"Hard put" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pug's room, just as was being done now precisely in accordance with the Pug's original intentions, she had thought of the Adventurer. It had seemed the only way then; it seemed the only way now—despite the fact that she would be hard put to it to answer the Adventurer if he thought to ask her how, or by what means, she was in possession of the information that enabled her to communicate with him. But she must risk that—put him off, if necessary, through the plea of haste, and on the ground that there ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... sleeve on the body of a dead man, the rattle of a loose strand of barbed wire, the movement of a sorely wounded soldier lying out in the open, might draw the German fire. And if the moving picture boys were caught in that they would be hard put to it to escape. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... but to such a height of grief as it could rise to, it rose. As for his display of that grief, had he been a pretty boy the onlookers could not have failed to find it pathetic; as it was, for all that they were most of them keenly sensible of his royal condition, they were hard put to it not to ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... began. On September 30 the enemy lost Junction Post to a spirited attack by the Gloucesters, the line that he had been holding for three weeks was broken, and his retreat became fast and general. After relieving the Gloucesters our companies were hard put to it to advance rapidly enough to keep touch. At last we stood upon the Aubers Ridge itself. Lille was almost in view; but at this point the Division was relieved by the 59th and sent southwards to join our armies before Cambrai, where the final issue between British ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... last, had changed his occupation for a more useful one during a somewhat prolonged sojourn in Sing Sing. Affairs after that had not prospered with Melinoff. His wife, honest if her husband was not, and already an old woman, had been hard put to it with the shabby shop and the meagre business she was able to transact; so hard put to it, indeed, that the wonder had been that she had managed to keep the roof over her head. She had died a few months after her husband's release. Melinoff, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... rain came down in buckets, drenching them to the skin; see what sort of enthusiasm would show up when perhaps their supply of food gave out, and they were hard put to get enough to appease their savage appetites; given a week away from the loved ones at home, and how many of these bold spirits would still be able to declare with all their hearts that the life in the open was the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... you may take it, too, that a certain healthy sort of children will like to have these queer stories read aloud. The villainies of the Baba Yaga, an old witch of terrific resourcefulness, and the oddly inconsequent animal stories should make particular appeal. But you will be hard put to it to answer the questions which will be thrust at you; and (by the way) perhaps you will discreetly have to leave out a phrase or two for prudence' sake. On no account let the youngsters read the preface. I am not really quite sure whether you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... returned their swords to the scabbards, and were for trusting to their fists alone. I contrived to give one of them a smart tap on the crown before they came to close quarters; but ere I could recover myself they were upon me, the staff was wrenched from my grasp, and I was as hard put to it as a stag bayed by hounds. I made what play I could with my fists, and got home at least one blow for two; but the odds were too heavy against me, and when at length a fellow as big as myself slipped round to my back and gripped me hard by the neck, all my struggles did not avail to ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... is heir to the future? It would have been a hard choice between reptile and bird. I feel sure that I, for one, should not have selected the mammal, a small, feeble being, hiding in holes and ledges, and continually hard put to it to escape becoming a mouthful for some huge reptile. And yet the persecution, the impossibility of contending by brute strength, may have forced the mammal into the line of brain-building and placental development. The early development of mammals ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... he, pulling up the blind. "Look at this—a sheet from a note-book, with 'For God's sake come at once—P. T.,' scrawled upon it in pencil. Our friend, the doctor, was hard put to it when he wrote this. Come along, my dear fellow, for it's an ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... developing feathers on their wings were turning black. They squalled unremittingly, which squalling I decided was not so much on my account as because of a swarm of black flies that attacked them when the mothers flew away. I was hard put to it myself to keep these flies, large as pennies and as flat, from eating me alive. They slipped up my sleeves and trousers and their bite made a wasp-sting pleasure ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... cross-roads, were three dogs that made a practice of rushing out upon him when he went by. Knowing his deadly method of fighting, the master had never ceased impressing upon White Fang the law that he must not fight. As a result, having learned the lesson well, White Fang was hard put whenever he passed the cross-roads saloon. After the first rush, each time, his snarl kept the three dogs at a distance but they trailed along behind, yelping and bickering and insulting him. This endured for some ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... of grace, of the word, and of the soul's condition, doth he now lay before it, and haunt it with; whereby he dejecteth, casteth down, daunteth, distresseth, and almost driveth it quite into despair! Now, by the reason of these things, faith (and all the grace that is in the soul) is hard put to it to come at the promise, and by the promise of Christ; as it is said, when the tempest and great danger of shipwreck lay upon the vessel in which Paul was, they had "much work to come by the boat;" Acts xxvii. 16. For Satan's design is, if he cannot keep the soul ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... portend, I could not see, but it chimed in with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion. He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hang for it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Grace of Cumberland. What on ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... this distressing news to his benefactor with the obsequious politeness which was usual to him; but he appeared a great deal less afflicted than he might have been in this grevions extremity. As a matter of fact, he was hard put to it to conceal, under a long face, his joyous feelings and his lively satisfaction. The parchment of his dry, humble, yellow eyelids ill concealed the light of joy which ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... hard put to it as he was for funds, Clemens at this time regarded himself as a potential multi-millionaire. The type-setting machine which for years had been sapping his financial strength was believed to be perfected, and ship-loads ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... reproach or report, and (apparently) to take a delight in them, yet guarded her from the direct consequences as if she had been sacred. This her parents knew very well, and never scrupled to turn to their advantage. For when hard put to it they would bring her forward between them, set her before the Abbot, and say, "For the sake of the child, my lord, let us go." ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... standing in the sun for some time they became exhausted, and Sir Redvers sent back word for them to sit down, which they gladly did, whilst the relievers, as they passed along, chucked them bits of tobacco, ready cut up, from their small store, small because they themselves were also hard put ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... laboriously, and with much reiteration, he strove to build up in their minds a crude conception of numbers. As the quantities increased, he had the boys holding different magnitudes in each of their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the symbols on the log of driftwood; and for symbols he was hard put, being compelled to use the teeth from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for billions. It was here that he stopped, for the boys were showing signs ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... pickle; in extremis; between two stools, between Scylla and Charybdis; surrounded by shoals, surrounded by breakers, surrounded by quicksands; at cross purposes; not out of the wood. reduced to straits; hard pressed, sorely pressed; run hard; pinched, put to it, straitened; hard up, hard put to it, hard set; put to one's shifts; puzzled, at a loss, &c (uncertain) 475; at the end of one's tether, at the end of one's rope, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus, at a standstill; graveled, nonplused, nonplussed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... watchful terrier on guard. In spite of herself she was nervous. Her eyes flashed continually from one window to the other. She noted the exact position of the communication cord. What it was that she feared, she would have been hard put to it to say. But in her own mind she was far from feeling the confidence displayed in her words. Not that she disbelieved in Tommy, but occasionally she was shaken with doubts as to whether anyone so simple ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes, already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing that his pronouncements in that field were ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... imperfectly defined, still more imperfectly executed or realized. It would be absurd to suppose that it was held by all Greeks; it was indeed advocated by and for a minority only. Those who now find in it the impulse and guide of Greek history might be hard put to it if they were obliged to produce evidence of their faith, and they would be forced to confess that there was much to be said against their interpretation. There is to be acknowledged first the apparent want of internal ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... persons concerned in the concealment of the birth, and in the desertion of the infant, my nobly-born, highly-bred, irreproachable aunt now stood revealed before me as one! An older woman than I might have been hard put to it to preserve her presence of mind, in such a position as mine. Instinct, not reason, served me in my sore need. Instinct, not reason, kept me passively and stupidly silent when I got back to the house. "We will talk about it ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... they are, that you see around us.—And Helen—what could become of her, were I to leave her the subject of new insult and atrocity?—or how could she bear to be removed from these scenes, where the remembrance of her wrongs is aye sweetened by the recollection of her revenge?—I was once so hard put at by my Great enemy, as I may well ca' him, that I was forced e'en to gie way to the tide, and removed myself and my people and family from our dwellings in our native land, and to withdraw for ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... road. An officer in a strained voice just warned me in time for me to avoid a deep shell-hole by inches. I delivered my despatch to the General. Outside the house I found two or three officers I knew. Two of them were young captains in command of battalions. Then I learned how hard put to it the Division was, and what the result is of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... point I was coming to)—Ver. 824. Colman observes here: "Madame Dacier makes an observation on this speech, something like that of Donatus on one of Micio's above; and says that Micio, being hard put to it by the real circumstances of the case, thinks to confound Demea by a nonsensical gallimatia. I can not be of the ingenious lady's opinion on this matter, for I think a more sensible speech could not be made, nor a better plea offered in favor of the young ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... that their more well-to-do neighbors, if they do not belong to the category of millionaires, are living beyond their means. Every man whose own means are small, or even moderate, finds himself rather hard put to it to make both ends meet, and is constantly harassed by desires which he is unable to gratify. When he sees others gratifying them, his self-love drives him often unconsciously into ascribing it to recklessness and improvidence. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... the little Doctor was hard put to it to keep his hands off the great political issue of the year, bound up as it was in the tenets of his own politics, which he held only less uncompromisingly than those of the Shorter Catechism. It was, unfortunately for him, a ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... herself with much difficulty, began now the necessary preparations; for as to Susan, she was utterly rejected, and with such disdain, that the poor wench was as hard put to it to restrain her hands from violence as her mistress had been to hold her tongue. This indeed Susan did not entirely; for, though she literally kept it within her teeth, yet there it muttered many "marry-come-ups, as ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... likewise speak to you through the hole, and be heard: but if you hear the noise of feet or strange voices in that chamber, have a care to lie as squat [quiet] and close as ever you can. So may you safely hover [lie concealed]; for the cleverest soldier of them all shall be hard put to it to find you ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... voices inside, followed by sudden silence. Anazeh made a sign to Mahommed ben Hamza and me. We all three laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard. Evidently that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were hard put to it to keep our feet. The man who had opened the door lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air, and Anazeh laughed at him—the bitterest sign of disrespect one Arab ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... one of them is as bad as the other. You'd be hard put to it to say whether it was Priscilla has put the comether on the young fellow or him that had her druv' on to be doing what it would be better ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... such an addition would make the old mansion ever so much more valuable, and as to the cost, he would arrange that so that they would never feel the payment of it. But this suggestion met with no encouragement, and poor Burke was so hard put to it for something to occupy his mind that one day he asked Mrs. Cliff if she had entirely given up her idea of employing some of her fortune for the benefit of the native Peruvians, stating that if she wanted an agent to go ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove. He looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is sometimes, when we are very hard put to it, let behind the counter with a corkscrew; but never when it can be helped, his demeanor towards the public being disgusting servile. How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as to marry him, I don't know; but I suppose he does, and I should think he wished he didn't, for he leads ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... idea," agreed the young camera operator. "Those International people must be pretty hard put to it to steal ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... to the camps of the organization that they had five days to leave that state. Spokane was awakening to the menace of hordes of strange, idle men who came in on the westbound freight-trains. The railroads had been unable to handle the situation. They were being hard put to it to run trains at all. The train crews that refused to join the I.W.W. had been threatened, beaten, shot ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... his reports you'd think the pueblo of Mexico had a population pushing a million. Actually, if it had thirty thousand it was doing well. Without a field agriculture and with their primitive transport, they must have been hard put to feed even that ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... inexplicable thing, even to the curious, and certainly Dolores would have been hard put to it to explain why she felt any curiosity about the new arrival and the man who had so patiently awaited him. But she did feel curious, and mingled with her curiosity was a vague sense of something like compassion, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... outcry about my ugliness! Why the bit of a dwarf can hardly peer out of its pulpit when it is hubbubbing there, and is so gossamer-shankt it durst not walk across the great square if the wind chance to be blowing strong; the congregation are hard put to find him out when he is grimacing and gesticulating before the altar, and need all their christian faith and hope to believe him actually corporeally present; and such a hop-o'-my-thumb, such a ghostly ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... revolting costumes filled him with wondering contempt. As for the little French girls, he was at any time uninterested in girls; and these spindle-shanked precocities walked on two-inch heels, and tried to fascinate him with the graces of mature coquettes. His careful politeness was hard put to it to conceal his distaste for their conversation. Possibly he was hankering after a healthier life; but at any rate he, who was generally so full of energy, had mooned listlessly about the gardens ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... discuss the matter with her. She will, I have little doubt, try to help the relations in the arrangements for the defence. Go to her this morning—tell her that the case has my sympathy—that, as she knows, I am a barrister, and, if she wishes it, I will defend Hurd. I shall be hard put to it to get up the case with the election coming on, but I will do it—for the sake of the public interest involved. You understand? Her father is a Tory—and she is just about to marry Mr. Raeburn. Her position, therefore, is difficult. Nevertheless, she will ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and every time I found him behind my chair I was hard put to repress a shudder. In this fashion the strange evening passed; and to the accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to give me my instructions in a whisper, and five minutes after entering ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... her physician calls mental shock. My wife will not speak of it. The questions I would ask her are checked on my lips by the look of utter terror in her eyes. As I have confessed to you, my own philosophy is hard put to it to withstand not so much the community attitude toward what they are pleased to call my taste in practical joking, but to assemble and adjust the facts ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... before in the history of the world did soothsayers, astrologers, and unregistered therapeutic specialists of all sorts flourish as they did during this half century of the drift to the abyss. The registered doctors and surgeons were hard put to it to compete with the unregistered. They were not clever enough to appeal to the imagination and sociability of the Heartbreakers by the arts of the actor, the orator, the poet, the winning conversationalist. They had to fall back coarsely on the terror of infection and death. They prescribed ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... stopped her then. No fear or awkwardness of hers should be allowed to hamper that thoroughbred mustang. Carley felt that Calico understood the situation; or at least he knew he could catch and pass this big bay horse, and he intended to do it. Carley was hard put to it to hang on and keep the flying sand from ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... not, to say the truth, find much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of these raucous young gentlemen, who, when they have succeeded in flinging the ruins of the architecture of Venice into its small stinking canals, will find themselves hard put to it to build anything beautiful in the place of them. But in their reaction against "the eternal feminine," they may, I think, very possibly be followed by the serious ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... said the skipper; "only don't get within shot. I don't want to have to turn amateur doctor again on your behalf. I am clever enough at cuts and bruises, and I dare say if I were hard put to it I could manage to mend a broken leg or arm, but I wouldn't undertake to be hunting you all over to find where a rifle-bullet had gone. Accidents are my line, not wounds received in war; and, by the way, while we are talking of such subjects, if we have to lie up here in this ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... presently the smell of toasting corn began to rise, until my mouth watered and my belly yearned. Fifteen or twenty minutes later (it seemed like twenty hours, sahib!) hot corn was brought to us and we on guard began to be new men. Nevertheless, food made the guard more sleepy, and I was hard put to it walking from one ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... th' Cunnel hadent leff no wil, I was hard put what ter dew; but arter thinkin' on it over a spell, I knowed shede har on it sumhow; so I 'cluded to tell har miseff. She tuk on d——d hard at fust, but arter a bit, grew more calm like, and then she sed it war God's wil, an' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... long, hard put to it in argument, and very delicately and discreetly convicted of arrogance or worse. They were entering the woods of the park when he suddenly stopped ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had Joseph looked to hear, and he was hard put to it to dissemble his satisfaction. For a while he was silent, making ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... born life was hard and dangerous in Domremy. The villagers were hard put to it to protect themselves against fierce knights and noblemen who rode at the head of marauding bands to steal and plunder at will. The peasants had to look on sadly, with no hope of redress, when brutal men at arms ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... more, he was handicapped at every turn. Scarcely had he taken command at Fort Smith when he was apprised of the fact that the chief armorer there had been ordered to remove all the tools to Arkadelphia.[736] Steele was hard put to it to obtain any supplies at all.[737] Many that he did get the promise of were diverted from their course,[738] just as were General Pike's. This was true even in the case of shoes.[739] He tried to fit his regiments out one by one with the things ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... 'in the general line. Also a—a little money on account of rent. A very little, sir. It oughtn't to be owing, I know, but we have been hard put to it, indeed!' ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... be caught napping, and, being prepared for all contingencies, a fierce combat took place, and the warriors of Chitor were hard put to it to stand their ground until Bheemsi had escaped to the stronghold on a fleet horse. Then the devoted remnant retreated, pursued to the very gates by their foes. The flower of Chitor had perished, but they had achieved their object. This was ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... heard it said that certain orders of beings are able to improvise or to interchange organs, just as need calls. Thus a polyp, if hard put to it, may shift what little brain and stomach happen to be in his possession. You may say that he carries his heart in his hand. He can take his stomach, and dump it down in brain-case or thorax, just as he fancies,—can organize viscera and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... haven't much to do at home, or are hard put for company, to travel six miles in the snow to show off their prinkin' to a lot of idle louts shiny with bear's grease and scented up with doctor's stuff," added the girl, shrugging her shoulders, with a touch of ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... horribly vexed, nervous and embarrassed, was hard put to it to keep back the tears. Old Grannis stood for a moment with averted eyes, murmuring: "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I—I really—I ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... with his wild morning. For, all the way, his master, apparently unconscious of every thing else, had been immediately aware of the slightest slackening of muscle under him, the least faltering of the onward pace, and, in the temper of the savage, which wakes the moment the man of civilization is hard put to it, the moment he flagged, still drove the cruel spurs into his flanks, when the grand, unresenting creature would rush forward at straining speed—not, I venture to think, so much in obedience to the pain, as ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... be hard put to it, with your nature, Charles," she told him critically. Then she rose. "Will you go to him with me?" ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... the visits of Mary Magdalene, and subsequently of Peter and John to the tomb, which are given in the fourth Gospel, are from a Johannean source, if we were asked our reasons for this belief, we should be very hard put to it to give them. Nevertheless ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... the broad form of my adversary was suddenly thrown into faint light by a narrow window in the wall. I staked all upon one swift thrust. It caught him full in the belly, and ran how far up his body I know not. With a cry he fell forward, and I was hard put to it to save my sword and avoid going down with him. But I got myself and my sword free, and went on up the stairs as fast as ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... question was how long he would stand the wear and tear of having to defend his position, and how soon he would begin to feel that the inconvenience of giving in would be less troublesome than the inconvenience of holding out. Even the most courtly historian would be hard put to it if he were set to find out any passage in the whole of George the Fourth's matured life ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that I taught him, and it's MULTIPLICATION—which you may see him execute upside down, because he can't do it the natural way. The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber—if very hard put upon making a show—but he could no more come the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... the dog to catch up with him, and leads him on in a merry chase. I feel sure that unless badly cornered or confused by a number of dogs or wolves, the deer does not often develop great fear, nor is he hard put to it in these episodes. Quite likely there is an element of sport ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... I looked in on Madame d'Epinay and M. Grimm for a moment as I passed. They were distressed that I had not spoken sooner, as they would at once have sent their doctor. I did not tell them my reason, which was, that my mother would not see a French doctor. I was hard put to it, as they said they would send their physician that very evening. When I came home, I told my mother that I had met Herr Heina with a German priest, who had heard a great deal about me and was anxious to hear me play, and that they were both to call on me next day. She seemed quite satisfied, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... to adduce a satisfactory reason why he has not written thoroughness into his course of study he might be hard put to it to justify the omission. He hopes, of course, that the quality of thoroughness will issue somehow from the study of arithmetic and science, but he lacks the courage, apparently, to proclaim this hope in print. He says that education is a spiritual process, while his course of study proves ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... was hard put to it. The grey infantrymen were good marksmen, and their line was long, drawn across the road and the up and down of the fields. Here and there, now and again, a trooper went down to the dust, and the riderless horse, galloping ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... wot a comf'rable feed they git. I can tell 'ee that them Sailors' Homes is the greatest blessin' that was ever got up for us sea-dogs. We ain't 'xactly such soft good natur'd ignorant big babies as some o' your well-meanin' pheelanthropists would make us out; but we are uncommon hard put to it when we git ashore, for every port is alive with crimps an' land-sharks to swaller us up when we come off a long voyage; an' the wust of it is, that we're in a wild reckless humour for the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... in ambush for me. What! An income sufficient to support three or four working-class families—a house all to myself—things beautiful wherever I turn—and absolutely nothing to do for it all! I should have been hard put to it to defend myself. In those days I was feelingly reminded, hour by hour, with what a struggle the obscure multitudes manage to keep alive. Nobody knows better than I do quam parvo liceat producere vitam. I have hungered in the streets; I have laid my head in the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... 10,000 to the Duke of York, and 5000 to the Duke of Gloucester. A deputation from the City attended at the same time, to tender their loyalty to the King, and to make an offering of 10,000. It was little wonder that the King, who a few weeks before was hard put to it to borrow a few pistoles, and was deep in debt for the maintenance of his household, should receive such messengers with overflowing welcome. The citizens of London were sent home rejoicing in the honour of knighthood—in ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... mean that," cried Corrie, with a feeling of self-reproach. "I don't mean to say that you're ignorant in a general way, you know, but only about what men are likely to do, d'ye see, when they're hard put to it, you understand. Our feelings are so different from ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... whether his uncle were right or no, but he hated him, and marked him down for an enemy. His grandfather had no great love for him either, and was in revolt against his theories; but he was easily crushed in argument by Theodore's fluency, which was never hard put to it to turn into ridicule the old man's simple generosity. In the end Jean Michel came to be ashamed of his own good-heartedness, and by way of showing that he was not so much behind the times as they thought, he used to try ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... bobbing in emphasis of the intensity of their feelings; times when together they conjured up recollections of the everlasting debt that they owed her for her manifold goodnesses, her countless sacrifices on behalf of them. The average Northerner, of whatsoever social status, would have been hard put to it either to comprehend the true inwardness of the relationship that existed between these girls of one race and this old woman of another or to figure how there could be but one outcome. The average Southerner would have been able at once to sense the sentiments and the prejudices underlying ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... literature with Mrs. Jim Conley. I've been working on her for two weeks. The hardest part of my job is to keep her from subscribing for a set of Dickens. She has been on the point of signing the contract at least a half dozen times, and I've been fearfully hard put to head her off. Conley's house is not ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... not very large," said he; "I have two horses and two dogs, a Parsee servant, and a Cape baboon. I should like to take the latter with us as well as my servant. My servant, because he is a good cook; and my monkey, because, if we are hard put to it, she will show us what we may eat and what we may not; there is no taster like a monkey. Besides, she is young and full of tricks, and I like something ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... should you suppose that Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her colouring, but she does not wish you always to measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... weary journey. The supper, materials for which Evan had brought from shore, created a welcome diversion; but supper over, they were still miles from home, and the helpers were hard put to it to keep the small passengers even moderately contented. Fortunately during the last hour the greater part fell asleep where they were, on the sofas, on the floor, on a ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... If I have, and you feel good about it, I'd be thankful if you'd report the way we're workin' this camp. And if you've a spare moment to talk other things, you might say that the boys of my camp are mighty hard put to get the stuff, and they're as tough a gang of jacks as ever heard tell of the dog's ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... antelope, wolves, and abundance of rattlesnakes, were nearly the only living things we saw. The Indians were mainly fishers of the Shoshone - or Great Snake River - tribe, feeding mostly on salmon, which they speared with marvellous dexterity; and Root-diggers, who live upon wild roots. When hard put to it, however, in winter, the latter miserable creatures certainly, if not the former, devoured their own children. There was no map of the country. It was entirely unexplored; in fact, Bancroft the American historian, in his description of the Indian tribes, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... man paused a moment. "Yes, like that," he repeated. "That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn't they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter," he added musingly, "we eliminated ...
— Gun for Hire • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... anger is noticeable in the behaviour of MRS. KRAUSE. KAHL is obviously hard put to it to restrain his laughter concerning something that seems to furnish him immense inner amusement. HELEN observes KAHL with burning eyes and her threatening glance has repeatedly restrained him from saying something that is clearly on the tip of his tongue. LOTH, peeling an apple ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and made him feel thirty again: and as he felt thirty he wanted to be thirty.... She never discussed her private affairs with him, but he knew that she lived alone. She baffled him, bewildered him, until he was often hard put to it not to burst into tears. So quick she was and she understood so well, had so keen an insight into character and the intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for her refusal ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... what I dared not expect, we set off, again and again finding ourselves hard put to it to get the long chassis of the Gloria round sharp corners of narrow streets. More than once it could be done only by backing the car, a feat which was witnessed with cries of astonishment by a crowd of water-sellers with painted tin vessels, ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... staff of ten officers were quartered in Judge Hubbell's house. Mrs. Hubbell was hard put to furnish them with meals, but they treated her with perfect respect, and every night, not knowing how long they might stay, they left on the table the price of their board ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was old, and of this the religion of his fathers was a part. But a faith as strong and as far-reaching as Judaism cannot be dropped out of the life into which it has been ingrained, and hence the Jew has been hard put to cover it up, to hide it, or to attempt its modification to fit the fashion in religions. The inevitable reaction on the non-Jewish part of the community has been a feeling of mystification, and, following on ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... other. All that summer he had fallen into the habit of waking at five o'clock, and not being able to doze off again. The narrowest bar of light on the ceiling, the earliest twitter of the sparrows was enough to strike him into full consciousness; and Mary was hard put to it to darken the room and ensure silence; and would be till the day came when he could knock off work and take a thorough holiday. This he promised himself to do, before he was very ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... tariff for Josiah Wedgwood; and everywhere the importance of guarding the china nurseries has been understood. We have in this country broadcast and in abundance every type of material needed for the finest china ware, and for the finer glasses and enamels. The royal manufactories in Europe were hard put to it sometimes for want of discovering kaolin beds in their dominions, but the resources of the United States in these particulars needed something more than to be brought to light. The manipulation and washing of the clays to render them immediately ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... seas, and it became necessary for the Colonies to take steps for the protection of their commerce. In this year an eighteen-gun ship from Cambridge, Mass., fell in with a Barbary pirate of twenty guns, and was hard put to it to escape. And, as the seventeenth century drew near its close, these pests of the sea so increased, that evil was sure to befall the peaceful merchantman that put to sea without due preparation for a fight or two ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... castles and walls which have suffered through a hundred wars, a score of revolutions. It dominates the younger, more dynamic, Pest which stretches out on the flat plains to the east so that though you stand on the Harmashatarhegy hill of Buda and strain your eyes, you are hard put to find the ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... one photograph Lady Burton, devoted as ever to her husband, is seen nestling at his side and leaning her head against his shoulder. She had grown uncomfortably stout and her tight-fitting dress was hard put to it to bear the strain. Her glorious hair was now grown gray and thin, and it was generally hidden by a not very becoming big yellowish wig with curls, which made her look like ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... him; and says he: 'See thar; thar's a perfect paragone o' hossflesh; a raal Arab; nimble's a cricket; sunder'n a nut; gentler'n a cooin' dove, and faster'n a tornado! I doan't sell 'im fur nary fault, and ye couldn't buy 'im fur no price, ef I warn't hard put. Come, now, what d'ye say? I'll put 'im ter ye fur one fifty, an' it's less'n he cost, it ar!' Wall, the ole man tuk—swallowed the critter whole—tuk him down without greasing, he did! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... person—and some minutes later either Gregory or Peter might have been observed coming down the staircase with a missive from Hamlet. Juliet had detected his gift for verse, and insisted, rather capriciously, on having all his replies in that shape. Hamlet humored her, though he was often hard put to it; for the Muse is a coy immortal, and will not always come when she is wanted. Sometimes he was forced to fall back upon previous efforts, as when he translated these lines into very ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to notice such versatility of invention, such readiness of resource, such familiarity with divers nooks and crannies in the practical experience of life, in a man now so hard put to it for a livelihood. There are persons, however, who might have a good stock of talent, if they did not turn it all into small change. And you, reader, know as well as I do, that when a sovereign or a shilling is once ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and almost as soon set down again: for he was not long set up, but by his ill managing of his matters at home, together with his extravagant expences abroad, he was got so far into debt, and had so little in his shop to pay, that he was hard put to it to keep himself out of prison. But when his Creditors understood that he was about to marry, and in a fair way to get a rich Wife, they said among themselves, We will not be hasty with him, if he gets a rich Wife he will ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... the money to stay there till the next steamer. I had much to do in Australia, and was not a little exercised in mind as to how I should ever be able to get round the world at all unless I once more shipped before the mast. I was, in fact, so hard put to it in the matter of cash, that when the hotel-keeper asked three dollars for a pony on which to ride to Vailima, I refused to pay it, and went away believing that after all I should not see him whom I most desired to meet. Yet it was possible, if not likely, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Sir Owen received so hard and fierce a blow upon his headpiece that he was hard put to it to keep his wits and his seat; and looking round he saw the troll, a fierce dark little man, on the very top of the mound, wielding a long thick bar of iron, as thick as a ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... several other straglers, had stayed behind, commanded Major AEneas Mac Kay, with two troops of horse after them; who finding the said Mac Leans at Kinchardie, in the parish of Luthel, chased them up the Morskaith: in which chase Glencoe happened to be, and was hard put to it, as was foretold. What came of Archibald himself, I am not sure; I have not seen him since, nor can I get a true account of him, only I know he is yet alive, and at that time one of my father's ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... If so, it might happen that Lydia would extricate herself out of her present unpleasant position by the use of past experience. To give her no chance of such dodging, Lucian rapidly detailed the evidence against her so that she would be hard put to baffle it. But in this estimate he quite underrated Lydia's nerve and capability of fence, let alone the dexterity with which she produced a satisfactory reply to each ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the bad name that he had earned dogged him to London. The Royal Society struck him off its rolls, and in revenge he is said to have threatened to publish a travesty of their transactions. He was doubtless often hard put to it for a living, but the variety of his attainments served him in good stead. He possessed or gained some reputation as a mining expert, and making his way down into Cornwall, he seems for some years ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... exact sphere of British influence, and the doubts favoured Drake for the most part. Insular prehensiveness, at its highest flight, could do no more than claim Boruwimi as its uttermost limit, and was aware it would be hard put to it to substantiate the claim. The editor, nevertheless, persevered, bombarded its citizen readers with warnings about trade fleeing from lethargic empires, published a cartoon, and reluctantly took the blackest view of Drake's ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Nature in another part of the village. Elia had been prostrated with a nervous attack which ended in a terrible fit, and Eve, all unaware of what had gone before between her brother and Will, had been hard put to it, in ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... reins and bustled the great sorrel under him. The animal's response was a lengthening of stride which left his companions hard put to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... dislodge the trap. Finally it jerked free and he was off like a rabbit, despite his dragging burden, leaping logs or scuttling beneath them, zigzagging along the crooked trail, dodging bowlders, tree limbs and my frequent but ineffective fire. For I madly pursued him though hard put to keep ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... grateful. Well, I'm goin' to ask a favor of you. I ain't got a cent of my own left, and my niece by marriage, Thankful Cahoon that was, that I love same as if she was my own child, may, sometime or other, be pretty hard put to it to get along. I want you to look after her. If ever the time comes that she needs money or help I want you to do for her what I'd do if I was here. If you don't,' he says, risin' on one elbow ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this afternoon I was hard put to it to escape to my tryst, for my master, the physician, was ailing, and sent me to visit the sick for him, carrying them their medicines. At the last, however, between four and five o'clock, I fled, asking no leave. Taking the Norwich road I ran for a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... hard put to it to carry on the Government at all, and they only succeeded in passing their Education Bill by ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... began to blaze up. A little after, Hall Gizur's son [the bridegroom] came to the south door, and Arni the Bitter, his henchman, with him. They were both very hard put to it, and distressed by the heat. There was a board across the doorway, half-way up. Hall did not stop to look, but jumped straight out over the hatch. He had a sword in one hand, and no weapon besides. Einar Thorgrimsson was posted near where he leapt out, and hewed at his head ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... as some miracle of health that has been attained. Any man—I do not care who he is—who was the sort of a drinker I was, who will stop drinking long enough to get cooled out will feel so much better in every way that he will be hard put to it to give a reason for ever ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... depredations had been committed which Germany would be hard put to explain satisfactorily. No less than ten pressing American inquiries regarding sunk ships were sent to the Berlin Foreign Office as soon as the President, assured that his tenure of office was no longer in doubt, returned to the consideration of foreign affairs. The submarine outbreak ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... beautifully arranged, and her cheeks, amazingly soft and smooth, with scarcely a line in them, were faintly pink. A more utterly incongruous figure to find on an outlying Arizona ranch would be impossible to imagine, and Buck was hard put to refrain from showing ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... satisfied. He cared nothing at all for himself. No bodily suffering could compare with the anguish of mind he had passed through, was still passing through. And so he rode headlong till the youth accompanying him was hard put to it to keep ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... most ideal places in the world for boat-sailing, and the Guardsman had taken up yacht racing with his usual enthusiasm; atoning for his lack of experience by a persistent readiness to take the most hideous risks. The C.O. of the British battalion then stationed in Bermuda was rather hard put to it to find sufficient employment for his men, owing to the restricted area of the island. He encouraged, therefore, their engagements in civilian capacities, as it not only put money into the men's pockets, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... trunk before the workmen got to asking questions. He carried his set of Dickens upstairs, not without interrogation, and stored the volumes away at the bottom of his trunk. So few were his individual belongings that he was hard put to fill the trays compactly enough to prevent the shifting of the contents. When the job was done he locked the trunk, tied a rope around it and then sat down upon it to think. Had he left anything out? He remembered something. He untied the knots, unlocked the trunk, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... smiles from time to time. They are evidently good friends; and she loses her strange startled look when she speaks to him. I suspect she has been quite aware of the squire's wish that she should return to France; and has been hard put to it to decide whether to leave her child or not. The idea that she would have to make some such decision came upon her when she was completely shattered by grief and illness, and she has not had any one to consult as to her duty until Roger came, upon whom she has evidently firm reliance. He told ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I am hard put for an answer. I look round me, and watch my interlocutor preparing to make bread. There is a mammoth pan on the bench beside me containing a coast-line of flour with a lake of water in the middle. Cook is opening the yeast-jar, an expression of serious intent on ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... by a simple device that saves the fancy a good deal of trouble. For, while it is true that the poetic fancy plays, yet the faculty which goes by that pseudonyme in prosaic minds (and it was by such that the details of this Satanic commerce were pieced together) is hard put to it for invention, and only too thankful for any labor-saving contrivance whatsoever. Accordingly, all it need take the trouble to do was to reverse the ideas of sacred things already engraved on its surface, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... terms as no Roundhead could have found. One who had been courtier, exile, naval commander, student, prisoner, and diplomatist, who had associated with all sorts of persons, from kings to alchemists and cooks, had learnt resourcefulness. But he was never too hard put to it perhaps, seeing that "if he had not fourpence, wherever he came he would find respect and credit." "No man knew better how to abound, and to be abased, and ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working-class—especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellences of that remarkable invention of man, compound ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... rejected the intended utterance as unworthy. At the end of half an hour his mind was still working fruitlessly. He knew that the longer he waited the more brilliant he would have to be, and he told himself that even Bernard Shaw or one of those clever writing fellows would have been hard put to it now. ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... For if at any time the pilgrims meet with any brunt, it is when they forget what favours they have received, and how unworthy they are of them.[182] This is the place also, where others have been hard put to it; but more of the place when we are come to it; for I persuade myself, that to this day there remains either some sign of the battle, or some monument to testify that such a battle ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fearfully retained her clasp on his arm, and when he surged to get away she was hard put to ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the New Town, to his city of Prague, moved thereto by the acuteness of the "Housing Problem," which, by the way, is equally urgent to-day. Prague is again the capital of a free and flourishing State, and is again hard put to it to find room for all those who feel attracted to her. The New Town soon entered into the spirit of mediaeval Prague, put on no airs, but just joined in any fray that happened to be going on. So New Town and Old ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... in company, and Thor consenting, they sat down to eat their breakfast, and when they had done, Skrymir packed all the provisions into one wallet, threw it over his shoulder, and strode on before them, taking such tremendous strides that they were hard put to it to keep up with him. So they traveled the whole day, and at dusk Skrymir chose a place for them to pass the night in under a large oak tree. Skrymir then told them he would lie down to sleep. "But take ye the wallet," he added, "and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... into the meadow and Lydia laughed up at him mischievously, "I've always thought I overpaid for those school books. They were fearfully used up. Oh, the speeches have begun," and Billy was hard put to it to keep close to her as she rushed toward the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... phrase. When the Confederate Congress at Richmond began, in the autumn of 1864, seriously to discuss a plan of transforming slaves into soldiers, putting guns in their hands, and thus replenishing the waning man-power of Southern armies, Hotze was hard put to it to explain to his English readers that this was in fact no evidence of lowered strength, but rather a noble determination on the part of the South to permit the negro to win his freedom by bearing arms in defence of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... useless suffering and death, formed [238] the main point of interest. People watched their destruction, batch after batch, in a not particularly inventive fashion; though it was expected that the animals themselves, as living creatures are apt to do when hard put to it, would become inventive, and make up, by the fantastic accidents of their agony, for the deficiencies of an age fallen behind in this matter of manly amusement. It was as a Deity of Slaughter—the Taurian goddess who demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her coasts—the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... at night, as had been agreed, Marouin was on the Champs de Mars, then covered with Marshal Brune's field-artillery. No one had arrived yet. He walked up and down between the gun-carriages until a functionary came to ask what he was doing. He was hard put to it to find an answer: a man is hardly likely to be wandering about in an artillery park at ten o'clock at night for the mere pleasure of the thing. He asked to see the commanding officer. The officer came up: M. Marouin informed him that he was an avocat, attached to the law courts of Toulon, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one of the most suspicious of the fowls of the air. Why is the Canada jay so much tamer than are other jays? They belong farther north, where they see less of man; they are birds of the wilderness; they are often, no doubt, hard put to it for food; their color does not make them conspicuous,—all these things, no doubt, tend to make them more familiar than their congeners. Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch upon your hand, and take food from it, more readily ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... Corinth, of which little Christian community nothing further is known. But if we take into account the hideous immoralities of Corinth, we shall deem it probable that the port, with its shifting maritime population, was, like most seaports, a soil in which goodness was hard put to it to grow, and a church had much against which to struggle. To be a Christian at Cenchrea can have been no light task. Travellers in Egypt are told that Port Said is the wickedest place on the face of the earth; and in Phoebe's home there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... in my life I have met with a man with whom it is possible to live. In general, not many of the type exist in Russia, and, though clever, good-humoured, well-educated men abound, one would be hard put to it to find an individual of equable temperament with whom one could share a roof for centuries without a quarrel arising. Anyway, Chichikov is the first of his ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... continually at grips with the Hun. The German airmen, with their "travelling circuses" of twelve to fifteen fast scouts, once more had an innings in the spring of the current year, and the older types of British machine were hard put to it to carry through their regular work. Then came the great day when scores of our new machines, husbanded for the occasion, engaged the enemy hell-for-leather at his own place in the air. An untiring offensive ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... time," Sir Richard continued, "when I was really on my last legs. It was just before I came into the baronetcy. I had borrowed every penny I could borrow. I was even hard put to it for a meal. I went to Paris, and I called myself by another man's name. I got introduced to a somewhat exclusive club there. My assumed name was a good one—it was the name, in fact, of a relative whom I somewhat resembled. I was accepted without question. I played cards, and I lost somewhere ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Greek Language, and he assures me upon his Word, that your late Quotation means no more, than that Manners and not Dress are the Ornaments of a Woman. If this comes to the Knowledge of my Female Admirers, I shall be very hard put to it to bring my self off handsomely. In the mean while I give you this Account, that you may take care hereafter not to betray any of your Well-wishers into the like Inconveniencies. It is in the Number of these that I beg leave ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... him," Saunders urged, "an' him to her? She's that hard put to it for a man that wi' a bit steering she'll ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... and have you nothing better to do than steal when the world is so hard put for honest soldiers and workmen to carry on her affairs. Now get you away and pray the saints to forgive you, for the next time you'll not be ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... too, came the terrified flying-fish, which went winging away out to the beam, glittering in the bright sun. The rumbling of the ship's engines filled the air with a sleepy monotone; and Mac was hard put to keep awake. From his cool perch he looked down on snowy awnings stretching fore and aft, though here and there through openings he caught glimpses of mens' bare bodies as they lay sleeping on deck, and of horses' heads hanging low with half-closed eyes. The other signaller ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... moved away. "His whole company has absolute confidence in him. You can't imagine the calm and prestige that kid possesses in the face of danger. He's the real type of leader, he is! And let me tell you, he's pretty hard put sometimes." ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... minutes these two young men drew near to the two young women, whose manners were hard put to hide surprise. When their brother introduced Mr. Carne to them, Faith bowed rather stiffly, for she had formed without reason a dark and obstinate dislike to him. But the impetuous Dolly ran up and offered him both her hands, and said, "Why, Mr. Carne saved both our ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... the Saxons repulsed every effort, but as the lashings of the oars gave way under the pressure of the Danish ships, these drifted alongside, and they were thus able to attack along the whole length of the bulwarks between the castles. The Saxons were now hard put to it, but their superior height still enabled them to keep ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the climb. Short as it was, it caused us a good deal of trouble; but we had dogs enough, and by harnessing a sufficient number we got the sledges up. I should like to know what they thought on board. They could see we were already hard put to it to get up here. What would it be like when we had to get on to the plateau? I do not know whether they thought of the old ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... another burden, for, as you may know, her son Charles got keeping company with a servant at a wine shop, who of course ran away after she had a baby, which she left him to see to. So one can understand that the Toussaints themselves are hard put. I don't complain of them. They've already lent me a little money, and of course they can't go ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... bear the notion of her," rejoined Tom stoutly. "I'd be hard put-to to do wi' onybody at arter our Betty. Hoo's wick an' 'earty, an' I dunnot want nobry; but if I did have to pick a second missus, ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... as Israel did—among a people who elaborately fed the kas of the departed—might pick up a trace of a custom, the giving of food for the dead, still persevered in by St. Monica till St. Ambrose admonished her. But Mr. Huxley is hard put to it for evidence of ancestor-worship or ghost-worship in Israel when he looks for indications of these rites in 'the singular weight attached to the veneration of parents in the Fourth Commandment.'[3] The Fourth Commandment, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... recovering them, but ineffectually. At last, a fortnight after their desertion, and only the day before the ship was to leave the island, two of them were caught by the goat-hunters and brought aboard. They confessed that they had been hard put to it for the first five days, being forced to subsist entirely on the cabbage-trees, which are here in great plenty; but having accidentally found some fire, left by the goat-hunters, it served them in good stead, as it enabled them to cook their victuals. That same evening they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... where you're going to find the nation as moves to begin with, and then you'll be hard put to it to find what they are moving about. It's like this, sir," said Edwards, who had not quite relished being called "my good friend." "They haven't got any grievance—nothing to hit with, don't you see, sir; and then there's not much to hit against, because the Government is more like ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... painful. So much so, that Mr. Samuel Plowman, Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths, whose nerves were less subordinate than those of the two ex-officers, was hard put to it not ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... became toil. Gale could distance Yaqui going downhill; on the climb, however, he was hard put to it to keep the Indian in sight. It was not a question of strength or lightness of foot. These Gale had beyond the share of most men. It was a matter of lung power, and the Yaqui's life had been spent scaling the desert heights. Moreover, the climbing was infinitely slow, tedious, dangerous. On ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... in this Vale of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had not gone far, ere he saw a foe come in the field to meet him, whose name was Apollyon. Then did Christian fear, and he cast in his mind if he would go back or stand his ground. But Christian thought that as ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin |
