"Stave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... literature. He saw himself saving people from sinking ships, cutting away masts in a hurricane, swimming through a surf with a line; or as a lonely castaway, barefooted and half naked, walking on uncovered reefs in search of shellfish to stave off starvation. He confronted savages on tropical shores, quelled mutinies on the high seas, and in a small boat upon the ocean kept up the hearts of despairing men—always an example of devotion to duty, and as unflinching as a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sometimes very big. They were the Dreadnought battleships of their own time and place and people. When their ends were sharpened into a sort of ram they could stave in an enemy's canoe if they caught its side full tilt with their own end. Dug-out canoes were common wherever the trees were big and strong enough, as in Southern Asia, Central Africa, and on the Pacific Coast ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... do anything they wished on account of the weather, as it was not so cold to the natives as to us. They played with balls, both large and small, and sleds of all descriptions; and if the latter were not to be had, or all in use, a barrel stave or board would be made to answer the same purpose. It was a rush past the window down the hill, first by a pair of muckluked feet, then a barrel stave and a boy, sometimes little Pete, and sometimes John. One barrel stave would hold only one coaster, and there were usually enough for the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I don't see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are only about twenty men on board this machine, I don't think they can stave off two ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... dawn. The horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... soprano with that sympathetic timbre, that power of expressing every phase of her artistic conception, that bird-like quality of the upper notes, that marvelous beauty and equality of the entire range of two octaves and three quarters (from B below the stave to G on the fourth line), that exquisite sonority, that penetrating pianissimo, that unrivalled messa di voce, that mastery over technique of which so much has ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... steel-cap cleft in twain, His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain; Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid the rout, "For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on, and fight it out!" And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And now he quotes a stage-play, and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... men are powerless. There come times in man's life when he moves heaven and earth, figuratively speaking: prays until he can pray no more: sacrifices, it may be, his money, his health, his prospects, and does everything that is in the power of a human being in a vain attempt to stave off a threatened disaster. But, in spite of all his efforts, in spite of his cries to a pitiless heaven, the relentless march of fate cannot be stayed. It moves forward like a huge juggernaut and crushes his hopes, his dearest ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... need of our all falling into a panic, or all being obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into their hands. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by visiting various free lunches during the day. Every night I arrived with my dollar, and that meant beer and beds for a score. I also brought along a flour sack half full of biscuits, cold pancakes, corn ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... you, indeed,' said the fellow, as the stranger disclosed his haggard unwashed face, and torn clothes. 'What of that? Be merry, master. A stave of a ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Quintal," returned the other, who was beginning to talk rather thickly, so powerful was the effect of the liquor on his unaccustomed nerves; "I shay, ole feller, you used to sing well once. Come g-give us a stave now." ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... seeing of why it was; and he resolved, in justice to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and, taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes, saw that his feelings in—the old time had been hers. Instantly the old time gave him its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given, Alike, to playground and the grave,— And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of the soul, Oh, sleeper, snore! Whistle me, wheeze me, grunkle and grunt, gurgle and snort me a Virile stave! Snore till the Cosmos shakes! On the wings of a snore I fly backward a billion years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him limb from limb, And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to death, for I am Virile! Snore! Snore! Snore! Snore, O struggling and ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave's end as well as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I should have given 't you to-day morning; but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... provision the fort, the South Carolina authorities referred the matter to the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at Montgomery, hesitated—drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... much at variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will not ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... followed one another in a jigging kind of fairly rapid sequence, running up and down the gamut and in and out, as if the notes of the composer had suddenly become animated, and, like some kind of tiny, big-headed, long-tailed goblins, were chasing one another in and out of the five lines of the stave, leaping from bar to bar, never stopping for a rest, making fun of the flats and sharps, and finally pausing, breathless and tired, as the player now finally laid down the bow, took out a fine laced handkerchief, and began to wipe his ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... and junket and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to, bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down would drop his chin ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... all that!" said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... and so the mace-bearers, being on their own ground forgot their manners, and peremptorily demanded their pay before they would allow us to move one step farther. At first I tried to stave the matter off, promising great rewards if they took us quickly on to Suwarora; but they would take no alternative—their rights were four wires each. I could not afford such a sum, and tried to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses. the grieve had met the relief party from Thrums. Already the weavers had helped Waster Lunny to stave off ruin, and they were now on their way to Whinbusses, keeping together through fear of mist and water. Every few minutes Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... reduced exactly under any of these heads; as between 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping altogether the ear: thus it is ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... by way of variety. 'The Night before Larry was stretched' was done by a bishop, they say; and 'Lord Altamont's Bull' by the Lord Chief Justice; and the Solicitor-General is as up to fun as any bishop of them all. Come, Jim, tip us the stave!" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... dull should only probe things that are soft and tender. He who has a blunt knife must search out the ways to cut joint by joint. Since, therefore, it is best for a man in distress to delay the evil, and nothing is more fortunate in trouble than to stave off hard necessity, I ask three days' space to get ready, provided that I may obtain from the king the skill of a freshly ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... how delighted he was to see me, how it pleased him to see that we came to him with our little troubles, etc. He kept off the subject of the laisser-passer as long as he could, but when he could stave it off no longer he said that he must ask me to see von Herwarth, who had been placed in charge of all matters regarding passports, etc. I made a blue streak over to Herwarth's office, and saw him after a little delay. He kept me as long as he could, ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... legions of Caesar came over the Alps, and finding the snowy slopes in front of them, immediately sat down on their shields and slid down upon the Northern races they had come to conquer. Many a New England youngster in days gone-by learned to come down a hill on a barrel stave in much the same way; he, too, with blood of the conqueror in his veins. The toboggan wasn't really invented; it grew. From that invention has worked out many devices specially fitted to the sport under special conditions. Switzerland has seen coasting ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... of The Strayed Reveller does not cease with its rhymelessness. The rhythm and the line-division are also studiously odd, unnatural, paradoxical. Except for the "poetic diction" of putting "Goddess" after "Circe" instead of before it, the first stave is merely a prose sentence, of strictly prosaic though not inharmonious rhythm. But in this stave there is no instance of the strangest peculiarity, and what seems to some the worst fault of the piece, the profusion of broken-up ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Pains I felt were very Sharp, and hindred my Rest; my Blood was heated and boiling up to a Fever, which being agitated with daily dressing my Wounds, it requir'd a skillful Physician and a good Regimen in the Patient, to stave off a Fit of Sickness. My Brother prov'd an excellent Nurse, and had he not us'd a great deal of Reason in keeping me from improper Nourishment, the Game would quickly have been up with me. I was also waited upon several times by a worthy Clergyman, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... theatres would be streaming towards cars and ferry. It was time we were on board again. Often there would be a crowd of us bound for the wharves. It was a custom to tramp through 'sailor-town' together. On the way we would cheer the 'crimps' up by a stave or two of 'Mariners ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... from an old Germanic verb that means to scratch and the Germanic name for the beech. Our earliest books were wooden tablets on which inscriptions were scratched. The word book itself comes from Anglo-Sax. b[o]c, beech; cf. Ger. Buchstabe, letter, lit. beech-stave. Lat. liber, book, whence a large family of words in the Romance languages, means the inner bark of a tree, and bible is ultimately from Greek {byblos}, the inner rind of the papyrus, the Egyptian rush ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Susan, or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... you kindly; it ain't many suvrings as comes my way—though I hate the sight on it, I do. I'd like to stave a hole in the bottom of that there cranky concern; it ain't safe, and that's the fact. There'll be another accent out of it one of these fine days and no coming to next time. But, Lord bless you, it's her way of pleasuring herself. She's a queer un is Miss Beatrice, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of real life. He assembled ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... they have echoed o'er the arsenal, Keeping due time with every hammer's clink, As a good jest to jolly artisans; Or making chorus to the creaking oar, In the vile tune of every galley-slave, Who, as he sung the merry stave, exulted He was not a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it holding ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce the South ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of a bottle and glass, flanked by the words "Bon Vin de Macon a 8 et a 10 S." hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot's cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the Cafe or the Trois Freres, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood for a similar amount. It needs a three ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... practically suggesting to them the policy, or rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North Borneo Company, the British Government no longer called for the observance of these provisions of ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... your recruits, you must assemble them at some central point where you have a large quantity of arms and equipment stored, generally at your own expense—though "Sam" Hughes is remedying this—and issue these, stave off complaints that the fit is not exactly up to West End standards, and, if you are an old "stager," give them an hour or two of drill while enthusiasm ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... ocean-currents from the far north. In sailing along she was often obliged to run with great violence against lumps so large that they caused her whole frame to tremble, stout though it was. "Shall we smash the lump, or will it stave in our bows?" was a question that frequently ran in the captain's mind. Sometimes ice closed round her and squeezed the sides so that her beams cracked. At other times, when a large field was holding her fast, the smaller pieces would grind and rasp against ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. Behind the battered and tottering Crimson wall a figure raved and ranted and roared, entreating his teammates to stave off the Bulldog's advance. He stamped from end to end in the churned up sod, prodding each player in a vicious manner. But there was no visible stiffening of the Harvard defense at the savage barking of its ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? Has Dr. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where the prisoners lay, they flew at him to fell him. But even on the threshold Herdegen saw through their purpose, and had no sooner shut the door than he drew his hunting knife. Then the old beldame gripped him by the throat and clawed him tooth and nail; one of the ruffians beat him with a stave torn from the bedstead till he weened he had broken or bruised all his limbs, while the other, whose hands were yet bound, pressed between him and the door. In truth he would have come to a bad end, but that the younger woman saved him at the risk of her own life. The man who had rid himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is, if I can help Description; and I won't reflect,—that is, If I can stave off thought, which—as a whelp Clings to its teat—sticks to me through the abyss Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss Drains its first draught of lips:—but, as I said, I won't philosophise, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... cursed shower the other night, that made it incumbent on Cluffe, who had had two or three sharp little visits of his patrimonial gout, and no notion of dying for love, to get to his quarters as quickly as might be—he had no doubt that the last stave of their first duet rising from the meadow of Belmont, with that charming roulade—devised by Puddock, and the pathetic twang-twang of his romantic instrument, would have been answered by the opening of the drawing-room window, and Aunt Becky's imperious summons to the serenaders ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person she knows, rather than leave the ground clear for him. She should not go for moonlight strolls, nor to look for the Southern Cross on board ship, if she really wants to stave off his proposal. There is no need to be rude, and even if she has to appear unsympathetic, that is better than to humiliate him by a rejection. Some women glory over their hapless suitors as an Indian counts his scalps. This is the height of bad taste and heartlessness. ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... BUNG-STARTER. A stave shaped like a bat, which, applied to either side of the bung, causes it to start out. Also, a soubriquet for the captain of the hold. Also, a name given to the master's assistant serving ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... saying, she shivered and covered her face. Now while Beltane yet stared, amazed by her saying, the bushes parted near by and a hooded figure stepped forth silent and soft of foot, at sight of whom all men gave back a pace, and Roger, trembling, drew a second cross in the dust with his bow-stave, what time a ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the savage folk, with sword and stave, Set on me, weening to have found rich prey. And now my bones lie weltering on the wave, Now on strange shores winds blow them far away. O! by the memory of thy sire, I pray, By young Iulus, and his hope so fair, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... after another short prayer, joined us with a face of angelic serenity. Having greeted each of us affectionately, he entered into conversation with us, until we were called, as we soon were, to table. I, who watched his actions most closely and ever found them regular and harmonious as a stave of music, was amazed at the brevity of this preparation and thanksgiving. In the evening, therefore, when we were alone together, I said, using the filial privilege which I knew was mine, "Father, it seemed to me this ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... eat six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks. Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard—we need nowt but the boards we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... sang, and thou, the last, Sweet Spenser, of their god-like line, Soar far too swift for verse of mine One strain to compass of your song. Yet there are poets that prolong Of your rare voice the ravishment In silver cadences; content Were I if I could but rehearse One stave of Wither's starry verse, Weave such wrought richness as recalls Britannia's lovely Pastorals, Or in some garden-spot suspire One breath of Marvell's magic fire When in the green and leafy shade He sees ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... some few succeeding seconds, the diapason stop only was opened ... and how sweet and touching was the melody which it imparted! "Oh Dieu! (exclaimed our valet) que cela est ravissant, et meme penetrant." This was true enough. A solemn stave or two of a hymn (during which a few other pipes were opened) was then performed by the organist ... and the effect was, as if these notes had been chanted by an invisible choir of angels. The darkness of the heavens added much to the solemnity of the whole. Silence ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the house-Servants—male and female—all negroes or mulattoes. There are shrieks, intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action. As in such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost painless. How did Coleridge discount his own notes of this ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... back into the snow. The desire to live increased, and when I felt the numbness creep from my limbs into my body, I crawled alongside Peoria Red and snuggled closely against him, hoping that our mutual body warmth would stave off the crisis to the last possible moment. He was groaning, and mustering the last vestige of control I yet had over my benumbed hands, I searched about in the darkness until I found his frozen fingers, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!" and the gang relieved streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton waterbutts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats then began to arrive, so many per day, with the tea chests. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... stave within a few feet of them, grunted discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who looked up and down the shaded cave of ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... dangers of the northern shore, which was to leeward; towards this broken land, however, and lee-shore, the ship settled very fast, notwithstanding our utmost efforts: In this pressing emergency we were obliged to stave all the water-casks upon the deck, and between decks, to clear the vessel, and to make her carry better sail, and at length, happily escaped the danger which threatened us. After we got clear of those islands, and drew off from the Streight's mouth and the land, we found the sea run more regularly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine. ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off tomorrow. To-morrow— ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... few weeks like this would enable us almost to complete the courses," replied the engineer. "Easy, lads, easy! If you run her up so fast you'll stave in the planks. Stand by with ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... soul Melodious descant gave, But yet his voice so rich and sweet Swell'd not the sacred stave, The Christmas wreaths o'er arch and nave Were lingering still to cheer His parting visit to the fane Which he had ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... have been, what they are, or what is like to become of them hereafter: such thoughts they count unmanly and hurtful. And now they are for any thing rather than the word: an alehouse, a playhouse, sports, pleasures, sleep, the world, and what not, so they may stave of the power ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... The Spaniard was firing her guns as she came on, the Nashville was replying. Captain Long was working to stave off the impending disaster. Hastily the engineer got up steam. The gun-boat was ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott
... chucked over to stave the bottom," growled Dick Bannock, beginning to row. "If I hadn't shoved her off, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... it by de stem wid he teef. He wouldn't fling it down, kase he's feard he'd spile de berries. Time he totch de groun' good, Miss Grace, she hauled off, she did, an' smacked his jaws ez hard ez she could stave, an' axed him how dar'ed he skeer 'em like dat? An' Mars Jim, he larfed out loud, and said: 'Princess wanted it,' an' den he put de truck he'd resked his nake ter git in Miss Pocahontas's arms, an' she hugged it up tight, an' went long to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... by the public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung beneath the lilacs since the Colonel ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... nothing is the matter. But if he merely answers "No-o-o!" he means yes, and in order to stave off sea-sickness he must be ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... was less dense to the left, I thought, and in a moment I came out upon an open space, and saw a young man in the garb of a shepherd, a looped blue tunic, with a hat tossed back upon the shoulders and held there by a cord. He had leaned a metal stave against a tree, the top of it adorned by a device of crossed wings. He was stooping down and disengaging something from the earth, so that when I drew near, he had taken it up and was gazing curiously at it. It was the herb ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... boat, would certainly come on shore in their other boat to look for them, and that then, perhaps, they might come armed, and be too strong for us; this he allowed to be rational. Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat, which lay upon the beach, so that they might not carry her off; and taking everything out of her, leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim; accordingly, we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... lane. For this flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow, set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles through her side and stains the yellow paint. But ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to prevent, mon ami. What's to become of the king ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... stave Through all the bounds, from Beersheba to Dan; Come out! come out! who scorns to be a slave, Or claims ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... after dinner, and Maude sat alone at work in the banquet-hall. She was almost unconsciously humming to herself the air of a troubadour chanson—an air as well-known to ourselves as to her, though we have turned it into a hymn tune, and have christened it Innocents, or Durham. A fresh stave was just begun, when the hall door opened, and a voice at ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... stave in two or three heads before any number of you could stop me," sneered the fellow, ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of "The Mermaid"; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good deal of a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... I dare say I shall become quite good again. Ah, your new Judaisms will never appeal like the old, with all its imperfections. They will never keep the race together through shine and shade as that did. They do but stave off the inevitable dissolution. It is beautiful—that old childlike faith in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, that patient waiting through the centuries for the Messiah who even to you, I dare ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... our work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire, and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly knows that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whole business appeared infinitely distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in order to insert a wooden disc, disfigure ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.— You with the unpaid bill, Despair,— You tiresome verse-reciter, Care,— I will pay you in the grave,— Death will listen to your stave. Expectation too, be off! To-day is for itself enough; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good Alter long pain—with all your love, This you never ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave off ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never speak again—don't take ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Base of the First Metacarpal Bone.—Bennett of Dublin described an injury of the thumb which, although comparatively common, is often mistaken for a sub-luxation backward of the carpo-metacarpal joint, or a simple "stave of the thumb." It consists in an "oblique fracture through the base of the bone, detaching the greater part of the articular facet with that piece of the bone supporting it which projects into the palm" (Fig. 53). We have frequently ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... "Look at him!" repeated Judah. "When I go up to the depot he'll stand right in the middle of the railroad track and go to sleep. I have to whale the timbers out of him to get him awake enough to step ahead so's a train of cars won't stave in his broadside. But get him home here where he can see the barn, the place where he knows I stow the oats, and he wants to run right over top of a stone wall. Can't hardly hold him, I can't. Who-a-a!... Well, Cap'n Sears, here we ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute himself, and which he was unwilling should ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... collapsed into inert heaps, asleep immediately. Carse extracted a ray-gun from the belt of Leithgow's suit and prepared to stand watch. But that was too much. He over-estimated his capacity. He had come through thirty hours of hellish sleep-denied delirium, and he could not stave sleep off any longer. He staggered and went down, and his eyelids were glued in sleep when his ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... teeth of the natural color; and Swen with the Forked Beard (TVAESKAEG, Double-beard, "TWA-SHAG") was not born; and the Monks of Ely had not yet (by about a hundred years) begun that singing, (Without note or comment, in the old, BOOK OF ELY date before the Conquest) is preserved this stave;—giving picture, if we consider it, of the Fen Country all a lake (as it was for half the year, till drained, six centuries after), with Ely Monastery rising like an island in the distance; and the music of its nones or vespers sounding soft and far over the solitude, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... sink sank or sunk sunk [adj. sunken] sit sat [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... with even a theoretical civil character undecided. But many of the members, who saw the illogic quite plainly, voted for it, being dazzled if not seduced by the thought that it was a compromise which would stave off an irreconcilable conflict at least for the present; so Washington, who wished the abolition of slavery, voted for the compromise along with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the South Carolinian who regarded slavery as higher than ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the noonday ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... build your dam and be damned to you. Of course, if you complete your contract eventually, you will force me to pay you for it, but in the interim you will have had to use clam-shells and woodpecker heads for money. I know I can stave off settlement of your judgment for a year; after that, should I acquire title to the Rancho Palomar, I will settle ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring 'that' of Sheridan. 'Oh,' replied the attorney, 'the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.'—'Well,' said I, 'and what do you mean to do?'—'Nothing at all for the present,' said he: 'would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of it?' and here he began laughing, and going over ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... type a score of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to the depredator ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old- fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father's wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda's earnings being large enough to stave ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thyself, Reft was the solace that we had in thee, Menalcas! Who then of the Nymphs had sung, Or who with flowering herbs bestrewn the ground, And o'er the fountains drawn a leafy veil?- Who sung the stave I filched from you that day To Amaryllis wending, our hearts' joy?- "While I am gone, 'tis but a little way, Feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed, Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive, Beware the he-goat; ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone—we think he has gone off with Florrie," she cried, "and ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... paths by others trod. The man who trusts himself, and dares step out, Soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout. 'Tis I who first to Italy have shown Iambics, quarried from the Parian stone; Following Archilochus in rhythm and stave, But not the words that dug Lycambes' grave. Yet think not that I merit scantier bays, Because in form I reproduce his lays: Strong Sappho now and then adopts a tone From that same lyre, to qualify her own; So does Alcaeus, though in ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... best. Capitaines of longe and of greate experience. Souldiers well trayned in Fflaunders to joyne with the younger. Harqubusshiers of skill. Archers, stronge bowmen. Bowyers. Ffletchers. Arrow head makers. Bow stave preparers. Glew makers. Morryce pike makers, and of halbert staves. Makers of spades and shovells for pyoners, trentchers, and forte makers. Makers of basketts to cary earthe to fortes and rampiers. Pioners and spademen for fortification. Salte peter ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... of tallow stuck outside my hat, I will be through those bars in no time. French iron ar'n't worth a d—n, and the sentry sha'n't hear me if he lolls against them; although it may be just as well if Thompson tips us a stave, as then we may work ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavoured to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... firing the bomb directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom I have hitherto said nothing, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sound of his own voice And sweet self-pity, or the fancy of it Made his eye moist; but Enid fear'd his eyes, Moist as they were, wine-heated from the feast; And answered with such craft as women use, Guilty or guiltless, to stave off a chance That breaks upon them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... plain and sea and distant Welsh mountains beyond that. Now I thought nothing of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, though they ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... may be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... boat, with the money under his arms, and whistling as he went the pathetic air of "Shule Aroon." It was the first time I had heard that tune; I was to hear it again, words and all, as you shall learn, but I remember how that little stave of it ran in my head after the free-traders had bade him "Wheesht, in the deil's name," and the grating of the oars had taken its place, and I stood and watched the dawn creeping on the sea, and the boat drawing away, and the lugger ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when success I cannot crock this Does their designs attend, stave. And then their ways, who thus ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to action, and she followed him so swiftly that she reached the top, and the broad road there, almost as soon as he. Before then, however, he had caught up a barrel stave, which happened to be lying in a too convenient spot, and was belaboring ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... 4 o'clock, the drummers of the regiment began to beat their drums as hard as they could stave, and I saw men running in every direction, and the camp soon became one scene of hurry and excitement. I asked some one what all this hubbub meant. He looked at me with utter astonishment. I saw soldiers running to their tents and grabbing their guns and cartridge-boxes and hurry out again, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... am a living sinner, the rosy-faced old boy took up his flute and blew a stave or two of ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cramped, and he knows he has been asleep. But a curious impression is on his mind, as if some one came and looked at him. The lamp burns, the corners of the room are shadowy. An ugly chill creeps up his back, and he rises, stretches himself, whistles a stave of rondeau, and inspects the outer room. All is as usual. He will go back to bed. Or had he better take another ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and by G-d, you are both. When he spoke this, he was a prisoner in the store-tent, and asked the captain, If he was to be kept there all night? On these provocations, the captain attempted to strike him again, but the centinel said, he should strike no prisoner of his. But Cozens endeavouring to stave a cask of brandy, was soon after released. This day got out of the ship several chests of wax candles of all sizes, bales of cloth, bales of stockings, shoes, with some clocks and mercantile wares, with which the ship ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... vines. From below there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his loves and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... he was clear of his enemies, several other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... you on account of my little child.' There he stopped with a break in his voice. Harold, with intent to set his mind at ease and to stave off further expressions ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... on this head, yet I do not see that the measure could have been decently avoided, most certainly not, consistent with the letter and spirit of my instructions. I have endeavored to adapt the mode to the main end I have in view, that is, to stave off any question touching the expediency of the voyage at this time, or prior to my obtaining permission to make it; for the reasons mentioned in my letter of the 24th instant, as well as for others, which it may not be prudent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... reverses came to the Union Arms, so seemed to grow proportionately the efforts, on all sides, to force forward, or to stave off, as the case might be, the great question of the liberation and arming of the Slaves, as a War Measure, under the War powers of the Constitution. It was about this time (July 12, 1862) that President Lincoln determined to make ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... I was very sorry about it, for my castles in Spain have been real homes to me. But there is no fear. She has a block of wood she found in the blacksmith shop which she calls her "dear baby." A spoke out of a wagon wheel is "little Margaret," and a barrel-stave is "bad ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... Mag Trega and they unyoke there and prepare their food. It is said that it is there that Dubthach recited this stave:— ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... account of the heat, and their terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time, which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the forerunner ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a task to get the dory aboard, even with the aid of the Bolo's stern davits. The sea was rising every minute and even when they had the "falls," as they are called, secured to the little dinghy, she threatened to stave either herself or the Bolo while she was being hoisted and lashed. At last, however, even that task was accomplished and the boys began to anticipate a rest. But the indefatigable Ben would not let them loaf, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Colwyn reached Heredith the following day. The brief English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered woman striving to stave off the inevitable ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... They say—and perhaps you will say—that friendships and affections can do more; but I assure you, where there are not the means to stave off grinding toil or crushing poverty, affections wither; or if they do not quite wither, they bear no golden fruit of happiness. On the contrary, they offer vulnerable spots to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner |
