"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to relate it here mainly in the words of the chief engineer of a certain steamship which, after bunkering, left Lerwick, bound for Iceland. The weather was cold, the sea pretty rough, with a stiff head wind. All went well till next day, about 1.30 p.m., then the captain sighted a suspicious object far away to starboard. Speed was increased at once to close in with the Faroes and good lookouts were set fore and aft. Nothing further was seen of the suspicious object, but about ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the front door opens, and a young man—not the one what's your friend, but the other—comes sailing out, and through the gate, and down the road, as stiff and upright as a grenadier,—I never see anyone walk more upright, and few as fast. At his heels comes the young man what is your friend, and it seems to me that he couldn't make out what this other was a-doing of. I says to myself, "There's been a quarrel between them two, and him ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... The farmers were stiff to move in some cases and especially disliked the idea of having to train the women. "They weren't going to run after women all day—they had too much to do to go messing round with girls!" This objection was met by the Board of Agriculture ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... that the strange creatures in the tree began to move oftener, and to draw their limbs up as if they were growing stiff, and then their long-drawn howl grew longer and more ferocious than ever; the game, tired out, would soon drop into their mouths. But it did not, the two creatures made sounds as if they were again encouraging each other, and the hearts of the wolves filled ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stiff uncomfortable visit; the very politeness of the good ladies made Felix feel that they viewed his position as altered, and he could not but feel a strong hope that he should never again have to make this offering at the shrine ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Limited was limbered up that Christmas morning, Henry leaned from the window, leaned back, tugged at the throttle again, smiled over at the fireman, and said, "Now, Billy, watch her swallow that cold, stiff steel at about a mile ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... that he awoke, stiff, and chilled. The dryness of pre-dawn gave partial light and somewhere a bird was twittering. There had been birds—or things whose far off ancestors had been birds—in the "hot" forest. Did they also sing to greet ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... to be attacked by any but a very numerous body of horse; and if they should attempt it, you may be sure that we can render a very good account of ourselves. We have beaten off the French horse once, and, as since then we have had some stiff fighting, I have no fear of the men being unsteady, even if all Franceschi's cavalry came down upon us. Of that, however, there will be little chance; the French have their hands full for some days, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... George Bentinck. He was lying on his face; his arms were under his body, and in one hand he grasped his walking-stick. His hat was a yard or two before him, having evidently been thrown off in falling. The body was cold and stiff. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... lady does," corrected the boy glibly. "The one who wears the queer lace cap and sits in the big chair by the hearth all day—and all night, too, Tommy Spade says, 'cause he peeped through once at midnight and she was still there, sitting so stiff that it scared him and he ran away. Well, Aunt Mehitable sold her a dozen, and she got a side of bacon ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... "O only worthy, whom the earth all fears, High God defend thee with his heavenly shield, And humble so the hearts of all thy peers, That their stiff necks to thy sweet yoke may yield: These be the sheaves that honor's harvest bears, The seed thy valiant acts, the world the field, Egypt the headland is, where heaped lies Thy fame, worth, justice, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... scorns to "take the pledge," And keep the promise fast, May be, in spite of fate, a stiff Cold-water man, at last! J. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... so, finding a little path which led upward, she commenced to climb. Great boulders strewed the ground here between the trees, and although by the sound she knew herself to be near the river, she could not see it until after a stiff climb of twenty minutes or so she emerged on an open space above the falls. Here indeed was beauty enough to satisfy even her desire for it. The undulating ground all about and below her was mostly forest-clad, the larches showed in their vivid green against the sombre hue of the pines, while ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... season. Silk underclothing I regard as dangerous, because silk is a non-conductor. Good Lisle thread or flannel giving proper aeration is excellent. No one should be more careful about their clothing than New Yorkers, because of the sudden changes in temperature there. Stiff, high collars are injurious, because they are irritants to blood-vessels and nerves and are non-conductors. Collars should be worn from a quarter to half an inch away from the skin, for the less the Adam's apple—the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... three sailed in the Swordfish. Having ascertained that the midshipmen intended visiting Barbuda, they first steered for that island. There was a good stiff breeze, and as the Swordfish was a fast craft, she rapidly ran over the thirty miles of water which intervenes between Antigua and its small dependency. It was not, however, all plain sailing, as numerous shoals, reefs, and rocks surround the island mostly below the surface, some only ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... heaven, not your psalm-smitin', knock-me-down, ten-commandment, cussin' God. I'm grawin' very auld an' I knaw what I knaw. Your God's a devil, fisherman—a graspin', cruel devil; an' them the devil saves is damned. 'Tis Christ as you've turned your stiff back 'pon—Christ as'll let this poor lass into heaven afore ever you gets theer! You ban't in sight o' the gates o' pearl, not you, for all your cold prayers. You'm young in well-doin'; an' 'tis a 'ard road you'll ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... held out his band to Cynthia, and she climbed, with unbending dignity, to the driver's seat. "You know you've got that dress to turn, Lila," she said, as she settled her stiff skirt primly over ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... back from the gravelwalk, through a side-door into the pompous solitude of the stately house; across long chambers, where the mirrors reflected her form, and the huge chairs, in their flaunting damask and flaring gold, stood stiff on desolate floors; into her own private room,—neither large nor splendid that; plain chintzes, quiet book shelves. She need not have been the Marchioness of Montfort to inhabit a room as pleasant ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... French frigate to action. Now the manner in which the Hermione's helm had been manipulated on the occasion in question had excited the admiration of, and extorted frequent favourable comments from the officers; there was a stiff breeze blowing at the time; and the frigate, when heavily pressed upon a taut bowline, had a most unhandy knack of griping; notwithstanding which, as I have before stated, her wake had been as straight as though ruled upon the water. But Captain Pigot ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... stair, Eleanor shook out her plumes, the attendant lady arranged her veil over her yellow hair, and drew out her short train and long hanging sleeves, a little behind the fashion, but the more dignified, as she swept into the ball, and though her heart beat desperately, holding her head stiff and high, and looking every inch a princess, the shrewd Scotch lady behind her flattered herself that the two Barons did look a little daunted by the bearing of the creature they ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll topple easy." ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... English. Its body is usually covered with a substance much resembling a shawl, sometimes red, sometimes blue, often plaid, and, strange to say, they frequently change skins with one another. On their heads they have a horn very like a stiff brown paper lamp-lighter. Wings of the same substance flap upon their shoulders when they fly; this is never very far from the ground, as they usually fall with violence if they attempt any lofty flights. They browse over the earth, but can sit up and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... man will have a stiff leg for life as it is, and he would have died if you hadn't ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... diplomatic immunity. Here the ideologies could rant and rave against each other, seeking a rendering of a final decision in men's age-old arguments; but elsewhere such discussions were verboten, and subject to swift, stiff penalties. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid droppings fall To stain the stiff ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... Sonnets. Have just finished Casa Guidi Windows, a grand poem and so fitting to our terrible struggle.... I wish the government would move quickly, proclaim freedom to every slave and call on every able-bodied negro to enlist in the Union army. How not to do it seems the whole study at Washington. Good, stiff-backed Union Democrats would dare to move; they would have nothing to lose and all to gain for their party. The present incumbents have all to lose; hence dare not avow any policy, but only wait. To forever blot out slavery is the only possible ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Garlands, a green worsted mat, hopefully designed to imitate moss, and on the depression in its center the astral lamp. On the wall opposite were pictures of Tenney's father and mother, painful enlargements from stiff photographs, and on the neighboring wall a glazed framing of wax flowers and a hair wreath. The furniture was black walnut upholstered with horsehair. Tenney was of the more prosperous line of farmers. And yet he had not begun so. All this represented ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... for an hour and a quarter. Then the alarum roused me, and I sprang up before I was thoroughly awake. Had I hesitated, the desire to relapse into perfect sleep would have overpowered me. Although the muscles of my neck were painfully stiff, and my hands unsteady from my nervous disturbance, produced by the interruption of my first slumber, I dressed myself resolutely, and, after taking a draught of cold water, stole out of the house. It was exceedingly dark; and I had some difficulty in finding the cow-house, ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... time Mithridates appears to have assumed the tiara, or tall stiff crown, which, with certain modifications in its shape, had been the mark of sovereignty, both under the Assyrians and under the Persians. Previously the royal headdress had been either a mere cap of a Scythic type, but lower than ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... scenic rendering of it. His dramatic methods, however, so far elaborated from the simplicity of Tasso's, had a vast influence over subsequent work, and it is highly important to obtain a clear idea of their nature. We shall, therefore, be condemned to follow Guarini, part-way at least, through the stiff artificiality ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... parents' roof as "Narra-Mattah," the devoted wife of a Narraganset warrior-chief, and the young mother of his little son. This book draws a strong picture of pure family devotion; even the old grandfather's heart, beneath his stiff Puritan garb, beats an unforgettable part. Sorrow for the lost child gave the story its name—"The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish" (then thought to mean in the Indian language, "Place of the Whip-poor-will")and it has been ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... tranquil as we proceeded north, and from Lausanne to Vevey we actually had smooth water. I saw vessels becalmed, or with baffling winds, under this shore, while the bise was blowing stiff, a few leagues farther down the lake. When I got home I was surprised to hear that the family had been boating the previous evening, and that there had scarcely been any wind during the day. This difference was owing to the sheltered position of Vevey, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... leg-band somewhat similar in make to armlet No. 5, and between half-an-inch and an inch in width, though the colour of this leg-band is a dull brown. But the usual form of leg-band and anklet is made by women only out of thread fibre by a process of manufacture quite distinct from the stiff plait work adopted for some of the belts and for the armlets. They make their thread out of fine vegetable fibre as they proceed with the manufacture of the band, rolling the individual fibres with their hands upon their thighs, and then rolling these fibres into two-strand threads, and ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... were very informal and exceedingly enjoyable. There were many who gladly entertained us by their accomplishments. Champney the artist, sent after blackboard and chalk, and did wonderfully clever things. Some one described a stiff and stupid reception where everyone seemed to have left themselves at home. Those who came to me brought their best. Mrs. Barnard, wife of President Barnard of Columbia College, urged me to give three lectures in her parlour. I could not find the time, but her house was ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... ourselves on your French courtiers; but for some time, thanks to your changing loves, you have kept us so often in the field, in harness, that our voices are hoarse from the cold night air, and our stiff knees can no longer bend in our armour: you must then take me just as I am, madam; since to-day, for the welfare of Scotland, you are no longer at ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... running yet," He cried in hopeful tone, Alas, the hydrant too, was froze, As stiff ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... cried. "How? For Heaven's sake, man, tell me all!" He went to a cupboard, got out some brandy and drank a stiff portion. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... nodded, showing all their teeth, and the mother took the littlest baby, for there seemed to be a very generous number of the smaller members of the family, and sat down with it in her lap on the rickety step. Then they all drew up stiff as ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... glad I am not in the kingdom of heaven; though, if one dies like Christina, one escapes purgatory. Roberto, when I rise I am very stiff: I think, indeed, I have ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... especially in knee and arm staking, are required in the stretching, which is the essential feature of these operations. Breaking is first resorted to. The break beam, which is armed at each end with a knife edge, oscillates up and down. In a frame beneath it the operator stretches the dried and stiff skin. The break beam comes down upon the skin, stretches and softens it, and removes much surplus custard. The operator presents a new surface to each stroke of the break beam, and in a very short space of time the entire skin ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... son," said His Holiness, dismissing him at last, "for I would wear the button myself before I die." Then, raising a beaming face, "Wouldst thou aught further with me, Fra Giuseppe? Ah, I recall! Thou yearnest to preach to thy stiff-necked kinsmen. Ebbene, 'tis a worthy ambition. Luigi, remember me ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... do either. She was terribly stiff and she had slept near a bed of May-apple blossoms. In the twilight she had not noticed them, and they ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stock—Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton,[34] and author of an excellent law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether he was originally big or little is more than I can guess. When I knew him he was all fallen away and fallen in; crooked and shrunken; buckled into a stiff waistcoat for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a wig for decency, not for deception, on his head; close shaved, except under his chin—and for that he never failed to apologise, for it went sore against the traditions of his life. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waited for nearly a quarter of an hour. She had placed herself on one of the least comfortable chairs, and sat there in a very stiff attitude, holding her umbrella across her knees. After a rather nervous survey of the room, (it had changed very little in appearance since her last visit six years ago), she fell into uneasy thoughtfulness, now and then looking impatiently towards the door. When the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... respecting the Fall of Man; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but a real tumble, by which the whole body of humanity became, as it were, lame to the performance of good works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff neck; irresolution, the nerves shaken; an inclination to sinister paths, crookedness of the joints; spiritual deadness, a paralysis; want of charity, a contraction in the fingers; despising of government, a broken head; the plaster, a sermon; the lint to bind it up, the text; the probers, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... his manager. He was dressed in dimity; and his stiff figure and mutton-chop whiskers gave him at the same time the air of a magistrate and a dandy. Even when he was speaking, his features did not ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... cigar, and he searched in the pockets of the overcoat for a box of matches he had placed there before leaving his bedroom. The box had gone, but in the right-hand pocket his fingers closed on a long, narrow envelope, made of stiff linen paper, which somehow seemed unfamiliar. He drew it out, and examined it, standing in front of a well-lighted ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... fearful thing; but these fears were nothing compared to the sense that haunted him of that morning's ghastly figure following at his heels. He could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed—not running too: that would have been a relief: but like a corpse ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... hearts. Praise is comely when flowing from a heart full of love, but a wild hurrahing is unseemly. All unseemly conduct in modes and forms of worship—such as tossing the head to and fro, swaying the body, the loud stamping of feet, rolling on the floor, lying stiff and rigid, shouting until the face reddens and veins distend and exhaustion overcomes, are disgracing to God and disgusting to refined ears ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... there would be no time—he had appealed to Caesar. He must send a letter to her telling that he had started out for Jericho. A dangerous journey he knew it to be, but he was without strength to resist the temptation of one more effort to save the Jews: a hard, bitter, stiff-necked, stubborn race that did not deserve salvation, that resisted it. He had been scourged, how many times, at the instigation of the Jews? and they had stoned him at Lystra, a city ever dear to him, for it was there he had met Eunice; the memories that gathered round her beautiful name ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... in regard to the finish in necks of dresses for morning wear. Plain colors have rather a stiff appearance, tulle or crepe lisse frilling are expensive and frail, so it is a good idea to purchase a few yards of really good washing lace, about an inch and a half in depth; quill or plait and cut into suitable lengths to ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... that it swarms with fish, such as pike, trout, perch, barbel, and other kinds not easily identified. Apparently there is also a form of gar-pike found here (see p. 74); this is described as having scales of a very large and stiff kind, and being a beautiful bright silver in colour. The size of these gar-pike range from two feet to four feet in length. Their flesh was delicately white and soft, but so foul and rank in taste that even the Indians would not eat it. The trout in Lake Athabaska seem ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... was nervy work waiting for that thing to come. Then, suddenly, I was aware of a little, cold wind sweeping over me, coming from behind. I gave one great nerve-thrill, and a prickly feeling went all over the back of my head. Then I hove myself 'round with a sort of stiff jerk, and stared straight against that queer wind. It seemed to come from the corner of the room to the left of the bed—the place where both times I had found the heap of tossed bedclothes. Yet, I could see nothing ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were beating up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the ship. They must then be hauled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... poets, orators, and historians, and the modern."—Id. "To violate this rule, as the English too often do, shows great incorrectness."—Id. "It is impossible, by means of any training, to prevent them from appearing stiff and forced."—Id. "And it also gives to the speaker the disagreeable semblance of one who endeavours to compel assent."—Id. "And whenever a light or ludicrous anecdote is proper to be recorded, it is generally better to throw it into a note, than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of Germany had been built upon those of other countries. There was a case I recalled, that of the Australian cordial manufacturer, who desired to introduce his stuff into Germany. He was met with a stiff tariff, but informed that if he established a factory there there would be no need to import it. Why, now I came to remember it, even the original "Rush-on-Paris" plan was stolen. Hilaire Belloc, the Anglicised ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the book and its position. Then he resolved that he would not look at the book again, would not turn a glance on it unless it might be when he had made up his mind to reveal its contents. His neck became absolutely stiff with the efforts necessary not to look ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... what I mean. I knew you'd understand and I am so relieved that you are not angry about the chapel and things. We can leave it all to you and we'll have the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at your clothes." With which Letitia descended from her spiritual heights into the realm of the material and plunged with both Mammy and Sallie ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Master Pothier reflectively, "the best bond I could draw would not bind him more than a spider's thread! They are stiff-necked as bulls, these De Repentignys, and will bear no yoke but what they put on of themselves! Poor lad! Do they know at the Manor House that he is here drinking and dicing with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... at Cockermouth, told me that she once said to her, that the only one of her five children about whose future life she was anxious, was William; and he, she said, would be remarkable either for good or for evil. The cause of this was, that I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so that I remember going once into the attics of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... less than it would be with George Brattle. The ironmonger was connected with the unfortunate young woman only by marriage; and what brother-in-law would take such a sister-in-law to his bosom? And of Mrs. Jay he thought that he knew that she was puritanical, stiff, and severe. Mr. Jay he found in his shop along with an apprentice, but he had no difficulty in leading the master ironmonger along with him through a vista of pots, grates and frying pans, into a small recess at the back ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... enclose a winged beetle, or scarabaeus, bearing a disc or emblem of the sun. The other main division of the field is spotted in regular order with open blossom forms. There is decided order in the repetition and arrangement of these details, which gives a rather stiff and formal look to ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... fashioning a sword for Siegfried,—still another sword, after ever so many,—realising even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands. "The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword there is," he ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... not to see an enterprising reporter cheated out of his rightful "space." Then I hired a sleigh and drove home through the storm, wet through—"I can hear the water yet running out of your boots," says my wife—wet through and nearly frozen stiff, but tingling with pride ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... now from heat or from boiling, now from the act of a noisy breaking, now from shivering. Discouragement and despair are expressed by the melting of the heart, fear by the loosening of the reins. Pride is portrayed by the holding high of the head, with the figure straight and stiff. Patience is a long breathing, impatience short breathing, desire is thirst or paleness. Pardon is expressed by a throng of metaphors borrowed from the idea of covering, of hiding, of coating ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... hand, Martin stiff-armed him out of the way and ran for the side. Someone jerked the rope-ladder out of reach and someone else leaped on Martin. For, he was Martin now, Martin Pinzon. His own identity seemed submerged far below the surface, as if somehow he could look on all this without risking anything. ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... the corner, leaning against the wall, sat the poor girl with red cheeks and smiling mouth, frozen to death on the last evening of the Old Year. The New Year's sun rose upon a little corpse! The child sat there, stiff and cold, with the matches, of which one bundle was burned. "She wanted to warm herself," the people said. No one imagined what a beautiful thing she had seen, and in what glory she had gone in with her grandmother to the New ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... yield. J'y suis; j'y reste. Not an inch should anybody else yield. Well, thank me, Roger, for having given you this little glimpse into the great big world. It's full of interest." He rose suddenly, stiff and straight and slender as some young fir-tree. "Come, Roger, put on your hat and go ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... know what to make of him. Of all the hallucinations I ever had witnessed, this was the most strange and unaccountable. Cutts, with great coolness, manufactured a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, which he placed at the elbow of the ex-potentate, and exhorted him to make a clean ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... wife, he bowed with composed ease and a somewhat military grace to the multitude. His tall, thin, bony frame, surmounted by a venerable, weather-beaten, strongly-lined and original countenance, with stiff, upright, gray hair, changed the opinion which some had previously formed. His military services were important, his career undoubtedly patriotic; but he had interfered with many and deep interests. There was much ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... faces of the ancient gilded Dionysi at Corinth were smudged all over with cinnabar, like fetish-stones in India or Africa.(1) As a rule, however, the statues of historic times were beautiful representations of kindly and gracious beings. The older works were stiff and rigid images, with the lips screwed into an unmeaning smile. Older yet were the bronze gods, made before the art of soldering was invented, and formed of beaten plates joined by small nails. Still more ancient were the wooden images, which ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... stop at all, let's sleep a while," said the Very Young Man. "A little rest only gets you stiff. It's a pretty exposed place out here though, isn't it, to sleep?" he added, thinking of the ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the usual time. The passengers had ridden all night, and now descended glum and stiff to stretch their limbs for breakfast. A nice double wagon stood waiting. It was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek—and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous, in some distant chamber—and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff—whenever the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through the lonely house; the Judge's quietude, as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... nearer view, Don Pedro proved to be a tall, lean, dry man, not unlike Dore's conception of Don Quixote. He must have had Indian blood in his veins, judging from his very dark eyes, his stiff, lank hair, worn somewhat long, and his high cheek-bones. Also, although he was arrayed in puritanic black, his barbaric love of color betrayed itself in a red tie and in a scarlet handkerchief which was twisted loosely round a soft slouch hat, It was the hat and the brilliant red ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... several weeks a barrier stood between them. When they met by chance Sara looked the other way, and Ermengarde felt too stiff and embarrassed to speak. Sometimes they nodded to each other in passing, but there were times when they did not even exchange ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with age, and half charred with the smoke of the destruction it had escaped, fluttered down from the table through the open casement, and fell in the balcony by my side. There were words on the paper, written in stiff German characters, orthodox and methodical in every turn and upstroke and formal pothook. They were these:— "I distinctly refuse to give my daughter in marriage to a man who is so great a fool as to throw away his chances of wealth and fame for the sake of a mere whim. Yesterday ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... be thankful, and she would naturally exaggerate in her own mind the horror which he would feel at such a revelation. Then the husband endeavoured to lighten the effect of what he had said. 'Offence, perhaps, is the wrong word. But he was stiff and masterful, if you know what ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... waiting, it is merely to stretch his legs a little. The adversary, on the contrary, is stiff from riding; they place themselves in proper order, and my friend kills his opponent, and the affair ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... down to the dory, and put his fishing-gear on board. He did it as a man goes to a funeral. He had been a fisherman in his younger days, but it was a bitter necessity, in his view, which now compelled him to resume it when he was old and stiff. While he was stowing the bait and lines in the skiff, Dock Vincent came down to see him. He had laid aside his suit of black, and now wore a full ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... said Lord Dreever, "this is boring me stiff. Let's have a game of something. Anything to pass away the time. Curse this rain! We shall be cooped up here till dinner at this rate. Ever played picquet? I could teach ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... do with those rigid prelates who made it a matter of conscience to give you the least indulgence, but kept you at an uncharitable distance, and even to your most reasonable scruples continued stiff and inexorable, the argument might be fairer on your side; but since the common danger has so laid open that mistake, that all the former haughtiness towards you is for ever extinguished, and that it hath turned ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... with caps plaited on the caul with silver, or gold, or both, bordered round with stiffened lace, which stood out before their eyes, but not lower, so that the eyes sparkled through it—the Hanoverian with the fore part of the head bare, then a stiff lace standing up like a wall perpendicular on the cap, and the cap behind tailed with an enormous quantity of ribbon which lies or ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... house not far back; but a fierce dog, by his barking, had deterred him from the application. The road was lonely, and he had seen no other house since. Finally, exhausted by the effort of dragging himself through the deep snow, and, stiff with cold, he sank down by the side of the road, and would doubtless have frozen had not the doctor made ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the top of the office to the bottom, and her morning had been a levee. Even poor little Mrs. Jardine, whose boy had been killed before he had been over two weeks, had spoken to Marjorie brightly, and said how glad she was, and silent, stiff Miss Gardner, who was said never to have had any lovers in her life, had looked at her with an envy she tried to hide, and said that she ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... had consented to undertake the root and branch reform of the War Office. He had sallied forth into that tropical jungle of festooned obstructiveness, of intertwisted irresponsibilities, of crouching prejudices, of abuses grown stiff and rigid with antiquity, which for so many years to come was destined to lure reforming Ministers to their doom. 'The War Office,' said Miss Nightingale, 'is a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... fell from my lips, as, stiff with horror, I let my eyes travel from his determined face, first to the windows high over my head and then to the opening of the door, which, though but a few steps from where I stood, was as far as possible from the room into which my ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... none that pointed the way to a low cliff and a rock cairn. He ranged here and there, and at last went up the hillside which rose here so steeply as to be stiff climbing. It bore here and there a massive tree, rough-barked pillars rising to a branchy head two hundred feet in the air. But for the most part the slope was clothed with scrubby hemlock and thickets of young fir and patches of hazel, out of which he stirred ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... delicious it would be to treat Miss Evelyn in the same way, and to revel with my stiff-standing prick in her delicious quim, which in my mind's eye I saw before me as I had viewed in on her rising from the bidet, when I lay hid under the bed. Then I thought of my sister Mary's smaller, although attractive little quim, and I resolved, as that was the easiest to ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... lines,—and also to maintain in that border-strip a resident peasantry, armed and loyal,—these are not matters of sentiment, which may be postponed to a more convenient season, but they are essential to the stiff, steady, and successful prosecution of our campaigns. It is not, therefore, simply for charity Boards of Education to discuss such subjects. It is for the Government to determine its policy, and for the people, who make that Government, to compel it so to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the frozen moat, where the osiers, stood stark and stiff in their winter nakedness, was a group of dark figures waiting for them with horses. In the pallid moonlight Myles recognized the well-known face of Father Edward, the Prior ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... him, in the same place where we had seen him before, but not in the same position. He was sunken now to the ground; but his face was pressed against the rails, and in his stiff, cold hand was clutched a letter which afterwards ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Lundy Race is one of the wildest and grandest portions of the Cornish coast, and on it there is always somewhere a tossing sea, a stiff breeze above, and a sucking tide below. Great cliffs hundreds of feet high guard it, and from the top of them the land rolls away in long ridges, brown and bare. These wild and rocky moors, full of pagan altars, stone crosses, and memorials of the Jew, the ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... trees lying parallel to each other with the branches pointing in the general direction of approach and interlaced. All leaves and small twigs should be removed and the stiff ends ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... wire. Stout, stiff, and surprisingly springy wire of the same peculiar metal. It was that metallic ammonium which chemists have deduced must exist because of the chemical behavior of the compound NH3, but which Denham alone had managed to procure. Tommy deduced that it was an allotropic modification of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... out of contempt not to study equity and righteousness towards him, and it makes another man impatient of receiving and bearing an injury or disrespect. While every man seeks to please himself, the contention arises. Pride in both parties makes both stiff and inflexible to peace and equity, and in this there is a great deal of folly. For, by this means, both procure more real displeasure and dissatisfaction to their own spirits. "But with the well advised is wisdom." They who have discretion and judgment will not be so wedded to their own conceits, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... he sought the Burmese landlady. She greeted him with a smile and a stiff little shake of the hand. He owed her money, but that was nothing. Had he not sent her drunken European sailor-man husband about his business? Had he not freed her from a tyranny of fists and curses? It had not affected her in the least to learn that her sailor-man had been negligently ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Moultrie, of the defence of Fort Sullivan; and in that of Washington, of the battle of Trenton. The actions from the skirmish at Lexington to the surrender of Cornwallis, are all admirably and graphically told in a style animated without being florid, and chaste without being stiff. The straight forward honesty of the diction, leaves the mind of the reader to be carried on with the simple but intense spirit of the action, as if he were a spectator rather than reader. The description of the battle of Trenton is the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... her catcher. Curly strove to wipe out the intervening two years and to imagine himself back at college, pitching for his class in the final championship game. But alas! his arm was stiff and muscle-bound, and creaked in the socket every ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... power. They represented to the sovereigns, that it seemed like insensibility to the goodness of Providence, which had delivered the infidels into their hands, to allow them any longer to usurp the fair inheritance of the Christians, and that the whole of the stiff- necked race of Mahomet might justly be required to submit without exception to instant baptism, or to sell their estates and remove to Africa. This, they maintained, could be scarcely regarded as an infringement of the treaty, since the Moors would be so great gainers ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... summer full of voices, and therefore it does not so need the sound of rushes; but they are most sensitive to the stealthy breezes, and betray the passing of a wind that even the tree-tops knew not of. Sometimes it is a breeze unfelt, but the stiff sedges whisper it along a mile of marsh. To the strong wind they bend, showing the silver of their sombre little tassels as fish show the silver of their sides turning in the pathless sea. They are unanimous. A field of tall flowers tosses many ways in one warm gale, like the many ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Cooper; the former of whom, indeed, before he asked M'Linnie a question, gave him confidence in his peculiar way, by requesting him "not to be a frightened fool, for Mr. Abernethy was not the brute the world was pleased to make him out;" and after a stiff and rough examination shook the student heartily by the hand, and pronounced him "not an ass, like all the world, but a sensible shrewd fellow, who, instead of muddling his head with books, had passed his days, very properly, where real life was only to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to ask the vice chancellor for a pretty stiff annual sum for my client, for I know Larch is rich, when, to my surprise, she would not permit it. She said if she left him it was for good and all, and that she wanted none of his bounty. She had some means of her own, she declared, and ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... at all the 'crushes' and big functions,—in London, in Paris, in New York, in St. Petersburg, in Vienna,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth'—as Aunt Emily said;—money no consideration, distance no object,—always 'ce cher Roxmouth,' stiff as a poker, clean as fresh paint, and apparently as virtuous as an old maid,—with all his aristocratic family looming behind him, and a long ancestry of ghosts in the shadow of time, extending away back to some Saxon 'nobles,' who no doubt ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... passed on to the consumer or deducted from the farmer, and, besides, it is not just that a family living by giving productive service to the community should pay the same as a family that contributes nothing by way of effort. A stiff tax on these latter families might send them to work, and certainly would induce economy. Moreover, the earner of income must provide for old age and dependents while the unearned income taxpayer has this provision already. Altogether, it would ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... in every detail to the facts. The medical examiners and inspectors become exceedingly expert in detecting disease, disability, or deception. If an overcoat is carried over the shoulder, they look for a false or stiff arm. The gait and general appearance indicate health or want of it to them, and all who do not appear normal are turned aside for further examination, which is thorough. The women have a special ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... Lady de Brantefield proved wonderfully correct; she gave me back the image I had in my mind—a stiff, haughty-looking picture of a faded old beauty. Adhering religiously to the fashion of the times when she had been worshipped, she made it a point to wear the old head-dress exactly. She was in black, in a hoop of vast ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... and ends of patches—old socks, old trowser-legs, and the like—I bedarned and bequilted the inside of my jacket, till it became, all over, stiff and padded, as King James's cotton-stuffed and dagger-proof doublet; and no buckram or steel ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... had not been killed. No sooner had he mastered the German and seized the paper than bullets showered upon him like rain, and yet beyond these two slight flesh wounds he was wholly untouched. It was true he was very stiff and sore, but he knew that he would soon be ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... completely and instantaneously his whole bearing is reversed. Instead of walking upright, the body sinks downwards or even crouches, and is thrown into flexuous movements; his tail, instead of being held stiff and upright, is lowered and wagged from side to side; his hair instantly becomes smooth; his ears are depressed and drawn backwards, but not closely to the head; and his lips hang loosely. From ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... popularity which greeted him on his return—if he had advertised his fame and, amid high circles, played the part of Chinese Gordon in a becoming manner— the results would have been different. But he was by nature farouche; his soul revolted against dinner parties and stiff shirts; and the presence of ladies— especially of fashionable ladies— filled him with uneasiness. He had, besides, a deeper dread of the world's contaminations. And so, when he was appointed to Gravesend to supervise the erection of a system of forts at the mouth of the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... interview. Lord Fawn became more than ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Germain pursued them a short distance but with his usual want of success so that we made a meal off the muscles and sinews we had dried, though they were so tough that we could scarcely cut them. My hands were benumbed throughout the march and we were all stiff and fatigued. The marching of two days weakened us all very much and the more so on account of our exertion to follow the tracks of our Commander's party, but we lost them and concluded that they were not before us. Though the weather was not ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... body is soon absorbed, and the negative pressure thus produced increases the impaction. A ring of edematous mucosa quickly forms and covers the presenting part of the object, leaving visible only a small surface in the center of an acute edematous stenosis. A forceps with narrow, stiff, expansive-spring jaws may press back a portion of the edema and may allow a grasp on the sides of the foreign body; but usually the attempt to apply forceps when there are no spaces between the presenting part of the foreign body and the bronchial wall, will result only in pushing the foreign body ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... was watching his chance. Much state was kept up also. Whenever the major appeared, 'Commanding officer; guard, present arms,' was called down the line of men on duty, and the guard hastened to obey, the major acknowledging the salute with stiff precision. By day and by night sentinels paced the walls. True, the walls were crumbling, and the whole force was constantly engaged in propping them up, but none the less did the sentinels pace with dignity. What was ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff, right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad—and I ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... of the stiff-necked dame with the straight nose and the gun-metal hair. No, both eyes, it was; and a cold, suspicious, stabby look is what they shoots my way. No wonder I chokes off the feeble-minded remarks and turns sort of panicky to Vee, half expectin' to find her blushin' painful or signalin' me to ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... broad window sill, and when I had waited a few minutes, Mademoiselle de Chaumont darted around a corner, bare armed and bare necked. She collapsed to the floor at sight of me, and then began to dance away in the opposite direction with stiff leaps, as ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the doors were flung open, and a magnificent Princess swept into the room. Never was such a beauty seen before. Her golden hair fell almost to the floor and was bound about with jewels. Her robes were stiff with embroidery and gems. The other Princesses paled before her as stars ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... miserable troops from Upper Egypt-ground down by the long war, and bought over by Ani—were carried away by the universal enthusiasm, and joyfully hailed the hero and king who had successfully broken the stiff ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... been the putrid flesh of their lacerated backs, for days after the infliction, that they would be kept out of the house—the smell arising from their wounds being too horrible to be endured. They were always stiff and sore for some days, and not in a condition ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... he came to be called, was clearly a victim of the sudden affability of Duchess Susan. The transformation of a stiff military officer into a nimble Puck, a runner of errands and a sprightly attendant, could not pass without notice. The first effect of her discriminating condescension on this unfortunate gentleman was to make him the champion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Germany in Belgium and to the Belgian consuls in prison in Tabora, gripped their vitals. Hastily they sent their women and children at all speed east along the line to Tabora, the new Provincial capital, and planned to put up the stiff rearguard actions that should delay the enemy, until the English might take Tabora and save their women from Belgian hands. For the English, those soft-hearted fools, who had already so well treated the ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... the ear, with a kind of honeyed, friendly whine, not far off singing, that was eminently Scottish. He laughed not very often, and when he did, with a sudden, loud haw-haw, hearty but somehow joyless, like an echo from a rock. His face was permanently set and coloured; ruddy and stiff with weathering; more like a picture than a face; yet with a certain strain, and a threat of latent anger in the expression, like that of a man trained too fine and harassed with perpetual vigilance. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ladies in their quaint gowns of stiff brocade, and at the men in their lace frills, and ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... Knowledge implies the possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious, stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... wary as a gray old badger that has often been hunted. To see him on Sunday, so stiff and starched in his demeanor; so precise in his dress; with his daughter under his arm, and his ivory-headed cane in his hand, was enough to deter all graceless youngsters ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... "I feel stiff," she said; "but that will soon wear off, when I have run about a little. Oh, how tired you must be, after carrying me all ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... either! Where was it? Who could have taken it? Suddenly her heart failed her utterly, and she clutched at the edge of the coffin to keep herself from falling. It seemed to her that under the stiff, pallid, rigidly clasped hands of the dead general something gleamed white through the transparent muslin of the covering, something like ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... from the stock. A bud stick of the same size is selected, and from it a similar ring with a good bud on it is removed by cutting around the bud stick and slitting down the back or side opposite the bud. This bud is then placed in position on the stock. After the buds are in place, a piece of stiff wrapping paper should be tied around the stock just above the bud and allowed to flare out over the bud to protect it from the sun and wind. Preferably all buds should be ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... off up the board-walk, her back as stiff as a ramrod. Any one with half an eye could see that she was resolved not to drop the parasol again. No savage warrior on battle bent ever gripped his ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... it," bluntly. "That's why you're good for me." Unconsciously his glance travelled to the mantel, and shifted hurriedly. "I'm a kind of clinging vine, I guess. To change the figure of speech, I need a stiff rudder to keep me headed straight to windward. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... still early when he awoke, weary, stiff, and unrefreshed, but with a conviction in his mind that had grown plain and strong in the mysterious way notions sometimes seem to gather force in hours of unconsciousness, and surprise us with their mature vigor when we awake. "I must go!" he kept muttering to himself; "I must ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... soles and longer the tops the better. His pants were stuffed inside the tops of his boots, of course. A double-breasted coat, heavily wadded, with two rows of big brass buttons and a long skirt, was considered comfortable. A small stiff cap, with a narrow brim, took the place of the comfortable "felt," or the shining and towering tile ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... in a land which is exposed to a winter cold below the freezing-point of mercury, and where the animal cannot seek protection from it by creeping down to a stratum of earth which never freezes, presupposes that either the insect itself, its egg, larva, or pupa, may be frozen stiff without being killed. Only very few species of these small animals, however, appear to survive such a freezing test, and the actual land-evertebrate-fauna of the Polar countries is therefore exceedingly scanty in comparison with that ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... where a pretty woman was concerned, entered and took possession of him. He would succeed where Alick Corfield had failed, and Leam, who refused her old friend, should gratify her new. He had been guiding Adelaide over the ice, but she was rather too stiff in her movements, not sufficiently pliant nor yielding to be a very pleasant skating companion. And he had been pushing Josephine along the slide, but Joseph was too stout and short-breathed to be an ideal convoy; also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... was not possible for me to turn this man away and tell him I had nothing for him to do, and therefore I must devise employment for him. I found that he wrote a fair hand, a little stiff and labored, but legible and neat, and as I had a good deal of copying to do I decided to set him to work upon this. I procured board and lodging for him in a house near by, and a very happy being ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... standing up out of the sand. I do not mean the tubes of the Terebella, so common in all sands, which are somewhat flexible, and have their upper end fringed with a ragged ring of sandy arms: those I speak of are straight and stiff, and ending in a point upward. Draw them out of the sand - they will offer some resistance - and put them into a vase of water; you will see the worm inside expand two delicate golden combs, just like old-fashioned back-hair combs, of a metallic lustre, which will astonish you. With these combs ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley |
