"Wrench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made no resistance, but seemed to be returning his caress. Then, with an angry wrench, she ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... not a heavy one; bit of iron place for a ladle; gun-cleaning apparatus; turnscrews; nipple- wrench; bottle of fine oil; spare nipples; spare screw for cock (see chapter on Gun-Fittings).......................2 1/2 Two macintosh water-bags, shaped for the pack saddle, of one gallon each, with funnel-shaped necks, and having wide mouth (empty) (see chapter ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... with the private secretary of the governor, the first and second in command, and several old residents. They would apply to the British consul for warrants for the arrest of the ruffianly marksmen, they would wrench them from the rails, and sentence them ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Right ahead, was a great gray ledge. There was a crack in the ledge big enough for a boy's foot. Billy was the boy to have his foot caught in it! He tried to pull it out, but the sudden wrench was not good for his foot, and there he stood yelling—he was ky-eying ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... great nervous strength and of the hue of old ivory, directed a pistol through the opening above him. As he leaped, the hand was depressed with a lightning movement, but, lunging suddenly upward, Max seized the barrel of the pistol, and with a powerful wrench, twisted it from the grasp of the yellow hand. It was his ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... eye saw that his step was unsteady, his face dull and flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to do; she fled to him with one bound, threw herself on his breast, and burst ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... if she would wrench her fingers from their sockets, she clutched at her long white hair, and, rocking to and fro, moaned, "Woe is me, and woe the ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... suddenly gone dead lame. In an instant we were both out of the curricle and on our knees beside her. It was but a stone, wedged between frog and shoe in the off fore-foot, but it was a minute or two before we could wrench it out. When we had regained our places the Lades were round the curve of the hill ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... impatient, and will begin to suspect that all is not right. We must get them inside, and then tie them up with the others. Stand back behind the door as they enter and, as I close it, throw yourselves upon them. One of you grip each of them by the throat, and another seize his musket and wrench it from him. The rest will ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... "I'll speak to Mrs. Talbert—" He walked so inconclusively away that I was not surprised to have him turn and come back before I left my place. "Why, certainly! Make the announcement! It's got to come out. It's a kind of a wrench, thinking of it as a public affair; because a man's daughter is always a little girl to him, and he can't ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... removal to another and more distant one—out of the buzz of the gossip of her native neighbourhood—as the best thing that could have happened. But when it came to the point of sending her forth to battle with her fate alone for the rest of her life, the wrench was dreadful. She was the bravest of them all under the ordeal. The shattered father, whose right hand she had been for so many happy years, and whose heart was broken with the weight of his responsibility for her misfortunes, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... be a whole lot worse," replied the medical man with a smile. "It's just a bad wrench and sprain. You'll be lame and sore for maybe two weeks, but eventually you'll be able to go back, ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... that it fixed itself deep in the stump of a wild olive tree that stood in the field. The tree had been sacred to the deity Faunus, but the Trojans had cut it down to make a clear ground for their military movements. When AEneas attempted to wrench the spear out, Turnus prayed to Faunus to ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... Frank Chester, flinging down his wrench and passing his hand through a mop of curly hair; ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... thing happened. With one wrench Vasco tore the thick architrave from the wall, a beam as thick as a man's thigh, and smote into the middle of them. Where he hit the bone gave and the flesh fell away, and as they ran from before him the wall ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a spasm, as if from a wrench of pain, passed over his face. Then he took the glass, and said coldly, "I drink ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a sudden and furious blast rushed out of the woods, and tore and shook at the four corners of the house as if to wrench it from ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... silly he must have felt—the doctor I mean. After all the hours he spent and the things he said." She laughed with reminiscent amusement. "He threw the monkey wrench at it, too. And he thought he knew so much ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... dog aroused the neighbourhood and brought several people to the spot. The first was one of the carpenters of the circus; the bear instantly pounced on him, but the man, with a sudden wrench, shook himself free,—leaving his coat behind him, however. The bear next attacked a goat, and then, seeing a boy of about thirteen amongst the crowd (for boys a hundred years ago were always foremost in a crowd, as they are to-day) the infuriated animal pursued ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Uritay—the five hills of Uritay, which were two days' journey from Parahuari. While thus talking of his old enemy he lashed himself into a kind of frenzy, smiting his chest and gnashing his teeth; and finally seizing a spear, he buried its point deep into the clay floor, only to wrench it out and strike it into the earth again and again, to show how he would serve Managa, and any one of Managa's people he might meet with—man, woman, or child. Then he staggered out from the door to flourish ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... One more wrench with my teeth, and I felt his arm limp and useless in my mouth. Then I let go, and as he cowered back on three legs I reared up and fell upon him again, hitting blow after blow with my paws, buffeting, biting, beating, driving him before me. Even now he had fight left in him; ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... when the pricks and pains of this great wrench are over, shall we not all acknowledge that it is best the crash should have come? You have suffered and borne too much. Now we shall see you expand in a freer and happier life. The Duchess has asked ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thoughts, and for a moment even my faith seemed at a low ebb. I could hear my children's stifled sobs, and my darling wife shed silent tears. The thought of parting from them gave me the bitterest wrench. With my fleeting breath I gasped these words, 'That mercy I showed others, that show thou me.' The darkened room grew darker, and after that I died. In my sleep I seemed to dream. All about were refined and heavenly flowers, while the most delightful sounds and perfumes filled ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... But oh, what rogues these fat money bags are!" he said. "You saw this here fellow. Why, he has about twelve million roubles, and he cannot speak correctly; and if he can get a twenty-five rouble note out of you he'll have it, if he's to wrench it out with ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... exclusive weeklies. He had also picked up Hindustani from Dyan, and looked forward to tackling Sanskrit. In the Schools, he had taken a First in Mods; and, with reasonable luck, hoped for a First in the Finals. Once again, parting would be a wrench, but India glowed like a planet on the horizon; and he fully intended to make that interlude the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the distance was so short, and I feared that he might wrench one of his hands loose. Moreover, I thought that you might prefer his being searched in ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... realized that the hide would yield before the mud would. The attempt had taken time, however; and the tide was now well up in the fur of his back. Thrusting her paw down beneath his haunches, she tore him clear with a mighty wrench and a loud sucking of the baffled mud. That stroke sent him head over heels some ten feet nearer safety. By the time he had picked himself up, pawing fretfully at the mud that bedaubed his face and half blinded him, his mother was close behind him, nosing him along and lifting him forward skilfully ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... changing panorama, yet I could not divorce my mind from this perplexing problem. Totally unknown to me as these two mysterious girls were, their strange story fascinated my imagination. What possible tragedy lay before them in the years? what horrible revelation to wrench them asunder? to change in a single instant the quiet current of their lives? About them, unseen as yet, lurked a grim specter, waiting only the opportunity to grip them both in the fingers of disgrace, and make instant mock of all their plans. In spite of every effort, every lurking hope, some ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... other Abbot Henry out of the monastery. And they had need; for in five-and-twenty winters had they never hailed one good day. Here failed him all his mighty crafts. Now it behoved him, that he crope in his skin into every corner, if peradventure there were any unresty wrench, (163) whereby he might yet once more betray Christ and all Christian people. Then retired he into Clugny, where he was held so fast, that he could not move east or west. The Abbot of Clugny said that they had lost St. John's minster through him, and through his great sottishness. Then could ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... that followed, a voice cried, "Are you mad?" and there was the grating of chairs thrust hastily back. But, after a great wrench, her heart stood still within her as through the madness she perceived the purpose. As well as Edric of Mercia she knew that the young Viking's vulnerable point was his longing for his own self-esteem, a craving so unreckoning in its fervor that—should he have the guilty consciousness ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of greatest suffering he had never felt himself so sunk in a foul pit of misery. It was as though he had given the last wrench; there was no fiber of attachment left. In tearing up the roots of every affection he had not hitherto had the distressful feeling which now came over him, like that of a lost dog. It was no longer a torturing mortal pain, but the frenzy of a forlorn and homeless animal, the physical ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... turn of Grady, secretary of the I. W. W., and here a terrible thing happened. Grady, watching this scene from one of the cars, had grown desperate, and when they loosed the handcuffs to get off his coat, he gave a sudden wrench and broke free, striking down one man after another. He had been brought up in the lumber country, and his strength was amazing, and before the crowd quite realized it, he was leaping between two of the cars. A dozen men sprang upon him from a dozen ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... for a fresh gun an' failed to get any. I turned around, an' there was Monody holdin' the sub-cook's right wrist with his left hand an' grippin' at his throat with his right. The' was a horrid look on the sub-cook's face, an' just as I turned to interfere, Monody gave a wrench which tore out the cook's wind-pipe, gave him a sling which landed him under the table, an' handed me a fresh gun. I was some bothered about this; but that wa'n't no time to hold an investigation, so I begun shootin' at ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... but a fleeter foot was behind her, and though she dodged and evaded like a creature of the woods, the reaching hand fell upon the loose sleeve of her red blouse, nor fell lightly. She gave a wrench of frenzy; the antique fabric refused the strain; parted at the shoulder seam so thoroughly that the whole sleeve came away—but not to its owner's release, for she had been brought round by the jerk, so that, agile as she had shown herself, the pursuer threw ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... her wailing cry again, and then listened for the echo that she could no longer hear. The older girl's hand was stayed. She dared not seize the child, for they were both in a precarious place and if the little one was frightened and tried to wrench away from her, Janice feared that they might both fall ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... Then the wrench on his bruised arms as they were pulled roughly back by the cords caused the veil of unconsciousness to gather over ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... cursed her horridly in a frenzy of fear, for he saw that did Garnache shake off the Marquise there would be an end of himself. He sought to wrench himself free of her detaining grasp, and the exertion brought him down, weary as he was, and with her weight hanging to him. He sank to his knees, and the girl, still clinging valiantly, sank with him, calling to Garnache that she held ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... with this tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in twain, and ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... had tried to do that himself, but his cramped position made it difficult to ram home the powder and ball. For his own gun, he snatched an unshot one which the man was struggling to release from its cover. In the hurry, piece and cover got entangled, but, with a wrench, Sir George tore the two apart. His plan of campaign was settled; he advanced to the rock where the light-coloured native had head-quarters. In bold initiative, there remained the only hope for Sir George and his following, against imminent massacre. Would it be a moral victory, won by a ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... life is redeeming some of those large promises to pay which I had long ago given up as hopeless bad debts; even now, it gives me a wrench to remember the crudest chapter in that bitter lesson. So certain had I been of reelection that I had arranged to go to Boston the day after my triumph at the polls. For I knew from friends of the Crosbys in Pulaski that Elizabeth was still unmarried, was not engaged, and upon ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... underestimated, and as a consequence many persons go through life with ankles that are abnormally weak, and even painful in bad weather, and in which there is a tendency to swell and become exceedingly troublesome after a slight wrench. In all true sprains there is more or less actual tearing of the ligaments that bind the joint together, and, if the injury be not properly treated and the joint thoroughly supported, complete recovery in ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... Darrin, knocking von Schellen's hand away, seized the lever, forcing the periscope to rise to its full height above the conning tower. Nor did he stop there. With the mightiest twist and wrench of which he was capable he jammed the lever so that it could not be promptly operated to ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... stood still. But with a clutch that seemed superhuman he held on. He had but one thought—Viggo, his chief! Viggo, his idol! Viggo, his general! He must save him or die with him. One end of the rope was hanging on the branch and was within easy reach; but he did not venture to seize it, lest the wrench caused by his motion might detach his ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... slow an' very slow, an' he looked at her long an' very long, an' he tuk his spache betune his teeth wid a wrench ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... combined efforts of Jarvis and Max, working with one tool after another, to effect an entrance. Clearly this was not an ordinary closet lock which barred the way. But at last, with a vigorous wrench, Jarvis held the yielding door under his hand. From the top step he waved his free arm at the company, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the bankers had only seen the one credit, the name of Shipp, the sub-manager, must be instantly put on the others. We had the genuine signature of J. P. Shipp on a draft, and Mac at once sat down to write it on all the letters. It was a trying ordeal for him, Mac's nerves having had a wrench. He was a temperate man, but under the circumstances we advised him to take a glass of brandy to steady his nerves. Then placing the genuine signature before him and the forged letters, he began to put in the name. The signatures were ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... to win his curse. You little dream the deathless pride that's rooted in his heart! To wrench out that pride would break the heart ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... an iron bar, which enabled me to wrench off the lock from the stable door, and, having got so far with my burglarious performance, I entered cautiously, and I may say nervously. Creeping up to the manger I fumbled about till I caught hold of a strap to which the animal was tied, cut the strap through and led the horse ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... home, and peace with those abroad, people of the land of the Maple Leaf and the Beaver will look upon the twentieth century {481} as peculiarly their own. But in doing so it will not be without a wrench to see old institutions alter and in some cases pass away. One of these is the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, which in November, 1919, became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, provision being made for the absorption of the Dominion ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... but, let the worst come to the worst, they were sure never to be without others in their press. But hark you me, master of mine, asked Panurge, have they not some of different growth? Ay, marry have they, quoth Double-fee. Do you see here this little bunch, to which they are going to give t'other wrench? It is of tithe-growth, you must know; they crushed, wrung, squeezed and strained out the very heart's blood of it but the other day; but it did not bleed freely; the oil came hard, and smelt of the priest's chest; so that they found there was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... an international status. Landing-fields must be established and open to foreign planes, each nation providing some kind of reciprocal landing rights to other nations. Arrangements must be made so that if a monkey-wrench drops out of a plane a mile or two up in the air proper damages can be collected. For such things there is to-day but little precedent ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... whom died young by untoward accidents. It was strange I was always bidding good-bye to them every three or four years. One ought to have been steeled to parting by now. Nevertheless every time the wrench was as ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... action came so unexpectedly that for the instant Jack did not know what to do. Then, however, he tried to wrench himself free from ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... prejudices?... Did you ever consider how a man like that would feel? I have no domestic tradition. I have nothing to think against. My tradition is historical. What have I to look back to but that national past from which you gentlemen want to wrench away your future? Am I to let my intelligence, my aspirations towards a better lot, be robbed of the only thing it has to go upon at the will of violent enthusiasts? You come from your province, but all this land is mine—or I have ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... relapsed into silence. But there are silences of all sorts, as there is speech of all sorts. There are silences that set one's teeth on edge—it is always a relief to break them; and there are silences that are gentler, kinder, sweeter, more loving, more eloquent than any words, and which it is always a wrench to interrupt. Of these was the pause that followed now; but Margaret was asking herself what he meant by saying that he had no right to ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... but for the nearer coast. But this was not the only strange thing about her course, for when she had made some few hundred yards towards the coast, she jibbed round of a sudden, with an appalling wrench at the horse; and there being, as it appeared, no hand either at the peak halyards or the throat halyards, the mainsail presently showed a great rent near the luff, while the foresail had torn free from the bolt-ropes of the stay, and was presenting ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... black steer, rangey built, heavy and wicked. When he lunged from his horse on to the horns of the brute it dragged him for a hundred feet before he could check its mad flight. At last he slowly forced its nose in the air and with a quick wrench of the head to one side threw its feet from under it. Man and beast went down in a heap—the neck of the steer across the cowboy's body. A groan went up from the crowd in the grandstand and Carolyn June's cheeks paled with horror—it looked as if one horn of the creature had pierced ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... scarf, and the bull, seeing it, rushed directly for it. As he struck the scarf, like a flash Sedgwick caught the ring in the bull's nose with his left hand, the left horn in his right hand, and twisting the ring and giving a mighty wrench on the horn, both man and bull went prone upon the turf. But the man was above and the bull below, and clinging to ring and horn and with knee on the bull's throat, Sedgwick bent all his might upon the brute's head and ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... had their situation continued cannot be said; but in a few moments a rattling of the door distracted their adversary's attention, and a man appeared. He ran forward towards the leading-staff, seized it, and wrenched the animal's head as if he would snap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck seemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst the nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the nose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... thing was settled. The temptation to allow sentiment to interfere with business might have become too strong if he had waited much longer. He knew that it would be a wrench definitely excluding Bob from the team, and he hated to have to do it. The more he thought of it, the sorrier he was for him. If he could have pleased himself, he would have kept Bob In. But, as the poet has it, "Pleasure is pleasure, and biz is biz, and kep' ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Now, as all the chickens had names—Sultan, Duke, Lord Tom Noddy, Lady Teazle, and so forth—and as I was very proud of them as living birds, it was a great wrench to kill one at all, to start with. It was the murder of Sultan, not the killing of a chicken. However, at last it was done, and Sultan deprived of his feathers, floured, and trussed. I had no idea how this was all done, but I tried to make him ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... end is known only to God;—whether in the gradual spread of Gospel light, and the peaceful fall of that system which has so long enthralled the intellect and soul of the Tuscans; or whether, as a result of the growing exasperation and deepening horrors of these bondsmen, they may give a violent wrench to the pillars of the ecclesiastical and social fabric, and pull it down upon the heads of ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... answered Tom, as he switched on the electric lights. He was just in time to see Koku wrench a gun from a man who stood near the pedestal, on which the great searchlight was poised. Tossing the weapon aside, Koku caught up his club, and aimed a blow at the man. But the latter nimbly dodged and, a moment later leaped over the rail, ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... or of enhancing them. My object is very much more humble. I simply wish to bring out the remarkable order, in which Paul here marshals, in his passionate, rhetorical amplification, all the enemies that can be supposed to seek to wrench us away from the love of God; and triumphs over them all. We shall best measure the fullness of the words by simply taking these clauses as they stand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... under the examination of the nearest practitioner, and then Derrick remembered a wrench and shock which he had felt in Lowrie's last desperate effort to recover himself. Some of ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from his feet by the pony's rapid turn, nevertheless struggled desperately to wrench himself loose. Button, intelligent at all rope work, walked steadily backward, step by step, taking up the slack, keeping the rope tight as he had done hundreds of times before when a steer had struggled as this man was struggling now. His master leaped from the saddle ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... those who had wept like little children, letting her hands drop limp the while upon her lap, made it all very picturesque and touching. But Phillida twisted the fingers of her left hand with her right, feeling a little wrench in trying to put herself into sympathy with this movement. It was the philanthropic side of religion rather than the propagandist that appealed to her, and she could hardly feel pity for people whose ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... themselves from the group above the cliff, and were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne, Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, both ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... door he had just opened was suddenly darkened. Turning rapidly, he was conscious of a gaunt figure, grotesque, silent, and erect, looming on the threshold between him and the sky. Hidden in the shadow, he made a stealthy step towards it, with an iron wrench in his uplifted hand. But the next moment his eyes dilated with superstitious horror; the iron fell from this hand, and with a scream, like a frightened animal, he turned and fled into the passage. In the first access of his blind terror he tried to reach the deck above through the forehatch, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart, Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: "It's striking, but is it Art?" The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung, While each man talked of the aims of Art, and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... I have heard things from him to-night that are a revelation to me. Well, he has come through, and I believe he is recovering it; but the three threads of our being have all had a terrible wrench, and if body and mind come out unscathed, it is the soundness of the spirit that has ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... towards his barrack, and returned with it. To wrench by their united efforts, one bar from its place, and to fasten the rope to another, was the work of an instant. Space was just left them to creep through the aperture. Sir Henry was the first to breathe the confined air of the sepulchre. A voice warned him in what direction to proceed; ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... very much into each other's hearts during the years they had shared together, and when friends part, no matter how big a wrench the separation may mean to the one who goes, there is a special kind of sadness reserved for the one who is left behind. For the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the new life adventured upon may not ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... head and heels roped to the rack, and a wrench given the pulleys at each end that nigh dismembered his poor, torn body. And what words, think you, came quick on top ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... But the wrench of pain in his foot as, swinging up at last, he tried to catch his off stirrup was reality enough to clear any confusion of spirit. Hanging on as best he might with his knees and one foot, Lockwood, threshing the horse's flanks ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... unravel; disentangle; set free &c. (liberate) 750. sunder, divide, subdivide, sever, dissever, abscind[obs3]; circumcise; cut; incide|, incise; saw, snip, nib, nip, cleave, rive, rend, slit, split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, tear, burst; rend &c. rend asunder, rend in twain; wrench, rupture, shatter, shiver, cranch[obs3], crunch, craunch[obs3], chop; cut up, rip up; hack, hew, slash; whittle; haggle, hackle, discind|, lacerate, scamble[obs3], mangle, gash, hash, slice. cut up, carve, dissect, anatomize; dislimb[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... him. With a wrench that strains his heart he bursts loose from the devil's bonds that confine his limbs. The witch has vanished, and Helwyse seems to himself to fall headlong from a vast height, striking the earth at last ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... himself, but got up again to adjust the chair and make himself comfortable! The executioner then arranged the rope round his neck, tied his legs and his arms, and retired behind the post. At a word or a look from the priest the wrench was turned. For a single instant the limbs of the victim were convulsed, and all ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... not humbled again. We ate quite sparingly for a meal or two, and had fits of abstraction, gazing at the ceiling when extra-odorous dishes were placed in front of us. The Radcliffe girls said that they had passed a strenuous night, engaged in wild manoeuvres to obtain possession of the monkey wrench and feloniously to secrete the same. Their collegiate training had included instruction on the hygienic virtues of fresh air, which made no allowance for a sea trip; and their views as to the practical application of these ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... imminent peril that awaited her worse half, than without other weapons than those with which Nature had provided her, she darted upon the incumbent gladiator, and, clasping him round the waist with her long and snakelike arms, lifted him by a sudden wrench from the body of her husband, leaving only his hands still clinging to the throat of his foe. So have we seen a dog snatched by the hind legs from the strife with a fallen rival in the arms of some envious groom; so have we seen ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... dreary waking on the dark winter morning, the hurried farewells to her aunt and Tom, the last long embrace from her mother, the drive to the station, her father's recognition on the platform, the rude staring and ruder comments to which they were subjected, then the one supreme wrench of parting, the look of pain in her father's face, the trembling of his voice, the last long look as the train moved off, and the utter loneliness of all that followed. Then came dimmer recollections, not less real, but more confused; of a merry set of fellow passengers who were going to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... as they lie, and I stand still thereto: 'Knowing that Satan can make any of God's ordinances a PEST and plague to his people, even baptism, the Lord's table, and the holy scriptures; yea, the ministers also of Jesus Christ may be suffered to abuse them, and wrench them out of their place.' Wherefore I pray, if you write again, either consent to, or deny this position, before ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and help through it all; for Rosa, the woman he loved, his mother, and his sister believed in him, and gloried in what other people called his want of common sense. Ay, though the horrible wrench of parting was suffered by Rosa every minute of every day, and the shadow of that dreadful, unnatural separation began to blacken her life even before it actually fell upon her,—through it all, she never wavered. When he first told her that he must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... out. The only response was the fast diminishing tread of heavy footsteps on a stairway outside. He tried the window bars. The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness. Baffled in his attempt to wrench the bars away, he shouted at the top of his voice, hoping that some passer-by—some good Samaritan—would hear his cry and come to his relief. Some one laughed out there in the night; a low, coarse laugh that chilled him to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... where prevails the law of taboo—"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which shines red with blood after it has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old Bardic day of Britain; it became the lance of Longinus which pierced ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that had weighed upon him, and when Mrs. Bond took a small house farther out, where there were trees and a garden for the General to play in, he furnished two rooms for himself, and, after the first wrench of leaving, he and Peterkin found it very comfortable. His show-cases and other fixtures were moved to a shop not far from the ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... fulness of productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy as leaves no time for either hopes or fears. And I manage it, except only in moments of rebellion (quickly ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... thoroughly out of place in these little mending-shops called sick-chambers, where bodies are taken to pieces, and souls set right. He had no faith in your slow, impalpable cures: all reforms were to be accomplished by a wrench, from the abolition of slavery to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... nothing, Howard," she said. "If you lived with me from now to the millennium you couldn't make me love you, nor could you love me—the way I must be loved. Try to realize it. The wrench is what you dread. After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier, than you have been with me. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out into the river and fished around in the locker under the seat. You had a few old wrenches there, and some rags. Well, I owe you a wrench. It was the biggest one, which means it isn't used very ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... unfathomable gloom. All Pierre's poor weary frame quivered at the sound as he stood motionless in the centre of the expanse. What! had he spent barely three-quarters of an hour, chatting up yonder with that white old man who had just wrenched all his soul away from him! Yes, it was the final wrench; his last belief had been torn from his bleeding heart and brain. The supreme experiment had been made, a world had collapsed within him. And all at once he thought of Monsignor Nani, and reflected that he alone had been right. He, Pierre, had been told that in any ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he cried. "I was as eager as yourself, only not so bright at the beginning. No; I've myself to thank for it; but it's a wrench." ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... astonishing things has he performed! and all for the sake of a stinking, miserable carcass; hardly worth the hanging! How dexterously did he pick the chain of his padlock with a crooked nail! how manfully he burst his fetters asunder! — climb up the chimney! — wrench out an iron bar! — break his way through a stone wall! — make the strong door of a dark entry fly before him, till he got upon the leads of the prison! then, fixing a blanket to the wall with a spike, he stole out of the chapel. How intrepidly did he descend ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... she called his desertion of their common ideals. He answered the arguments in the letters that had become a misery to him to receive as his had become an inexpressible burden to write. Finally, with a wrench to himself, he ceased, and, with infinite pains, compiled data that might interest without offending her. The letters continued, but as soon as he found she was sending him abstractions valueless because they had no roots in the living issues of things, he had to stop. That, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Gunnar's back and makes a blow at him with a great axe. Gunnar turned short round upon him and parries the blow with the bill, and caught the axe under one of its horns with such a wrench that it flew out of Skamkell's hand away ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... which I could see even in that light, trickling down his face. His paws were stretched out, and in another instant he would have had me in his deadly clutch, when Andrew dashed at him with his spear. The bear seized the handle, and endeavoured to wrench it from his assailant; but the iron had entered his breast, and, in his attempt to rush on, it pierced ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... "A bed-wrench, Aaron. It's to take apart corded beds so as to get them out of houses that are on fire. There aren't hardly any corded beds now, of course, but it's a very old association that you're foreman of, and the members keep the old things. It's awfully nice to do ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... capture and cast him under ground? But after a moment he thought that if it were to be so, they would have sent more men. But should they throw themselves on him, they would not destroy his armor at once, and then he could wrench a weapon from the nearest and kill them all before assistance could arrive. They knew ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... families—so often of Presbyterian Irish stock—who rose to prominence in western Virginia at the time of the Revolution. In Kentucky all were mixed together, no matter from what State they came, the wrench of the break from their home ties having shaken them so that they readily adapted themselves to new conditions, and easily assimilated with one another. As for their differences of race origin, these had ceased to influence their lives even ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... replied to John's remark. He arose from the bench as he spoke. "It does; but it is more a matter of knack really. A great tuner named Clark taught me, and he learned it from Jonas Chickering himself. Old Jonas wouldn't allow any of his grand pianos to be tuned with an L head wrench." ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... in a grey shirt had attracted general attention by his dexterity. He was resolved to have Nero's rosette. He managed to wrench it from between the bull's horns, but not completely to disengage it. The bull drove after him so close that it was impossible for another man to run between, the grey shirt reached the barrier and swung over, but the horns caught his nether garment and rent ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... be, 'Tis wondrous heavy. Wrench it open straight. If the sea's stomach be o'ercharged with gold, It is a good constraint of fortune, that ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... wrench Aaron Sisson lifted the box. The tree pricked and stung. His wife watched him as he entered staggering, with his ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... a wrench to Clara, so wholly had she been absorbed in him; but though she longed to know his name she could not bring herself to ask her old friend who he was. That did not matter. He was, and Charing Cross Road had become a hallowed ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... cluck to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... had given her apples and candy hearts when he was in the third grade and she learning her A, B, C. So she felt a heartache to see him go like this. Their friendship was shattered, too. Nor had she experience enough to know that this could not have endured, save as a form, after the wrench he had given it. Yet she knew him well enough now to be sure that it was his vanity and self-esteem that were hurt, and not his love. He would soon find consolation among the other ranch girls, upon whom he had been used to lavish his attentions at intervals when ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... a severe mental wrench that I arrived at this almost desperate decision, for I stood between two fires, either one of which might ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... done to save his comrade's life. Flinging all his weight upon the door, he closed it, imprisoning the assailant's hand above the wrist joint. The knife clattered to the floor, where it stuck out quivering, grazing Spurling's cheek as it fell. The hand tried to wrench itself free, the fingers opening and closing convulsively, but there was no sound ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... chill ran through the girl, but this time it was much more definite, so strong that it gave her a feeling of physical sickness. It was only with an effort that she could wrench her mind free from the grip of it and answer calmly and with perfect truth, "I have never loved you so well as ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... creature, apt to take fright at any moment. A dog coming along the barn floor in front of her manger was always the signal for a struggle at her stanchion. But the object of her worst fears was the sight of a woman! She would leap in the air, wrench and tear, and even bawl aloud and cast herself flat on the floor. Neither Gram nor any of the girls ever went in front of "Little Jersey," if it could be avoided. This fear of women has always seemed to me rather singular, for I am told that in the Isle of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... living conditions of the poor, we must 'begin with the children,'—begin by teaching them better ways of living. Our minister and his wife have all along been eager to teach these foreign children. We have no place to teach them in, except our church. It was rather a wrench for my husband and me,—giving our approval to using a church for a club-house. But we did it. And we secured the consent of the rest of the congregation,—we told them what our children had said. We were not the only ones ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... whence it was instantly drawn forth again by the enraged landlord. This game was carried on for some time, each as determined as the other, grasping; snatching, and pulling this unfortunate piece of furniture until one wrench, stronger than the former, entirely dislocated its component parts, and laid it in a ruined heap upon the ground. This was the moment for the tenant to show himself a man of spirit. Taking advantage of the surprise of the landlord, he swept the broken ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... disgust for the shallow excitability of women like Camilla, whose faculties seemed all wrought up into fantasies, leaving nothing for emotion and thought. The exhortation was not yet ended when she started up and attempted to wrench her arm from Camilla's tightening grasp. It was of no use. The prophetess kept her hold like a crab, and, only incited to more eager exhortation by Romola's resistance, was carried beyond her own intention into a shrill ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... like a fierce order, and he quite hurt me when we did shake hands, even the doctor saying it was like putting your fist in a screw-wrench. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... last movement, however, and he picked up Gum roughly, and proceeded to wrench open its jaws. He felt all round his mouth, but the nugget was not there. He held the senseless body up by the tail and shook it, but no gold appeared. He took his head between his knees, and sounded all over its throat, but the nugget was not to ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... fort, built in 1738, was the first occupation of the site of the City of Winnipeg. The French Captain Verandrye, his sons and his men, made further journeys to the far West, even once coming in sight of the Rocky Mountains. But French Canada was doomed. In twenty years more Wolfe was to wrench Canada from France and make it British. The whole French force of soldiers, free traders, and voyageurs were needed at Montreal and Quebec. Not a Frenchman seems to have remained behind, and for a number of years the way to the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... their essence and purpose in reconstruction. At the time of which I write, there seemed nothing left for the friends of law, bereft as they were of all statutary means for its enforcement, but making a virtue of this necessity by organizing a "vigilance committee" to wrench by physical strength that unobtainable by moral right. There had been no flourish of trumpets, no herald of the impending storm, but the pent up forces of revolution in inertion, now fierce for action, discarded restraint. Stern, but quiet had been the preparation for a revolution ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... and this chiefly has invested the sailing-vessel with its poetry. This the steamer, with its vulgar appeal to physical comfort, cannot give. Does any one know any verse of real poetry, any strong, thrilling idea, suitably voiced, concerning a steamer? I do—one—by Clough, depicting the wrench from home, the stern inspiration following the wail of him who goeth away ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet beyond the stack of cannonballs. A wormer, ladle, and wrench were also part ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... another to act. Our comforts, appetites and passions grow with usage, and Jennie was not only a comfort, but an appetite, with him. Almost four years of constant association had taught him so much about her and himself that he was not prepared to let go easily or quickly. It was too much of a wrench. He could think of it bustling about the work of a great organization during the daytime, but when night came it was a different matter. He could be lonely, too, he discovered much to his surprise, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the old woman's bosom his identity flashed upon mammy, and she tumbled over on the floor, laughing and crying alternately. Evelyn had written from her heart, and the story, simply told, held all the wrench of parting with old associations, while the spirit of courage and hope, which animated her, breathed in every line as she described their entrance upon ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... energy have neither method nor guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and melts into water. Man always assimilates something from the surroundings in which he lives. Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has imbibed a taste for Oriental splendor; he often sacrifices ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... as he spoke, with one arm folded across his chest, guarding the secret which that old man was attempting to wrench from his heart with ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... dexterous with his left hand as with his right, reached down as the weapon came forth from its holster and gripped the stranger's wrist. He gave a sharp wrench and the revolver clattered down on the sidewalk. And then Curly Bill, who had witnessed the incident, stepped forward and ordered the visitor ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... 1844 is marked by the publication in the Foreign Quarterly of the essay on Dr. Francia, and by the death of John Sterling,—loved with the love of David for Jonathan—outside his own family losses, the greatest wrench in Carlyle's life. Sterling's published writings are as inadequate to his reputation as the fragmentary remains of Arthur Hallam; but in friendships, especially unequal friendships, personal fascination counts for more than half, and all are agreed as to the charm in both instances of the inspiring ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... was kneeling beside the dog and trying to discover what its trouble was, the swinging white light approached so closely that he saw it to be a lantern, borne by a man who, in his other hand, carried a long-handled iron wrench. He was the track-walker of that section, who was obliged to inspect every foot of the eight miles of track under his charge, at least twice a day; and the wrench was for the tightening of any loose rail joints that ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... to give our antiquaries a little wrench towards taste—but it was in vain. Sandby and our engravers have lent them a great deal—but there it stops. Captain Grose's dissertations are as dull and silly as if they were written for the Ostrogoth maps of the beginning of the new Topography: ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... felt the want of companionship. Those who have lost what is most worth having, whether by death or by their own fault, or by the other's, miss the companionship of love more than anything else, when the pain of the first wrench is dulled and the heart's blood is staunched, and the dreadful bodily loneliness comes only in dreams. Then the longing for the old sweet intercourse of thought and word makes itself felt and is very hard to ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... she? You have insulted me. . . . I? . . . Not a single one can wrench herself from me, never! And you say to me such offensive words." . . . And, indeed, he looked really offended. Evidently there was nothing for which he might respect himself, except for his ability to lead women astray; it may be that aside ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... fleece from one Aquinum-dyed, Is not more surely, keenly, made to smart Than he who knows not truth and lies apart. Take too much pleasure in good things, you'll feel The shock of adverse fortune makes you reel. Regard a thing with wonder, with a wrench You'll give it up when bidden to retrench. Keep clear of courts: a homely life transcends The vaunted bliss of monarchs and ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair |
