"Tough" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the devil has given him. In this condition, the loulerous run upon four legs, pass the night in ranging over the country, and in biting and devouring all the dogs they meet. At break of day they lay aside their goatskins and return home. Often they are ill in consequence of having eaten tough old hounds, and they vomit up their undigested paws. One great nuisance to them is the fact that they may be wounded or killed in their loulerou state. With the first effusion of blood their diabolic covering vanishes, and they are recognized, to ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... agreeable impression. Loud and thundering sounds, such as the ringing of heavy bells, beating of drums, and firing of cannon, and the gothic hourra are requisite to move the phlegm that surrounds the tough heart of old ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... abundant among the older rocks of all parts of the globe. Popular names for them are "whinstone," "greenstone," "toadstone" and "trap." They form excellent road-mending stones and are much quarried for this purpose, being tough, durable and resistant to wear, so long as they are not extremely decomposed. Many of them are to be preferred to the fresher dolerites as being less brittle. The quality of the Cornish greenstones appears to have been distinctly improved by a smaller amount of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... sewn thickly, forming a sort of chain armour, while permitting perfect freedom of the limbs. The archers also wore steel caps, which, like those of the men-at-arms, came low down on the neck and temples. They had on tough leathern frocks, girded in at the waist, and falling to the knee; some of them had also iron rings sewn on the shoulders. English archers were often clad in green cloth, but Sir Eustace had furnished the garments, and ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... also hanging from the roof, but with a sigh he determined to reserve that delicacy for the morrow, remembering that two days would elapse before a fresh supply was due. His dog, Sibi—a starved looking mongrel greyhound—lay at his feet and gazed up with expectant eyes, waiting for the handful of tough mealies which would be flung to him when his master had ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... edge of the balcony and looked over; it was not very far from the ground, but it was too far to jump. How about the wistaria boughs? They looked pretty tough—he decided to try, and if he fell—well, he had smashed himself up before this more than once, and no doubt would do so again. A few tumbles more or less wouldn't make much difference to him, especially, he reflected, as he was bound to get ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... she moved; but I could recall none of that sort. She had been too unhappy, here in Tempe, to make friends. So I sat there shivering until morning, unwilling to go away, altogether bewildered, quite at my wits' end, steeped in despair. The world seemed too hard and tough for me. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Hume paid no heed to the question. His lips quivered, his nostrils twitched, and his eyes shot strange gleams. He caught the back of his chair with both hands in a grasp that tried to squeeze the tough oak. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... delicious fruit is the part of the plant known in Manila. The peel is at the present time almost universally employed in medicine. The fruit is about the size of a small Manila orange, the pericarp a dark red or chocolate color, tough and thick, crowned with the remains of the calyx. On breaking it open the edible portion of the fruit is seen, consisting of 6-18 seeds covered by a white, sweet pulp, cottony in appearance, of a ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... resembled an antique and dilapidated baboon; his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself, but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring. Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot with a rifle especially when he used a little single-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun of mine made by Purdey which he named ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... "He made a proposition." In current slang almost anything is a proposition. A difficult enterprise is "a tough proposition," an agile wrestler, "a slippery proposition," ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... promptly, seeing that they wore a sort of armour, woven of cotton thread, and carried arrow-proof shields." We have already alluded to this passage, but must add that Parkman, describing from French archives a battle of Illinois against Iroquois in 1680, speaks of "corslets of tough twigs interwoven with cordage." [Footnote: Discovery of the Great IV, [misprint] 1869.] Golden, in his Five Nations, writes of the Red Indians as wearing "a kind of cuirass made of pieces of wood joined together." [Footnote: Dix, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... which the swamps of the Philippine Islands produce is one called the 'bejuco,' or 'jungle rope.' This is a vine of no great size, but of tremendous strength, which, near the end, divides into several slender but very tough branches. Each of these branches is surrounded by many rings of long, wicked, recurved thorns, as sharp and strong as steel fish-hooks, and nearly as difficult to dislodge. The hunter who encounters ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... sigh in vain To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, We think upon those ladies twain Who loved so well the tough old Dean. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gentleman, when carving a tough goose, had the misfortune to send it entirely out of the dish, and into the lap of the lady next to him; on which he very coolly looked her full in the face, and with admirable gravity and calmness, said, "Madam, may ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... time of it in Moscow," he said. "I am very glad for your sake. . . . I'm an old man and I need nothing. I shall soon give up the ghost and set you all free. And the wonder is that my hide is so tough, that I'm alive ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be accurate! [Obviously their nerves are now on edge.] He said we should find him tough to ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... more to kill a tough man than you London chaps think," said Mat. "I was found before my head got cool, and plastered over with leaves and ointment. They'd left a bit of scalp at the back, being in rather too great a hurry to do their work as handily as usual; and a new skin growed over, after a little—a babyish ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... his apprehensions disappeared. Before him stretched a wide, grassy savanna and upon it was grazing a herd of wild cattle, at least fifty in number, stocky beasts with long horns. Robert looked at them with satisfaction. Here was enough food on the hoof to last him for years. They might be tough, but he had experience enough to make them tender when it came ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... put upon the market, or old goods with new names. Standard goods, such as serges, cashmere, Henrietta cloth, and covert cloth, are always to be found in the shops. These are all twilled goods. The serges are woven of combed wool and are harsh, tough, springy, worsted fabrics of medium and heavy weight, with a distinct twill, rather smooth surface, and plainer back. There are also loosely woven serges. Cashmere and Henrietta cloth have a fine, irregular twill—the finest made. They are woven with silk, wool, and cotton warp, but the latter ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of his gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a bluish grey—violent in its colours once, but sobered now by age and dinginess—and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in colour blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to his chin. His cravat ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... generally follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man, should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no use to ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... pain to come upon him, the second and third, use it in like manner; it allaies all pain the first day how great soever it be, and prevents Swelling; the second day it causes Sweat, which is very nasty, tough and thick, very soure in taste, and of an evil sent, and most of all in those parts where the Members are united and joined together by the Joints; and if you should give none in the third day, yet will there be a purgation of the Veins, and of the Excrements, without any molestation or ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... hippopotamus, or boiled rhinoceros. But she met with none of these, and day after day was rejoiced to find her native turkey appearing on the table, with pigeons and chickens (though the chickens, to be sure, were scarcely larger than the pigeons), and lamb that was really not more tough than that of New Hampshire and ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... language of the country to which he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for much juvenile delinquency. Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the "tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of the family life because the children have to become the interpreters and representatives of the family ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... knife he cut the tough withes that held the bamboos in their places, and pulled out three of ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... the fellow had a charter, he would be compelled to pay; otherwise he would not, as probably the charges were exorbitant. Brown argued they might have some trouble with the ranchman if pay was refused, as they generally had a pretty tough crowd around them who were ready for any kind of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana—a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe—if I dared swing one—would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing out again; my body ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sign of grit, that, when it appears, t' other fellow or t' other opinion must give way. Its power comes from its tough hold on the real, and the surly boldness with which it utters and acts it out. Thus, in social life, it puts itself in rude opposition to all those substitutes for reality which the weakness and hypocrisy and courtesy of men find necessary for their mutual defence. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... soul. Be not misled by worldly-wisemen to take advice of the doctor's boy, but go direct to Jesus; he is ready—he is willing to cure and save to the uttermost. His medicine may be sharp, but merely so as to effect the cure 'where bad humours are tough and churlish.' 'It revives where life is, and gives life where it is not. Take man from this river, and nothing can make him live: let him have this water and nothing can make him die.' The river of water of life allegorically represents the Spirit and grace of God; thus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The thick mustaches and pointed beards with which the lips and chins of most of them were decorated, gave to their physiognomies a manly and determined air, fully borne out by their unrestrained carriage and deportment. To a man, almost all were armed with a tough vine-wood bludgeon, called in their language an estoc volant, tipped and shod with steel—a weapon fully understood by them, and rendered, by their dexterity in the use of it, formidable to their adversaries. Not a few carried at their girdles the short ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was ignorant, the mysteries of the human mind were a sealed book to me as yet, and I stupidly looked upon myself as a tough and unforgivable criminal. I wrote to Dr. Holmes and told him the whole disgraceful affair, implored him in impassioned language to believe that I had never intended to commit this crime, and was unaware that I had committed it until I was confronted with the awful evidence. I have lost ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... physique than most giants. He wore a full beard. His features were thick and heavy, coarsely modelled, like those of a wooden carving; but his eyes, small and black, sparkled with the fires of intelligence and audacity. His hair was short, black, and bristling. Nightspore was of middle height, but so tough-looking that he appeared to be trained out of all human frailties and susceptibilities. His hairless face seemed consumed by an intense spiritual hunger, and his eyes were wild and distant. Both men ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... almost entirely closed by a membrane called the hymen. The vulgar name for hymen is "maidenhead." The hymen may be of various shapes, and of different consistency. In some girls it is a very thin membrane, which tears very readily; in others it is quite tough. On the upper margin or in the center of the hymen there is an opening which permits any secretion from the vagina and the blood from the uterus to come through. In rare cases there is no opening in the hymen, that is, the vagina is ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... when pigs spoke rhyme, And monkeys chewed tobacco, And hens took snuff to make them tough, And ducks went ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... mask of cheerfulness—with the desperate resolution of an actor, amusing his audience at a time of domestic distress. He astonished the keeper's wife by showing that he really knew how to use her frying-pan. Cecilia's omelet was tough—but the young ladies ate it. Emily's mayonnaise sauce was almost as liquid as water—they swallowed it nevertheless by the help of spoons. The potatoes followed, crisp and dry and delicious—and Mirabel became more popular ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... as the same solitude whence he had just emerged; therefore he followed Peter, who over his shoulder carried a bag containing various bodies of minks, fishers, and other furry animals, snared in his traps, and subsequently knocked on the head by his tough service-rod. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... lunched upon a shoe, and for my own part, whenever I go upon another voyage, I shall take the precaution of providing myself with pliable French boots—your Kilmarnock leather is so very intolerably tough! Towards evening, to our infinite joy, we descried a boat entering the Sound. We shouted, as you may be sure, like demons. The Celtic Samaritans came up, and, thanks to the kindness of Rory M'Gregor the master, we each of us went to sleep that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... when the trudging is heavy, and the wind pierces our worn garments. The others, all of them, are unendingly cheerful when in the tent. We mean to see the game through with a proper spirit, but it's tough work to be pulling harder than we ever pulled in our lives for long hours, and to feel that the progress is so slow. One can only say 'God help us!' and plod on our weary way, cold and very miserable, though ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to carry enough water and supplies to make it. Say, Juan, who was that big Portuguee with Professor Gurlone? He's blind, ain't he? His eyes were white as milk, and his face tanned black as river mud. Surely is a great big guy, and tough looking, too." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... on them—the officers seemed to be consulting together—and then they made up their minds to attack us, and came on altogether in a line. If our crew had consented to fight it would have been pretty tough work, I must own that, and maybe we should have got the worst of it. In a few minutes the boats were alongside, and their crews were clambering up on deck, some on our quarters and some amidships and for'ard, shouting and jabbering, and waving their ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... monsters. I own that I shouldn't much like to have to fight one of them with a suit of armour on, and a spear or battle-axe in my hand. I suspect even Saint George who killed the dragon would have found it somewhat a tough job, and yet these naked fellows make no ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... spurned the furniture was a symbol of him; it was some such thing that prevented him and his heirs from sitting as quietly on their throne as the heirs of St. Louis. He thrust again and again at the tough intangibility of the priests' Utopianism like a man fighting a ghost; he answered transcendental defiances with baser material persecutions; and at last, on a dark and, I think, decisive day in English history, his word sent four feudal murderers ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... dey tell me. Dat was a pretty rough time wid de people den. I don' recollect so much bout de times back dere cause in dat day en time chillun didn' have de heap of knowledge dey have dis day en time, but I remembers seein de Yankees en de people gwine to de war. Oh, dat was a tough time cause dey use de whip in dem days. Oh, yes'um, my Massa whip my gran'mammy wid a leather strap. You see she had a knack of gwine off for some cause or another en meetin de boat what run up en down dat big Pee Dee river en bring fertilizer en all kind of goods to de peoples. Massa Randall ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... sensation; whence great arterial energy is produced, and the pulse becomes strong and full, as well as quick; and the coats of the arteries feel hard under the finger, being themselves thickened and distended by inflammation. The blood drawn, especially at the second bleeding, is covered with a tough size; which is probably the mucus from the inflamed internal surface of the arteries, increased in quantity, and more coagulable than in its natural state; the thinner part being more perfectly absorbed by the increased action of the inflamed absorbents. See Sect. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... black-bearded face rose silently above the iron partition between his room and that of the German. A hand gripping a small electric flashlight followed. A white ray searched the room, halting on the khaki shirt lying over a box. A tough withe with a barb at one end came over like a slender tentacle, hooked the shirt neatly, drew it stealthily up to the top. Shirt, stick, lamp, hand, face all ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... creature through college, and had a high opinion of him, and a great delight in his company. They were both much given to books, and according to their lights zealous archaeologists. They had got hold of Chapelizod Castle, a good tough enigma. It was a theme they never tired of. Loftus had already two folios of extracts copied from all the records to which Dr. Walsingham could procure him access. They could not have worked harder, indeed, if they ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... digging of graves. He "had a rule from his father to know when not to dig a grave." That was "when he found a certain plant about the bigness of the middle of a tobacco-pipe, which came near the surface of the earth, but never above it. It is very tough, and about a yard long; the rind of it is almost black, and tender, so that when you pluck it, it slips off and underneath is red; it hath a small button at the top, not much unlike the top of an asparagus; of these he sometimes finds two or three in a grave." ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... kept very sharp. The line is attached to the middle of the spear-head, the near end being slanted, so that when the line is tightened it lies cross-wise in the wound, like a harpoon, and it is almost impossible for it to draw out after once passing through the tough hide of the animal. When the line is nearly run out, the end of the spear-shaft is passed through a loop in the end of the line and held firmly by digging a little hole in the ice for the end of the spear to rest in, the foot resting upon the line and against the spear to steady it. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in the morning with the will that, smooth or rough, You'll grin. Sink to sleep at midnight, and although you're feeling tough, Yet grin. There's nothing gained by whining, and you're not that kind of stuff; You're a fighter from away back, and you won't take a rebuff; Your trouble is that you don't know when you have had enough— Don't give in. If Fate should down you, just get up and take another ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... and river dikes, and of causeways and other embankments and fillings, create a great demand for that material. Sand is also employed in Holland, in large quantities, for improving the consistence of the tough clay bordering upon or underlying diluvial deposits, and for forming an artificial soil for the growth of certain garden and ornamental vegetables. When the dunes are removed, the ground they covered is restored to the domain of industry; and ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... so-called aluminum bronze with a fine golden color, which it retains for a long time. The tensile strength of this alloy is usually given as 100,000 pounds to the square inch; but castings of our ten per cent. bronze have stood a strain of 109,000 pounds. It is a very hard, tough alloy, with a capacity to withstand wear far in excess of any other alloy in use. All grades of aluminum bronze make fine castings, taking very exact impressions, and there is no loss in remelting, as in the case of alloys containing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... the noise, but others never. Every time a battery fired simultaneously one of the men who were with me, a hard, tough type of mechanic, shrank and ducked his head with an expression of agonized horror. He confessed to me that it "knocked his nerves to pieces." Three such men out of six or seven had to be invalided home in one week. One of them had a crise de nerfs, which nearly killed him. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... carry arms. Those who could afford it were to provide themselves with a complete coat of mail. The rest were to wear helmets and breast-plates only. The horses were also to be protected as far as possible by breast-plates, either of iron, or of leather thick and tough enough to prevent ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... the half-cooked ham, The rich ragout and the charming cham., I've got to mix my liquor; Give me a gander's gaunt hind leg, Hard and tough as a wooden peg, And I'll keep it down with a hard-boiled egg, 'Twill ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... tough. I think half ob dem'll be hung, de way dey throw rocks at ole peoples. Dat's why I's crippled now, a white boy hit me wid a rock. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... you're so infernal green, Perry! The 'Thunderbolt' is a fighting man from Lambeth, a tough customer who's won a fight or so lately and thought he could beat anything on two pins. So we were bringing him down here, hoping to match him with Jessamy, or, failing him, some other good man. But the fool, not knowing Jessamy, get's himself thrashed, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... will turn before long," answered Adair; "and if the boats get aground we may find these same Arabs rather tough customers. However, we must look out to avoid the contingency, and if we can take the fellows by surprise, we may manage to get hold of a good ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... off the hoof," groaned Marty. "Unless they pound it like they say they do the boarding-house beefsteak, that pullet will sure be tough." ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... Hard lifted Scott gently into the car. "Don't worry about him. He's had this coming to him for some time by all accounts and the worst of it is his hide's probably so tough he won't know it's been ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... bleached, fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb. There are long, dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn clings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at night the turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white eggs with tough, rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off to nowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great, blind worms, to finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few miles ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... shrewdly, and confessed the truth of the charge without an attempt at mitigation. He asked frankly for a place in the troop, the lowest, as his chance of redemption, or rather demanded it as a grace due from man to man. Drake was taken by his manner, noticed his build, which was tough and wiry, and conceded the request. Nor had he reason to regret his decision on the march out. Gorley showed himself alert, and vigilant, a favourite with the blacks, and obedient to his officers. He was advanced from duty to duty; a week before the force began its homeward march from Boruwimi ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Russia, and were now following a horse-path which winds up to the Kurdish encampments on the southern slope of the mountain. The plain was strewn with sand and rocks, with here and there a bunch of tough, wiry grass about a foot and a half high, which, though early in the year, was partly dry. It would have been hot work except for the rain of the day before and a strong southeast wind. As it was, our feet were blistered and bruised, the ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... never since his first entrance into intellectual circles had Cuthbert Banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry. But the strain was terrible and I am inclined to think that he must have cracked, had ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... fought for mastery in Hampton Roads. The ironclad vessel was not then a new idea in naval architecture, but its efficiency as a fighting machine was then first demonstrated. Iron for armor soon gave way to thick and tough steel, while each improvement in armor led to a corresponding improvement in guns and projectiles, until now a battle at sea has grown to be a remarkably different affair from the great ocean combats of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... off in a jiffy. And our coffee is just ready, too—I rather guess that'll warm you up some. Eli, it's lucky you made an extra supply, after all. Looks as if you expected we'd have company drop in on us. I'll carry the paddle—good you hung on to it, for it's a tough job to whittle one out, I know. Here we are, old chap, and believe me, you're a thousand ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... him another horse, just as docile as the mare. The obedient creature, at a signal, reared suddenly, and seated Mr. Little on the sawdust behind him. A similar result was attained several times, by various means. But Henry showed himself so tough, courageous, and persistent, that he made great progress, and his good-humor won his preceptors. They invited him to come tomorrow, at an earlier hour, and bring half a quid with him. He did so, and this time there was an American rider rehearsing, who showed Henry what ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Count of Holland, and would not release him until the Duke of Brabant offered to become prisoner in his place, and found himself obliged, in order to obtain his liberty, to pay his father-in-law a tough ransom. It was not long before Guy himself suffered from the same sort of iniquitous surprise that he had practised upon his sons-in-law. In 1293 he was secretly negotiating the marriage of Philippa, one of his daughters, with Prince Edward, eldest ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... then Elizabeth gave a great start, and stood still and looked up at him. "Wait a moment, please," he continued hurriedly; "this branch is so tough and my knife is small. There, I have secured it;" and then, waving the festoon of honeysuckle triumphantly, he scrambled down the bank and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for Chris, like the rest of the sailors in the tropic heat, wore only his breeches. His bare chest and shoulders were tanned and healthy and the soles of his bare feet as tough as shoe leather. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... he could easily reach the lower end of the iron bars closing the cell window, and he at once began work on them. At first he seemed to produce about as much effect as would the gnawing of a mouse, but after a while his tiny saw was buried in the tough iron. Then footsteps approached, and Ridge had barely time to fling himself on the vile-smelling pallet before a sentry was peering in at the grating. A ray of light fell where he lay, but fortunately failed to reach the side on which the barred aperture was located. ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Water. The Water being settled, they pour it off gently by degrees, they dry the Colour in the Shade that fell to the bottom of the Vessel; and this is the true Roucou, without any Mixture. The Physicians in these Parts prescribe it to cut and attenuate thick and tough Humours, which cause difficulty of Breathing, Retension of Urine, and all sorts ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... and moralized and spiritualized; and over our earthly victuals (or rather vittles, for the former is a very foolish mode of spelling),—over our earthly vittles is diffused a sauce of lofty and gentle thoughts, and tough meat is mollified with tender feelings. But oh! these solitary meals are the dismallest part of my present experience. When the company rose from table, they all, in my single person, ascended to ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... us round in a wide sweep to open the ships, and every eye and glass was glued to them. As we rounded the Indiaman's great gilded stern, about a mile away, it did not need John Ozanne's emphatic—"It's him!" to tell us we were in for a tough fight, and that three prizes lay for our taking. We gave John another cheer, tightened our belts, and perhaps—I can speak for one at all events—wondered grimly how it would be with some of us a couple of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... was in two tin canisters, each one carefully sewn up in stout sailcloth. Mrs. Getchell had fastened a stout strap to each bag of powder and a bag of shot. These straps went over the girls' shoulders, and made them easier to carry than in any other way. It was of course a tough job for each girl to carry ten pounds for the long distance that lay before them, but they ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... laughed. "We're climbing mountains before we come to them. It will be tough work ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... sometimes pronounced like o soft, as court; sometimes like o short, as cough; sometimes like u close, as could; or u open, as rough, tough, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... thither, and often travel vast distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... perfectly insane. Witness the lengths they go, these young fellows out here, for anything on earth they happen to set their crazy hearts upon. The young fancy bloods, I mean, who have the love of sport developed through generations of tough old hard-riding, high-playing, deep-drinking ancestors; the "younger sons," who have inherited the sense of having the ball at their feet, without having inherited the ball. They are certainly great fun, but I should hate to be ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... interrupted the other;—'we shall receive the thanks of Aurelian, though they be not spoken, as heartily as Varus. That was a tough old fellow though. They say he has served many years under the Emperor, and when he left the army was in a fair way to rise to the highest rank. Curses upon those who made a Christian of him! It is they, not Varus, who have put him ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... typical young Englishman, for example, one who has recently emerged from one of our public schools, one of the sort of young Englishmen for whom all commissions in the Army are practically reserved, who will own some great business, perhaps, or direct companies, and worm your way through the tough hide of style and restraint he has acquired, get him to talk about women, about his prospects, his intimate self, and see for yourself how much of him, and how little of him, his school has made. Test him on politics, on the national future, on social relationships, and lead him ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... you a clam and so you try to live up to your reputation. I know you, Kent. You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is too early. But I am excessively hungry. I had only a quarter of jugged cat for breakfast, and the brute was tough. In reply to your question, may I put another—Did you lay in plenty ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by hail. Lastly the urban quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be presumed, of the general condemned three years before,(8) and like his father a vehement antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans dispersed the comitia by violence. But the tough soldiers of Marius, who had flocked in crowds to Rome to vote on this occasion, quickly rallied and dispersed the city bands, and on the voting ground thus reconquered the vote on the Appuleian laws was successfully brought to an end. The scandal ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... was ready to go on, Snake refused to budge. Tough as he was, he had at last reached the limit of his energy and ambition. Al yanked hard on the bridle reins, then rode back and struck him sharply with his quirt before Snake would rouse himself enough to move forward. He went stiffly, reluctantly, pulling ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... his spine moved sinuous as a bow, Till all his weight hung poised on flank and loin. And e'en as, when a chariot-builder bends With practised skill his shafts of splintered fig, Hot from the fire, to be his axle-wheels; Flies the tough-rinded sapling from the hands That shape it, at a bound recoiling far: So from far-off the dread beast, all of a heap, Sprang on me, hungering for my life-blood. I Thrust with one hand my arrows in his ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... have dragged him away quick enough if he had a-come! Now don't you get tearful over Joe, you can't call him no prodigal; his veal's tough old beef by this time! But I never had nothing in particular against him more than I thought he ought to be kicked clean off the face of the earth!" said Mr. Shrimplin, rolling his drooping flaxen mustache fiercely between his stubby thumb and its ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... when I was at liberty, was dim and gloomy. I walked hurriedly along, fearing darkness would overtake me; and looking about me as I went, was snatching a hasty pleasure from the contemplation of Nature's beneficence, when my foot caught in a projecting root of some tough ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... tough drab coat With large pearl buttons all afloat Upon the waves of plush; to tie A kerchief of the king-cup die (White-spotted with a small bird's eye) Around the neck,—and from the nape Let ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed— Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote 30 (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind) We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss— Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... reeds, and the Scythian Sacae, with their hatchets and painted crests. There, too, were the light-clothed Indians, the Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, Gandarians, and the Dadicae. There were the Caspians, clad in tough hides, with bows and cimeters; the gorgeous tunics of the Sarangae, and the loose flowing vests (or zirae) of the Arabians. There were seen the negroes of Aethiopian Nubia with palm bows four cubits long, arrows ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw her embarrassment, for he hastened to enlighten her. "I know all about young Guy. Nobody's enemy but his own. I helped Burke dig him out of Hoffstein's several weeks back, and a tough job it was. How has he behaved himself lately? Been on ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Billy Brackett spun the skiff around, and with the energy of despair pulled back towards the raft. The stout oars bent like whips. If one of them had given way nothing could have saved our raftmates from destruction. Had the tough blades been of other than home make, and fashioned from the best product of the Caspar Mill, they must have yielded. With each stroke Billy Brackett rose slightly from his seat. Arms, body, and legs made ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... lad. He's the boneless wonder. He's as gentle as a spring lamb, and not hardly as tough. Signer Anaconda, the Human Snake, that's what he's called on the bills. Ed Casey ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... was briefly unprintable. "Lord! you'll have to keep that dark," said Mr. Blendershin. "But you have got a tough bit of hoeing before you. If I was you I'd go on and get my degree now you're so near it. You'll ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... him who has not learned woman, Mademoiselle sat at the window each day and spread her nets for the ignominious game. Once she kept a grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for half an hour while she battered in vain the candy man's tough philosophy. His rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... with the cook as to whether we are going to have a cut of pastry that fairly melts in your mouth or a tough doughy mass that is unfit ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... part her cookies, but don't you get carryin' on with her little basket, 'cause it was her pa's, an' she's goin' to set great store by it. Tell him it's half-past nine if it's a minute, an' them old fowls what we're killin' off first is ruther tough. I ought to have her in the pot right now, an' there she ain't caught yet, runnin' 'round the hen-yard at loose ends, an' I'll try to catch her an' that'll help, an—My suz! if that boy ain't half 'crost the pastur' an' me not done talkin' to him. The sassy thing! If I'd had my way makin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... a tough proposition to tackle in the darkness, but these colonials are practical above all else, and they went about it in a practical way. They stopped a few moments to pull themselves together and to get rid of their packs, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... necessary to extract the strength from the meat. If boiled fast over a large fire, the meat becomes hard and tough, and will not give ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Mr. Rossitur, disgusted with his first experiment, resolved this season to be his own head man; and appointed Lucas Springer the second in command, with a posse of labourers to execute his decrees. It did not work well. Mr. Rossitur found he had a very tough prime minister, who would have every one of his plans to go through a kind of winnowing process by being tossed about in an argument. The arguments were interminable, until Mr. Rossitur not unfrequently quit the field with, "Well, do what you like about it!"—not conquered, but wearied. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... interpreter of the 'honest grey hills.' Scott's poetical faculty may, perhaps, be more felt in his prose than his verse. The fact need not be decided; but as we read the best of his novels we feel ourselves transported to the 'distant Cheviot's blue;' mixing with the sturdy dalesmen, and the tough indomitable puritans of his native land; for their sakes we can forgive the exploded feudalism and the faded romance which he attempted with less success to galvanise into life. The pleasure of that healthy open-air life, with that manly companion, is not likely to diminish; and Scott ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the short, tough turf of the camp a little way without speaking, and then Purvis began, in his smooth thin voice, riding a little nearer to his companion so as to make himself heard without undue exertion, 'I wanted to ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... eighth son of Jesse the Bethlehemite. Jesse would seem to have been a landholder, as his fathers had been before him, a man of substance, with fields and flocks and herds. We first meet David, a ruddy, fair-haired lad, tough of sinew and keen of eye and aim, keeping the sheep ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... went to sell her husband's fish, was a very important stronghold of Black Prigord in the Middle Ages, and the chief place in that Sarladais which the English kings of Norman and Angvin descent found such a tough bone to pick. The way to it from Beynac leads up steep valleys and gorges, covered with dense forest. Here wolves are to be seen occasionally in winter, but the wolf country begins a little to the north of Sarlat, and stretches ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... its hand, and kissed the sarcastic, savage face that every one else shrank from contemplating; and bemoaned him with that strong grief which springs naturally from a generous heart, though it be tough as tempered steel. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... long claws, and in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff Which did him round environ." ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... fought like a mule. But I had my own way. It was tough work. I crocked up myself afterwards. And then it was his turn." Max jerked up his head. "After that," he said, "we became pals. He was only my patron before; since, we have ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of which the Romans really did fall in with a serpent as monstrous as their imagination had depicted. It was said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of the River Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls, and only succeeded with much difficulty ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like a Dutch shrubbery. The roots which connect them with mythic antiquity, and the fresh leaves and flowers of the growing present, have been generally cut off with care, and the middle part only has been allowed to be used—too often, of course, a sufficiently tough and dry stem. This method is no doubt easy, because it saves teachers the trouble of investigating antiquity, and saves them too the still more delicate task of judging contemporaneous authors—but ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... comfortably warm, a little too warm, perhaps, presently, when they had trodden the narrow path by the Tongue Ghyll, and were beginning to wind slowly upwards over rough boulders and last year's bracken, tough and brown and tangled, towards that rugged wall of earth and stone tufted with rank grasses, which calls itself Dolly Waggon Pike. Here they all came to a stand-still, and wiped the dews of honest labour from their foreheads; and here Maulevrier flung himself down upon a big boulder, with the soles ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... leg had a decisive effect upon the career of Matthew Flinders. So fine a sailor and so tough a fighting man would unquestionably, if not partially incapacitated, have had conferred upon him during the following years of war commands that would have led to his playing a very prominent part in fleet operations. As it was, he did not go to sea again, though he was promoted through ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... cried: "You shall not escape me!" He leaped and wrenched off his helmet. "Eya!" The vizard broke and remained in his hand, and Miyanoya still fled afar, and afar, and he looked back crying in terror, "How terrible, how heavy your arm!" And Kagekiyo called at him, "How tough the shaft of your neck is!" And they both laughed out over the battle, and went off each his ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... carrying, and gave Barker one of the most satisfactory castigations he had ever undergone; the boys declared that Dr. Rowlands' "swishings" were nothing to it. Mr. Williams saw that the offender was a tough subject, and determined that he should not soon forget the punishment he then received. He had never heard from Eric how this boy had been treating him, but he had heard it from Russell, and now he had seen one of the worst specimens of it with his own eyes. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... she washes and scrubs, and is by turns a midwife, a matchmaker, or a beggar. It is true she, too, is not disinclined to drown her sorrows, but even when she has had a drop she does not forget her duties. In Russia there are many such tough old women, and how much of its welfare rests ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... at this I knew, and he knew; but he held me with the hold of his despair, and I could not loose myself. Both of us together, he meant; but not I. Yet I only freed myself just as he rolled exhausted, but clutching at the tough, short bushes wildly, toward the brink, and partly over it.... Only the hold of his hands between him and his death. And I knelt above him, with the knife in my hand that was stained with ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... settled the matter in less than a minute. But, Judge, let me tell you, that buck was dangerous; and if Crop hadn't been around, may be ther'd have been the bones of man and beast bleachin' on the sandy beach of Mud Lake! I bound up my wounds as well as I could—but it was tough work backin' my bark canoe over the carryin' places on Bog River, and across the Ingen carryin' place, and from the Upper Saranac to Bound Lake, with them holes in my leg and arm, and the other bruises I received. When I got out to the settlements I was mighty glad ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... like that. It would mean having to exercise authority and getting tough with people, and he hated anything like that. He ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... they must have acted unfairly by the English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... all the yaks that had been grazing till the end of September at the higher elevations, and the Phipun presented our men with one of a gigantic size, and proportionally old and tough. The Lepchas barbarously slaughtered it with arrows, and feasted on the flesh and entrails, singed and fried the skin, and made soup of the bones, leaving nothing but the horns and hoofs. Having a fine day, they prepared some ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the long poles for her home occupied all of the daylight hours that were not engaged in the search for food. These poles she carried high into her tree and with them constructed a flooring across two stout branches binding the poles together and also to the branches with fibers from the tough arboraceous grasses that grew in profusion near the stream. Similarly she built walls and a roof, the latter thatched with many layers of great leaves. The fashioning of the barred windows and the door were matters of great importance and consuming interest. The windows, there were two ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... brightly expressed it, "Those are things that no decent man monkeys with. Besides, smatter fact, I'll tell you confidentially: it's a protection to our daughters and to decent women to have a district where tough nuts can raise cain. Keeps 'em away from our ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... beyond the north line. I thought you'd moved from this land of strife, lizards, and mosquitos, and staked out a claim in the celestial regions. Did not know you at first. You must have seen some pretty tough times before I found you if this is how you look after undergoing a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... "If, with that tough Friesian skull of yours," Frederick once said to him, "you succeed for twenty years in propagating the idea of artificial selection as applied to man, and if the idea of race hygiene, of a teleologic improvement of human types is sufficiently spread, it will undoubtedly ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... claimed, he had been spending the afternoon in the fascinations of poker. One by one the ladies of the —th had learned to trust Mr. Gleason as little as did their lords, but there was no snubbing him. "Snubs," said the senior major, "are lost on such a pachydermatous ass as Gleason," and however tough might be his moral hide, and however deserved might have been the applied adjective, the major was in error in calling Gleason an ass. Intriguing, full of low malice and scheming, a "slanderer and substractor" he certainly was, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... curiously while Rad built a fire, and when the colored man was trying to break a tough stick of wood with the axe, one of the giants picked up the fagot and snapped it in his fingers as easily as though it were a twig, though the stick was ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... better part of which they were unwilling to lose. Mr. Brougham said, he consented to it as the price, the almost extravagant price, of the inestimable good which would result from emancipation; and it was described by Sir James Mackintosh as one of those tough morsels which he had scarcely been able to swallow. It was opposed by Mr. Huskisson and others as a measure uncalled for by any necessity, and not fitted to gain that object which alone was held out as justifying it. It was absurd, it was said, to allege as a pretext for it, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... survivor, which was subsequently gratified—to the enrichment of these pages. Long after that again, in the Place Dolorous—Molokai—I came once more on the traces of that affectionate popularity. There was a blind white leper there, an old sailor—an "old tough," he called himself—who had long sailed among the eastern islands. Him I used to visit, and, being fresh from the scenes of his activity, gave him the news. This (in the true island style) was largely a chronicle of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... portions for the purpose of making points, mats, swabs, gaskets, sinnet, oakum, and the like (which see). Also, a dense cellular tissue in the head of the sperm-whale, infiltrated with spermaceti. Also, salt beef, as tough to the teeth as bits of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... enough to go the whole length, and the end of the carpenter's bench, where the funniest papa sat, was bare, and all through dinner-time he kept making fun. The vise was right at the corner, and when he got his help of turkey, he pretended that it was so tough he had to fasten the bone in the vise, and cut the meat off with his knife ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... nearly to madness they were fed in an almost miraculous manner. Several enormous sharks had been swimming about the brig for some hours, and the hungry sailors were planning various projects for the capture of them: tough as a shark is, they would willingly have risked life for a few raw mouthfuls of the same. Somehow, though the sea was still and the wind light, the brig gave a sudden lurch and dipped up one of the monsters, who was quite secure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... misgivings, though I was very proud of my steed. My misgivings were fully realised, for Traveller would not walk a step. He took a short, high trot—a buck- trot, as compared with a buck-jump—and kept it up to Fredericksburg, some thirty miles. Though young, strong, and tough, I was glad when the journey ended. This was my first introduction to the cavalry service. I think I am safe in saying that I could have walked the distance with much less discomfort and fatigue. My father having thus given me a horse and presented me with one of his swords, also ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off, too. "You have to work all day ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... now, what are you travelling for?"—"Health and pleasure." "Well, now, I guess you're pretty considerable rich. Coming to settle out west, I suppose?"— "No, I'm going back at the end of the fall." "Well, now, if that's not a pretty tough hickory-nut! I guess you Britishers are the queerest critturs as ever was raised!" I considered myself quite fortunate to have fallen in with such a querist, for the Americans are usually too much taken up with their own business to trouble ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... whirlwind has uprooted it in its prime, and it has brought down to the ground a dozen small ones in its fall. Its bark has already begun to drop off! And that heart of mora close by it is fast yielding, in spite of its firm, tough texture. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... dream, and woke. Later in the day she met her neighbour, who complained of a pain in the arm, just where the farmer's wife seized it in her dream. The place mortified and the poor lady died. To return to Montezuma. An honest labourer was brought before him, who made this very tough statement. He had been carried by an eagle into a cave, where he saw a man in splendid dress sleeping heavily. Beside him stood a burning stick of incense such as the Aztecs used. A voice announced that this sleeper was Montezuma, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... poked like the rest. The ground was new, and during two days gold was obtained in this way, from a particle the size of a pin's head to a lump of nearly an ounce. When the surface was exhausted, digging commenced; but the soil was too tough for the common cradle, and although rich in gold, it would not repay the trouble of washing. Upon this, the company broke up, each pursuing his own way; and our adventurer and another agreed to go down the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... tumbler of whiskey-toddy. But this is an exceptional case of longevity. All the evidence favours the opinion that tobacco, like alcohol, shortens life. It is certain that abstinence is beneficial, as shown by the long lives of some of our hardest brain-workers. It is worthy of note, too, that all the tough old Frenchmen still in the enjoyment of unimpaired mental faculties never smoked. M. Dufaure, M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Victor Hugo, M. Etienne Arago, brother of the astronomer, Abbe Moigno, belong ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the "tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... Then The Chief told the children briefly about road materials; how soft limestone makes too weak roads for loads, how easily they wash and wear; how granite, because of its being made up of several materials, is poor, too; how flint and quartz, while hard, are brittle, and are not sufficiently tough; and that sandstone was impossible. Then he told them that good gravel, tough limestone and trap-rock were good road materials. Roads need materials having ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... heroes, excited with rage and taking up another bow of greater impetus, pierced Bhagadatta in that battle with many sharp arrows. That mighty bowman, viz., Bhagadatta, then deeply pierced, began to lick the corners of his mouth. And he then hurled at his foe, in that dreadful battle, a tough dart, made wholly of iron, decked with gold and stones of lapis lazuli, and fierce as the rod of Yama himself. Sped with the might of Bhagadatta's arm and coursing towards him impetuously, Satyaki, O king, cut that dart in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... are all upon the wing. I'm not the fellow to be scared, Old Death, by you and those pale awnings: I have a right to my three warnings." And Death, who saw that of the jobs on His hand, just then, tough was this Dobson, Agreed to go and come again; So, as he re-adjusted awnings About his brows, agreed three warnings Should be allowed; and Dobson, fain To go back to the feast, agreed Next time to do as was decreed: And so they parted, with by-byes, And "humble servants," "sirs," and "I's." ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... all so strange; it seemed as if her father must both get down with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... critical lawsuit, a dinner at their favourite hotel, comprising fish and pears and meat and hypocras (no less!) and ginger and sugar and a hundred oysters. Not in that order let us hope, though the bowels of men of law are traditionally tough, and the hospitality of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... my natural rest, I hope may bring me round after the persecutions I have undergone from the dustman with his head tied up, which I just now mentioned. The tough job being ended and the Mounds laid low, the hour is come for Boffin to stump up. Would ten to-morrow morning suit you, partner, for finally bringing Boffin's ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... "Some tough!" remarked a Canadian when he saw the Australians for the first time marching along a French road. They and the New Zealanders were conspicuous in France, owing to their felt hats with the brim looped up on the side, their stalwart physique and their smooth-shaven, clean-cut faces. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... some cranny under the door to creep out at, but there was none. And he felt so hungry that he could almost have eaten the cat, who kept walking to and fro in a melancholy manner—only she was alive, and he couldn't well eat her alive:— besides he knew she was old, and had an idea she might be tough; so he merely said, politely, "How do you do, Mrs. Pussy?" to which she answered ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wife," he said; "we'll pull him through. Tod is a tough little chap with plenty of fight in him yet. I've seen them much worse. It will soon be ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the old days are gone, there are wanting the landlord's bow and the kindly smile of his stout wife. Who now knows the landlord of an inn, or cares to inquire whether or no there be a landlady? The old welcome is wanting; and the cheery, warm air, which used to atone for the bad port and tough beef, has passed away—while the port is still bad and the beef ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... from the white men bits of steel and iron, ground them to sharp points, and with them replaced their arrow-heads of flint. Has-se, with great pride, displayed to Rene his javelin or light spear, the tough bamboo shaft of which was tipped with a keen-edged splinter of milk-white quartz, obtained from some far northern tribe. Guests began to arrive, coming from Seloy and other coast villages from the north, and from the broad savannas of the fertile Alachua land, ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... same moment, and, as I have often known to happen at such sudden encounters, the very movements made to prevent the collision brought it about. We both moved to the same side, and jostled each other, and I, being the more weighty of the two, gave him a tough shoulder and well ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... splendidly mounted on horses inured to the miasmic climate, "led" animals carrying their necessary equipment. Each man knew how to take care of himself. He knew only the elementary principles of drill, but was none the less a very tough proposition for a Hun to tackle. Skilled in woodcraft and travelling, able to cover great distances with the minimum of fatigue, and capable of going on short rations without loss of efficiency the Rhodesians were ideal ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... strong to do and dare: If a host had withstood him there, He had braved a host with little care In his lusty youth and his pride, Tough to grapple though weak to snare. He ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... going to France soon, and will be fighting them Germans. If they find thee as hard to deal wi' as I have, they'll have a tough job. But they are a bad lot, and I don't ask you to ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking |
