"Stiffen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... either; who sing "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay," and know how to solicit backsheesh to perfection. The theatricals here are simplicity brought to perfection. It is said their language consists of only a hundred words. If you were to paint your face black, look wild-eyed, stiffen your hair in many strands, array yourself in a cotton garment that revealed more than it concealed, and then were to jump straight up and down to the music of a dolorous chant you would not be far astray. Add to this a whining ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... years ago we met," he resumed, "in the Wabash Avenue place. I noticed her when the bidding on a rocking chair started. A pretty girl. And as is often the case among women who attend auctions—a bug, a fan, a fish. You know, the kind that stiffen up when they get excited. The kind that hang on your words and breathe hard while you cut loose with the patter, and lose their heads when you swing into the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... little, giving a singularly soft and gentle expression to her elderly visage. But seeing that he only colored, turning his head aside, and fumbling with his beard, her expression changed into one of constraint, which appeared to stiffen on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. Little evidences of the subtle but ever-living friction between my Mohican and the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... said in the first pause, "you are in trouble." She could feel him stiffen, and hurried on: "What can I do? You know you can ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... excuses, and is above all practical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and shoved it into ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... ask help from Uruj and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, and to them they appealed. By this time their fame was known to all men, and they could supply that which was lacking—namely ships, artillery, a first-class fighting force, and last, and best of all, the moral support which would stiffen and put heart into the motley horde which at present surged around the gates ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... forgotten how he would fasten a cock's feather in his cap, almost like a gentleman, and hang his cloak over one shoulder, and pull up his hose till they almost cracked, so as to show off his leg? Ah, he had handsome legs, my poor Vito, and he never would use anything but pure beeswax to stiffen his mustaches. No, he never would use tallow. He was almost like ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... Jane silent and unresponsive. She was not writing when I came in, but sitting doing nothing. She said nothing to me about Mr. Gideon's call, till I mentioned him myself. Then she seemed to stiffen a little; I saw her hands clench over ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... of whalebone or ivory, formerly worn by women, to stiffen the forepart of their stays: hence the toast—Both ends of ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... toy men, dogs, and sled may be used to complete the scene, or they can be cut from newspapers or old magazines. Stiffen by pasting them on cardboard; then cut out the men, dogs, and sled more carefully in detail. Bend one leg forward and one backward to make the men stand alone, and bend two legs outward and two inward to enable the dogs to stand. Paste narrow strips ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... a second one. One glance at the title caused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script and carried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from the desk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Then he took heaps and armfuls of papers, books and notes and carried ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... degraded and removed from the stern virtues which dignified that father; so he took the old man home, and seemed to believe his often-repeated assertions, that he drank nothing but water. The stranger tried to stiffen himself up into steadiness as he drew nearer home, as if there some one there for whose respect he cared even in his half-intoxicated state, or whose feelings he feared to grieve. His home was exquisitely ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... worker's preference for the deserter as material with which to work is not far to seek. With the deserter as described, the problem is chiefly to alter his point of view; with the non-supporter it is, in addition, to stiffen his will and to increase his capacity—a far ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... right! You are so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed to stiffen with the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... slipped some money into his pocket. Then he put on a ragged overcoat, and a hat which he drew down over his eyes with a furtive jerk of his yellow fingers. Then he went behind the bar and swallowed something; it was not whisky, but it brought a faint tinge of colour into his cheek, and seemed to stiffen his knees. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... dumbfounded. "Good Heavens, no!" he cried. "I was speaking to the chauffeur." (Jackson's back seemed to stiffen a little.) "I've told him a thousand times to be careful about running up on people like that. Now this is the last time I'll warn you, Jackson. The next time you go. Understand? Just because you happen ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave, and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity of mind, looked at her future master ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... so they did discountenance poor Denys. And that whole day I wore in experimenting these German lasses; and 'twas still the same. An ye doff bonnet to them they stiffen into statues; distance for distance. But accost them with honest freedom, and with that customary, and though rustical, most gracious proffer, of the kissed hand, and they withhold neither their hands in turn nor their acquaintance in an honest way. Seeing which I vexed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Love cried out again: "You pray in vain for peace who shall ever be peaceless from this time forth. For the unavoidable hour is at hand when you shall know my power. Farewell awhile." As the figure spoke those last words it seemed slowly to stiffen into stone again, and the beautiful, vital coloring faded away, and the pale, leaping flames vanished, and Dante found himself sitting and staring at the painted image above the lisping water that he had looked at unmoved a thousand times, as ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... her a steppin'," urged thrifty Mrs. Fanny. "She'll stiffen up master, an' disapp'int ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... pulpit stair. He announced his text: "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets." Captain Pott felt Elizabeth, who was sitting beside him, stiffen. Miss Pipkin leaned forward in her eagerness to catch every word, and as the minister proceeded her expression changed from perplexity and doubt to one of deep respect. There were others who followed the thought of the sermon with keen interest. Elder Fox was present, for the first time ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark, And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why human buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral That has his day; while shrivell'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss: Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells, and baby clothes; ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... pass the jelly through it until clear, then pour it into moulds and put them in a cool place to set. One calf's foot and one cow heel will be more economical than two calfs feet. If fruit is desired to be in the jelly, it must be put in when the jelly begins to stiffen in the mould. ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... articles of the heretical creeds were of purely pagan origin. Given similar conditions to-day, our easy tolerance of opinion would disappear. If Islam, for instance, were to-day a serious menace to the Faith, Christians would automatically stiffen their attitude towards monophysite doctrines. Toleration of the false Christology would, under those circumstances, be treason to the true. The Church of the fifth century was menaced from many sides. Monophysitism was the foe at her gates. That heresy was not a variety of Christianity. It was ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... pleading, she bent down rather shamefacedly and gave him a freckled, tennis-blistered little paw to kiss. And she looked into his eyes and suddenly felt a perplexity, a curious swimming of the mind that made her recoil and stiffen, and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... as compared with the lively originals; but the difficulty was to get them of any truthful sort whatsoever, for the babies regarded the photographer—the kindest and mildest of men—with the gravest suspicion: and the moment he appeared, little faces, all animation before, would stiffen into shyness, and the light would slip out of them, and the naturalness, so that all the camera saw, and therefore all it could show, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... "Then you should stiffen your backbone. It's your backbone that matters. You shouldn't want to abandon yourself. You shouldn't want to fling yourself all loose into a woman's lap. You should stand by yourself and learn to be by yourself. Why don't you ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... quietly pessimistic; others actively commit themselves to fight. Some who fight see present human growth and the growth of human demands on resources as the stark unavoidable realities they are, and seek mainly to guide them and mitigate their effects. Others stiffen their necks against development to meet those demands, staunch enemies to all reservoirs and other forms of compromise, stubborn if highminded nay-sayers against the tide, ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... the miser, "he darn't, he darn't—wouldn't God consume him if he robbed the poor—wouldn't God stiffen him, and pin him to the airth, if he attempted to run off wid the hard earnings of strugglin' honest men? Where 'ud God be, an' him to dar to do it! But it's a falsity, an' you're thryin' me to see how I'd bear it—it is, it is, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... thrust Thro' the bor'd holes; his body black with dust; Unlike that Hector who return'd from toils Of war, triumphant, in Aeacian spoils, Or him who made the fainting Greeks retire, And launch'd against their navy Phrygian fire. His hair and beard stood stiffen'd with his gore; And all the wounds he for his country bore Now stream'd afresh, and with new purple ran. I wept to see the visionary man, And, while my trance continued, thus began: 'O light of Trojans, and support of Troy, Thy father's champion, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... really," I went on; I smiled painstakingly into his stupid pink face that seemed suddenly to have grown pinker; and then I felt my smile stiffen upon my lips, for he had whirled around on the piano stool on which he was sitting, and he smiled back at me, but not as he would have done in Mrs. Whitney's presence. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the lapse of several days in quiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizen brought them word from another slave of information precisely like that which had first set them on the qui vive. This caused the local militia to be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointed Sunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city council created a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistrates together with five citizens carefully selected for their substantial character and distinguished ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 'all these are excellent reasons for bringing in the Englishman. It is true that in his own country he is taught to shirk work, because kind, silly people fall over each other to help and debauch and amuse him. Here, General January will stiffen him up. Remittance-men are an affliction to every branch of the Family, but your manners and morals can't be so tender as to suffer from a few thousand of them among your six millions. As to the Englishman's ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the dead silence, the clatter of a pebble struck on the girl's raw nerves and made her wince. She saw the muscles of Lynch's back stiffen and the barrel of his Colt flash up to cover the narrow entrance to the ledge. For an instant she hesitated, choked by the beating of her heart. Should she cry out? Was it the man really coming? Her dry lips parted, and then all at once a curious, slowly moving object barely visible ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor of his ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, Through the flashing bars of July, Waiting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The North-west flying viewlessly, With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet, And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown To stiffen ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... but we will not be quiet enough to hear. One always enjoys listening to his friend. What this Friend says to us will change radically our conceptions of Himself, and of life. It will clear the vision, and discipline the judgment, and stiffen ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... He felt little Jennie stiffen, and draw away from him; so quickly he had to set to work to patch up the damage. "I want you to get well," he pleaded. "You're so good to everybody—you treat everybody ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... and Fig. 63) of the front and back of a jacket that will preserve the advantages of the corset without its evils. This jacket may at first be fitted to the figure with corsets underneath it, just like the waist of a dress. Then, delicate whalebones can be used to stiffen the jacket, so that it will take the proper shape, when the corset may be dispensed with. The buttons below are to hold all articles of dress below the waist by button-holes. By this method, the bust is supported as ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... every light on board was doused, and the great hull, gliding through the glass-smooth water, merged her steep sides and towering yards and canvas into the universal shadow. With whispering keel and a wind so fair and soft that one wondered to see the sails stiffen in the bolt ropes, the man-of-war stole steadily to leeward, with no sound but the occasional creak of cordage, or the hoarse murmur of voices from the lower deck. Hadow himself, pacing the quarter-deck in his boat cloak, was lost in reverie, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... I fell into th' step for I knaw how to march, For I've been stiffen'd up wi' guvernment starch; An' first smell o' music it makes me fair dance An' I prick us mi ears like a trooper his lance, Hasumever, I thout as I'd gotten the scent, I'd follow ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... there," observed the halberdier from Haarlem under his breath, "a man would most willingly stiffen his back ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness, and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage: Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it, As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... stiffened limbs he could no longer move along fast enough to keep the warmth of life in his body. To add to his trouble, his foot, which had been broken in Tennessee previous to his capture, was now giving him great pain, and threatened to cripple him wholly; indeed, it would stiffen and disable the best of limbs to compass the journey he had made in darkness over strange, uneven, and hard-frozen ground, and through rivers, creeks, and bogs, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... her crying children, pleading for their mother's release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and of blasphemy. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... queen tells me except command my tones when there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to stiffen. My heart gave a mad throb of hope, then seemed to stop. What did she mean? I faced her fully once more, and, I doubt not, I was very pale. Yet lest vanity should befool me, I dared not act upon suspicions. And so "True, mademoiselle," ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... his misused body stiffen, that when he was called it required another ten minutes and a second glass of whisky to unbend his joints and ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... "If you find yourself inclined to change your mind before morning, just murmur over to yourself, 'England expects every man to do his duty.' That will stiffen your back." ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Every time he dragged one and threw it into the pit he yelled: "Ho! Ho!" Carley was impelled to look at his face, and she was amazed to meet the rawest and boldest stare from evil eyes that had ever been her misfortune to incite. She felt herself stiffen with a shock that was unfamiliar. This man was scarcely many years older than Glenn, yet he had grizzled hair, a seamed and scarred visage, coarse, thick lips, and beetling brows, from under which peered gleaming light eyes. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... and the wavering, in his case and that of Easty, indicated by the magistrates on this occasion, alarmed the prosecutors; and they felt that something must be done to stiffen Hathorne and Corwin to their previous rigid method of procedure. The following letter was accordingly written to them that very day, immediately after ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... mark, with the feet eight or ten inches apart, at right angles to the line of shot. Straighten your body, stiffen the back, expand the chest, turn the head fully facing the mark, look at it squarely, and draw your bow across the body, extending the left arm as you draw the right ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... want to talk to you about that matter, about young Cameron." For just a moment Miss Brodie's courage faltered as she observed her uncle's figure stiffen. "I want you to know ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... guide these hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?— The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... truth, been her purpose in coming to them, she would have found little encouragement in the countenances before her. Every one of them seemed to stiffen into grim disapproval of her unfilial act in ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... to stiffen, and the look on her face altered to one of cold anger. She peered farther over as if to assure herself of something, and Dick, following her eyes, saw they were fixed on a man who stood leaning against one of the pillars near the entrance to the dance floor. He ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... lay on his back, not three feet beyond the radius of the door, in a pool of blood that was almost dried and gave the room a sickly-sweet butchershop odor. Under the back of Rand's hand, Rivers's cheek was cold; his muscles had already begun to stiffen in rigor mortis. Rand examined the dead man's wounds. His coat was stained with blood and gashed in several places; driven into his chest by a downward blow, the bayonet of a short German service ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... to stiffen and grow rigid in a second. Dolly turned her deathly face, with her eyes aflame ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dream, and it seemed little more than a few minutes before Sergeant Stokes, having passed through a curtain of shrapnel, had his platoon extended in some shallow support trenches to which the remnants of the regiment whom they were called upon to stiffen had fallen back. It was a critical moment: our first trenches were in the hands of the enemy, and the whole line was sagging under the impact of the German hordes. Somehow that trench had to be recaptured—to be recaptured before the Germans had converted the parados into ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... Oldshaw, the banker, and Mr. Horn, the grocer, and Mr. Acroyd, the shoemaker, would be sitting there talking to Mr. Belk, who was justice of the peace. And they would see Papa. The young men squatting on the flagstones outside the "Farmer's Arms" and the "King's Head" would see him. And Papa would stiffen and draw himself up, trying to look dignified ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... of another temper: The clotted blood-drops of Thyestes's sons Still stiffen on its frame: do not delay To furbish it once more in the vile blood Of Atreus; go, be quick: there now remain But a few moments; go. If awkwardly The blow thou aimest, or if thou shouldst be Again repentant, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... said Eric. "Look: yonder are Golden Falls, though we did not hear them because of the snow; and there, out at sea, loom the Westmans; and that dark thing is the Temple Hof, and behind it stands the stead. We are saved, Gudruda, and thus far indeed thou wast fey. Now rise, ere thy limbs stiffen, and I will set thee on the horse, if he still can run, and lead thee down to Middalhof before ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... heard the yellow rover Laugh to sleep, while we raged thick, Thick as ants the ant-hill over, Asking who has thrust the stick. Lo, as frogs that Winter cumbers Meet the Spring with stiffen'd yawn, We from our hard night of slumbers Marched ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to them easily enough, and also to the transmission of the Protectorship from Oliver to Richard. The one insuperable stumbling-block, I believe, had been and was Cromwell's Established Church. Even in his blindness he could theorize on that, and stiffen himself more and more in his intense Religious Voluntaryism, Conscious of his irreconcileable dissent from Cromwell's policy in this great matter, and knowing that Cromwell was aware of the fact, it may have been a satisfaction to him that he was not called ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the fate of murder'd monarchy. Before the sounding axe so falls the vine, Whose tender branches round the poplar twine. 440 She chose her ruin, and resign'd her life, In death undaunted as an Indian wife: A rare example! but some souls we see Grow hard, and stiffen with adversity: Yet these by fortune's favours are undone; Resolved into a baser form they run, And bore the wind, but cannot bear the sun. Let this be nature's frailty, or her fate, Or Isgrim's[106] counsel, her new-chosen mate; Still she's the fairest of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Cleveland permitted the publication of a letter which he had written to Chairman Wilson condemning the Senate bill, the fact was disclosed that the influence of the Administration had been used to stiffen the opposition of the House. Senator Gorman and other Democratic Senators made sharp replies, and the party quarrel became so bitter that it was soon evident that no sort of tariff bill ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Manitoba, Dakota and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... little vein of common sense, against which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and then she is ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that was revolting. The coarse indiscretion of their enthusiasm wounded the boy's modesty of feeling. When they praised a work that he loved it was as though they were insulting him personally. He would stiffen himself and grow pale, frozen, and pretend not to take any interest in music. He would have hated it had that been possible. Melchior used ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that I saw Markovitch's face that had been puckered with pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the doorway, quietly ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... her the tweed sleeves, she trembled like an aspen leaf. When they brought her the glass receptacle, she seized Bayne by the shoulder and turned her head away. By degrees she looked round, and seemed to stiffen all of a sudden. "It is not ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... call Phaeton, deaf to all their mournful cries. Stretch'd on his tomb, by night, by day they call'd. Till Luna's circle four times fill'd was seen; Their blows still given as 'custom'd, (use had made Their forms of grief as nature). Sudden plain'd Fair Phaethusa, eldest of the three, Of stiffen'd feet; as on the tomb she strove To cast her body prone. Lampetie bright, Rushing in hope to aid, a shooting root Abruptly held. With lifted hands the third Her locks to tear attempted; but green leaves Tore off instead. Now this laments her legs, Bound with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the voice was masterful, the voice of the thoroughbred, when he gets in earnest. Brenton longed to stiffen himself against the mastery, but he could not. His ineffectual effort lent an edge of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the rim, and build up on that round and round with laces as before, until you have turned the saucer into a cup, about four inches across, and, maybe three inches high. Set this away to stiffen. Then finish the shape, by adding more coils, and drawing it in a little. When this has stiffened, make a "slip" or cream of clay and water, rub this all over the pot inside and out; use your fingers and a knife to make it smooth and ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... stumble at noontide, as in the dark. A man may starve, outside of barns filled with plenty, and his lips may be parched with thirst, though he is within sight of a broad river flowing in the sunshine. So a soul may stiffen into the death of self and sin, even though the voice that wakes the dead to a life of love be calling to it. Christ and His grace are yours if you will, but the invitations and beseechings of His mercy, the constant drawings of His love, the all-embracing offers of His forgiveness, may be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... head was up, her slim body drooped. Like a little wildwood flower wilting. So she remained for what seemed a very long time. Then suddenly he saw her body stiffen; her hands flew to her breast. The ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... man who, 'reft of wife, Thenceforward drags a maimed life? The economy of Heaven is dark; And wisest clerks have miss'd the mark, Why Human Buds, like this, should fall, More brief than fly ephemeral, That has his day; while shrivel'd crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years. Mother's prattle, mother's kiss, Baby fond, thou ne'er wilt miss. Rites, which custom does impose, Silver bells and baby clothes; Coral redder than those ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... refresh these old trees; well, my man, digging, found a box, or rather, the iron-work of a box, in the midst of which was the skeleton of a newly born infant." Monte Cristo felt the arm of Madame Danglars stiffen, while that of Villefort trembled. "A newly born infant," repeated ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with us since my mother died, the year after I was born. She is violently anti-liquor. Reluctantly, she condones Dad taking a snort now and then, but as soon as she saw Bish Ware, her face started to stiffen. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... he is," said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. He's started a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... But I thought I would come down, in case she made a descent and you wanted some one to stand by and stiffen you." ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... on his dying bed among the barbarous people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and, even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was 'Amplius'—Onward! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... tenderness, Hermione put her arms round the child's slim body. But even as she did so she remembered Vere's secret, shared with Emile and not with her. She could not abruptly loose her arms without surprising her child. But they seemed to her to stiffen, against her will, and her embrace was surely mechanical. She wondered if Vere noticed this, but she did not look ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... pause of complete silence. Mrs. Boyce's face might have been seen by a close observer to quiver and then stiffen as she stood in the light of the window, a tall and queenly figure in her sweeping black. But she said not a word, and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... death hearing the uniform he wore insulted by cowardly brutes without making a resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... (3) Stiffen the body and raise yourself up by the strength of your arms until you rest on your hands ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... however, were unknown to Jane. If you were in a temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen her own.... ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... clear and definite statement of the attitude of the Pope towards attendance at the English service helped to stiffen the backs of the English Catholics, and to determine even the waverers to stand firm; but in addition to this the question of the succession to the throne raised considerable discussion. Elizabeth was still without ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... faltered, the hand that held the lorgnette shook, her face seemed to stiffen and, in a low voice, she said to Reggie, who had pulled ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... we had better walk for the present," suggested Tad. "We shall stiffen up if we ride in our ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... be boxed, Fig. 285, D, that is, portions of the sides may be affixed to the top. These extra pieces are a help to stiffen the top and to keep it from warping. A boxed top may have the top board flush with the sides, Fig. 285, E. The disadvantage of this is that the top may shrink and part from the sides and give a bad appearance. The overlapping top, Fig. 285, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... now the fight was over the men began to stiffen, and several unexpectedly turned faint, it proving that though not a single man was seriously wounded, nearly every one of those who had followed Joe Cross in his gallant achievement of boarding the ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... This look seemed to stiffen him, and he sat perfectly erect upon his horse, with the pike-shaft resting upon his toe, as he told himself that he hoped if the men fired they would miss; that before he would run away, with Scar Markham to laugh at his flight, they might ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... anticipations, strange remembrances. He had never, from the day of his birth, been known to cry. When he was frightened or distressed the colour would pass slowly from his cheeks, and strange little gasping breaths would come from him; his body would stiffen and his hands clench. If he was angry the colour in his face would darken and his eyes half close, and it was then that he did, indeed, seem in the possession of some disastrous thraldom—but he was angry very seldom, and only with certain people; for the most part he was a happy ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... wanted. He thought it so ridiculous to make inquiries of strangers, before his own house, after his wife and children, and still more so, after himself, that he mentioned the first neighbour whose name occurred to him, Kirt Stiffen. All were silent, and looked at one another, till an old ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Korak slunk noiselessly around them to a point where he might get their scent as well as a better view of them, and scarce had he done so when he recognized them—they were the men who had fired upon him years before. His eyes blazed. He could feel the hairs upon his scalp stiffen at the roots. He watched them with the intentness of a panther about to spring ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hell's utmost bounds. No more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and retreat the shores; Swift o'er the waves we ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... demonstrated, but only the poor description in words of an habitual mood going far deeper into life than words can ever carry us. Without for a single moment falling off into the nullities of pantheism, neither did he for a single moment suffer his thought to stiffen and grow hard in the formal lines of a theological definition or a systematic credo. It remains firm enough to give the religious imagination consistency and a centre, yet luminous enough to give the spiritual faculty ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... has more of wind, And speedier through their inwards rouses up The icy currents which make their members quake. But more the oxen live by tranquil air, Nor e'er doth smoky torch of wrath applied, O'erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk, Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark, Pierced through by icy javelins of fear; But have their place half-way between the two— Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men: Though training make them equally refined, It leaves those pristine vestiges behind Of each mind's nature. Nor may ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... me. The wind, he said, was backing and we might look for this spell of weather to break up before long. Once past the Rame we should be right as ninepence and might run down the coast on a soldier's wind: it would stiffen a bit out yonder unless he was mistaken. He pulled out his pipe and lit it. Aft loomed the bulk of Mrs. Pengelly at the wheel. Save for a call now and again to warn us that the helm was down, to put about, she steered in silence. And she ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the joint gives very great pain, it is a grave mistake to put the knee in splints to prevent bending. What is wanted is to encourage bending as far as that can be done without much pain, so that the joint may not permanently stiffen. Even where, by the use of splints, permanent stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first of a slight bending, and then, with ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... "I thought of knocking at your door, as I passed," he said, with sympathetic apology, "but I was afraid I might disturb you. Isn't it glorious here? Quite like the old hill. Look at that lizard; he hasn't moved since he first saw me. Do you remember the one who used to steal our sugar, and then stiffen himself into stone on the edge of the bowl until he looked like an ornamental handle to it?" he continued, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... be said, it must be admitted that the Christian religion has something astonishing in it. Some will say, "This is because you were born in it." Far from it; I stiffen myself against it for this very reason, for fear this prejudice bias me. But although I am born in it, I cannot ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... to stiffen. The first paralysis of surprise was past. The heavy guns of the enemy opened up, and from scores of machine gun nests and pill boxes came a storm of bullets. The German officers had got their troops under some semblance ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... middle of an Election goes over to France to fight a duel, can hardly expect to win; he has all the morality of an English borough opposed to him,' she said; and seeing the young lady stiffen: 'Oh! the duel is positive,' she dropped her voice. 'With the husband. Who else could it be? And returns invalided. That is evidence. My nephew Palmet has it from Vivian Ducie, and he is acquainted with her tolerably intimately, and the story is, she was overtaken in her flight in the night, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken—each gem with a flaw— Be comforted thou! For rising in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... assistance. It was too late; for Alcantara was already staggering under the loss of blood, and soon fell to the ground. Pizarro threw himself on his invaders, like a lion roused in his lair, and dealt his blows with as much rapidity and force, as if age had no power to stiffen his limbs. "What ho!" he cried, "traitors! have you come to kill me in my own house?" The conspirators drew back for a moment, as two of their body fell under Pizarro's sword; but they quickly rallied, and, from their superior numbers, fought at great advantage by relieving one another in the assault. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... adverse fate, Have made our meeting all too late; Yet this may Argentine, As boon from ancient comrade, crave— A Christian's Mass, a soldier's grave." Bruce pressed his dying hand—its grasp Kindly replied; but, in his clasp It stiffen'd and grew cold— And, "O farewell!" the victor cried, Of chivalry the flower and pride, The arm in battle bold, The courteous mien, the noble race, The stainless faith, the manly face! Bid Ninian's convent light their shrine, For late-wake of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... hungry Tommies! Surely this must be a "bon front." I am afraid things looked vastly different after the Hun attempt to smash through the 55th division here in the following April. It was with the probability of this attack in view that the 42nd division began to stiffen the defences, and as well as holding the line we interested ourselves in digging, concreting ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... its bottom. As he did so, of his own volition he checked himself. Dead ahead he saw horses scattered about, and beyond the horses, rising limply in the noon haze, a thin column of smoke. Also, he felt both his riders stiffen. Then on the midday hush rose the crack of firearms from ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... father, Oliver, wishes me to go out on the pond, and bring home the sled we left there, the other night, in the storm. The wind has come out in the north-west, and there is every prospect of a bitter cold night. It has begun to stiffen already, and, before morning, the sled may be locked ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... time to call worshippers to prayer. I know I slightly chilled to it—it was so exquisitely sweet and yet as passionless as the ring of steel on a frosty night. And I knew the effect on the men beneath me was electrical. I could feel them stiffen and chill to it as I had stiffened and chilled. And yet ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... pain or death there is but one thing more full of suggestion than the faint smell of antiseptics,—the gruesome, cleanly, unpleasant odour,—that is, the unnatural sound of the whispering of hushed voices. Lord Walderhurst turned cold, and felt it necessary to stiffen his spine when he heard his servant's answer and the tone in which ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,' that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys, too, and fruition,—'Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their many home lands and the ingredients available in their new land produced tasty dishes that have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. Their cooking was truly a folk art requiring much intuitive knowledge, for recipes contained measurements such as "flour to stiffen," "butter the size of a walnut," and "large as an apple." Many of the recipes have been made more exact and standardized providing us with a regional cookery ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... brave, full of resources, confident of ultimate triumph." The student at Johns Hopkins University who knew him best said: "No strain of physical wear or suffering, no pressure of worldly fret, no amount of dealing with what are called 'the hard facts of experience', could stiffen or dampen or deaden the inborn exuberance of his nature, which escaped incessantly into a realm of beauty, of wonder, of joy, and of hope." Certainly the great bulk of his published lectures and his poems bear out this impression. His brother, Mr. Clifford Lanier, says that ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... scenes, and the processes connected with the culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about them. The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... or soda, or even alumina, a fusible double silicate will be formed. Thus lime, soda, oxide of iron, and clay, are fluxes when properly used; but since lime, clay (and oxide of iron if there be any tendency to form peroxide), are of themselves infusible, any excess of these fluxes would tend to stiffen and render pasty the resulting slag. So, too, soda, which is a very strong base, may act prejudicially if it be in sufficient excess to set free notable quantities of lime and magnesia, which but for that excess would exist in combination as complex fusible silicates. There are many minerals which ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... stiffen and crouch, thought of him even in that horrible moment; and she gripped his arm with all her might. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled, the colour left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be now set in motion, even this large quantity of emulsion will stiffen in at least an hour and a half. It may be further remarked that, the outside of the kettle being black, the lid being light-tight, and all the apertures in it being firmly closed, nearly the whole process can be conducted by daylight, ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... "Mis' Polly stiffen' up like a ramrod. 'It mus' be unde'stood, Samuel,' says she, 'dat w'en I 'sumes cha'ge er yo' house, dere ain' gwine ter be no 'vided 'sponsibility; an' as fer dis Julia, me an' her couldn' git 'long tergether nohow. Ef I ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... us you, I didn't like it. None of us did. You were CO then, and we thought maybe you were a sickman even if you didn't look like it, and you kept sort of sticking up for the sick corps whenever it was mentioned. Well, that's all right. New officer in charge, trying to stiffen up discipline, et cetera and so forth. But now we've got Frendon for CO. You're in the same boat as the rest of us, and you still keep insisting that the sickmen are O.K. But you're a ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... slow, and the windless heat became so oppressive to his impatience, that he was beginning to think of giving up the idle venture, when suddenly he came face to face with a perpendicular and impassable wall of cliff. This curt arrest to his progress was just what was needed to stiffen his wavering resolution. He understood the defiance which his ready fancy had found in the stare of the eagle. Well, he had accepted the challenge. He would not be baffled by a rock. If he could not climb over it, he would go round it; but ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... will come when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd at the ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... came to the side of the sofa, and passing his hand beneath the boy's belly, felt his lovely prick, but it was not stiff. He separated the thighs a little, and tickled his testicles, still it would not stiffen. He then skinned it, and stooping took the head between his lips. This had no better effect. He again commenced to birch him, stopping for a moment to rub his testicles and prick with eau ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... and the striking-muscles of his arms and shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered apprehensively into ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... with the wine of love, from languishing in the seductive embrace of the beautiful bathing nymph, Bathsheba, heard the voice of Nathan. Surely God is no respecter of persons, and will speak to all classes if the people will not stiffen their necks ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... man who had a grievance, a wound where there had been a grievance or a fear that he might have something to complain of in the future, contributed to the real original grievance until the trouble grew so that it appalled the officials and caused them to stiffen their necks. In this way the men and the management were being wedged farther and farther apart. Finally, the general manager, foreseeing what war would cost the company and the employees, made an effort to reach a settlement, but the very effort ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... kindly to my courting? Don't want anything to do with me at all?" His forced laugh had a harshness in it that caused the young man's muscles to stiffen. He took a sly glance at the girl and saw her ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... How romantic, how inexpressibly delightful, that idea seems to some minds! Ay, even when the weight of years begins to stiffen the joints and slack the cords of life the memory of God's great, wild, untrammelled, beautiful wilderness comes over the spirit like a refreshing dream and restores for a time something like the pulse ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... came within a few feet of the rattlers. Then something seemed to stiffen the cattle. They tried to stop short, but the press of the beasts behind them would not permit of this. For a few seconds it looked as if the impetus of the cattle in the rear would shove the others on, in spite of ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... clasping it, while his mind sank into a state of torpid, passive suffering, growing nearer to the dreamy indifference which precedes death. His cloak had been torn away in the first rush of the inundation, and the wet coat began to stiffen in the wind, from ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... love him. And apparently he could not. He let her go after a minute, and flung himself down by her in just the attitude that the knock on the door, fifteen months ago, had interrupted. And Marjorie tried not to stiffen herself, and not to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel that a perfect stranger was doing something he had ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... we all got down to work, and presently had a regular production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen, cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a wonderful-looking kite. Happily, ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... dark; soon he emerged again and glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense of ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... rests are much better than long stops, which have a tendency to stiffen the muscles. The walker on a long tramp must pay especial attention to the care of his feet. They should be bathed frequently in cold water to which a little alum has been added. A rough place or crease in the stocking will sometimes cause ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. She ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reasoning we would conclude that from the form of the neck, many objects are indicated, and the material of which it is composed would give reason to turn all its powers of thought, to ask why it is so formed, as to twist, bend, straighten, stiffen and relax at will, to suit so many purposes? A very tough skin—a sheathe—surrounds the neck with blood vessels, nerves, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia, glands great and small, throat and trachea. In bones we find ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... till the clouds of steam take the shadowy form of a spectral thing, A tyrant terror that threatens our lives, whilst we rub and scrub, whilst we rinse and wring. Well, cheer up, BET, girl, stiffen your lip, and straighten your back. You have finished your grub, So to work once more; if our champions score, we may find a new end to this Tale of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... limbs frigidly Stiffen too rigidly, Decently, kindly, Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close them, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... account certainly." She emphasized the my so distinctly that I was sure she suspected. That dreadful thought caused me to stiffen my manner, and as hers had been strangely stiff all the afternoon, we were awfully polite to each other during supper. Each of us insisted upon paying the bill and feeing the waiter. It was terrible. I couldn't afford to pay it all, and yet I was too silly to give in gracefully, especially ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... back, feeling my hair rise and stiffen. The sound echoed and reverberated through the silent night, and then died away; but before it had done so I had sprung to the great beam and closed the upper gate. As I did so I caught sight of the old man trembling and shaking at the door of the cottage. I called to him to go and watch the upper ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... into small portions in order that there may be no large holes and the fermentation be equal throughout. The loaf is baked in order to kill the ferment, to render the starch soluble, to expand the carbonic acid gas and drive off the alcohol, to stiffen the gluten and to form a crust which shall have a pleasant flavor. Much of the indigestibility of bread is owing to the imperfect baking; unless the interior of the loaf has reached the sterilizing point, 212 deg. F., the bacteria contained in the ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... stiffen. A change came over his whole appearance. He had the air of an actor who ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... will not shut me from my kind, And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with sighs a passing wind: . . . . . "Regret is dead, but love is more Than in the summers that are flown, For I myself with these have grown To something greater ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in anticipation of its touch, and shrank—shrank in every nerve though she made no outward ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... only wait. I had but one more shot, and wished to hold it till he should be close; but my torn hand was weak, and the bruised tendons had already begun to stiffen. Into that deep place, where bank and trees overhung, the sun did not come, and I felt the cold striking into my raw flesh. More than that, my weight upon my shoulder began to cut off the blood from my arm. I felt pricking in my flesh, my arm began to be numb, and I feared that ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... manifestation of Simon's ruthless determination always to have his own way in everything, then shifted a portion of her severity toward her nephew. "In a sense, Copley, I'm rather glad that he did. If there's one thing you need, it's a touch of adversity. Stiffen up, boy! I've done everything this morning that I propose to do for you; now go to Sheila and talk things over with her, as you ought to, instead of with ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... yon dwarf, of visage pale and wan; A sketch of life, a remnant of a man! Whose livid lips, as now he moulds a grin, Like charnel doors disclose the waste within; Whose stiffen'd joints within their sockets grind, Like gibbets creaking to the passing wind; Whose shrivell'd skin with much adhesion clings His bones around in hard compacted rings, If veins there were, no blood beneath could force, Unless by miracle, its trickling course;— Yet even he within that ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... insisted Merley. "Why, I can hardly move now," and he seemed to stiffen all over, though there was no visible sign ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... thousand fiery darts are piercing my brain. Ah, don't touch me, pray don't." By this time his haggard eyes had the appearance of being ready to start from their sockets; his head fell back, and the lower extremities of the body began to stiffen. Valentine uttered a cry of horror; Morrel took her in his arms, as if to defend her from some unknown danger. "M. d'Avrigny, M. d'Avrigny," cried she, in a stifled voice. "Help, help!" Barrois turned round and with a great effort ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unceasingly, and the desolation, the horror, were indescribable, as the sable wings of the Destroyer hung over the doomed city. Out of her ten fellow-graduates, four slept in the cemetery. The night before she had watched beside another, and at dawn saw the limbs stiffen and the eyes grow sightless. Among her former schoolmates the contagion had been particularly fatal, and, fearless of danger, she had nursed two of them. As she stood fanning herself, Clara entered hurriedly, and, sinking into a chair, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... course, there is the record of Russia to be considered. Russia has always been beaten at the start of a war. It has taken months of defeat to stiffen the Russians to a real fight. Napoleon marched to Moscow fairly easily, though he did have some hard fights, like the one at Borodino, on the way. But he had a dreadful time getting back, and that was what destroyed him. After that Leipzic and ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... kept his ears steadily closed to them. At last the noise grew so loud that he lost patience, and he stooped to pick up a stone to hurl into the midst of the clamour, when suddenly his arm seemed to stiffen, and the next moment ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... son of Northland, Dire and only son of Winter, Let my members not be stiffened, Neither ears, nor feet, nor fingers, Neither let my head be frozen. Thou hast other things to feed on, Many other beads to stiffen; Leave in peace the flesh of heroes, Let this minstrel pass in safety, Freeze the swamps, and lakes, and rivers, Fens and forests, bills and valleys; Let the cold stones grow still colder, Freeze the willows ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Malotte watched the hunted look in Glenister's face grow wilder and then stiffen into the stubbornness of a man at bay. The posse was at the door now, knocking. The three inside stood rigid and strained. Then Glenister tossed his burden ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... presentiment that in a day or two he would recall some omitted and wretchedly important child. Quick hoof-beats made him look up, and Mr. McLean passed like a wind. The Governor absently watched him go, and saw the pony hunch and stiffen in the check of his speed when Lin overtook his companions. Down there in the distance they took a side street, and Barker rejoicingly remembered one more name and wrote it as he walked. In a few minutes he had come to the shops, and met face ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... these principles into practice that there arose the numerous difficulties that at times seemed insurmountable. But, according to another co-worker, "Edison seemed pleased when he used to run up against a serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time I thought I was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag. That was in my green days, and I soon learned that the failure ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... teeth, and exposed my breast to the genial influences of the refreshing sea-breeze, which at sunrise, as this was, is indescribably pleasant. But what a gloomy prospect was now before me!! I was growing weaker every minute; my limbs were beginning to stiffen and the muscles to contract, and I thought there was no help probably nearer than Ain Tarad; what was to be done? I could not travel the distance, and I must perish miserably by slow degrees, from starvation and exhaustion, in the dreary desert; far better, thought ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... some areas that the federal government should not leave and should address and address strongly. One of these areas is the problem of illegal immigration. After years of neglect, this administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the protection of our borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And tonight, I announce I will sign an executive order to deny federal contracts to businesses ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in place with one nail each and a stay lath fastened on to hold them in place. Test the ends with your plumb-level and when they are found to be correct nail all the rafters securely in place and stiffen the centre pair with a piece called a "collar." Add four purlins set at right angles to the rafters and take off your hat and give three cheers and do not forget to nail a green bough to your roof tree in accordance with the ancient and ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... should go to a good maker and have them of patent leather, which is smarter and cleaner than blacking leather. For wear in tropical countries, I found that boots which have the foot part of patent leather and the leg of morocco, with a thin leather lining to stiffen and keep the leg part in place, are cooler and more comfortable than any other kind. A pair of boot-hooks will be required for putting them on, and a boot-jack for taking them off. A little Lucca oil used occasionally prevents patent leather from cracking. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes |
