that causes me throughout this long discussion, to see, on the one side, dubious facts and defective logic, and on the other side firm reasoning and a knowledge of what rigid experimental enquiry demands. But, judged of practically, what, again, has the question of Spontaneous Generation to do with us? Let us see. There are numerous diseases of men and animals that are demonstrably the products ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... with passionate swiftness plucked hold of him by two favorite points of vantage, and threw him bodily into the water. This movement, as it chanced, turned his gaze seaward. The youth was seen to stand an instant, rigid as a bather in marble, staring out over the water he ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... spring was nearing its end, and London still suffered under the rigid regularity of easterly winds. Although in less than a week summer would begin with the first of June, Mr. Sarrazin was glad to find his office warmed by a fire, when he arrived to open ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... specialisation of certain districts within the town, though far less rigid than in the mediaeval town, is very noticeable in the larger centres of industry. Natural causes often determine this division of localities, as in the case of the riverside industries, brick-making and market-gardening in the outer suburbs. Round the central ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... He calculated that he had already collected enough wood to last him, with small and carefully constructed fires, one day, and a survey of the island and its possibilities revealed the fact that all the additional fuel he could garner from the rocks would scarcely last him, even with rigid ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... board fences that bounded the Alley separating their yard from the Halford place, she knew her two small playmates were happy out in the sunshine. Mrs. Halford's views on Sunday keeping were not so rigid. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... they are capable of being reacted upon by the outer world, and having their principles and views expanded, modified or quickened, does not outlast the first period of life; from that time they remain fixed and rigid in their policy, temper and characteristics; if a new phase of society is developed, it must find its exponent in other men. But in Webster this fresh suggestive sensibility of the judgment has been carried on into the matured ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... leg for one and twenty times ten billions of years. And then she wandered for ten times ten thousand billions of years with the creatures (of the earth). Next, repairing to the sacred Nanda that was full of cool and pure water, she passed in those waters eight thousand years. Observing rigid vows at Nanda, she cleansed herself of all her sins. Then she proceeded, first of all, to the sacred Kausiki, observant of vow. Living upon air and water only, she practised austerities there. Repairing then to Panchaganga and next to Vetasa, that cleansed damsel, by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... to you what a painful feeling it often is to me to pass from a work of this kind into one of a philosophical character. In the former all is so joyous, so alive, so harmoniously evolved, and so true to human life; in the latter all is so stern, so rigid, abstract, and so extremely unnatural; for all nature is synthesis, and philosophy but antithesis. I can, in fact, give proof of having been as true to nature in my speculations as is compatible with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... with five semi-palmated toes with short compressed claws; eyes small, with linear erect pupils; long skull with forty teeth; the orbit complete in many cases, or only slightly imperfect; the hairs are long, rigid, and ringed like the quill of a porcupine, which gives the grizzled appearance peculiar to these animals. The female has only four mammae. They are very active and sanguinary, chiefly hunting along the ground, but can ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... brilliant, and impulsive, had never fully harmonized with the politicians of Virginia in their political doctrines, but had been inclined to ridicule the rigid and non-progressive principles of her statesmen, who, always cautious, were now slow to receive into fellowship and to commit themselves to the new convert who sought their support. They slighted him, and rejected ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... grinding his teeth and putting himself into a rigid shape. 'Then 'tis my enemy—he has tempted her away with him! But I am a rich man, and he's poor, and rides the King's horse while I ride my own. Could I but find that fellow, that regular, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... entered a formless and unbillowed sea of greyness, from which there rose dim mountain-flanks that lost themselves in air. Up, ever up, and still below us westward sank the stars. We were now 7500 feet above sea-level, and the December night was rigid with intensity of frost. The cold, and movement, and solemnity of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... so utterly from those used by other philosophers in like case. His imagination was perhaps more luxuriant and was allowed freer play than most men's, but it was nevertheless always controlled by rigid examination and comparison of hypotheses ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... And every step carried Susan nearer to the world of her childhood, with its rigid conventions, its distrust of herself, its timidity of officials, and in crowded places! The influence of the Saunders' arrogance and pride failed her suddenly; the memory of Stephen's bracing belief in ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... and social spending that reduce income disparity and the impact of free markets on public health and welfare. The current government has lowered income taxes and introduced measures to boost employment, but has done little to reform an overly expensive pension system, rigid labor market, and restrictive bureaucracy that discourage hiring and make the tax burden one of the highest in Europe. In addition to the tax burden, the reduction of the workweek to 35 hours, which is to be extended to small firms ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... the feeling that it was not altogether foreign to the Gospel, was expressed in the memorials of the people. But the contest for and against this principle could not be carried on by one government; duty and prudence enjoined a rigid maintenance of rights guaranteed by documents as long as possible. Upon another field, that of science, and where the Gospel would be appealed to, theological science, it must be decided beforehand. On this field Luther and Zwingli actually ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... of Anne Mie seemed literally to have been turned to stone. She sat upright, rigid as a statue, her eyes fixed upon the poor, crippled girl as if upon an inexorable judge, about to pronounce sentence upon ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... principle that Burke directed some of his most forcible diatribes.[18] It has been already pointed out that the commendable want of intellectual symmetry which is the inherited possession of the Englishman gives him a very great advantage as an Imperialist agent over those trained in the rigid and bureaucratic school of Continental Europe. But the Englishman is a Western, albeit an Anglo-Saxon Western, and, from the point of view of all processes of reasoning, the gulf which separates any one member of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... to men that are awake in their souls, than to have wrong thoughts of God—thoughts that are narrow, and that pinch and pen up his mercy to scanty and beggarly conclusions, and rigid legal conditions; supposing that it is rude, and an intrenching upon his majesty to come ourselves, or to invite others, until we have scraped and washed, and rubbed off as much of our dirt from us as we think is convenient, to make us somewhat orderly and handsome in his sight.25 Such ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... were among the methods introduced into his department by Professor Woodman, and that class still remembers the spectacles quietly adjusted, that his near-sightedness might not encourage an illicit use of and -, and the rigid silence which shut them up to the simple problems written upon the blackboard, notwithstanding adroit questions, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... through the rigid economy of Dr. Riggs and his faithful assistants, has enrolled more pupils than the appropriation permitted. Notwithstanding this, hundreds have been turned from the school because the funds were not sufficient to furnish ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... limit made every experienced dog driver incredulous, from the first, of Doctor Cook's claim to have travelled some eleven hundred miles, from Etah to the North Pole and back, with a team of dogs hauling their own food. It is possible, however, on fair trails, with rigid economy, to travel five hundred miles and haul dog food and man food and the other indispensables of a long journey; and that is twice as far as it is ever necessary to travel in the interior of Alaska without reaching a supply point, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... violation of the "rule"—if it were stated as absolutely rigid—is to be found in Mr. Granville's later act, "The Yellow Streak," written in collaboration with James Madison. Here scene two takes place later in the evening of the first scene, and the third scene after a lapse of four months. But these two exceptions, out of many that might be cited, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... is cemented, while in the expanded condition, upon a rigid surface, the distortion then existing is fixed, and rendered permanent. Such a cementation or method of mounting is that which has been generally adopted, and the consequence has been that every now and then complaints have justly been made of the untruthfulness—owing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... same country and comrades with the same destinies. The clergy promptly saw what might be deduced from such a fact; and they made of it a means of establishing more peacefulness in society, and in the conduct of individuals a more rigid morality. This was the general work they pursued; and, if it were convenient to study the matter more closely, we might see, in the canons of councils from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, the Church exerting herself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... thing is done with a perfect grace, we mean that it seems entirely delightful, appropriate, seemly, and beautiful. It pleases every sense; it is done just as it should be done, easily, courteously, gently, pleasantly, with a confidence which is yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or unamiable about it. To see a thing so done, whatever it may be, leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the same way. It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth doing; and this is where ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... machine in the days before the conquest. He it was who kept the seigneurial system from developing abuses; it was his praetorian power 'to order all things as may seem just and proper' that kept the seigneur's exactions within rigid bounds. The administration of New France was a government of men; that of the new regime was a government of laws. Hence it was that the British officials, although altogether well-intentioned, allowed ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... here also the beginnings of that system of castes, which, at first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought only to be distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, when it was constituted under the influence of ethnological reasons, as to dig ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... with the hope of victory and captured trenches, but with memories of past scenes in France and Mesopotamia, and of a strip of ground the evening after Magersfontein, each battlefield dotted with little groups of men lying rigid, each marked with lines ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... admired. He was best when he was at sea, and although Mrs. Stevenson was a poor sailor and often suffered greatly from seasickness, she accompanied him on all his wanderings in the South Seas and on rougher waters, with the greatest spirit. A woman who was rigid in small matters of domestic economy, who insisted on a planned and ordered life, would have worried ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... sorrows of Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue of her nearest and most loving friend,—as troubles will sometimes come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the softness ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... he said calmly, turning a face rigid with hidden conflict, and gleaming white, from the framework of the arch, upon his master, whose ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... his night had, however, been too much for his feeble and slightly superannuated frame. Before he had finished his toilet, a stroke of apoplexy stretched him senseless upon the floor. His servants, when they soon afterwards entered the apartment, found him rigid, and to all appearance dead. After a few days, however, he recovered his physical senses in part, but his reason remained for a longer time shattered, and was never perhaps fully restored ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the deputy lieutenant's uniform made a great figure, with the addition of the long-breasted waistcoat, a white scarf, and the white cockade, adorning Alex, who, with a boot-jack under his arm, looked as tall and as rigid as he possibly could, with a very low bow, which was gracefully returned by a royal personage in a Scottish bonnet, also bearing the white cockade, a tartan scarf, and the blue ribbon. Altogether, Prince Charles Edward and the Baron of Bradwardine ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sandy stood rigid, his face very grave and set. She held out both hands to him, speaking softly in Turkish. I noticed that the six Companions had disappeared from the castrol and were somewhere out of sight on the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... and each soldier drew a deep breath as if to prepare for some exertion. Boom! went a third, and a restless undulation swept along the lines. Boom! for a fourth time roared a cannon, and some of the men laughed nervously. Boom! rolled out yet a fifth, and the ranks stood tense and rigid, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the people, it will be the purpose of my Administration to maintain the authority of the nation in all places within its jurisdiction; to enforce obedience to all the laws of the Union in the interests of the people; to demand rigid economy in all the expenditures of the Government, and to require the honest and faithful service of all executive officers, remembering that the offices were created, not for the benefit of incumbents or their supporters, but for the service of ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... intimate, that this theory of life is much more generally accepted by women than by men, and it may be true that as a rule their reasoning is much less rigid in its nature than that of the sterner sex, and that they may be liable to scan their premises less keenly; but may it not also be true, that they are of finer texture and more spiritual in their natures, and that they may be just as likely to arrive at the truth through their ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... more than six months I have vainly endeavoured to discover where he has concealed himself, but I have now some reason to think he is at the Hague.' The Count earnestly conjured the Marquis to make the most rigid search, in order to discover his son's retreat, and to endeavour to prevail upon him to return to his home. 'It is an act of justice,' continued he, 'to provide for the girl, if she consents to give up the written promise of marriage which she has received, and I leave it ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... a ravine, a shaft, that many centuries would not traverse; and it is serrated on its posterior wall with a harrow that perhaps is partly hidden. From the anterior wall of this chasm rise, in vertical directions, two processes; one perpendicular, and rigid as a horn, the other streaming forward before some portentous breath. What these could be, seemed doubtful; but now, when further examinations by Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, have filled up the scattered outline ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... was rigid, a pure white mask of ivory; there was not a trace of colour even in the set lips. Her eyes burned upon him, twin flames of dark amber, steady under levelled brows. She was wrapped in a long ermine-caped and bordered ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... fall has killed him." She had no hope of anything else at the moment; there seemed no possibility of life in that rigid form and death-like face; and she made no effort to give assistance or to call for it. She was like one turned to stone by the sudden crushing blow. She loved and she had lost—that ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... nationalistic aspirations by the memory of the Egyptian deliverance, which he yet regarded as mythical in its details. It was a terrible night for Hannah, sitting opposite to him under the fire of his poetic regard. She was pale and rigid, moving and speaking mechanically. Her father glanced towards her every now and again, compassionately, but with trust that the worst was over. Her mother realized the crisis much less keenly than he, not having been in the heart of the storm. She had never even ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... members of the party. Tom was a general favorite. His youth and his obliging disposition made him liked by all except Missouri Jack and his set. It cannot be said that his Scotch friend was popular, but he was, at all events, highly respected as a man of high principle and rigid honesty. This was not the way the miners expressed it. They called him a "square" man, and that word expressed high moral praise. They all felt that Tom was ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... our judges are in enjoining the punctual observance of the severe laws that lay women under such a burdensome constraint; and they are yet more strict in the observation of their own families: nay, the cadi you saw is more rigid than all the other magistrates put together. They are always preaching to their daughters what a heinous crime it is to show themselves to men; and by this means the girls themselves are so prepossessed with the notion, that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... lips she moved away from Louis and stood apart in the moonlight, a fixed and rigid figure of despair. Louis stepped to where Villon stood in stricken ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and Miriam too. There came a voice from the doorway. "So this is one of your lady friends, is it?" And there stood Gladys, staring, rigid with anger, her little hands clenched. "So this is one of your Red sweethearts, one of your nationalized women?" And she stamped her foot. "Get up, you hussy! Get up, you slut!" And as Miriam continued to kneel, motionless ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... picture. The Lady Desdemona stood now, tense, rigid, immobile as any rock, though instinct with life in every hair. Finn became the very personification of action, eager movement, alert interest. Inside of one minute he had examined the motionless Desdemona (by means of the most searchingly concentrated application of his senses of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... end," although it is clear from the cases just cited that these and similar expressions are merely of a general character, as we ourselves might say, "when the year came round," and do not indicate any rigid connection with a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... it a mythologically apperceiving science, wherein I go a little beyond the very clearly developed conception of Wilhelm Wundt (Volkerps. Myth. u. Rel.) regarding mythological apperception, from a desire for a more rigid formulation, but without losing the peculiar concept of the mythical or giving it the extension it has acquired with G. F. Lipps. Alchemy's myth-like point of view and manner of thinking is paralleled by the fact that it ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... progress in the art of war. We have read in the American papers of a most wonderful new French shell that in bursting paralyzes and destroys life so instantly that all the living things within so many yards are, in a flash, set rigid in position as though manufactured for Jarley's Wax Works, the officer standing in position with uplifted arm, yet dead, the soldier by the window with a cigar in his fingers, a smile on his face, ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... rigid guards dropped their burdens roughly and stood at attention. One was an Earthman, the other a fish-faced Venusian. Yet the queer dead look of their eyes was ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... so, indeed; but the men before us are so rigid, and love so much their own notions, and do also so lightly esteem the opinions of others, that let a man be never so godly, yet if he jumps not with them in all things, they thrust him quite out ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... priests, and nuns surrounded by their chattering flocks. A noise in the upper air causes everyone to stop work. We look up, to count a flock of high-sailing cranes floating far to the south,—one hundred and fifty-three of them. The observers make a pretty picture,—the rigid figures and uplifted faces of the monks, the nuns with their up-kilted skirts, the happy children. "It is the Man with the Hoe," I murmur. "Yes," assents the Kid, "and The Angelus ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... book, his hands on either side keeping it close. Then there was a little scheming to get it exactly in equilibrium; this was attained, and as the boy sat there stiff-necked and rigid of spine, with his eyes turned upwards, there was nothing left to do now ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the blanket and stretching her arms rigid above her head. Then with equal abruptness she stooped, caught up her bedding, spread it out, and lay down stolidly to rest, turning her back ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... was wretchedly poor; for that very reason the Prussian rulers had to practise strict economy and unrelenting industry. It is true the country was always insecure and constantly threatened by powerful neighbours; for that very reason the people had to submit to a rigid discipline and a strong military organization. It is true the country was depopulated; for that very reason the rulers had to attract foreign settlers by a just, wise, and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... over the great levels of the view. Her face was rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard. The King took his cue from a glance at ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... began to explore that cold, still, and rigid body for a stab, a gunshot wound, for the trace of some killing blow. He felt all over the skull anxiously. It was whole. He slipped his hand under the neck. It was unbroken. With terrified eyes he peered close under the chin and saw no marks ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... blast of frantic adoration Pierre gazed at Leo XIII, now again motionless on his throne. With the papal cap on his head and the red cape edged with ermine about his shoulders, he retained in his long white cassock the rigid, sacerdotal attitude of an idol venerated by two hundred and fifty millions of Christians. Against the purple background of the hangings of the baldacchino, between the wing-like drapery on either side, enclosing, as it were, a brasier ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... understand that there is a failure in the nature and execution of things, or from an envy and spite at the execution of them. Now if murmurings arise from this pretended wisdom of the flesh, then instead of fearing of God, his actions are judged to be either rigid or ridiculous, which yet are done in judgment, truth, and righteousness. So that a murmuring heart cannot be a good one for the fear of God to grow in. Alas! the heart where that grows must be a soft one; as you have it in Job 23:15, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his residence with noble rivers, that yield him fish in abundance. Ah! suffer me to thank thee, Author of so many benefits: do not deprive me of my charming sensations. I shall not find my illusions so sweet, so consolatory in a severe destiny—in a rigid necessity—in a blind inanimate matter—in a nature destitute of intelligence, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... word Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow voice, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... still calculating the expenses of his entertainment to the Shah, and had resolved upon adopting a system of more rigid economy in his household, was not sorry to lose a hungry hanger-on, and without hesitation he promised to assist me. It was agreed between us, that he would forthwith call upon the chief executioner, and appointed me to meet him at court, after the morning's selam ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... may be considered as fundamental, without which the most rigid attention to matters of dress will go for nothing. For instance, cleanliness, which according to the old proverb, is rated so high as to be placed next to godliness, is one of these, and of primary importance. The most costly attire, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... and formal chirography on more substantial materials than at present. There was something about it that quickened an instinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red tape, that tied up the package, with the sense that a treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending the rigid folds of the parchment cover, I found it to be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of his Majesty's Customs for the port of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remember ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in a maid. She was chiefly to get an English maid, if at all possible, for the qualifications would more or less naturally follow from her nationality. There proved to be no English maid, but there was a Swedish one who had received a rigid training in an English family living on the Continent, and had come immediately from that service to seek her first place in America. The manager of the office pronounced her character, as set down in writing, faultless, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fact of democracy as indicated by the election of a First Magistrate by a method already frankly plebiscitary, and the effect of a Party System, becoming, as all Party Systems must become if they endure, at once increasingly rigid and ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... commission of the most atrocious crimes, together with the dissipated, turbulent, and abandoned disposition of the convicts, which had more than ever at this time been manifest, determining the governor to enforce the most rigid discipline, he resolved on constructing a strong and capacious Log Prison at each of the towns of Sydney and Parramatta. It being absolutely necessary that these should be erected as expeditiously as possible, the safety of the inhabitants and security ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... anniversary dinner without any great hilarity. Aggie's neck was very stiff and she had turned in the collar of her dress and wrapped flannels wrung out of lamp oil round it. When she wished to address either Tish or myself she held her head rigid and turned her whole body in her chair; and when she felt a sneeze coming on she clutched wildly at her head with both hands as if she expected ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the great balloon was explained to me carefully. It was made of layer after layer of gold-beater's skin and contained two ballonets—a small ship compared to the Zeppelins, and non-rigid in type. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fortress of the rigid old barons of Tuvers. Hugo, the sixth lord, died there in 1309, and in the chapel, which still stands, mass is said at stated periods for the salvation of his soul and the souls of his relations. The whole place would undoubtedly have been given over to the owls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... she sprang out, rushed into the house, opened the door of her father's chamber, pushing aside a servant who tried to stop her, and fell upon her knees beside the bed where lay the body of her father, white and rigid. ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... itself at the time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises. The great authorities upon foreign policy to whom I have been accustomed to listen, such as Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, never to my knowledge took that rigid and, if I may venture to say so, that impracticable view of the guarantee. The circumstance, that there is already an existing guarantee in force, is, of necessity, an important fact, and a weighty element in the case, to which we are bound to give full and ample consideration. There is ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... I select "The Raven" as most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... national faith, pledged for the redemption of the public debt, must be kept inviolate, and that for this purpose we recommend economy and rigid responsibility in the public expenditures, and a vigorous and just system of taxation: and that it is the duty of every loyal State to sustain the credit and promote the use of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... moment, in at the coach-house door shot Ginevra, as white as Gibbie. She darted to where he lay, and there stood over him, arms rigid and hands clenched hard, shivering as he had shivered, and sending from her body shriek after shriek, as if her very soul were the breath of which her cries were fashioned. It was as if the woman's heart in her felt its roots torn from their home in ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... surprise was natural. The old officer sat rigid in his chair, with his eyes open and staring at his friend; and yet, apparently, without seeing him. The color in his face had faded away and, even through the deep bronze of the Indian ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... to small, very deeply five-lobed; the younger leaves truncate at base, giving them a semi-circular outline, with long, sharp teeth alternating with very small ones; glabrous, or nearly so, on both sides. Bunches very large, short, shouldered, compact and rigid; berries very large, round, often misshapen from compression; dull purple, lacking color in the center of the bunch; flesh firm, crisp, neutral in flavor, lacking in richness; quality rather low. Season late, ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... friction were removed. The employer who desires to treat his workers well and maintain good conditions is relieved from the competition of rivals who care little for these things, and what he is chiefly concerned about is simplicity of rules and rigid universality of enforcement. It is this section of employers who have prevented the crippling of the Boards in a time of general reaction. It is blindness to refuse to see in such co-operation a possible basis of industrial peace, and those were right who in 1918 saw ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... devoutly pious, and rigid in never permitting before him any licentious language or manners. It is well known that James the First had a habit of swearing,—expletives in conversation, which, in truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings; but in that age, when Puritanism had already possessed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... realism, Scott was not in general very rigid. In his Life of Richardson he says: "It is unfair to tax an author too severely upon improbabilities, without conceding which his story could have no existence; and we have the less title to do so, because, in the history of real ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... his own flash. Someone was there! Someone had beaten him to it! He held himself crouched and rigid at the thought. But who could it be? The utter silence and the steady, unchanging, pale-green light showed him the folly of the thought. There was no one there; there ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... covering on the settle, the woman, with frantic gesture, tore it aside, and when her eye fell on the little face, grand in death's calm, a great rigor took hold of her, and then she became rigid as the dead on whom her gaze ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... little deferred; the other has now absolved me of all my sins, and assured me of God's forgiveness, yet cannot keep from me those dread apparitions which in this terrible hour arise before me. Twice have you seen me battling with a superhuman horror. My brow has been bathed in sweat, my limbs rigid, my cries have been stifled by a hand of iron. Has God permitted the Evil Spirit to tempt me? Is this remorse in phantom shape? These two conflicts I have suffered have so subdued my strength that I can never endure a third. Listen ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and devotion creates armies and saves nations from defeat, disaster, or domestic convulsion. These highest tokens of a nation's honor had for many years been given with the greatest care, after most rigid scrutiny of the official records and all other evidence presented, laboriously reviewed by the general-in-chief in person, recommended by him under the universal rule of civilized nations, and approved by the Secretary of War, whose approval is considered equivalent ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... virtue. Its achievements in theology were somewhat insignificant, as it had not the lofty independence of Port-Royal. It went too far into Molinism, and did not avoid the paltry meanness which is, so to speak, the outcome of the rigid ideas of the orthodox and a set-off against his good qualities. The ill-humour of Saint Simon against these pious priests is, however, carried too far. They were, in the great ecclesiastical army, the noncommissioned officers and drill-sergeants, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... authorities." As all the revenue of the island was handed over to the Porte excepting a bagatelle insufficient for the requirements of the country, the really overworked and energetic servants of the Crown were absolutely obliged to practise a most rigid economy, commencing with their own salaries, equally vexatious to themselves and unworthy of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... resembled the love of a sighing swain of Arcadia. This error in the original conception of the character must doubtless be ascribed to Dryden's habit of romantic composition. Montezuma and Almanzor were, like the prophet's image, formed of a mixture of iron and clay; of stern and rigid demeanour to all the universe, but unbounded devotion to the ladies of their affections. In Antony, the first class of attributes are discarded: he has none of that tumid and outrageous dignity which characterised the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... descendants of the present day. At length, to conclude the inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... been a Miss Nagle,[1] having had fourteen or fifteen children, all of whom died young, except four,—one sister and three brothers: the sister, Mrs. French, was brought up in the faith of her mother, who was a rigid Roman Catholic, while the sons were trained in the father's belief. This, happily, created no unkindness between them, for not only were they an affectionate and a united family, but perfectly charitable in their opinions, each of the other's creed. As the future statesman ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... in the parliament, who were urgently pressing forward a motion, the object of which was, that Cromwell should exchange the title he had heretofore borne, and adopt the more time-honoured, but, alas! more obnoxious one, of King. Some of the more rigid sects were busily discoursing in groups, respecting Walton's Polyglott Bible, and the fitness or unfitness of the committee that had been sitting at Whitelock's house at Chelsea, to consider properly the translations and impressions ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... therefore, the importance of a rigid adherence to the scripture standard, "Be not unequally yoked, together with unbelievers." It is even desirable that husband and wife belong to the same branch of the church, that they may walk together on the sabbath to the house of God. There is indeed something repugnant to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... relative to the power which certain persons are said to possess in a state of crisis, of deciphering a letter at a distance with the foot, the nape of the neck, or the stomach. The word impossible in this instance seemed quite legitimate. Still, I do not doubt but some rigid minds would withhold it after having reflected on the ingenious experiments by which Moser produces, also at a distance, very distinct images of all sorts of objects, on all sorts of bodies, and in the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the great capacity of its military schools, it was as well able as other nations engaged to make up for losses in battle. One sweeping and beneficial change that had been made was that promotion no longer went by seniority but entirely by merit: the higher the position the more rigid the tests. Incidentally, it was Russia's good fortune that the war came at a time when the noncommissioned ranks were full and it was possible to promote many of these men to fill vacancies ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... weak— How miserably imbecile—he had become, Tampering with temptation. Such a groan, Wrung from such agony, as then he breathed, Pray Heaven my ears may never hear again! He smote his forehead with his rigid palm, And sank, as if the blow had stunned him, to his knees, And there, with face pressed hard upon his hands Gave utterance to frenzied sobs and prayers— The wild articulations of despair. I was confounded. He—a man—thought I, Blind ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... side, and his eyes fixed upon the dead form of Elinor, lying at Effingston's feet. All followed the monarch's glance, the ministers and peers leaning forward to better see the stricken girl growing rigid in the clasp of death. So profound was the silence in the great hall, that the footsteps of those without were heard with startling distinctness in every part of the room. Before all the peers, leaned Lord Monteagle, his gaze riveted upon the face of his son. As for Effingston he heeded nothing; ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... smaller till he suddenly disappeared. A groan muffled with horror went up from the shore. But the man who held the chain lifted up his hand, and silence—more pregnant of anticipation than any sound—held that whole crowd rigid. The man played out the chain; Harper stared at the seething, tumbling water, but Ransom looked another way. The torture in his soul was taking shape, the shape of a ghost rising from those tossing waters. Suddenly the pent-in breath of ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... people in Darien for mattresses, sofas, and all sorts of stuffing purposes,—which, in my opinion, it answers better than any other material whatever that I am acquainted with, being as light as horse hair, as springy and elastic, and a great deal less harsh and rigid. It is now bed-time, dear E——, and I doubt not it has been sleepy time with you over this letter, long ere you came thus far. There is a preliminary to my repose, however, in this agreeable residence, which I rather dread, namely, the hunting for, or discovering without hunting, in fine relief ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... was troubled with the return of the obscure complaint which had already threatened him, and he there began that rigid observance of the laws of health which afterwards developed to almost an eccentricity. His peculiar attitude when studying was due to the fear that if he bent over his work the compression of his internal organs might ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... implicit confidence in Jack's courage and wisdom. For a few seconds, that seemed long minutes to my mind, we sat thus silently; but I could not resist glancing backward, despite the orders to the contrary. On doing so, I saw Jack sitting rigid like a statue, with his paddle raised, his lips compressed, and his eyebrows bent over his eyes, which glared savagely from beneath them down into the water. I also saw the shark, to my horror, quite close under the log, in the act of darting towards Jack's foot. I could ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the marquise, stopping Eugene with a cold and rigid manner, "you will find it difficult to explain, monsieur, why your pen should, by accident, write my name. A name, written on a letter, is not a friend's opera-hat, which you might have taken, carelessly, on ...
— Study of a Woman • Honore de Balzac
... shoes had never been changed. For six months his bed was not made, and the unhappy child, consigned to this living burial, remained silent and immovable upon the impure pallet, breathing his own infection. By long inactivity his limbs became rigid. His mind, by the dead inaction which succeeded terror, lost its energy, and became, not only brutalized, but depraved. The noble child of warm affections, polished manners, and active intellect, was thus degraded far below the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... command of four hundred Moors, whom he caused to be hewed in pieces by his guards; several others were hanged in the most public places of the city, and the rest were rigorously imprisoned, above 100 being convicted of participating in the plot. By these rigid measures the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... his side sprang up with a sharp cry to her who questioned. Then he raised his eyes. Jacqueline was unaware of the sobbing girl who clung to her. Her face was changed to marble, her body as rigid. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... straightest female figure with which I am acquainted—aged seventy-four—is said to have been formed by the youthful habit of pacing the floor for half an hour dally, with a book upon the head, under rigid maternal discipline. Another traditional method is to insist that the damsel shall sit erect, without leaning against the chair, for a certain number of hours daily; and Sir Walter Scott says that his mother, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... one figure like a statue, girl and beast; the next, sudden panic took hold upon her. Whether the man were dead or not, she must make haste. It might be he would come to himself and pursue her, though there was that in the rigid attitude of the figure down below that made her sure he had been dead some time. But how had he died? Scarcely by his own hand. Who had killed him? Were there fiends lurking in the fastnesses of the mountain ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... hotel at Cadenabbia offers him, for instance, in the most elegant and assured form, the so often precarious adventure of what he calls at home summer board. It is all so unreal, so fictitious, so elegant and idle, so framed to undermine a rigid sense of the chief end of man not being to float for ever in an ornamental boat, beneath an awning tasselled like a circus-horse, impelled by an affable Giovanni or Antonio from one stately stretch of lake-laved ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... proper police and sanitary regulations, and to the absence of intelligent organization and division of labor. The abuses were in a large measure due to the almost total absence of system, government, and rigid, but wholesome sanitary regulations. In extenuation of these abuses it was alleged by the medical officers that the Confederate troops were barely sufficient to guard the prisoners, and that it was impossible ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of a door, straightened their uniforms, and then slid the door to one side and stepped smartly into the room. They came to rigid attention before a massive desk, flanked by two wall windows of clear sheet crystal reaching from ceiling to floor. Standing at the window, Captain Steve Strong, Polaris unit cadet supervisor, his broad shoulders stretching ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Machiavel and Tacitus, for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this writer's estimate of the powers of the mind, the understanding must have held a most tyrannical preeminence. Whether we look into his plays or his most passionate love-poems, we shall find all frozen and made rigid with intellect. The finest movements of the human heart, the utmost grandeur of which the soul is capable, are essentially comprised in the actions and speeches of Caelica and Camena. Shakspeare, who seems to have had a peculiar delight in contemplating womanly perfection, whom for his many sweet ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... course, for the lady of the house, and hearing she was in the grounds, joined her there. She looked ill and anxious, and she received me with rigid politeness. Fortunately, Mrs. Eyrecourt (now convalescent) was staying at Ten Acres, and was then taking the air in her chair on wheels. The good lady's nimble and discursive tongue offered me an opportunity of referring, in the most innocent manner possible, to Winterfield's favorable opinion ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... vexed scowl on his face, and walked the room. In a minute the library door opened again, and a pale, thin, rigid, frozen-looking little woman, scantily clad, the weather being considered, entered, and dropped a curt, awkward bow to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... her own colonies, and particularly those embracing the people of different races from her own, better than any other nation. She is just to the conquered, but rigid. She makes them self-supporting, but gives the benefit of labor to the laborer. She does not seem to look upon the colonies as outside possessions which she is at liberty to work for the support and aggrandizement of the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... what he had learned of old Greifenstein he believed that he would have been capable of telling the plain truth to his son and of enjoining upon him to give up his name, and to hand over his whole fortune to the Sigmundskrons. He had been a stern man with fearfully rigid traditions of honour, incapable, Rex thought, of allowing Greif to practise an unconscious deception, willing that he should come to a miserable end rather than seem, even for a moment, to be what he was not. It was almost inconceivable to Rex that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... matrons were all much older than herself and, while sitting over their cakes, stewed fruit, and hippocras, knitting, spinning or netting, talked of the hard times during the siege, of the cares of children and servants, washing and soap-making, or subjected to a rigid scrutiny the numerous incomprehensible and reprehensible acts other women were said to have committed, to be committing, or to desire to commit, until Maria's heart grew heavy and her lonely room seemed to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... within A casement, gloomy, lone, Where lay a cold and rigid form, A death bed stretched upon. The fixed gaze of the half closed eyes, The forehead chill and white, The shroud and pall, more ghastly looked, Wrapped thus in ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... door he felt it move. He stepped aside. The door rolled back, and her Royal Highness, the archbishop and the chancellor passed in. The princess's eyes were like dim stars, but her fine nostrils palpitated, and her mouth was rigid in disdain. The chancellor looked haggard and dispirited, and he eyed all with the listlessness of a man who has given up hope. The prelate's face was as finely drawn as an ancient cameo, and as immobile. He gazed at Madame with one of those looks which penetrate ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... never absolve gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum. I neither claim such privilege, nor indulge ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... marched to the [Middle Barrier] depot fairly easily yesterday afternoon, and since that have suffered three distinct blows which have placed us in a bad position. First, we found a shortage of oil; with most rigid economy it can scarce carry us to the next depot on this surface [71 miles away]. Second, Titus Oates disclosed his feet, the toes showing very bad indeed, evidently bitten by the late temperatures. The third blow came in the night, when the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... creak somewhere in the old house that disturbed him and snapped the thin, rigid little thread that seemed to paralyze his soul; and still in a sort of terror, though no longer in the same stiff agony, he made his way down the three or four further steps of the flight, laid hold of the handle, turned it ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... that he is not dead?" I thought. "Perhaps he is in a swoon, brought on by agitation and excessive weakness." Taking a brand from the fire, I approached the body, and lifted the cloak from his face. The features remained fixed and rigid as before. The stamp of death was there. My fancy had deceived me. Replacing the cloak, I returned to my seat by the fire. Never has a night appeared so long. At last my fuel was almost exhausted, and my watch told me that it wanted some ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston |
