"Stiffening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the stiffening body of Lieutenant Burroughs, alias Captain Strom, who had just purchased his life and that of Lenore at the cost of his own. Was his undeserved shame now to follow him to his grave? Quirl was no lawyer, and he decided not to take any chances with ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... it to Weedon Moore, that's all," he ventured, and then, in the stiffening of her whole body, he saw it was a mistake even to mention Moore. Her large charity made her fiercely partisan. He ventured the audacious personal appeal. "Give me some, Amabel, if you've really got so much. Let me put on some plays, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... threatens, he fears; Nequissimum hunc servum puto, I account this man a very drudge." And as he follows it, [5423]"Is this no small servitude for an enamourite to be every hour combing his head, stiffening his beard, perfuming his hair, washing his face with sweet water, painting, curling, and not to come abroad but sprucely crowned, decked, and apparelled?" Yet these are but toys in respect, to go to the barber, baths, theatres, &c., he must attend upon ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... they remained silently in their exposed position, their limbs stiffening with cold, drenched continually with spray, and occasionally overwhelmed by the crest of a monstrous wave. Sometimes a rocket from the lightship shot athwart the dark sky, and at all times her lights gleamed like faint stars far away ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... thro' visions, ghastly clear, Bearing a blast of wrath from realms below, And stiffening each rising hair with dread, Came out of dream-land Fear, And, loud and awful, bade The shriek ring out at midnight's witching hour, And brooded, stern with woe, Above the inner house, the woman's bower. And seers inspired did read the dream on oaths, Chanting ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... stickiness of blood on his face, and the sting of a deep cut somewhere upon it. He saw that Cain was straightening over a mangled form; that Kriijorl had overcome odds of two to one. The breeder at his own feet had died swiftly of a deftly broken neck, a reddened dirk still clutched in his stiffening fingers. ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... But their work was done. She had found courage, resolution, as women do, in a good cry. With his hand covering the upper part of his face whether to conceal his eyes or to shut out an unbearable sight, he was stiffening up in his corner to his usual poker-like consistency. She regarded him in silence. His thin obstinate lips moved. He uttered the name of the cousin—the man, you remember, who did not approve of the Fynes, and whom rightly or wrongly ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... cases these oo-o-ah exercises are insufficient because the throatiness of tone is partly brought about by a stiffening of the throat in general. The oo-o-ah must then be preceded by staccato exercises upon the syllable Koo, which have the effect not only of throwing the tone forward, but also of making the throat supple. Make the experiment before ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... won't take him!" snarled Cullin, wrath and temper stiffening his back, "but the law shall, quick as I can fix it. Back to your cab, both of you!" he waved, for Ben, too, was bulkily climbing the platform steps. "Pull out at once and don't you stop for ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... of materials for the use of Anne Boleyn in the time of her prosperity, bokeram frequently appears for "lyning and taynting" (?) gowns, lining sleeves, cloaks, a bed, etc., but it can scarcely have been for mere stiffening, as the colour of the buckram is generally specified as the same ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... 11th showed a stiffening of the enemy's resistance on the general line of the Wadi Sukereir, with centre about El Kustineh; the Hebron group, after an ineffective demonstration in the direction of Arak el Menshiye on the 10th, retired north-east and prolonged the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... life Jimmy remembered the broken-hearted look in Christine's eyes when she flung herself down by the fast-stiffening body of her favourite. And now she was looking like that again; looking at him as if he had broken her heart—as if—— Jimmy Challoner backed a step; his ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... its chill, had closed down upon the camp, covering everything with a half-frozen rime, dropping sullenly like rain from such things as came near the fire, and stiffening into ice in ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... guiding hands directed its course to the left, down the brae, and along the over-familiar road to the station. The old Clarence must have recognised with a sigh that its roaming days were definitely over, and that henceforth, as long as its creaking axles and stiffening springs held together, it could only look forward to an uneventful life of monotonous routine in a cold, grey Northern land; and, between ourselves, these feelings are not ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... there is perhaps no other country which has more to give than Canada in the shape of discipline; of that kind of mental, moral, and physical tonic which makes for swift, sure character-development, and the stiffening and bracing of the human fibers. In English life there has been of late years a rather serious scarcity of this tonic influence. Canada is very rich in her supply of it; but the tonic is too potent for the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... constitution anyone must have to endure such friendship! I have often seen the temperature in the Siberian steppes fall to more than forty degrees below freezing point! I have felt, notwithstanding my reindeer coat, my heart growing chill, my limbs stiffening, my feet freezing in triple woolen socks; I have seen my sleigh horses covered with a coating of ice, their breath congealed at their nostrils. I have seen the brandy in my flask change into hard stone, on which not even my knife could make ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... is doubtless consumed in the arts—as starch for stiffening linens, &c., and for other purposes not coming under the term of food, but I have purposely left out in the calculation about 30,000 to 40,000 quarters of rice in the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Bagdad venture of the German Higher Command proving hopeless before it was started, a great volume of reinforcements might be diverted to Southern Palestine with Turkish divisions from the Salonika front and a stiffening of German battalions spared from Europe in consequence of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... ain't a man on the pay roll we can't do without," Hawkins retorted, his neck stiffening with resentment. "It's a kinda rusty trick, though, Lone, quittin' without notice and leaving ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... make more than two years ago? I have often thought I would take them to you; but sister Stanhope said I had better wait, as you would call when you wanted them. I starched and ironed them all up nice for you; but I am sure the stiffening is all out, and they are as yellow as saffron ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the upper arches are three irregular-shaped openings, arranged pyramidally, the two lower being quatrefoiled, the upper sexfoiled. The whole is a curious mixture of vertical and flowing lines. They represent a design, as it were, of which the tracery is arrested half-way in its process of stiffening from the curved lines of the Decorated style to the straight of the Perpendicular. Here, as in the clerestory, the mouldings are delicately varied. The central shafts alone of the mullions have capitals. On ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... a second, for the worst was yet to come. Thinking to compliment Di, and honour the man who had brought their nephew out of captivity, they had arranged that Captain March should take Lady Diana Vandyke in to dinner. The expression on her face and the stiffening of his muscles had shown this plan to be impossible, to say nothing of Major Vandyke's mad-bull glare. Now, at an instant's warning, there would have to be a general post, and changing of partners; and the ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Buller set about his task in a slow, deliberate, but pertinacious fashion. It cannot be denied, however, that the pertinacity was largely due to the stiffening counsel of Roberts and the soldierly firmness of White who refused to acquiesce in the suggestion of surrender. Let it be acknowledged that Buller's was the hardest problem of the war, and that he solved it. The mere acknowledgment ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... disconnect them. Sooner or later every transgressor must be humbled; he must fall—by judgment, or by penitence—before the sword of excision, or into the arms of mercy. Happy for us if external visitations produce internal prostration of spirit; if, instead of stiffening ourselves into resistance, we bend to the inflictions of parental chastisement; and if present and temporary sufferings excite a feeling which will supersede the necessity of future and more ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... but choked it off when he noted the angry stiffening of mademoiselle's figure. Somehow, her veiled countenance was impressive of lingering, bitter emotions. She was a Basque, and that was a primitive race. She was probably bold enough and hardy enough to fulfill her mission. She had plenty of courage and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... stiffening her jaw rather ominously, "and it's just about time that he learned that he isn't always going to have it, too! It's very easy for him to have me do anything that is hard and stupid——Do you suppose," she broke off, suddenly, "that I'm so anxious to go to the Duers' dinner? I wouldn't care if ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dreadful chaos of snow-drifts, or snow-chasms, towards a point of rock, which, being turned, should expose only another interminable succession of the same character—might that be endured by ebbing spirits, by stiffening limbs, by the ghastly darkness that was now beginning to gather upon the inner eye? And, if once despair became triumphant, all the little arrear of physical strength would ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... books Philip had ever read worked together in his mind to produce these melancholy suggestions. Helen laughed, and instantly felt a stiffening withdrawal of her ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... ruins of Kelpie! The consul saw the ladies stiffening with indignation at this trespass upon their possible rights and probable privileges, and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... possibilities of its extension. You see, it is such a beautiful little army, and the dear people don't quite understand what to do with it. The theory is that it is an instructional nucleus round which the militia of the country will rally, and from which they will get a stiffening in time of danger. Yet other people consider that the army should be built, like a pair of lazy tongs—on the principle of elasticity and extension—so that in time of need it may fill up its skeleton battalions ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... and sat up, stiffening, as if half inclined to be offended, even with this very nice ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... been wounded in the head and at some time during the long hours of darkness between sunset and dawn the bandage had partly slipped off, and hemorrhage had begun. The blood had run down on his neck and shoulders, coagulating and stiffening as it flowed, until it had formed a large, red, spongy mass around his neck and on his naked back between the shoulder-blades. This, with the coal-black hair, the chalky face partly buried in mud, and the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... fled, And, wroth, as with the arm that missed a parent, The wretched man drove home unto his breast The abhorrent steel; yet ever, while dim sense Struggled within the fast-expiring soul— Feebler, and feebler still, his stiffening arms Clung to that virgin form—and every gasp Of his last breath with bloody dews distained The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So Lies death embracing ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wheeling days Until the cord goes slack, Until the very heartstring frays, Until the stiffening back Can ply no more; keep then the door, And, thankful in the sun, Watch you the same unending ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... not do so, as her courage could not brook the idea of confessing that she was vanquished by the persecution she endured. She certainly earned her bread, she did not steal the Rebufats' hospitality; and this conviction satisfied her pride. So she remained there to continue the struggle, stiffening herself and living on with the one thought of resistance. Her plan was to do her work in silence, and revenge herself for all harsh treatment by mute contempt. She knew that her uncle derived too much advantage from her to listen readily ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... hundreds were lying between some sheets folded at the bottom of a drawer in which he looked. But he cannot stop for more thorough investigation; a dreadful haste pursues him like a thousand fiends. He drags Anethe's stiffening body into the house, and leaves it on the kitchen floor. If the thought crosses his mind to set fire to the house and burn up his two victims, he dares not do it: it will make a fatal bonfire to light his homeward way; besides, it is useless, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... arms, eyes closed, with the blood stiffening on her face; and let him bear her whither he would. She seemed to sense his strength and mastery, his tender care and complete command of the situation. And, like a hurt and tired child, outworn and suffering, she yielded ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... crept to the doorway of the tomb. He saw Atma prostrate on the damp sepulchral mould, his face buried in his hands, and beside him lay still, and cold, and lifeless, a girl attired in bridal finery, with jewels gleaming on her dark hair and on her stiffening ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... Sioux and Cheyenne; away, yelling shrill warning, go warrior and chief; away, down stream, past the stiffening form of the brave fellow they killed; away past the station where the loop-holes blaze with rifle-shots and ring with exultant cheers; away across the road and down the winding valley, and so far to the north and the sheltering arms of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... what did he expect? He was not usually bashful, he was no coward; there was nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to what he believed was his first real passion. But he could do nothing. He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was stiffening into a ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... boat was to be reconstructed was not likely to be overflowed more than a foot by the next high tide, a month later, an excavation was made wherein to build the steamer that she might certainly come afloat at the desired time. Sixty holes had to be made in the iron plates so that the four stiffening timbers could be attached to the bottom to prevent the craft from breaking in two under the extra-heavy boiler. Inside, cross timbers were also added to resist the strain. On, December 17th, two steamers appeared ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... heat, Wrote variations of the seaside joke We all do know and always loved so well, And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves Anon Will in that self-same room, with tattered quilt Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands, All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts, Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more, So that we may expect it not in vain, The joke of how with curses deep and coarse Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove. So ye ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... you make the stroke. Most players seem to fix in their minds the appearance of the angles which are presented by the position of the arms, legs, and club shaft, and it is largely the desire to retain these angles which results in their moving their heads and stiffening their muscles so that there is no freedom in the swing. There is only one point which vitally affects the stroke, and the only reason why that should be kept constant is that you are enabled to see your ball clearly. That is the pivotal point marked at the base of the neck, and a line drawn ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... The brute seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's feet before stiffening in death. Like the great automaton it was, it had scented the human beings just as the bull had scented them, "fussed" just as he had fussed, charged as he had charged, and died ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... me that I was unable to make good to the degree of many of our friends in purely commercial lines. All you have ever said is the truth. A banking house pays low for its brains. My God!" he cried stiffening out in the chair and clenching his fists, "it pays low for ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... back in a pompadour. When he was angry or excited, it actually rose on his scalp like wire. Hap's counsel made a great fuss over Mart's pompadour and the part it sort of played in egging Hap on. The sight of it, stiffening and rising the way it did maddened Ruggam so that he beat it down hysterically in retaliation for the many grudges he fancied he owed the officer. No, it was all right to make the sentence life-imprisonment, only it should have been ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... in his hiding-place. They had laid Craig down on a couch and were endeavoring to revive him. Some one had already sent for a doctor, but the aconite was working quickly on its victim, and he was slowly stiffening out. Elaine was frantic. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... minutes the two lay thus, and then a sudden convulsion of the giant carcass at the man's side, a tremor, and a stiffening brought Tarzan to his knees beside the crocodile. To his utter amazement he found that the beast was dead. The slim knife had found a vulnerable spot in ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stiffening wrist, makes writing an operation so slow and painful to me, that I should not so soon have troubled you with an acknowledgment of your favor of the 8th, but for the request it contained of my consent to the publication of my letter of June the 26th. No, my dear Sir, not for the world. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... so emphatic," Jack answered. His voice was still pleasant, but shot with something metallic. The very shadow of him seemed to stiffen with the stiffening ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... "I can't allow you to tire yourself tonight, and run the risk of stiffening in the wrist tomorrow. In strength you are superior to de Mezy, and in wind far better. You should have no trouble with him. Watch his eye and stand for a while on the defensive. One of his habits, will soon wear himself down, and then he will be ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... "Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible. They've been bowing and scraping until there's a permanent ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... but a momentary stiffening of the whole powerful frame, an instant's flash of the ruling passion hidden within that very secretive soul. Then he once more turned towards her, the rigid lines of his face relaxed, he broke into a pleasant laugh, and with the most elaborate and most ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... his mother's return. Standing beside the crib, and gazing down at the rosy cheeks and curling locks, nestled against the pillow, Beulah's thoughts winged along the tear-stained past, to the hour when Lilly had been placed in her arms, by emaciated hands stiffening in death. For six years she had held, and hushed, and caressed her dying father's last charge, and now strange, ruthless fingers had torn the clinging heart-strings from the idol. There were no sobs, nor groans, to voice ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... qualities you will find in it—dramatic inventiveness, humor and pathos, eloquence, elfin glamor and the like—you must bless the original author: of these things I have only the usufruct. To me the play owes nothing but the stiffening of civistic conscience that has been crammed in. Modest? Not a bit of it. It is my civistic conscience that makes a man of me and (incidentally) ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... one knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... already so near it that he could not stop. The boat was carried out, the poor Tin Soldier stiffening himself as much as he could, and no one could say that he moved an eyelid. The boat whirled round three or four times, and was full of water to the very edge—it must sink. The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... countenance—a ghastly smile. And above his hissing breath, that gushed between his lips with the sound of air pumped through the fine mesh of a colander, there rose a still more ghastly croak of exultation and of triumph. Laboriously he wrote. A few words, and the pencil dropped from his stiffening fingers into the snow. Around his neck he wore a long red scarf held together by a big brass pin, and to this pin ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... upon her couch stiffening, there unheeded, the God of heaven only knowing at what moment ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... superintendent, and the master-mechanic were getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through the whirling snow and stopped at the semaphore. So a liner shaken in the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by stiffening spray, rides at last, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... it in the Mendi country, near Sherbro; he describes it as a vine with dense bark, which yields the gum when hacked, and which becomes soft and porous when old. The juice is milk-white, thick, and glutinous, soon stiffening, darkening, and hardening without aid of art. I should like to see the raw material tried for making waterproofs in the tropics, where the best vulcanized articles never last. The Ndambo tree has been traced a hundred miles inland from the Liberian ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... from underground; While silence paused to plan some ill, Thwarted by thunder growling still. All in the darkness of the place With lightning playing on its face, I fumbled with the corpse's ring To which the dead hands seemed to cling; The stiffening joints were loth to play— ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... but unashamed, they were tragic to the Princess in spite of the dissimulation that, with the return of comparative confidence, was so promptly to operate. How tragic, in essence, the very change made vivid, the instant stiffening of the spring of pride—this for possible defence if not for possible aggression. Pride indeed, the next moment, had become the mantle caught up for protection and perversity; she flung it round her as a denial of any loss of her freedom. To be doomed was, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... of eighteen, was then a student at Cracow), beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibers of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... upon the hopeless monotony of life in remote farmhouses with one of her phenomenal moods. They come like besoms of destruction, but they scatter the web of stifling routine; they fling into the stiffening pool the stone which jars the atoms ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... walked over to the body. It was stiffening rapidly, and the wide-open eyes glared up glassily to the ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... wire ropes of still greater tenacity, permitted the construction of road bridges of this type with spans at that time impossible with any other system of construction. The suspension bridge dispenses with the compression member required in girders and with a good deal of the stiffening required in metal arches. On the other hand, suspension bridges require lofty towers and massive anchorages. The defect of the suspension bridge is its flexibility. It can be stiffened by girders and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... heavenwards, and its mouth gaping open, as if longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... horse feels the lines stiffening in his hands; and the harness soon becomes so dry and brittle that it cracks and perhaps breaks ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... a stiffening of Miss Sally's back as she walked ahead of him, and even Eliph' Hewlitt could not fail to observe it. It told plainly that if he could have seen her lips he would have seen them close firmly, and he made haste to ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... last, cold; her arm was stiffening in the position in which he had left it; in a necessary forcible gentleness he composed her body. But he didn't hide her—not yet—with a sheet. That would follow soon enough. The blueness was receding, leaving her pinched, but white. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... down the narrow asphalt of the parkway. At eleven o'clock, to lessen her stiffening of joints, she walked twice the circumference of the fenced-in inclosure, finally sitting again, this time beneath a gaunt oleander that ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... fair to expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understand. I ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to crossing the difficult places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and more tenderly, if there had not been the consciousness of my financial dependence on her always stiffening my pride, I think she would have moved with me from the outset, and left the Liberals with me. But she did not get any inkling of the ends I sought in my change of sides. It must have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. She had, I knew—for surely I knew it then—an immense capacity ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... baby! the baby! She was stiffening like a rod before his very eyes. How did his words explain his having his arm round the unfortunate child? His conscience was so clean that the dear little man actually overlooked the fact that it wasn't my presence in the carriage, but his ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... forward, across his littered table, beyond his bookcases, through his thick-lensed glasses, as if confronting the stiffening legend of a husband too old, too dry, too unpliable; the victim, finally, of a sudden turn that was peculiarly malapropos and disrelishing, the head of a household tricked rather ridiculously ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the night, when deepest sleep Falls upon men, fear seiz'd me, all my bones Trembled, and every stiffening hair rose up. A spirit pass'd before me, but I saw No form thereof. I knew that there it stood, Even though my straining eyes discern'd it not. Then from its moveless lips a voice burst forth, "Is man more just than God? Is mortal man More pure than He who made him? Lo, he puts No trust in those ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... the partners. Lockyer was archaic, Sanders an antique; Benchley, actually only about fifty-five, had the air of one born in the grandfather class. Lockyer the son dyed his hair and affected jauntiness, but was in fact not many years younger than Benchley and had the stiffening jerky legs of one paying for a lively youth. Norman was thirty-seven—at the age the Greeks extolled as divine because it means all the best of youth combined with all the best of manhood. Some people ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... writing this book is to brush the cobwebs of ignorance from these dwarfed minds and help to point them to "the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world," and if I can be instrumental in this mission I will not only open the eyes of the followers of Catholicism, but I will put stiffening into the backbone of Protestantism and help them to brand this idolatrous doctrine of Catholicism wherever she may dare to ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... were reckless of my instructions, and I've sent for you to show, once and for all, what it has cost. Stand aside there!" he said sternly to the men, whom some instinct of pity had prompted to gather between them and the stiffening forms of the dead. "There are your hunters,—two of my best men, Mr. Davies, and who but ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... peered about him again and again in the gathering darkness, in the vain hope of discovering something that could give him an atom of comfort. Then, whipping his numbed hands about his shoulders until they tingled, he attemped to remove his soaked and stiffening boots; but, owing to his shaky and uncertain seat, he was baffled in ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... answer. His kingdom silently awaited his coming so he struck out at a sharp pace. The run of the day before, in place of stiffening him, had put him in racing trim and he went like the wind. He was in playful mood. He danced and shied as each cloud-shadow struck him, a dim figure in the shade but shining red-chestnut in the sun patches. On every hand he saw dozens of places where he would have stopped willingly had not ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... wind, a yachtsman's gale. Four days out of six its cycle ran the same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to a healthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown. Midnight would find the sea smooth as a mirror, the heaving ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... generally recognize that any stiffening of the throat interferes with the correct action of the voice. Yet for some strange reason vocal students are very much inclined to form habits of throat stiffness. This constantly happens, in spite of the fact that teachers continually warn their pupils ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... that much that he says is true." Keith looked at him quickly, his form stiffening. "And I believe that all that he says is true," continued Norman; "and I am unwilling to stand by longer and see this method of procedure ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... lights of her house were just before her, offering succor, stiffening courage. It would be but a dash from the door of the cab to her own door. There was no second course, once the cab stopped. She felt that to lurk in its gloom would mean robbery, perhaps death. She thought ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... pa'tridge; he's an old buster," said Jimmy. And he straightened up, holding by the legs a fine cock partridge whose stiffening wings still beat his sides spasmodically. He had been scared-up in the neighboring woods, frightened by some hunter out of his native coverts. When he reached the unknown open places he was more frightened still and, as a frightened grouse always ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... "Munition Areas," as the public has learned to call them, of England and Scotland. That great spectacle, as it exists to-day—so inspiring in what it immediately suggests of human energy and human ingenuity, so appalling in its wider implications—testifies, in the first instance, to the fierce stiffening of England's resolve to win the war, and to win it at a lessened cost in life and suffering to our men in the field, which ran through the nation, after the second Battle of Ypres, towards the close of April, 1915. That ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for you," Roy answered, stiffening in his turn. But because of old days—because this unpromising specimen of manhood had incidentally brought him and Desmond together, he held out his hand. "'Fraid I lost my temper," he said casually, for form's sake. "But you put ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... upon her couch, and she could not have said why, burst into tears. She felt cold now, and broken, and her stiffening wound pained her. But nevertheless, as she lay upon the little velvet pillow, and wept her rare tears were strangling sobs, the very ache of her wound had a strange savour that she would not have exchanged ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... air first fills the lungs and the infant screams at the new sensation, to the day when fingers press down the resisting lids and straighten the stiffening limbs, we are forced to meet and to bear all manner of aggravations in nine tenths of our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... practical, everyday mind told him it was empty for the time being. But he felt queer and uncomfortable, nevertheless. He sneaked along the ledge to the cabin, flattened himself against the corner next the gray boulder and waited there for a minute. He felt the flesh stiffening on his jaws as he crept up to the window to look in. By standing on his toes, Casey's eyes came on a level with the lowest inch of glass,—the window was ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... drew upon his reserves of pride which were large. He would not awaken Obed, but, drawing the pistol and holding his fingers on trigger and hammer, he walked a little distance down the bank of the stream. That terrible p-u, p-u, p-u, suddenly sounded much closer at hand, and Ned shrank back, stiffening ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tried another angle. The sight of that lorgnette had a stiffening effect upon Billy ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... once, quoting some Frenchman, that she was 'good to consult about ideas.' Ah well!—at a great price had she won that praise. And with an unconscious stiffening of the frail hands lying on the arms of the chair, she thought of those bygone hours in which she had asked herself—'what remains?' Religious faith?—No!—Life was too horrible! Could such things have happened to her in a world ruled by a God?—that ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stiffening suddenly in backbone, as he saw the outlet opened by Maguire, between antagonizing Peter, and retracting his consent. "I don't play ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... under terrorism. As a rule, he is not so good nor gritty a man as the men he is displacing, and he lacks their fighting organization. He stands in dire need of stiffening and backing. His employers, the capitalists, draw their two remaining weapons, the ownership of which is debatable, but which they for the time being happen to control. These two weapons may be called the political ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... for the fight. Her domestic situation was deplorable; parliamentary government had been suspended; and nearly half the population of the Empire was in veiled or open revolt. Hundreds of thousands of Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs had joined the enemy, and some were stiffening the Piave front. But German demands were inexorable, and it was hoped that German tactics would supply the place of German troops. There were two battles in the offensive which began on 15 June, one in the mountains, the object of which was to turn the whole Italian front on ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... are more or less frequent. They are always serious, and often result in anchylosis (stiffening) of the joint or the death of the animal. The joints mostly punctured are the hock, fetlock, or knee, though other joints may, of course, suffer this injury. As the symptoms and treatment are much ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... certainly scream as it died. For Marielihou was a mighty hunter, and her long black body could be seen about the cliffs at any time of night or day, creeping and worming along, then, of a sudden, pointing and stiffening, and flashing on to her prey like the black ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... do we delay to let loose that fury, that is so terrible, when our nests are attacked? I feel my angry sting is stiffening, that sharp sting, with which we punish our enemies. Come, children, cast your cloaks to the winds, run, shout, tell Cleon what is happening, that he may march against this foe to our city, who deserves death, since he proposes to prevent ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... slapping of the chest and this stiffening of the frame was immediately apparent in his demeanor, for they were the visible manifestations of a firm will. He was more cheerful, answered inquiries more briskly, and was less affected by adverse criticism of his ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... him in a flushed, bewildered sort of way, not resisting; but his eyes were so gay and mischievous, and his quick smile so engaging that a breathless, uncertain smile began to edge her lips; and it remained stamped there, stiffening even after he had jumped into his cutter and had driven away, jingling joyously out into ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... are the fallen, who, with helpless faces Low in the dust, in stiffening ruin lay, Felt the hoofs beat, and heard the rattling traces As o'er us drove the chariots of ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the hair are fixed. They vary with the ages of female children, and there is a slight difference between the coiffure of the married and unmarried. The two partings on the top of the head and the chignon never vary. The amount of stiffening used is necessary, as the head is never covered out of doors. This arrangement will last in good order for a week or more—thanks ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... active improvement have died by stiffening at last into some routine. Thus the Gothic gaiety of the thirteenth century stiffening into the mere Gothic ugliness of the fifteenth. Thus the mighty wave of the Renaissance, whose crest was lifted to heaven, was touched by a wintry witchery of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Texan remained. The stiffening forms, grim in death, returned not even a groan to the wild shout of triumph that rung so mockingly though the deserted chambers of the slaughter-house. Victory declared for the wily tyrant—the black-hearted Santa Anna. Complete was the desolation which ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... got my note?" he inquired, stiffening up, yet determined to ignore her touch of sarcasm, and so preserve ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... struck Barnabas motionless; that brought him back slowly, slowly across that awful room to sink upon one knee above that pale, clenched hand, while, sweating, shuddering with loathing, he forced open those stiffening fingers and drew from their dead clutch something that he stared at with dilating eyes, and with white lips suddenly compressed, ere he hid it away in ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... and her glowing, gipsy beauty against the sober blacks and grays and faded cheeks of the gathering, looking like a Kentucky cardinal alighted in a henyard, felt her smile stiffening. Sudden and inexplicable panic and rebellion descended upon her; it seemed certain that if she heard Mrs. Wetherby say "proud of this dear girl of ours" once again she would scream. She disengaged her arm and declined ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... heard the last words. She felt herself stiffening slowly, while the living room almost faded from her sight. Perhaps, in that instant, some additional new circuit had closed in her mind, or some additional new channel had opened, for TT's purpose in tricking her into contact with the reckless, mocking beings ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... nothing to show. He was dead; and yet I could hardly believe that it was so. He had been so much alive; so full of schemes and enterprises. Nothing now was left but that crushed and haggard figure, stiffening on the bed; nothing, at least, that mortal senses could take cognizance of. It ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... as any of the runners; there was the nervous thrill in his voice. "On your marks!" They put their hands to the ground; he ran his eyes along them to see that all were placed. "Set!" There was the instant stiffening of muscles. Then from the revolver came a click. Irving had emptied the six chambers in starting the other races, ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... lady in white satin, brocade silk, and rich laces, would spend long hours knitting stockings for her husband's army, and that night after night would find her, in a long grey cloak, at the side of the wounded, hearing from stiffening lips the husky whisper, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... above has witnessed. There they clung, those two, in the actual shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening corpse ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... from his breast, dripped on the glistening grass. The surgeon who knelt beside him took the pistol from his clenched fingers, and gently pressed the lids over his glazing eyes. Not a word was uttered, but while the seconds sadly regarded the stiffening form, the surviving principal coolly drew out a cigar, lighted and placed it between his lips. The child's eyes had wandered to the latter from the pool of blood, and now in a shuddering ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... good boat," said Moise, smiling; "we'll fix heem easy." So saying, he took his ax and sauntered over to a half-dead cedar-tree, from which, without much difficulty, he cut some long splints. This they managed to lash inside the gunwale of the canoe, stiffening it considerably. The rent in the bottom they patched by means of their cement, and some waterproof material. They finished the patch with abundant spruce gum and tar, melted together and spread all over. When they were done their labors the Mary ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the setting free of many Turkish soldiers of good quality from all the Russian fronts for service elsewhere. We had hoped that our offensive in Syria might have been supported by the co-operation of the Russians. Instead, we felt the pinch of their defection in the stiffening of enemy resistance on our front by the transfer of good troops from the Caucasus ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... quarter—mixture should finish browning and stiffening and shrink slightly from the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... ranch, the boys were enthusiastically blistering palms and stiffening the muscles of their backs, turning the water away from the ditches that crossed the disputed tracts so that the trespassers there should have none in which to pan gold—or to pretend that they were panning gold. Since the whole ranch was irrigated by springs ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the elderly woman. "Your last bit of land—and to think it should go like that. I never dreamed I should have to say those words to my son." Then stiffening and turning to Collins. "But I did not come to complain, I came to see if justice cannot be done. This is robbery. That terrible man with the German name has robbed Arthur. It is quite plain. What ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... anguish over the impending doom of her brother. That the boy had all he could do to maintain his composure was manifest to every one. For a time it seemed that affection would submerge all other emotions; then came a quick stiffening of his body as though he were preparing himself to resist any further appeal to his tenderness. When he spoke ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... becomes a smooth black canal between two steep white banks; and the glassy water seems momentarily stiffening into the solider blackness of ice. Here and there thin films are already formed over it, and are being constantly broken apart by the treacherous current; a flake a foot square is jerked away and goes sliding beneath the slight transparent surface ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... suddenly, out of the darkness, so terribly that I was scared beyond screaming, two large red eyes glowed, over a mouth that trembled in fire. I started back in my seat, sick with fright, but I could not take my eyes away. I watched that horrid thing, with my hair stiffening on my head. Then in the room below it, the luminous figure of an owl gleamed out. That was not the worst, either. I heard that savage, "chacking" noise which brown owls make when they are perched. This great gleaming owl, five times greater than any earthly owl, was making that ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... shaken off till he has worried us to death; the sword-fish stabs us with his sword; and the thrasher whips us to death with his own slender, but strong and heavy body. Then, men harpoon us, shoot or entrap us; and make us into oil and candles and seats, and stiffening for gowns and umbrellas," said the bone, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sudden stiffening on the part of Olive, as though she heard someone about to enter the room. Sir Francis came in, shook hands cordially with Larssen, and all three made their way ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... of fear of living ladies," the scald said, "how much more, therefore, of their ghosts! I had rather meet Danes. For when one sees them there comes a stiffening of back ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... his great hearty laugh as he spoke, and his companion's involuntary stiffening went unnoticed. But on Mahony voicing his attitude with: "And his immortal soul, sir? Isn't it the church's duty to hope for a miracle? ... just as it is ours to keep the vital spark going," he made haste to take the edge off his words. "Now, now, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 deg.-50 deg. Centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuehne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... on the deck above his head. The Nathan Ross had run into rougher weather with her change of course; the wind was stiffening, and now and then a whisk of spray came aboard. He heard Jim Finch's bellowing commands.... Heard Mark's laughter. Mark and Jim were astern, fairly over ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... rolled over at the end, but the jolting had scattered their belongings and broken open the biscuit box, with the result that they had no provisions left, except the few scraps they could pick up and the meager contents of their food bag. As quickly as stiffening limbs would [Page 172] allow they collected their scattered articles, repacked the sledge and marched on towards the depot. Before them lay a long plateau, at the edge of which Scott knew that they would find a second cascade, and beneath it the region ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... he had gazed for awhile upon the glazed eyes and the parted lips. "Let me see if he be really dead." His request was complied with; and as he became convinced that life had indeed departed from the already stiffening form, he exclaimed joyfully: "It is well—I have not failed—my task is accomplished. Had it been otherwise I could yet ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... black screen of yew. The late roses looked miserable. Vixen would have liked to have brought them in and put them by the hall fire—the good old hearth with its pile of blazing logs, before which Nip the pointer was stretched at ease, his muscular toes stiffening themselves occasionally, as if he was standing at a ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who wandered by night into a witches' sabbath, and was disputed for by the witches, young and old. There was the light o' love who went into the desert to tempt the holy man; but he died as he yielded, and the arms stiffening by some miracle to iron-like rigidity, she was unable to free herself, and died of starvation, as her bondage loosened in decay. And I had increased my difficulties by adopting as part of my task the introduction ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... think what humiliation Christ suffered, that He might reconcile us to God, and make us friends again with our heavenly Father, and renew our broken love. Whatever be our faith and works, and however correct be our creed and conduct, if we are giving place to anger, if we are stiffening ourselves in strife and disdain, we are none of His, who was meek and lowly of heart. We may come to the Sanctuary with lips full of praises and eyes full of prayers, with devotion in our hearts and gifts in our hand, but God will spurn our worship and despise our gifts. It is not a small matter, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... platform and began pawing Kathlyn, and shortly after the younger sister followed. Neither of the girls noted the stiffening mustaches of the leopard. The animal rose, and his nostrils palpitated. He hated the dog with a hatred not unmixed with fear. Treachery is in the marrow of all cats. To breed them in captivity does not matter. ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... slipped his arms about her. He felt a hard stiffening of the muscles of her body, then a slow relaxing. He was laying her back gently, when she ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... sore at heart, she gave no sign. On the contrary, she revealed the sprightliest interest in the coming nuptials. Percival himself had told her the news within the hour after his interview with Mrs. Spofford. In his blind happiness, he had failed to notice the momentary stiffening of her body as if resisting a shock; he did not see the hurt, baffled look that darkened her eyes for a few seconds, and the swiftly passing pallor that stole into her face and vanished almost instantly. He saw only the challenging smile that ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... better education," adds the Princess, "he would have been an accomplished man." The suite of the Czar were not less surprising than their master; the Muscovites danced with the court ladies, and took the stiffening of their corsets for their bones. "The bones of these Germans are devilish hard!" said ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson |
