"Clutch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How now noble Pompey? What, at the wheels of Csar? Art thou led in triumph? What is there none of Pigmalions Images newly made woman to bee had now, for putting the hand in the pocket, and extracting clutch'd? What reply? Ha? What saist thou to this Tune, Matter, and Method? Is't not drown'd i'th last raine? Ha? What saist thou Trot? Is the world as it was Man? Which is the way? Is it sad, and few words? Or how? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tent; a wailing, broken-hearted pleading in the harmonious Spanish tongue, and then two figures tumbled out into the light of the lanterns. One was the old woman; the other was a man clothed with a sumptuous and flashing splendour. The woman seemed to clutch and beseech from him something against his will. The man broke from her and struck her brutally back into the tent, where she lay, whimpering and invisible. Observing Tansey, he walked rapidly to the table where he sat. Tansey recognized him to be Ramon Torres, a Mexican, the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... beneath a careless touch; Endurance hardens with a word; She holds a trifle with a clutch So strangely, childishly absurd, That he who ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... terrible; her piercing black eyes had the glare of the tiger's; her face was like that we ascribe to a pythoness; she set her teeth to keep them from chattering, and her whole frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke of the flame that scorched her seemed to emanate from her wrinkles as from the crevasses rent by a volcanic eruption. It ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the hundred men in the troop carried a rifle balanced across his saddle pommel; each was dressed in the garb of the range-rider; and the face of each, glimpsed by the light from some window or doorway, was grimly stern. The sight was one calculated to make Fear clutch like an ice-cold hand at the hearts of those with guilty consciences; a spectacle which induced such respectable men as saw it to arm themselves and fall in behind the advancing line. These knew without being ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... what father had said about fighting. "Don't clutch and don't paw. Strike out from the shoulder like a gentleman." So, while the boy was talking, I struck out from the shoulder right on the end of his ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... hands over their ears to shut out the awful sound, and shut their eyes to prevent the revolting spectacle burning into their brains. The man's face was livid: terror such as it is impossible to describe was in his face; the unrelenting clutch of the rope wearing into his throat caused the veins of his neck to stand out like ropes; while streams of perspiration poured down his face. As he became weaker and weaker and the rope ground deeper and deeper into his throat his fights for breath became maniacal in their ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You'll hurt the delicate thing ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... had gone to have it verified. But, in spite of everything, realization was difficult: the realization that, turn whither she would, there was upon her—upon that poor, tortured breast, the relentless clutch of death. Struggle as she might, through the ensuing months—the few, few ensuing months, that clutch must grow tighter and more cruelly tight, until—the end. During the years since her marriage Madame Gregoriev had, more than once, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart, where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at her face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before. Partly this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of the plant which they ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... wrecked train a great many travellers had jumped like myself; but not all with the same happy result. They had mostly reached the ground more or less bruised, but at the moment of escape from the clutch of death we do not much feel our hurts. These unhappy victims, frightened as they were, had managed to creep and hide behind the untouched portion of the bulwark, and happy to have escaped from immediate death, sheltered from the tremendous cataract of stones, they remained quiet, trembling, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Ha, ha! though I come in rudely, be not aghast, I must work a feat in all the haste; I have caught two birds, I will set for the dame, If I catch her in my clutch, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... tribulation. "O, Jacob!" he exclaimed—"O, all ye twelve Holy Fathers of our tribe! what a losing venture is this for one who hath duly kept every jot and tittle of the law of Moses—Fifty zecchins wrenched from me at one clutch, and by the talons ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... nothing but clutch the seat and shut his eyes. He dared not look down, lest he lose his balance and fall; he dared not look about him, for there were, in all parts of the heavens, the most terrifying animals—a great scorpion, a lion, two ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... by name and by nature, it was not so strange that thy skeleton fingers should clutch at the myriad-headed city, situate by river and by sea, but thou wert insatiable! Proud dwellings and lowly cots in green fields and midst waving woods thou didst not spare; for thy victim, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... like a jointed cane, she sways to every breath of air. She smiles in passing by. O thou that dost alike accord With red and yellow and arrayed in each, alike art fair, Thou sportest with my wit in love, so that indeed meseems As if a sparrow in the clutch of playful ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... to dizziness obliged her, after a provisional clutch at the chimney against which they had been leaning, to follow him down more cautiously; and when she had reached the attic landing she paused again for a less definite reason, leaning over the oak banister to strain her eyes through the silence of the brown, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... eye starting with pleasure, accepted the proffered note with a gesture resembling a clutch, investigated its size in the dim light with hardly concealed delight, and pinned it into his waistcoat pocket with a large brass safety-pin. Then he raised his head slowly and looked ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... many birds at once burden themselves with another. Audubon records the case of the blue bird of America, who works so zealously that two or three broods are reared at the same time, the female sitting on one clutch, while the male feeds the young ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... when I saw him—when the tall, long-faced A.D.C. took me into his room and left us. Yes, Sir John was certainly going. There was no mistake about it. It was written in every line of his drawn fever-worn face, and in his wide fever-lit eyes, and in the clutch of his long yellow hands upon his tussore silk dressing-gown. He looked a very sick bad old man as he lay there on his low couch, placed so as to court the air from without, cooled by its passage through damped grass screens, and to receive the full strength ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... had given was not hidden from her father, and that quickly she would fill up the cup of woe. And she dreaded the guilty knowledge of her handmaids; her eyes were filled with fire and her ears rung with a terrible cry. Often did she clutch at her throat, and often did she drag out her hair by the roots and groan in wretched despair. There on that very day the maiden would have tasted the drugs and perished and so have made void the purposes of Hera, had not the goddess driven her, all bewildered, to flee ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... away from Lee, and meanwhile Grant had not only kept Lee on the watch on both banks of the James, as well as for Richmond as for Petersburg, but had taken a fast hold on the Weldon railway. Unable to shake off Grant's clutch either on the James or on the Shenandoah, Lee greatly needed Anderson back with him. Accordingly, on the very day when Sheridan went back to Berryville, Anderson, seeking the shortest way to Richmond, ran into Crook in the act of going into camp, and darkness shortly put an end to a ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... hide-and-seek. George, who is evidently the leader of the fun, dodges up and down behind his mother, throwing little William into an ecstasy of delight. As the round face appears again over the shoulder, the baby reaches up his fat little hand to clutch his brother's arm, fairly doubling himself up in his pleasure, and grasping one foot in ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... nervous clutch on the reins as she made this dire discovery and remembered Lady's antics on the ferry-boat, or whether the saucy little breeze which chose that moment to stir the elm branches and set the shadows dancing on the white road, was responsible, ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... proposes to clutch him to her heart, but he rejects the pure caress, bawling only the louder, and kicking frantically about the maternal gremium, as the butler announces "Mr. George Warrington, Mr. Henry Warrington!" Miles is dropped from his mother's lap. Sir Miles's face ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of those chances came to Lousteau which such bohemians ought to clutch by every hair. In the middle of December, Madame Schontz, who took a real interest in Etienne, sent to beg him to call on her one ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Antonia came in and stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... went upstairs in the possession of an astounding truth, but rapt with it in such a whirlwind of wonder that she could do no more than clutch it to her bosom as she flew. She sent out word that she was not coming down to dinner, and locked herself in with her truth, to make what she ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... rhyme, a rhyme in o?— You wriggle, starch-white, my eel? A rhyme! a rhyme! The white feather you SHOW! Tac! I parry the point of your steel; —The point you hoped to make me feel; I open the line, now clutch Your spit, Sir Scullion—slow your zeal! At the envoi's end, I touch. (He declaims solemnly): Envoi. Prince, pray Heaven for your soul's weal! I move a pace—lo, such! and such! Cut over—feint! (Thrusting): What ho! You reel? (The viscount staggers. Cyrano salutes): At the ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... open. The spade was driven hard and quick, deeper and deeper, and at last rang upon metal. There were seventy chassepots, complete with bayonets and ammunition. Fifty-one were handed out, the remaining nineteen were hastily covered in again. Fevrier was immeasurably cheered to notice his men clutch at their weapons and fondle them, hold them to their shoulders taking ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... windows turn inward, its music sings to itself. Tossed City sinners go in and out, and pass, and penetrate, but still the music dreams, and still the dim gold blinks above their heads. A muffled God walks the aisles, and you, in the bristling wilderness of chairs, can clutch at His skirts and never see His eyes. Nothing comes forward from that altar to meet you. It is as if He walked talking to Himself, and as if even His speech were ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... thou hast not always been as here to-day so comfortably ensovereign'd, In other scenes than these have I observ'd thee flag, Not quite so trim and whole and freshly blooming in folds of stainless silk, But I have seen thee bunting, to tatters torn upon thy splinter'd staff, Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast with desperate hands, Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long, 'Mid cannons' thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and yell, and rifle-volleys ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... fairies play, The best game of all, Is sliding down steeples— You know they're very tall. You fly to the weathercock And when you hear it crow You fold your wings and clutch your things, And then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... an instance of simultaneous cooerdination, since the two movements which are combined into a higher unit are executed simultaneously. The beginner in driving an automobile often has considerable trouble in learning to release the "clutch", which, operated by the left foot, ungears the car from the engine, and so permits the car to be stopped without stopping the engine. The foot brake, operated by the right foot, is comparatively easy to master, because the necessity for stopping the car is a perfectly ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... castaways in the clutch of a race of man-eaters who worshiped demons. But above them bent the tender and pitiful Mother of Christ who had seen her Son crucified, and Christ Himself stood surrounded by innumerable witnesses. Among the saints were some who had died at the hands of the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... the long wings, big, yellow eyes, and wild voice, still frequents the uncultivated downs, unhappily in diminishing numbers. For the private collector's desire to possess British-taken birds' eggs does not diminish; I doubt if more than one clutch in ten escapes the searching eyes of the poor shepherds and labourers who are hired to supply the cabinets. One pair haunted a flinty spot at Winterbourne Bishop until a year or two ago; at other points a few miles away I watched ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... time. He also had an idea in mind to replace the poor transmission, explaining the plan to Charles: "The three gears[30] on secondary shaft have friction clutches, the two bevel gears on same shaft are controlled by a clutch which frees one and clutches the other at will. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... the chauffeur threw in the clutch and the big machine whizzed away through the crowded traffic bearing a ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... to starboard. Were it not for the restraint of the fiddles everything must have been swept to the floor. There were one or two minor accidents. A steward, taken unawares, was thrown headlong on top of his laden tray. Others were compelled to clutch the backs of chairs and cling to pillars. One man involuntarily seized the hair of a lady who devoted an hour before each meal to her coiffure. The Sirdar, with a frenzied bound, tried to turn ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... conveyances along the route gave, as their instruction and appeal to conductors, "Set me down as near as you can to Brown and Hodgkinson's!"), and there was purchased a blouse of white lace—costing so much that Gertie, on hearing the amount, had to clutch at one of the high chairs; and as Clarence paid readily with gold, the polite young woman on the other side of the counter assured him it was well worth the money. Gertie, at another establishment, bought a pair of slippers, saying to herself that they would come in handy, even though she ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... the blood was beating in her ears like the deafening roar of waves, and the room was darkening with the film that was creeping over her eyes. Her hands fell powerless to her sides and her knees gave way limply. He was holding her upright only by the clutch on her throat. The drumming in her ears grew louder, the tent was fading away into blackness. Dimly, with no kind of emotion, she realised that he was squeezing the life out of her and she heard his voice coming, as it were, from a great distance: ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... the defenseless youth with frightful fury, but Frank managed to clutch the wrist of his foe and check the stroke that would have been fatal. With a surge he flung the Mexican aside, at the same time springing toward the spot where Red Ben's hunting knife lay. The moonlight revealed it plainly, and Merry had it in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... clutch at his heart which always told him, in the plainest manner possible, when he had hit upon the knotty point of a mystery. That grip of truth, that feeling of certainty ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... flash, and like a flash the great, powerful dog leaped forward, his fur a-bristle, his white teeth gleaming, and the next instant, taken by the suddenness of the attack, the sentry lay on his back half stunned by the fall, while Tumbu, on the top of him, checked even a cry by a clutch at his throat. A soft clutch so far; but one that would tear through flesh ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... turned and smiled at Maryette, made her a friendly gesture, threw in the clutch, and, twisting the steering wheel with both sun-browned hands, guided the machine out onto the road and sped away swiftly after the cloud ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... one or two, if I could have a look at the pools this week. Jolly little dog! he was paddling and spinning about last night, and enjoying himself, 'ere age with creeping'—What is it?—'hath clawed him in his clutch.' That fellow's destiny is not a hopeful analogy for you, sir, who believe that we shall rise after we die into some ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... wide open. Some little bit of seaweed, or some morsel of half-putrefying matter, comes in contact with it, and instantly every tentacle is retracted, and the lips are tightly closed, so that you could not push a bristle in. And when your tentacles draw themselves in to clutch the little portion of worldly good, of whatever sort it is, that has come into your hold, there is no room to get God in there, and being 'unfaithful in that which is least' you have made it impossible that you should possess 'that which is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... quite to the extremity of the wing and was about to tie his first rope, when a fierce gust of wind threatened to tear him from the rigging and crash him to the ice, a dangerous distance below. With a quick clutch, he saved himself but lost the rope. It was with a grunt of disgust that he saw it wind and twirl toward the white surface below. Then it was, for the first time, that he saw the yellowish-white object huddled there on ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... Eggs.—The full complement of eggs laid by a bird is known as a set or clutch. The number varies greatly with different species. The Leach's Petrel, Murre, and some other sea birds, have but one egg. The Turkey Vulture, Mourning Dove, Hummingbird, Whip-poor-will, and Nighthawk lay two. Various Thrushes, such as the {24} Robin, Veery, and Wood Thrush, deposit ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... it in echoes and glimpses. Yet all these rainbows which span the heaven of thought, finely woven of the tears of humility, one would sometimes grasp and crystallize forever. In that I find my satisfaction in what I know of Fourier; but to clutch at the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... hero and true knight. Woe! woe! the eager dream is broken by mad war-whoops! Alas! to those fierce wild men, what is love, or loveliness? Pride, and passion, and the old accursed hunger for gold flame up in their savage breasts. Wrathful, loathsome fingers clutch the long, fair hair that even the fingers of love have caressed but with reverent half-touch,—and love, and hope, and life go out in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, through the reverberations of more than fourscore years, through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... strength in the endeavor to raise himself somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat sidled away from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling with it he only slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... you get in the top of the tree For all your crying and grief? Not a star would you clutch of all you see— You ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... irresistibly in the light of a victim. Like all persons who achieve the miracle of changing their point of view when they are old she had been intensely converted; she had seized my hint with a desperate, tremulous clutch. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... to see the hyena free itself and run off again. They looked in vain. It never ran another yard. It never came alive out of the clutch of those ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... another clutch at the creature, which evaded him and, with a rapid movement, wound the rope around his neck so tightly that he choked, and began to turn black in the face. Mr. Lawrence, who, though mortified by the sensation they were creating, could not restrain his laughter, now ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... whin th' Clan an' th' Sons iv Sweden an' th' Banana Club an' th' Circle Francaize an' th' Pollacky Benivolent Society an' th' Rooshian Sons of Dinnymite an' th' Benny Brith an' th' Coffee Clutch that Schwartzmeister r-runs an' th' Tur-rnd'ye-mind an' th' Holland society an' th' Afro-Americans an' th' other Anglo-Saxons begin f'r to raise their Anglo-Saxon battle-cry, it'll be all day with th' eight or nine people in th' wurruld that has th' ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... one full of clutch, riding up the banister. It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of a hand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again. Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... children gazing on, The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence blowing, covered with sweat. I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... pouring out of the house carried her, at first, toward the tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her. He awoke from his stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but then the main force of the mighty water drove her away from him toward the house; her helpless body was whirled round and round three times, by the struggling eddies, and then hurried away like a feather by the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... was fulsome about it: Madame, in all things worldly, was in nothing weak; there was measure and sense in her hottest pursuit of self-interest, calm and considerateness in her closest clutch of gain; without, then, laying herself open to my contempt as a time-server and a toadie, she marked with tact that she was pleased people connected with her establishment should frequent such associates as must cultivate and elevate, rather than those who might ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... a moment in the clutch of a great fear; but he felt he was alive and well, and little by little his fear disappeared and left him eager. He went a few steps forward, and saw that the hill sloped downward, and downward he went, by steep slopes of turf and scattered grey stones. Presently ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strip of wool that the giants had threshed, and whirled it round and round until it had twisted it into hard thin thread. Then it would make a clutch with fingers of steel at the thread that it had gathered, and waddle away about five yards and come back ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... January, whenever there came the clutch and stab at his heart, and the struggle for breath, which he had felt for the first time that September day (but ah! how many times since, and with what increasing persistence!) would creep to the stairway beside which hung the signal lines, ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... snatch at the paper, over William Wylder's shoulder, nearly bearing that gentleman down on his face, but his clutch ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... else was to follow, it was very certain that Wilkes would not stay. His great enemy had sworn his destruction, and would now take his choice, whether to do him to death himself, or to throw him into the clutch of the ferocious Hohenlo. "As for my own particular," said the counsellor, "the word is go, whosoever cometh or cometh not," and he announced to Walsingham his intention of departing without permission, should he not immediately receive it from England. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... over-night, but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... well it would go on. And it did. By the time this baby was twelve months old he tottered just one inch under five feet high and scaled eight stone three; he was as big in fact as a St. Peter's in Vaticano cherub, and his affectionate clutch at the hair and features of visitors became the talk of West Kensington. They had an invalid's chair to carry him up and down to his nursery, and his special nurse, a muscular young person just out of training, used to take him for his airings in a Panhard 8 h.p. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... heroism superior in kind or degree to that which this illustrious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to snatch some human victim from the clutch of the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... you and I really believed that that crown of glory which Paul speaks about might be ours, and would be all sufficing for us if it were ours, as truly as we believe that money is a good thing, there would not be such a difference between the way in which we clutch at the one and the apathy which scarcely cares to put out a hand for the other. The things that are seen and temporal do get the larger portion of the energies and thoughts of the average Christian man, and the things ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... where, in a writhing, promiscuous mass, they roared and squealed out their joy in the joke, and made ineffectual and not very determined efforts to extricate themselves. Sylvia had seen the jerk coming and saved herself by a clutch forward at the dashboard. Glancing back, she saw that Jerry and Eleanor Hubert still sat upright; although the gay young man beside them had let himself go backward into the waving arms and legs, and, in a frenzy of high spirits, was shouting and kicking ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... hushed air is heavy with death; like the footsteps of death are the moments. "Arise!"—At the word, with a bound, to their feet spring the vigilant Frenchmen; And the dark, dismal forests resound to the crack and the roar of their rifles; And seven writhing forms on the ground clutch the earth. From the pine-tops the screech owl Screams and flaps his wide wings in affright, and plunges away through the shadows; And swift on the wings of the night flee the dim, phantom forms of the spirit. Like cabris [80] when white wolves ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... determined. One end slipped in and then the other slipped out, half a dozen times. James lost patience and became angry; and in his anger he overreached himself. The chair slid back. He tried to balance himself and, in the mad effort to maintain a perpendicular position, made a frantic clutch at the pipe. Ruin and devastation! Down came the pipe, and with it a ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... off—we hold to our own flesh and blood. And so I'm sure it will be with you. You see you have been young, my dear, and your spirit has been fresh and new. But how are you going to keep it so, without the ties you've always had?" He felt the violent clutch of her hand. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... were we. Should it break, she would have a smart fall to the ground—for the tree was one of the highest, for a pawpaw, we had ever seen; and there were no other branches below to which she could clutch ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch violently thrown. A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A uniform pushing ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... some time back, especially since the late Kur-Baiern's illness, understood that Austria, always eager for a clutch at Baiern, had something of that kind in view; but his first positive news of it was a Letter from Duchess Clement (date, JANUARY 3d), which, by the detail of facts, unveiled to his quick eye the true outline, extent and nature of this Enterprise of Austria's; Enterprise which, he could not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Eve"), hiding his misery in laughter, and Lavretsky ("A House of Gentlefolk"), hiding his misery in silence. It is not necessary to search for further examples. Turgenev put his hand upon the dark things. He perceived character, struggling in the "clutch of circumstances," the tragic moments, the horrible conflicts of personality. His figures have that capability of suffering which (as someone has said) is the true sign of life. They seem like real people, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... falling heavily. On deck the crew stood about in oilskins, while below, the boy, in his new capacity of gaoler, was ministering to the wants of an ungrateful prisoner, when the cook, happening to glance that way, was horrified to see the animal emerge from the fo'c'sle. It eluded easily the frantic clutch of the boy as he sprang up the ladder after it, and walked leisurely along the deck in the direction of the cabin. Just as the crew had given it up for lost it encountered Sam, and the next moment, despite its cries, was caught up and huddled away ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... young bulbuls, and take full advantage of the simplicity of the parent birds. Probably, three out of four broods never reach maturity. But the bulbul is a philosophic little bird. It never cries over broken eggs. If one clutch is ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his back, gives abundant food to the mountaineer over whose forest he ranges. The cropped or slit ear is the only evidence of human care or human ownership. He lives the life of a wild beast, and in the autumn he dies the death of a wild beast; while ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... him wonderingly. John Redpath threw in his clutch. "So long," he said. "I've a brother in Tucson, and I'm going to his place ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... Steve, who was braced there for the expected strain. "Don't worry about us, for we'll back you up. Get a clutch on him, and the rest is going to be easy. ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Dave, and then he threw in the clutch on low gear, and the big touring car moved gently away, out of the grounds of the Wadsworth mansion and into the main highway leading from Crumville to Shady Glen Falls. The second car ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... the shelter of the house and on the open road, the sulky received the full force of the wind. The first gust that howled in from the bay struck its curtained side with a sudden burst of power that caused Mrs. Beasley to clutch her driver's arm. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I was looking at her, and devouring her with my gaze. Her eyes wandered over the water and toward the shore. I heard her quick breathing, and saw a sudden shudder pass through her, and her hands clutch one another more tightly in a nervous clasp, as she came to that place where she had fallen last. She looked at that spot on the dark water for a long tame, and in visible agitation. What had taken place after she had fallen she well knew, for I had told it all on my first ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... closer and sniffed, and came yet closer, till its nose touched the strange object which had not been there when darkness fell. Then Hitchcock, for it was Hitchcock, upreared suddenly, shooting an unmittened hand out to the brute's shaggy throat. And the dog knew its death in that clutch, and when the man moved on, was left broken-necked under the stars. In this manner Hitchcock made the chief's lodge. For long he lay in the snow without, listening to the voices of the occupants and striving to locate Sipsu. Evidently there were many ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... few moments in deep thought. "All mine if he dies!" said he: "all mine if he does not return! All mine, all mine! and I have not a child nor a kinsman in the world to clutch it away from me!" With that he locked the vault, and returned to ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to my wishes," replied she, relaxing her clutch of his arm. "Le Gardeur de Repentigny can speak for himself. I will not allow even my brother to suggest it; still less will I discuss such a subject with the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... yards apart, but Jack never reached his man. Without a sign, without a sound, someone sprang upon him from behind, flung a cord over his head, and seized him in a strangling grip. Jack was as strong as a young bull, but in this awful, noiseless clutch he was helpless. He fought madly to throw off his unseen assailant, but he fought in vain. He felt a noose close upon his throat, and his eyeballs began to start out and his head to swim. In front of him stood the mysterious stranger, who had moved neither hand nor foot, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... rather sharp practice on the part of the railway company (alias the Government) to take sovereigns in at the window at ten rupees, and sell them at the door for eleven and a half, to speculators waiting ready and eager to clutch and sell them again ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush beds, and clutch'd the sword, And strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a streamer of the northern morn, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... clutches, tongs, forceps, pincers, nippers, pliers, vice. paw, hand, finger, wrist, fist, neaf^, neif^. bird in hand; captive &c 754. V. retain, keep; hold fast one's own, hold tight one's own, hold fast one's ground, hold tight one's ground; clinch, clench, clutch, grasp, gripe, hug, have a firm hold of. secure, withhold, detain; hold back, keep back; keep close; husband &c (store) 636; reserve; have in stock, have on hand, keep in stock &c (possess) 777; entail, tie up, settle. Adj. retaining &c v.; retentive, tenacious. unforfeited^, undeprived, undisposed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and eager Polish Jews step in, and see their chance. Eldorado lies before them. They are asked if they will make the coat for two shillings and sevenpence. The poor starving foreigners eagerly clutch at any chance. Who can blame them? No one. It is a struggle for life. Fair but false promises have brought them to these shores, to swell the sum of misery, already, Heaven knows, high enough! But still they come, keeping up a steady flow of suffering, and the Government makes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... stopped speaking. We had all gone along so with the story, that the stout seafarer, as he wrought the whole scene up about us, seemed instinctively to lean back and brace his feet against the ground, and clutch his net. The young woman looked up, this time; and the cold snow-blast seemed to howl through that still summer's noon, and the terrific ice-fields and hills to be crashing against the solid earth that we sat upon, and ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... thought, the bitter thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house or your own heart,—your heart, which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Susan's tight clutch on the roll of bills loosened so abruptly that the money fell to the floor. But at once Susan stooped and picked it up. The next moment she had crossed the room and thrust the money into ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... inspirations. She pointed to the floor of the cockpit, and there, sliding grotesquely with the motion of the seaway, was Poul Halvard. An arm was flung out, as if in ward against the ketch's side, but it crumpled, the body hit heavily, a hand seemed to clutch at the boards it had so often and thoroughly swabbed; but without avail. The face momentarily turned upward; it was haggard beyond expression, and bore stamped upon it, in lines that resembled those of old age, the ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Dunny. Back next year," I shouted cheerily as the driver threw in his clutch and the car glided on ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... by means of a rope working on a surging head. The mill itself, as regards the roll, is much the same as those of other firms; but instead of an engine with a heavy fly-wheel, always working in one direction, and connected to the rolls by double clutch and gearing, the work is done by a pair of horizontal reversing engines, in connection with which there is a very simple, and at the same time extremely effectual, system of hydraulic reversing. On the ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... lowering his voice, he added, softly and slowly, "except one—except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful. I say, old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight—rather like the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro—Pre—the man on Mount Caucasus. People don't appreciate me, I say, except HER. Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, she would have taken my name; but unfortunately ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... pitifully at first, and then actually fainted away from fright. Rob was much frightened, on his part, for he knew if his hands slipped from their hold he would fall to his death. Indeed, one hand was slipping already, so he made a frantic clutch and caught firmly hold of the Turk's baggy trousers. Then, slowly and carefully, he drew himself up and seized the leather belt that encircled the man's waist. This firm grip gave him new confidence, and he began ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... another came, he plunged in, and struck out like a man. He was a strong and expert swimmer, and as yet the channel was not more than a dozen yards across. He dashed over with the speed and strength of despair, and had just time to clutch the rocks on the other side before the next mighty swirl of the tide swept up in its white and tormented course. In another minute he was on the ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... breaks in, "but you're slippin' your clutch. Tricks! Why, he ain't even wise to what you want him to do it for. All he knows is that it's crooked, and he renigs on a general proposition. And, say, when a man's as straight as that, with the workhouse ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... that; the fan was fluttered wide in her face, poked sharply between her ribs. A single straightforward blow from her strong young arm would have laid the slender Cuba at her feet, but she could strike no blow. She was only to hiss, and clutch the air in impotent fury, and when she did this, Margaret had such an uncontrollable fit of coughing that it almost produced ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... promise. Oh, of course, we'll all do our best; but if he wants to clutch her, the silly little bird, he'll surely do it. Not that I'm saying he does want to; I daresay he only wants to upset her and make her his slave and then run away again to his ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... scaffolding—you can call it no more—that spans the torrent, it is clearly Dandy Jack's intention to hurl the coach, trusting to the impetus to get it over. We shut our eyes in utter despair of a safe issue, and hold on to our seats with the clutch of drowning men. It is ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... affiliated with that of the Rodaines, now nearing the task of completing their two million. October—month of falling leaves and dying dreams, month of fragrant beauties gone to dust, the month of the last, failing fight against the clutch of grim, all-destroying winter. And Fairchild was sagging in defeat just as the leaves were falling from the shaking aspens, as the moss tendrils were curling into brittle, brown things ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... it was there were four turnouts. I suspected that, before I was through, Mr. Stoughton Page's reputation as an automobile driver would not be undamaged in the estimation of at least one person. But for that and for what must be when the crisis arrived—well, it was inevitable. I threw in the clutch and drew out of the stable. At any rate, there were the hours back of me, and Margery was—Margery. There was sweetness in this thought, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... snorts, everybody climbed aboard. The driver let in the clutch, there was a tearing sound from underneath, but the motor did not go. One of the drivers clambered down, and after examination said that it could not go on that day, and they immediately began to take it to pieces. The aeroplane came ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... The scholar bullfinch aims to catch The soft flute's ivory touch; And, careless, on the hazel spray The daring redbreast keeps at bay The damsel's greedy clutch. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the dying are haunted by an hallucination that leads them to snatch at things about them, like men eager to save their most precious possessions from a fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at the bed-clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself with a hasty, covetous movement ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... how soft that chin which bears his touch: Her lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such: Her glance, how wildly beautiful! how much Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch! Who round the North for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear? how ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... here, some of you fellows! What did you promise before we left Liberty Hall?" Hardy shouted frantically, as he writhed in Amos's clutch. ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... frame, E, provided with the roller, D, upon which the cloth is wound, in connection with the gearing, k u, clutch, o, driving pulley, m, and shaft, l, all arranged substantially as shown ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... I heard it with my own ears, the Voice. The crabbed tree, that is the main line, dying in me; the grafted tree is the Vaufontaine, the interloper and the mongrel; and the sapling from the same seed as the crabbed old tree"—he reached out as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew back, sat erect in his chair, and said with ringing decision: "the sapling is Philip d'Avranche, of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror through ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... himself judgment will seek 1280 With host of angels. Every one there Of speech-bearing men the truth shall hear Of every deed through mouth of the Judge, And likewise of words the penalty pay Of all that with folly were spoken before, 1285 Of daring thoughts. Then parts into three Into clutch of fire each one of folk, Of those that have dwelt in course of time Upon the broad earth. The righteous shall be Upmost-in flame, host of the blessed, 1290 Crowd eager for glory, as they may bear it, And without torment ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... evil," I said, "through and through you are evil, I think, and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen— Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at bottom ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... human element. You do not think of it as a collection of very tired, dusty, and perspiring men with aching legs and parched lips, but as an unnatural phenomenon, or a gigantic monster which wipes out a railway station, a cornfield, and a village with a single clutch of one of its tentacles. You would as soon attribute human qualities to a plague, a tidal wave, or a slowly slipping landslide. One of the tentacles composed of six thousand horse had detached itself and crossed the river below the bridge, where it ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... especially, and my desperate running along under them, and how, every time I fell, roars of laughter went up from the other drunks. They thought I was merely antic drunk. They did not dream that John Barleycorn had me by the throat in a death-clutch. But I knew it. And I remember the fleeting bitterness that was mine as I realised that I was in a struggle with death, and that these others did not know. It was as if I were drowning before a crowd of spectators who thought I was cutting up ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... Charles could not obtain from him an investiture of the kingdom he pretended to have conquered, while he had himself to surrender the fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia alone remained in the clutch of Alexander's implacable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. The French army desired to see the liberties of Pisa established on a solid basis before they quitted Italy. On their ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... turned toward Eunice, who had arisen and stood trying to drive away the passions of rage that seemed to clutch her vocal cords so that she could not speak. At last getting sufficient ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the woman who sat before him. It seemed to him that he would have given the world to escape—to fly from her, to fly from himself. Some invisible force held him—a strong, new, and yet not new, emotion, a power that seemed to clutch his very life. He could not think clearly about it. In all his discipline, in his consecration, in his vows of separation from the world, there seemed to have been no shield prepared for this. The human asserted itself, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... roof of the same gray-green, starred in a vague pattern with the jewels of sunset. Carmen did not see the beauty of the magic temple, though she was conscious of her own. She hated to think that Nick Hilliard should keep her waiting, and there was cruelty in the clutch she made at a cluster of orange blossoms as she passed a long row of trees in terra-cotta pots on the terrace. Under the bamboos she scattered a handful of creamy petals on the golden brown earth, and rubbed them into the ground with the point of her bronze shoe. Then she held up ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... innocent cherubs they were, Master GLADDY, and young Miss MOORLEENA; Such sweet little souls to ensnare,— Why, no conduct could well have been meaner. But all things went well for a time; The parties they trusted made much of them; Little they fancied that crime Would ever attempt to get clutch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... no howdah, only a pad well secured by thick ropes. To clutch these tightly, and to dodge the opposing branches by ducking the head, now swinging to the right, then doubling down upon the left to allow the bending trees to sweep across the pad, then flinging oneself nearly over the flank to escape a bough that threatened instant extermination; ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... there in the darkness near Where the shadows clutch and cling, Above the plash of the bitter tear, A song and the lips ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller |
