"Clinched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his right hand. There was breathless suspense. What would it be? Fixing his eyes on the armed malcontents who were waiting to spring, he clinched his hand and made a downward gesture, as if striking a blow. It ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the Nabob himself well appreciated the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace. He stood for an instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with anger. Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together with ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... I will scratch anybody's eyes out that dares to scold her. This very morning I pinched Maggie black and blue for bothering her, and I tell you I shall not let anybody impose on her." The tears dried in her brilliant eyes, and she clinched her little fist with an exalted opinion of her ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... nothing!" I gasped, and there stopped short and clinched the table. "Has not my grandfather written ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stretcher comes, swinging from a bamboo pole, carried on the shoulders of two men. Over it a mat is thrown, and through the little open triangle at one end, you see a pair of brown legs lying. Only legs, no more. Drawn up stiffly, toes clinched. ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... cried the queen, gnashing her teeth, and making up her little hand into a clinched fist. "He has held me fit ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... one of her most vicious looks, and clinched her small claw-like hands as though they longed to be at him; but Tony answered ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... occasion the same thing had handily proved its efficacy, so why not again? Desperate cases require desperate remedies, he kept telling himself as he groped in his pocket and extracted some small object therefrom, holding it tightly clinched while he again moved the orange leaves across the lower part of the window without extracting a shot from the guardian ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... if she would like to have struck down the daring young queen. But her clinched fist ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... before he continued his reading. Later on his breath came more quickly still, and he clinched his fist several times, as if deeply moved. He was not a cold man, only thoroughly self-controlled. In his breast there lived an unquenchable hatred of all evil. It was this that awakened the talents which made him the celebrated detective ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... strong lock, it will prevent the losses which in some localities are so common from human pilferers. Such losses may be guarded against, by fastening a wrought iron ring into the top of each hive, well clinched on the inside; an iron rod may run through these rings, and thus with two padlocks and fixtures, (one at each end,) a dozen or more hives may be secured. I am happy to say that in most localities such precautions are entirely unnecessary. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... quoted Dr. Johnson: "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being drowned"; and further to overwhelm me, he clinched the saying by a comment of his own. "In a ship of war you run the risk of being killed as well as that of being drowned." The interview left me a perplexed but not a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the first ten thousand dollars which my acquaintance had ever saved, requiring, he said, years of effort from the time he was twelve years old until he was thirty, had been lost as the result of a strike; he clinched his argument that he knew what he was talking about, with the statement that "no one need expect him to have any sympathy with strikers ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of course the nephew and ward clinched till death did them part—which, I'm very sorry to have to tell you, death wasn't decent enough to do on the stage. If the play could only have ended with everybody's funeral I should have called it a real ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... wouldn't never let his wife go to the light operas or vodyville, an' she hadn't any records, so how—how, I ask you, comes it that she's so familiar with the song about 'My Pearlie Girlie' that she joined in the singin' of it with me at the dinner table to-night? That's what clinched it. Mrs. Schuyler, she knew that song's well as I did, and she picked it up where I left off and hummed it straight to the end—words and music! How'd she know it, ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... twenty dollars the line from a point five miles west of Ogden to the connection at Promontory. This five miles was subsequently sold to the Central Pacific Railroad. This arrangement was as the West puts it "clinched" by a Resolution of Congress, ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... cried the men, striking with their clinched right hands their knee, as though it ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... stated our grievances as respectfully as we could, but he broke in upon us, saying that we were getting fat and lazy, didn't have enough to do, and it was that which made us find fault. This provoked us, and we began to give word for word. This would never answer. He clinched his fist, stamped and swore, and ordered us all forward, saying, with oaths enough interspersed to send the words home, "Away with you! go forward every one of you! I'll haze you! I'll work you up! You don't have enough to do! If you a' n't careful ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... arisen from his chair, and seemed much elated. In his hand he held clinched the paper which had caused the lively discussion. It was as near to a disagreement as Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson had come in ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... crept down from the peaks far away; The water was still; the twilight was chill; the sky was a tatter of gray. Swift came the Big Cold, and opal and gold the lights of the witches arose; The frost-tyrant clinched, and the valley was cinched by the stark and cadaverous snows. The trees were like lace where the star-beams could chase, each leaf was a jewel agleam. The soft white hush lapped the Northland and wrapped us round in a crystalline ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... They clinched; and the moment Roger felt those vast soft hands tightening upon him the shock brought back to him a sort of reason. Garman was the stronger. His right hand caught Roger's clenched fist within an inch of his chin, and his gorilla grip held the fist helpless. His huge hand encased Roger's ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... but Abishai, the brave, the faithful, he who had denounced the viper, and had sought, but in vain, to crush it—it was he who fell at last a victim to its treacherous sting!" Jasher ended his peroration with a hissing sound from between his clinched teeth, and the caldron of human feelings around him began, as it were, to seethe and boil. Fanaticism stops not to weigh evidence, or to listen to reason. Joab could hardly make his voice heard amidst the roar of angry voices that was ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... them at the time shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands several times, finally closed and clinched them—a sure sign of energetic nervous action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception, because there was no energy in his remark and no reason for energy. I am not superstitious, but I believe in palmistry to a ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... those of a European and a sailor; the frame was emaciated and dried up, till it looked like a skeleton; the face was blackened and all withered, and the bony hands were clinched tight. It was evidently some sailor who had suffered shipwreck in these frightful solitudes, and had drifted here to starve to death in this appalling wilderness. It was a sight which seemed ominous ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... landed to Harris' sore nose. Then Harris rushed. Jack was forced back around the ring by the force of this rush and backed against the ropes; but he bounded out with great force and landed a vicious left to the side of Harris' jaw. Then they clinched. ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... placed it in the electric chair. They slit his trousers so that the deadly electrodes might form a better contact with his flesh. His sleeves were rolled back for the same reason. Next the headpiece was firmly adjusted. Now all the straps were tightly clinched. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... Francis. The French King replied that by the end of May his Queen would be in the eighth month of her pregnancy, and that if the meeting were further prorogued she must perforce be absent.[383] Henry was nothing if not gallant, at least on the surface. Francis's argument clinched the matter. The interview, ungraced by the presence of France's Queen, would, said Henry, be robbed of most of its charm;[384] and he gave Charles to understand that, unless he reached England by the middle of May, his visit ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... invested with the government of the family. The manumission of a son, or a slave, was performed by turning him round with a gentle blow on the cheek; a work was prohibited by the casting of a stone; prescription was interrupted by the breaking of a branch; the clinched fist was the symbol of a pledge or deposit; the right hand was the gift of faith and confidence. The indenture of covenants was a broken straw; weights and scales were introduced into every payment, and the heir who accepted a testament ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... shared that opinion. The boyish and rather theatrical movement with which he turned his back upon me, showed at once that he had been coached in the suspicions that were now so finally clinched. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... stretch the arms over the head till the hands touch the floor. Clinch the fists. Take a deep breath and hold it. Now raise the arms slowly, keeping the fists clinched, and bring them down at the sides, raising the head from the floor at same time. Raise the arms and stretch them on the floor over the head at same time, letting the head sink back to the floor, and ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... He claimed that my hogs had been gettin' into his field, and I told him that I didn't feel disposed to keep my hogs up when everybody else's were runnin' at large, and then he called me a scoundrel and we clinched. I took him so quick that he wasn't prepared for me, and I give a sort of a hem stich and down he went, right in the middle of the road. And there I was right on top of him. He didn't say a word, while I was wallowin' him, but when ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... and hobbled towards it. "A church is no good," he muttered, "but hospitality may hide in that hovel. Knock and know." And having by this time arrived at the door of the dwelling, he proceeded to rain a succession of blows on it with his clinched fists, as if he were determined not to be denied, and, at worst, to force ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... convulsive twitch in his neighbor's clinched fists; but he mastered himself, and said with a ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... that had behind it all of the power of the most joyous impulse of her life, she swung her bound clinched fists right through the pane of glass, pushed the gag ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... in full. He is then offered the alternative of paying 20 sacks at the next harvest or of performing some work that he is unwilling to do, so he accepts the former alternative. The bargain is then clinched with many threats on the part of the trader to the effect that the Americans will cut off his head or commit some other outrageous act should he fail to fulfill this ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers clinched. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... back, she saw Anfossi descending the stairs. His hands were held above his head; behind him, with his automatic, the staff officer she had surprised on the fourth floor was driving him forward. Above the clinched fists of the soldiers that ran to meet him, the eyes of Anfossi were turned toward her. His face was expressionless. His eyes neither accused nor reproached. And with the joy of one who has looked upon ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... and it cost her a bitter struggle not to throw her arms around the dear old man's neck and cry with him. But she came prepared for a sore trial of her feelings, and she clinched her hands and teeth, and would not ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... hair was rather long and a toss of dark curls. His face was as tenderly pretty as his sister's, whom he strongly resembled, although he was somewhat fairer of complexion. But it was full of the utmost bravado of rage and defiance, and his two small hands were clinched, until the knuckles whitened, in the faces of the little crowd who confronted him. The color had not left his face, for his cheeks burned like roses, but his pretty mouth was hard set and his black eyes blazed. The boys danced and made threatening ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... him, "Go, Sigmund, and look at that man; I wish thee to look at him," went without turn or waver, and gazed long and earnestly at the low type, bestial visage portrayed to him. Eugen had trodden noiselessly behind him; I watched, and he watched, how his two little fists clinched themselves at his sides, while his gaze never wavered, never wandered, till at last Eugen, with a strange expression, caught him in his arms and half killed him ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... the focus of all intellect), join the throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnt traveller;—now drinking in the wild account of Babylonian gardens, or of temples whose awful deity no lip may name—now, with clinched hands and glowing cheeks, tracking the march of Xerxes along exhausted rivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea—what moves, what hushes that mighty audience? It is Herodotus ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gossip in so mean a house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, is clinched into the positive assertion of Hume as to a popular belief for which there is not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fresh wind of the early morning,—objects were vaguely visible without distinct forms across the white mist which hangs, on summer nights, over the valley of the Seine. In the middle of the lawn, at rapid intervals, they heard the blunt noise of a clinched fist striking a living body, and saw two men, or rather two phantoms, furiously swinging their arms. Presently the two shapes formed but one, then they separated, again to unite; one of the two fell, rose at once, and ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... and clinched her hands above the sharp pain that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might sometimes more ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... Mrs. LaGrange to her own reflections, which seemed anything but pleasant. The look of terror returned to her face; she clinched her hands until the jewels cut deeply into the white fingers; then, springing to her feet, she paced the room wildly until she heard the footsteps of her son approaching, when she instantly assumed her ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... hand to her side and grew white and rigid. Then the blood flamed into her cheeks, and the perspiration stood out on her forehead. She clinched her lips between her teeth and lay back in ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... eyes had observed Madge closely, and from a little distance he had seen the parting between her and his brother. Then he saw Graydon seek Miss Wildmere and resume a manner which he had learned to detest, and the self-contained man went out upon the grounds, and said, through clinched teeth: "To think that there should have been such a fool bearing the name of Muir! He's been gushing to Madge about that speculator, and we shall yet have to take her as we ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... over the board, it laps down about 8 in. between the boards, and the same distance inside of the new board, as shown by the heavy line in the cross section, Fig. 1. Wrought nails are used which pass twice through the tin and both boards, and then well clinched. The three screws were then ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... on the new little grave in the desolate churchyard where poor Maud Grace and her pitiful secret slept. They had found the child late in the morning of that awful day succeeding the storm. In the small clinched left hand was a bit of water-soaked paper. No one but Mark had taken heed of it, but he guessed that it was the card which was to guide the girl to the man who had deserted her. Perhaps in that last hour of struggle and fear, she had taken it from its hiding place for comfort or, perhaps, to ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... they subsist, or destroying life indirectly by the generation of poisonous compounds within the body. This conclusion, which comes to us with a presumption almost amounting to demonstration, is clinched by the fact that virulently infective diseases have been discovered with which living organisms are as closely and as indissolubly associated as the growth of Torula is ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... nearer, and thought he saw, at the first glance, the unclosed eyes glare; but soon perceived that they were a mere glassy substance, mute as the tongue; the jaws were fallen, and, in some of the tangled locks, hands were clinched; nay, even the nails had entered sharpened by despair. The blood flew rapidly to his heart; it was flesh; he felt he was still a man, and the big tear paced down his iron cheeks, whose muscles had not for a long time been relaxed by such humane emotions. A moment ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... knew, son," began his father with extreme gentleness. "I didn't really know. I just put two and two together. There was the scratched machine and the gasoline gone—both of which facts puzzled me not a little. But the proof that clinched it all and made me certain of what had happened came to me this morning when Havens brought me an old red sweater and some school papers of Bud Taylor's that the men who were overhauling the car found under the seat. In an instant the whole ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... in each other's faces, clinched and fought, hand to hand, like devils. Two soldiers on top of the trench, their ammunition spent, choked each other to death and rolled down the embankment among the mangled ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Miss Heth was responsible for a meaningless lie which took away more than life itself from one who had loved her truly in his way: this was a hypothesis so wild and weak that it collapsed at the first opportunity for calm, just examination. The sight of her again, the other night, had merely clinched the matter; driven by a glance the last nail in the coffin of Dalhousie's hope; and by the same stroke, swept away the last lingering trace of diabolical suspicion. But that Miss Heth had treated Dal pretty badly before the Beach was only too probable. The ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and half annoyed. George often made remarks like this and imagined that they clinched his arguments. She saw that he ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the same Broadway taught her a sharper lesson. The scene she had witnessed coming down was now augmented and at its height. Such a crush of finery and folly she had never seen. It clinched her convictions concerning her state. She had not lived, could not lay claim to having lived, until something of this had come into her own life. Women were spending money like water; she could see that in every elegant shop she passed. Flowers, candy, jewelry, seemed the principal ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... his teeth clinched tightly to repress the pain racking him, stifled his resentment with an evident effort. "You may be less light-hearted when you learn that the last of our ammunition is already in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... gasping, gurgling sound broke from her. She snatched it, stared at it. Then the Gorgon head slipped through her fingers, she threw herself against the window, shook the iron bar frantically; and one desperate cry seemed to tear its way through her clinched teeth, over her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... who were responsible for the condition of the two natives of the strange bearing. When Jarvis saw their ugly faces and gleaming knives at the door of the ivory prison he was ready for a fight. His face turned purple, as he muttered between clinched teeth: ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... unfortunate experience with nails in the floor of box 1. He seemingly referred his misadventure to some unseen enemy under the floor, and this in spite of the fact that he was given abundant opportunity to examine the floor of the box, but not until after the dangerous nails had been clinched. His long continued avoidance of the experiment boxes and his still more persistent hesitancy in entering them, coupled with his almost ludicrous efforts to see beneath the floor through the holes cut ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... on Steignton had been spoken or sighed for during long years between Aminta and her aunt, until finally shame and anger clinched the subject. To look on Steignton for once was now Aminta's phrasing of her sudden resolve; it appeared as a holiday relief from recent worries, and it was an expedition with an aim, though she had but the coldest curiosity ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her grim lips rarely without some curse against the Lewallen race. He remembered she had smiled for the first time when she heard of the new trouble-the flight of his uncle and the hope of conflict. She had turned to him with her eyes on fire and her old hands clinched. She had said nothing, but he understood her look. And now-Good God! what would she think and say if she could know what he had done? His whole frame twitched at the thought, and, with a nervous spring to escape it, he was on his feet, and ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... sure—but I don't doubt it. Clarence Ahearn's name's been up at the Country Club five months—no action taken." He waved his hand disparagingly. "Ahearn and I had lunch together to-day and just about clinched it, so I thought it'd be nice to have him and his wife up to-night—just have nine, mostly family. After all, it's a big thing for me, and of course we'll have to ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Old Man Curry clinched this general opinion by entering into no entangling alliances with brother owners, and the bookmaker did not live who could call him friend. He attended strictly to his own business, which was training horses and ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... his head stretched forward, ears flat, and teeth clinched, with his lips drawn well back, and his eyes glaring. I am convinced that it was only Ivan's great presence of mind which prevented a most ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... to tell, that two weeks ago her husband was alive, and that he was now on his way to England—perhaps in England itself. She took it with an unnatural quietness. She grew distressingly pale, but that was all. Her hand lay clinched tightly on the seat beside her. He reached out, took it, and pressed it, but she ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... sigh of relief. "God shall bless you," he said. He wrung the sweater's hand passionately. "I dare say we shall find another sovereign's-worth to sell." Mendel clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom. If the worst come to the worst now, he had still had ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work. On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of the stones scattered for a considerable distance. Human agency again, in my opinion. Finally, Armitage clinched all his arguments by telling me that he had actually heard the Creature—indeed, that anyone could hear it who remained long enough at the Gap. It was a distant roaring of an immense volume. I could not but smile at this, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... executive acts, based upon considerations addressed to me alone and for which I am wholly responsible, I have had no invitation from the Senate to state the position which I have felt constrained to assume." Further on, he clinched this admission of full responsibility by declaring that "the letter of the Attorney-General in response to the resolution of the Senate... was written at my suggestion and by ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... brought his clinched fist down upon the little table near by, with such violence that the thin plank was shivered. His cheerful face in ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... take down the family atlas and turn to the map of Southern Asia you will see that Siam, with an area about equivalent to that of Spain, occupies the uncomfortable and precarious position of a fat walnut clinched firmly between the jaws of a nut-cracker, the jaws being formed by British Burmah and French Indo-China. And for the past thirty years those jaws have been slowly but remorselessly closing. Until 1893 ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... experimental establishment (1849) of the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859) revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846 occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the nineteenth century witnessed. Two scientists, in different lands, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... sweet face That bent above me in my hiding-place That day amid the grasses there beside Her pleasant home!—"Her pleasant home!" I sighed, Remembering;—then shut my teeth and feigned The harsh voice calling me,—then clinched my nails So deeply in my palms, the sharp wounds pained, And tossed my face toward heaven, as one who pales In splendid martyrdom, with soul serene, As near to God as high the guillotine. And I had envied her? Not that—O no! But I had ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... to deceive the next one. Then came a mighty heave and when Juggins in far right was seen running like mad it looked as if Allandale had clinched another brace of runs then and there. But Horatio proved himself to be a hero, for he gobbled that drive, and the side was extinguished with no ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... minutes before we left the taverne for the station, to start on a trip that was to last two days instead of three hours, and land us not in Brussels, but on German soil in Aix-la-Chapelle, two incidents happened which afterward, in looking back on the experience, I have found most firmly clinched in my memory: A German captain came into the place to get a drink; he recognized me as an American and hailed me, and wanted to know my business and whether I could give him any news from the outside world. I remarked on ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... trick, no conception of being in any danger. He stepped in directly behind the leader, and Sexton followed. An instant later, the door closed, with the sharp click of a night latch, and Mike flashed on the light. As he did so, he wheeled about, and shot one mighty clinched fist straight into West's face. This was done so suddenly, so unexpectedly, the man attacked found no opportunity to even throw up a hand in self-defence. The giant Pole flung his whole weight into the crashing blow, and the ex-soldier went down as though struck by a pole-ax. For an instant, he realized ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... this, and having settled that, went back to have a look at the main hatch. Feeling about round it, we found the points of the staple on which the hatchway bar worked above; they were not fastened with nuts as they would have been with us, but were simply turned over and clinched. We had no means of straightening them out, but we could cut through the woodwork round them. Setting to work at that, we took it by turns till we could see the light through the wood; then we left it to finish after dark. All this time we knew we were under sail by the rippling of the water ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... draw-bridge flies, Just as it trembled on the rise; Nor lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band He halts, and turns with clinched hand And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet at the towers. "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!" But soon he reined his fury's pace: "A royal messenger he came, Though most unworthy of the name. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... with the mad hotel keeper, having clinched with him, and now being engaged in taking away the shotgun, one barrel of which ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... vinegar at times in his ways of expressing himself," but, according to our oldest living graduate, "his commanding presence, imperative logic and sesquipedalia verba, always used with mathematical precision, hammered truth into us and clinched it." Professor Agnew has been described as a Greek from head to foot, the exact opposite of Dr. Whedon, extremely careful in his dress and appearance and correspondingly neat and precise in the expression of his thoughts. He represented the Presbyterian and Congregational ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... th' ghost iv O'Grady made a pass at him, an' they clinched an' rowled on th' flure. Now a ghost is no aisy mark f'r anny man, an' O'Grady's ghost was as sthrong as a cow. It had Flaherty down on th' flure an' was feedin' him with a book they call th' 'Christyan ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... Eugene clinched his hand. "I shall remember the curse," cried he, "and it shall be verified if God give ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... ale first gave way to tea, and then to coffee as a breakfast beverage. The Boston "tea party" clinched the case for coffee; but in the meantime, coffee was more or less of an after-dinner function, or a between-meals drink, as in Europe. In Washington's time, dinner was usually served at three o'clock in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Slavery had been effectively destroyed by the war and could never be revived, even were the South victorious. The acceptance by the Confederacy of a policy suggested by Lee, whereby Negroes were to be enlisted as soldiers and freed on enlistment, clinched this finally. On the other hand, Lincoln let it be clearly understood that if the Union could be restored by consent he was prepared to advocate the compensation of Southern owners for the loss of their slaves. The blame for the failure ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... upon me with clinched hands and blazing eyes. "You shall answer for these words, girl! if not now, years hence," he said; "the seed of your insult has been thrown on fertile soil, I promise you!" and he ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Joe had clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold. They reeled about the room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a crash across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was underneath, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... his crew jumped on Hen Smitz and threw him down, and some of them held him while the others sewed him in. My idea is that Wiggins got that electric-light bulb to replace one that had burned out, and that he met Hen Smitz and had words with him, and they clinched, and Hen Smitz grabbed the bulb, and then the others came, and they sewed him into the burlap and dumped him into ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... St. Leger taunted, as he often was, with the frailties of his mother or the errors of his father, but my heart was all in a flame—my fist clinched—my cheek burning. Many a fellow have I laid prostrate upon the earth with a sudden blow who dared, in my presence, to chase the color from St. Leger's cheek by alluding to the subject. There was this remarkable in St. Leger, by the way, that he never ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... was cruel, brutal! They were killing her. His clinched fist moved blindly toward his neighbor: he touched her hand and ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... fight on our horses; he shot at me and I shot at him. When we got close together I took his arrows away from him, and he grabbed me by the hair of the head. I saw him reach for his dagger, and just then we clinched. My war-bonnet had worked down on my neck, and when he struck at me with his dagger it struck the war-bonnet, and I looked down and saw the handle sticking out, and grabbed it and killed the other Indian. Then we rushed the Crees into the pit again, and my father ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... if possible, when met by them. Up in the Wind River country, a soldier was mauled terribly by one which he had wounded, but failed to kill on the first fire. The fight was desperate, for the bear, said to have been six or seven feet long, and weighing nine hundred pounds, had clinched the soldier, and both rolled down the ravine together, the other soldiers afraid to fire lest they should hit the poor comrade, almost in the jaws of death. They did rescue him, however, by lunging a knife into bruin's side, compelling him to release his hold, after lacerating ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... in no hurry; at times he suspended operations to pace aimlessly to and fro; and after a while, half undressed, he dropped into an arm-chair, clinched hands supporting ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... ask why? Did I do it? Was it my fault? Could I help being born? And look at me now, blighted and blasted, just as life was at its sweetest. Talk about the sins of the father—how about the sins of the Creator?" He shook his two clinched hands in the air—the poor impotent atom with his pin-point of brain caught in the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bending under the weight of his load of books, she gave an involuntary start, and Madam Imbert, on whose arm she leaned, felt that she was trembling with excitement. Cox stood beside his wife in the door-way with his teeth clinched. His wife looked unutterable things, but neither uttered ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... among us doubted the full meaning of it—we were to save the army! The very horses seemed to feel a sense of relief, hands clinched more tightly on taut reins to hold them in check; under the old battered hats the eyes ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... every meeting-place, a multitude of farmers and dwellers in country towns, with here and there a sprinkling of city-folk, crowded about the stand where "Old Abe" and the "Little Giant" turned and twisted and fenced for an opening, grappled and drew apart, clinched and strained and staggered,—but neither fell. The wonder grew that Lincoln stood up so well under the onslaughts of Douglas, at once skillful and reckless, held him off with so firm a hand, gripped him so shrewdly. Now, the wonder is that Douglas, wrestling with the man and the cause of a century, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... Creek and Atlanta, the lines did become commingled, the men fought individually in every possible style, more frequently with the musket clubbed than with the bayonet, and in some instances the men clinched like wrestlers, and went to the ground together. Europeans frequently criticised our war, because we did not always take full advantage of a victory; the true reason was, that habitually the woods served as a screen, and we often did not ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... could only SEE what it was," growled Moran between her clinched teeth. "But this—this damned heaving and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... that she was silent and during that interval her son talked and explained with a rapidity that left her no chance for reply. "Father says so," was the final argument that clinched the matter; and she wisely refrained from further controversy, reflecting that "Father" might alter his opinion when she had met him and reported the true state of things. Then he would, of course, promptly recall his son and heir from ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... was no time for indecision; and Jack sprang forward. His right fist shot out with stinging force—a blow that would have ended the battle right there had it landed, but the German ducked and clinched. At this kind of fighting, he was more Jack's match and he seized the lad ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... stop at the Two Bar on my way to Willets. By the time you reach town with the cattle I'll have the deal with Warden clinched." ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... however, and the two desperadoes clinched and never let up until they had minced each other into such insignificant odds and ends that neither was able to distinguish his own remnants from those of his antagonist. It ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... as to give me all the things that you say Christ has given to the world, I would stand by him, dead or alive. And I don't see why you can't be as honest with Him as you are with men." And Charlie clinched the matter that evening by saying, "Dick, if I thought you really believed your own arguments, I wouldn't talk with you five minutes, for the doctrine you are teaching is the most hopeless thing on earth. But I can't help feeling that if you would ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... her clinched fists outward, and twitched her skirts about the room in the prettiest ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... passes and they clinched. Constans was forced backward; he tripped and fell. The blows, short but savage, rained down upon his face. He tried to strike back, but his throat was gripped hard; he was suffocating. Consciousness was about to desert him, and he felt vaguely angry at this betrayal of his senses; then the light ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... I was proud. I had shown them I could spend with the best of them. Amongst strong men I had proved myself strong. I had clinched again, as I had often clinched, my right to the title of "Prince." Also, my attitude may be considered, in part, as a reaction from my childhood's meagreness and my childhood's excessive toil. Possibly my inchoate thought was: Better to reign among ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... with white face and clinched hands during Byrne's recital of his identity. At its close he took a threatening step toward the prostrate man, raising his long sword, with a muffled oath. Billy Mallory sprang before him, catching ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... keener and shrewder. Questions were more to the point; and many a quick retort was popped through the car windows at Staple's wonderful inventions. A strongly asseverated wish to do something, and that at the earliest moment, was generally clinched by a bouncing oath; but where, or how, that something was to be done was never even hinted. Briefly, Georgia seemed more anxious for preparation than her neighbors; withal she was equally far from preparation. It were manifestly ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... two moved toward the swaying figures. It was not an easy matter to stop the battle. Forrester and Harden were clinched but Enoch and Agnew were larger than either of the combatants and at a word from Enoch, Jonas seized Forrester, with Agnew. After a scuffle, Harden stood silent and scowling beside Enoch, while Forrester panted between ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... him and you have deceived me," she said, still standing before him, her body erect, her hands clinched. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... newcomer flourished clinched fists and began to prance. The Wilbur twin crouched, but was otherwise motionless. The newcomer continued to prance alarmingly and to wield his arms as if against an invisible opponent. Secretly he had no mind to combat. His ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... from the weapon to the person who held it, and saw a sturdy, plain man standing over him, with his teeth clinched, and his aspect that of one all ready ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deep it startled me. I turned, And there against the wall, with ghastly face, And eyeballs starting in a frenzied glare, As in a fit, lay Judas; his weak arms Hung lifeless down, his mouth half open twitched, His hands were clutched and clinched into his robes, And now and then his breast heaved with a gasp. Frightened I dashed some water in his face, Spoke to him, lifted him, and rubbed his hands. At last the sense came back into his eyes, Then with a sudden spasm fled again, And to ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... weapon clinched as if in a vise, the chief thrust his left foot forward for a single pace, but did not advance farther. He was debating with himself how best to dispose of this intolerable youth. A quick death would be too merciful; ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... as Bessie Hatch looked at that moment, with her black eyes flashing, her hands clinched, and her cheeks like two flaming poppies! Half irritated, half amused, Annie, the Irish nurse, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rolled upon the earth. Masterless steeds dashed wildly in every direction, revolvers snapped, sword-blades clashed, the horses uttered short, harsh screams, the Frenchmen fought amid oaths and exclamations, the Germans, with clinched teeth, dealt blows around them, swords were buried in the bodies of enemies, without their owners clearly seeing what they were doing, single pairs of foes, hacking furiously at each other, were suddenly ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... and on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt-end of a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ashore in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also assured him of the bonus offered for ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... on the bridge, his hands clinched round the hot iron bars of the breastwork and his eyes measuring the rapidly diminishing distance between the Mindoro and the landing place of Corregidor. As the Mindoro turned into the northern passage between Corregidor and the mainland, the chain ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff |
