"Stiffen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was dense and chill as he entered it; its moisture clung to his wings and made them heavy; his muscles seemed to stiffen, and motion became more and more difficult. The wings behind ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... first note John a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten. Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; and the priest's face, too, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... think it was on the first night that Maternus rose up! They stiffen if they stay a whole night on the cross. If he could walk to Daphne three nights later, he had not been crucified many hours. Come, let us go to the baths before the crowd gets there. If one is late those insolent attendants ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... meet him and they clasped hands in the middle of the room. It was only for a second; for as quick as a flash, Mr. Roddy seemed to stiffen every muscle in his body. He pulled the other man toward him with one arm and shot out his other fist. It made a dull sound like a blow struck on a pan of dough. And the wretched murderer slumped down ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... registered the land unconquerable. Why a last stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... eyes took on an absent, far-away look, his arms and legs seemed to stiffen, and a tremor ran through his limbs. Chris watched him ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... man's hat. It was turned up on one side with a big breastpin. I noticed it wasn't any eight-dollar hat; she had to fix it that way to stiffen the brim in front. It was a ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... given way before General Scarlett could stiffen their courage, and as his brigade, that of heavy cavalry, trotted towards the redoubts, other and more stirring work offered itself. The head of a great column of Russian horse, three thousand sabres, came over the crest of the ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... mind stretches its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when the soul forms some violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not express what I experienced, unless it was as if my pistol had said to me: "Think what you are about ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... she did not love him. And apparently he could not. He let her go after a minute, and flung himself down by her in just the attitude that the knock on the door, fifteen months ago, had interrupted. And Marjorie tried not to stiffen herself, and not to wonder if anybody was coming in, and not to feel that a perfect stranger was doing something he had no ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... drinking day at the same well of German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... on my account certainly." She emphasized the my so distinctly that I was sure she suspected. That dreadful thought caused me to stiffen my manner, and as hers had been strangely stiff all the afternoon, we were awfully polite to each other during supper. Each of us insisted upon paying the bill and feeing the waiter. It was terrible. I couldn't afford to pay it all, and yet I was too silly ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... and become a petty tyrant? If so, he would get what was coming to him. Every man's duty is measured by his knowledge and by his power. If, therefore, a man rises to leadership, and finds his elbow-room enlarging, let him stiffen his sense of duty to correspond, or there will be trouble. Degeneration by power ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... to avoid damaging the smaller varieties. However, by firing with the full choke barrel at about fifty yards two or three pellets almost always hit even the smallest birds. A very good method of preserving them is to inject formol into the bodies which at once stiffen out and become rigid in any position they are placed. Birds can thus be set with the wings extended in a flying position or as if roosting, the effect being much prettier than any which can be obtained ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... could hear the horses in the distant stable-yard rattling their harness—one of the younger "Excelsior" boys burst into a hysteric laugh, but the fierce eye of Yuba Bill was down upon him, and seemed to instantly stiffen him into a silent, grinning mask. The young girl, however, took no note of it. Following out, with lover-like diffusiveness, the reminiscences thus awakened, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sight the ol' man dug up a bottle o' whiskey, an' put on a few ruffles to sort o' stiffen up his back; an' one day after dinner he sez to Barbie, "Now you just stay settin'." She was in the habit of estimatin' just how little nurishment it would take to run her to the next feed, gettin' it into her ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... boys!" he cried, the thought of being a support to his men almost making him cheerful. But the words were not out of his mouth when other shots whizzed through the air. In spite of himself, his body twitched backward and his head sank lower between his shoulders. That made him stiffen his muscles and grind his teeth in rage. It was not the violence with which the scream flew toward him that made him twitch. It was the strange precision with which the circle of the thing's flight (exactly like a diagram at a lecture on artillery) curved in front of him. It was this ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... be looking, saw the "lookout" start and stiffen rigidly in his place, staring straight ahead into vacancy. A moment later the entire circle of witnesses saw him take a revolver from the holster on his hip and lay it upon the table, with another from the breast pocket ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of the Meuse fell back in great disorder upon Liege; that of the Scheldt was also forced to beat a rapid retreat. Leopold, whose reign was not yet a fortnight old, joined the western corps and did all that man could do to organise and stiffen resistance. At Louvain (August 12) he made a last effort to save the capital and repeatedly exposed his life, but the Belgians were completely routed and Brussels lay at the victor's mercy. It ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... that they had failed to reach an agreement. When President Cleveland permitted the publication of a letter which he had written to Chairman Wilson condemning the Senate bill, the fact was disclosed that the influence of the Administration had been used to stiffen the opposition of the House. Senator Gorman and other Democratic Senators made sharp replies, and the party quarrel became so bitter that it was soon evident that no sort of tariff bill ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Stiffen your upper lip. You know Who are your friends and who your foes now; We pay for knowledge as we go; And though you get some sturdy blows now, You've a fair field—no favors crave— The storm once passed will find you braver— In virtue's cause ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people half-way across the room, turn his head to look when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous, buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he knew that the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the fowl run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in color. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is apt to ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... More pupils have been hindered through this clumsy terminology than I should care to estimate. There cannot be a wrist touch since the wrist is nothing more than a wonderful natural hinge of bone and muscle. With the pupil's mind centered upon his wrist he is more than likely to stiffen it and form habits which can only be removed with much difficulty by the teacher. This is only an instance of one of the loose expressions with which the terminology of technic is encumbered. When the pupil comes to recognize the wrist as a condition rather than a thing he will find ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... this (August 22) Edwin's jaws began to stiffen. For nine or ten days there was suspense, so hard to bear. Some symptoms were not so bad, it did not assume so acute a form. I thought he ought to be carried through it. He was older, about twenty-one, six feet high, a strong handsome young man, the pride of Norfolk ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Stiffen too rigidly, Decently, kindly, Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... with me for months. Where I got it matters nothing; the whole point is that a mere sniff reduces flesh to clay. I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know, but I always felt it worth while to be forearmed against the very worst. Well, a bottle of this stuff is calculated to stiffen an ordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and I remembered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the small hours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I begged them to give me a drink before they ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself secure, and ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... out into the busy mart. The old mahout congratulated himself upon the docility of his find. It would stiffen the bidding to announce that she was gentle. He even went so far as to pat her on the shoulder. The steel film did not cover all her nerves, so it would seem; the patted shoulder was vulnerable. She winced, for she read clearly ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... and is above all practical, so he just whipped the soul of a lawyer out of his side-pocket, tied a knot in it to stiffen it, and shoved ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... while it set my heart throbbing in realization of new danger, yet served also to stiffen my nerves. What had we blindly drifted into? What was behind this lawlessness which could make murder commonplace? What mystery lurked about this haunted, hideous house where death skulked in the dark? My thought was not so much concerned with myself, and my own danger, as with that of ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... rows drops deck the spray, While Phoebus grants a momentary ray, Let but a cloud's broad shadow intervene, And stiffen'd into gems the drops are seen; And down the furrow'd oak's broad southern side Streams of dissolving ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... known, I suspect it deemed us dullish dogs. But we were tiring—not with the jaded weariness begotten of hard roads, when the spine aches and knees stiffen; no, a comfortable lassitude was slackening our joints and bringing thoughts of warm baths and supper. However, our shadows, valiant fellows, swung along before us across the rusty bracken with a cheerful constancy, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... perfectly clean, stiffen it by dipping it into a little gum-water, and pin it out on a pillow, in the proper form, to dry. Then darn it with embroidery cotton, every square of the pattern being ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... It was the strangest situation in which to build a town, where, I should suppose, no horse can climb, and whence no inhabitant would think of descending into the world, after the approach of age should begin to stiffen his joints. On looking back on this most picturesque of towns (which the road, of course, did not enter, as evidently no road could), I saw that the highest part of the hill was quite covered with a crown of edifices, terminating in a church-tower; while ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... observed the halberdier from Haarlem under his breath, "a man would most willingly stiffen his back ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... see this sad procession,' said she, and mounted to a turret, whence through an open window she looked upon the funeral. Scarce had her eyes rested upon the form of Iphis stretched on the bier, when they began to stiffen, and the warm blood in her body to become cold. Endeavoring to step back, she found she could not move her feet; trying to turn away her face, she tried in vain; and by degrees all her limbs became stony like her heart. That you may not doubt the fact, the statue still remains, and stands in ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the fugitives were frozen stiff, like a harness, upon them. Trenck felt neither cold nor stiff; he carried his friend upon his shoulders, and that kept him warm; he walked so rapidly, his limbs could not stiffen. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... now ask through what mechanism it happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen the lower jaw? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... addressed the frost as follows: "Frost, thou evil son of Northland, Dire and only son of Winter, Let my members not be stiffened, Neither ears, nor feet, nor fingers, Neither let my head be frozen. Thou hast other things to feed on, Many other beads to stiffen; Leave in peace the flesh of heroes, Let this minstrel pass in safety, Freeze the swamps, and lakes, and rivers, Fens and forests, bills and valleys; Let the cold stones grow still colder, Freeze the willows ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... and sled may be used to complete the scene, or they can be cut from newspapers or old magazines. Stiffen by pasting them on cardboard; then cut out the men, dogs, and sled more carefully in detail. Bend one leg forward and one backward to make the men stand alone, and bend two legs outward and two inward to enable the dogs to stand. Paste narrow strips of paper ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... the game animals (K'ia-pin-a-ha-i); that their breaths (the "Breath of Life"—Ha-i-an-pi-nan-ne—and soul are synonymous in Zuni Mythology), derived from their hearts, and breathed upon their prey, whether near or far, never fail to overcome them, piercing their hearts and causing their limbs to stiffen, and the animals themselves to lose their strength. Moreover, the roar or cry of a beast of prey is accounted its Sa-wa-ni-k'ia, or magic medicine of destruction, which, heard by the game animals, is fatal to them, because it charms ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... my hair until I thought she would pull out a lot, and I could feel her knees stiffen. Leon just whooped. Mother sprang up and ran to ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... said Washington, his wet clothes already beginning to stiffen on his back in the wintry blast. "I shall not despair so long as I remember that one faithful saint is praying for me," referring to the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... kind depends largely on boiling the sirup to just the right degree, for when this is done the icing will remain for a short time in a condition to be handled. If the sirup is not cooked long enough, the icing will not stiffen and it will have to be mixed with powdered sugar to make it dry. In the event of its being boiled too long, the icing will have to be applied quickly, for it is likely to become sugary. A thermometer is a convenient utensil to use in making ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... tried to make her distinguish between the public and the private virtues. But the word "responsibility" slipped from him and he felt her stiffen. This was preaching, and she hated preaching even more than history. Her attention strayed again and he rallied his forces in a last appeal. But he knew it was a lost battle: every argument broke against the close front of her indifference. He was talking a language she had ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... lightly, although there was a plain vein of anxiety in his voice; for when a fellow has covered nearly thirty miles since sun-up, every rod counts after that; and following each little rest the muscles seem to stiffen wonderfully. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... you find yourself inclined to change your mind before morning, just murmur over to yourself, 'England expects every man to do his duty.' That will stiffen your back." ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in anticipation of its touch, and shrank—shrank in every nerve though she made no outward sign ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cooperative factors which alone had justified Rumania's entering into the war had proved to be failures. The arrival of material from Russia was delayed because, after Turtekaia was taken, a new Russian corps was sent to the Dobrudja to stiffen up that front. The railroad communications were bad and immediately became congested by the movements of troops, thus interfering with the shipping of badly needed material. I have since heard the Russian reactionary government charged with purposely holding up ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... in very truth, been her purpose in coming to them, she would have found little encouragement in the countenances before her. Every one of them seemed to stiffen into grim disapproval of her unfilial act in thus publicly opposing ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... we observe in other persons or creatures the expression of that feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible, display curiosity and come up to join in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... on the high road, a few dotted figures in the village streets. Below the flying-men the packed thousands are crouched still to earth. At the sound of the engine's drone, at sight of the wheeling shape, square miles of country stiffen to immobility, men scurry under cover of wall or bush, the long, moving lines in the trenches halt and sink down and hang their heads (next to movement the light dots of upturned, staring faces are the quickest and surest betrayal of the earth-men to the air-men), ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... arm that was round me stiffen, and there was silence for a moment, then my lord swore a great oath, and let his clenched fist fall so heavily on the table, that the red French wine which stood before him splashed right out of the beaker, a foot ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Jeanne, on the arm of young Bellamy Smith. Andrew stood quite still looking at her. He saw her start for a moment as she recognized him, and her eyes swept him over with a half incredulous, half startled expression. She drew a little breath. And then Andrew saw her suddenly and instinctively stiffen. She looked him in the face and bowed very slightly, without the vestige of ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Castile soap and add to it a handful of salt to set the color. Wash each piece through this, and rinse through two clear waters to which just enough vinegar to taste has been added, the latter to brighten the color, then stiffen in cool starch and hang in the shade. When washing delicate colored fabrics a tablespoon of ox gall may be substituted for ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... any pride in Marion's eyes to dissemble. She stared at Ellen, and said heavily, as one who speaks concerning the violation of a secret, "Did Richard tell you that?" Before the girl had time to answer cruelly, "Yes, he tells me everything," she had remembered certain things which made her stiffen in her chair and keep her chin up and use her eyes as if there still flashed in them the pride which had utterly vanished. "Oh, yes," she asserted, in that forced voice, but very loudly and deliberately. "I have another son. He's a good boy. His name is Roger Peacey. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... white flame in us is gone, And we that lost the world's delight Stiffen in darkness, left alone To crumble in ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the fires in under hells must glow Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise, Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure! Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure! He may not say how many blows must fall, How many lives be broken on the wheel, How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall, How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal; But certain is the harvest time of Hate! And when weak moans, by an indignant world Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled, Who listens hears ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Hermannstadt, taking Schellenberg on the way. Here a Hungarian army had been defeated in 1599 by Rumanians under Michael the Brave. Hermannstadt, however, marked the high tide of Rumanian victory. At this point the resistance of the enemy began suddenly to stiffen. And then came the report that the Rumanians were observing German uniforms among the opposing forces. Again Germany had come to the rescue. On September 13, 1916, the first German troops to arrive on the scene came in contact with the Rumanians southeast of Hatszeg near Hermannstadt. Within ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... what he wanted. He thought it so ridiculous to make inquiries of strangers, before his own house, after his wife and children, and still more so, after himself, that he mentioned the first neighbour whose name occurred to him, Kirt Stiffen. All were silent, and looked at one another, till an old ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... did stiffen up involuntarily; it was so obviously not Mrs. Jameson's place to call us to order and attention. Of course she should have been introduced by our President, who should herself have done the rapping with the scissors. Flora Clark opened her mouth to speak, but Mrs. White clutched her arm ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rods, and giving stiffness to it by a trussed railing, a latticed framing of wood hung directly from the cables, and the timbers of the roadway being fastened to this by stirrups, the wooden lattice served both to suspend and to stiffen the road. It was a serviceable and cheap structure, built in two weeks, and answered our purposes well till it was burned in the next autumn, when Colonel Lightburn retreated before a Confederate invasion. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... gluten, and phosphate of lime. The office of the acid is to dissolve the gluten and phosphate of lime, and thus to separate them from the starch. Starch is used along with smalt, or stone-blue, to stiffen and clear linen. The powder of it is also used to whiten and powder the hair. It is also used by the dyers, to dispose their stuffs to take colours the better. Starch is sometimes used instead of sugar-candy for mixing with the colours that are used in strong ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... so. A policeman, I was informed, was a being to hold in fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... the ground, then they felt it stiffen, and were again on the alert. Venning ran his fingers lightly along the jackal's back till he reached the nose, which was pointing straight up. Without a moment's delay he ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... determination not to let them see her flinch at any kind of horror. That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always quite commendable; it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to things not ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... thousands of American women, American worry slays her tens of thousands. Work may bend the back and stiffen the joints. It ploughs no furrows in brow and cheek; it does not hollow the eyes and drag all the facial muscles downward. These are misdeeds of worry—your familiar demon, and the curse of our sex everywhere. A good man—who, by the way, had a pale, harassed-looking wife—once ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... up the pulpit stair. He announced his text: "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets." Captain Pott felt Elizabeth, who was sitting beside him, stiffen. Miss Pipkin leaned forward in her eagerness to catch every word, and as the minister proceeded her expression changed from perplexity and doubt to one of deep respect. There were others who followed the thought of the sermon with ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... they would curse and tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... don't take kindly to my courting? Don't want anything to do with me at all?" His forced laugh had a harshness in it that caused the young man's muscles to stiffen. He took a sly glance at the girl and saw her chin uplift ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the man who has iron in his blood and is determined that he will succeed. When he is confronted by barriers he leaps over them, tunnels through them, or makes a way around them. Obstacles only serve to stiffen his backbone, increase his determination, sharpen his wits and develop his innate resources. The record of human achievement is full of the truth. "There is no difficulty ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... literally held its breath as the girl paused before replying. Her hands shut hard at her sides, her body seemed to stiffen and rise, then she turned formidably with the fires of slumbering vengeance burning in her wonderful eyes—vengeance for her mother, for her lover, for her rescuer, for herself—she turned slowly toward the cowering nobleman and said distinctly: "I ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... could hear the sails snap and stiffen as it overhauled the fleet behind us. In a jiffy it bunted our own hull and canvas, and again we began to plough the water. It grew into a smart breeze, and scattered the fleet of clouds that hovered over us. The rain passed; sunlight ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... broken below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be moved, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... dear boy, he must have grasped it after he was dead, or have prevailed on some friend to stiffen his fingers round it." ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... (3) Stiffen the body and raise yourself up by the strength of your arms until you rest on your ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... hold of this thing; and in the first place I'll give you an order on my bank for all the money that seems necessary. You will take up some of that stock for me; and, as the Hogarth men will offer more freely as soon as they strike an actual buyer, in case prices stiffen you'll follow their lead and pitch the stock you ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... calcium employed in proportion of one equivalent for three of the total calcium is most convenient for the formation of oxychloride of calcium. If the mixture is made with carbonate of lime (pulverized chalk), it will not stiffen in the air; but if lime and carbonate of calcium are employed at the same time, the mass stiffens like cement, and can be moulded into bricks or plates. The best way to operate is to mix first a part of the ore and well pulverized ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... crown. Reform would be a self-denying ordinance, if not an act of political suicide, as well as a blow at George III. Privileged bodies do not reform themselves; proposals by Burke and by Pitt and by others were rejected one after another; and then the French Revolution came to stiffen the wavering ranks of reaction. Not till the Industrial Revolution had changed the face of England did the old political forces acknowledge their defeat and surrender their claim to govern the nation ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... been drawn, yet seeming to wait and watch. One hoof touches a twig; like lightning it spreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs sweep themselves forward, surveying the ground by touch, and bracing themselves, in a fraction of time so small ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... handlings gave a certain amount of pleasing sensation; and, latterly, my eldest sister had discovered that the hooding and unhooding of my doodle, as she called it, instantly caused it to swell up and stiffen as hard as a piece of wood. My feeling of her little pinky slit gave rise in her to nice sensations, but on the slightest attempt to insert even my finger, the pain was too great. We had made so little progress in the attouchements ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... younger man, "I have—and a bad one, too, and that's why I sent for you. The stocktaking is nothing; but I was afraid I might get another that would stiffen me properly. Look here, Lawson, you've been a true friend to me. You picked me up six months ago a drunken, half-maddened beast in Apia and saved my ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there 's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... when used to stiffen a ship, whether carried in casks, tanks, bags, or otherwise. The iron screw-colliers of the present day have immense tanks constructed in their floors, on the upper part of which the coals rest; when they are discharged, the tanks are allowed to fill with water, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... bit an immovable sort. I ride and play tennis and dance, all those things, more than most people. I care about them—a lot." One could see it in the vivid pose of the figure. "And, you know, it's really too much to expect. I won't stiffen gently into a live corpse. No!" The sliding, clear voice was low, but the "no" ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... instances totally arresting the process of digestion. These balls, almost circular in form, are composed of minute and rather stiff hairs, and several have been found in one animal. These hairs, numerous on the heads; do not stiffen sooner than the period of full bloom; hence, until that stage is reached in the growth of the plants, the danger from feeding cured hay made from them does ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... of lustrous black with the apparently simple lines that are so baffling to any but the expert maker, with a black picture hat that suited her no end. I saw more than one matron of the North Side set stiffen in her seat, while Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie turned upon her the chilling broadside of their lorgnons. Belknap-Jackson merely drew himself up austerely. The three other women of her party, flutterers rather, did little but set off their hostess. The four men were of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... instruction is, perhaps, not wholly without its inconveniencies; it certainly fills the nation with superficial disputants; enables those to talk who were born to work; and affords information sufficient to elate vanity, and stiffen obstinacy, but too little to enlarge the mind into complete skill ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... head. If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... against her sufferings, seeking to get the better of them by efforts of will, she all at once experienced such extraordinary lassitude that she yielded vanquished. Then, having become a woman again, even a little girl, no longer feeling the strength to stiffen herself, to stand feverishly erect before her terror, she plunged into pity, into tears and regret, in the hope of finding some relief. She sought to reap advantage from her weakness of body and mind. Perhaps ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... death there is but one thing more full of suggestion than the faint smell of antiseptics,—the gruesome, cleanly, unpleasant odour,—that is, the unnatural sound of the whispering of hushed voices. Lord Walderhurst turned cold, and felt it necessary to stiffen his spine when he heard his servant's answer and the tone ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... be boxed, Fig. 285, D, that is, portions of the sides may be affixed to the top. These extra pieces are a help to stiffen the top and to keep it from warping. A boxed top may have the top board flush with the sides, Fig. 285, E. The disadvantage of this is that the top may shrink and part from the sides and give a bad appearance. The overlapping top, Fig. 285, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... sort of hard-grained little vein of common sense, against which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and then she is charming. Most useful, most needful, these ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... queen tells me except command my tones when there is an attempt to stiffen her. She is not to be made ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glutton who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her with a chisel ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... in the matter of a minute struggled feebly to his feet where he stood swaying and dizzy; and thus Bashti, his eye to the crack, saw the miracle of life flow back through the channels of the inert body and stiffen the legs to upstanding, and saw consciousness, the mystery of mysteries, flood back inside the head of bone that was covered with hair, smoulder and glow in the opening eyes, and direct the lips to writhe away from the teeth and the throat to vibrate to the snarl ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... bark revealed to us two scorpions with enormous bellies, and heads so small as to be almost imperceptible; all they did was to stiffen out their tails, which are composed of six divisions, the last terminating in an ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... all got down to work, and presently had a regular production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen, cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a wonderful-looking ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... to make his declaration, he felt his tongue stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave, and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity of ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... after hour; the horses know they are on the way home, and trot without asking. My bare hands stiffen about the reins. As we neared a cottage a little way from the road, Fruen knocked on the carriage window to say it was dinner-time. She gets out, and her face was pale ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... strength, given by spirituous liquors to a person under the action of frost, is notoriously but momentary and leaves the sufferer exposed to an immediate and more dangerous reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and at the same instant a piercing cry for ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... from the boat. Crowded against the fish house on the dock, Henderson could only advance a few steps at a time. He was straining every nerve to protect and assist Edith. He saw no one he recognized near them, so he slipped his arm across her back to help support her. He felt her stiffen against him and catch her breath. At the same instant, the clearest, sweetest male voice he ever had heard called: ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... modern sense is a coarse open texture of cotton or hemp, loaded with gum, and used to stiffen certain articles of dress. But this was certainly not the mediaeval sense. Nor is it easy to bring the mediaeval uses of the term under a single explanation. Indeed Mr. Marsh suggests that probably two different words have coalesced. Fr.-Michel says that Bouqueran was at first applied ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... hardness of iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken—each gem with a flaw— Be comforted thou! For rising in air Thy flight ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wheel him right round all in a moment, and send him on a new path. He wants to do that with all of you to whom He has not already done it. I beseech you, do not stick your heels into the ground in resistance, nor when He puts His hand on your shoulder stiffen your back that He may not do what He ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by the help of such a gesture, and she firmly believed that it was of great assistance to her. (Even when she was singing in public, she kept her right hand down with difficulty, nervously clasping her white kid fingers together when she took a high note. Thea could always see her elbows stiffen.) She unvaryingly executed this gesture with a smile of gracious confidence, as if she were actually putting her finger on the tone: "There it ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... lost after hours' tracking in the interminable large grasses. An enormous snake, with fearful mouth and fangs, was speared by the men. In the evening I wounded a buck nsamma, which, after tracking till dark, was left to stiffen ere the following morning; and just after this on the way home, we heard the rogue elephant crunching the branches not far off from the track; but as no one would dare follow me against the monster at this late hour, he was reluctantly left to do ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... we could support our jacks...." The engineer paused, then went on. "If you can't give me Mars or Tellus, how about some other planet? I don't care about atmosphere, or about anything but mass. I can stiffen her up in three or four days if I can sit down on something heavy enough to hold our jacks and presses; but if we have to rig up space-cradles around the ship herself it'll take a long time—months, probably. Haven't got a spare ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... can sometimes be removed by careful manipulations with the hand; but, where this can not be accomplished, the flexible probang should be employed. This is a long India-rubber tube, with a whalebone stillet running through it, so as to stiffen it when in use. This instrument is passed down the animal's throat, and the offending substance is thus ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... meeting him in the park." The detective leaned forward in his chair and spoke gently, as if merely reminding the girl of some insignificant fact which she had presumably forgotten, yet there was that in his tone which made her stiffen, and she replied impulsively, with a warning ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... information, unsupported by vigorous mental powers. Information may be acquired at any age, provided that the intellectual machinery has been kept in activity; whereas, if the latter has been allowed to rust and stiffen from disease, the efforts of the man—supposing him to have energy sufficient to make an effort—to redress the wrongs done to the boy, will in most cases be vain. That self-educated men are generally the best educated is a trite remark; so trite, indeed, that it frequently falls on the ear ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... through the fog of new thoughts that were confusing his daughter's mind and she could feel his body stiffen. A thrill ran through her own body and she forgot McGregor. With all the strength of her spirit she was absorbed in what David was saying. In the challenge that was coming from the lips of her father she began to feel there would be born in her own ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson |
