"Stroke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great crowd in front of the Temple of Serapis. I was told that the Governor was about to make one final example. In the centre of the portico, in the broad light of day, a naked woman was fastened to a pillar, while two soldiers were scourging her. At each stroke her entire frame writhed. Suddenly, she cast a wild look around, her trembling lips parted; and, above the heads of the multitude, her figure wrapped, as it were, in her flowing hair, methought I recognised Ammonaria. ... Yet this one was ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: devisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a bit, but he chipped his thumb, and it bled so he had to chuck it. Then Dicky tried, and then Denny, but Dicky hammered his finger, and Denny took all day over every stroke, so that by tea-time we had only done the H, and about half the E—and the E was awfully crooked. Oswald chipped his thumb over ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... sense and of speech. The best medical aid being at hand, he was speedily relieved from the fit, and under the skilful management of Sir Samuel Garth, gradually regained his strength; but from the usual effects of such a stroke he never wholly recovered, neither his articulation nor his memory being restored to their original tone. He was able to proceed, it is true, so early as the 7th of July, to Bath, where he drank the waters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... grove crime stake hone mete grape shave skate mine wake smite grime spike more wave white stride brake score slope drone spade spoke fume strife twine shape snake wade slime strive whale strike slave mode stripe blame stroke shine smile swore scrape ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... had been led astray by the love of money; when he was saved, he put his idol away from him at a stroke. This is the first thing to be done; and if it is done in the power of one's first love, it is a more easy task than afterwards. But it must be done with a firm and whole heart; not "Lord, shall I give the half of my goods to feed ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... ran, followed by Bude and four gillies, to the little pier where the boat was moored. He must be doing something for her, or go mad. The six men crowded into the boat, and pulled swiftly away, Merton taking the stroke oar. Meanwhile Blake was carried by four gillies towards the Castle, the men talking low to each other in Gaelic. Mr. Macrae walked silently ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... looked upon with tenfold terror, yet for this very reason, the consequences which it produced were by no means so full of affliction and distress, nor presented such strong and pitiable claims on human aid and sympathy as did those of typhus. In the one case, the victim was cut down by a sudden stroke, which occasioned a shock or moral paralysis both to himself and the survivors—especially to the latter—that might, be almost said to neutralize its own inflictions. In the other, the approach was comparatively ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... as ye lyst. Poli. Mary syr I thanke you, ye can not gyue me a more thanckefull gyfte nor do me a greatter pleasure, for that asse withouten any tayle was made as holye as any asse could be by the touchynge of christes body. Cannius. Undouted they touched christes body also whiche stroke and buffeted christ. Poliphe. yea but tell me this one thynge I praye the in good ernest. Is it not a great sygne of holynes in a man to cary aboute the gospel boke or the newe testament? Cannius. It is a token of holynes in dede if it be done without hypocrysie, I meane if ...
— Two Dyaloges (c. 1549) • Desiderius Erasmus
... two sons of Ashur at work in the field, And one to the other his passion revealed— As the white barley bowed to the stroke of his scythe, He burst out in accents ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... wrestling with Death, and then the grim shadow drew backwards. I nursed her day and night with a very desperation of tenderness, for now Fate had touched the thing dearest to me in life. A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity and my love beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die, the love of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we kept the foe at bay. Then dropsy supervened, and the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... phrase, not their fundamental policy. It is not to be denied that there were times when Marx himself momentarily lapsed into the error of Blanqui and the older school of Utopian, conspiratory Socialists who believed that they could find a short cut to social democracy; that by a surprise stroke, carefully prepared and daringly executed, a small and desperate minority could overthrow the existing social order and bring about Socialism. As Jaures has pointed out,[50] the mind of Marx sometimes ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... working with his boasted "pull" to help his countrymen. He shook his fist at them as they departed and cried insults after them. Few immigrants have ever been passed through in briefer time than was the flute-player; few government inspectors at the landing station have ever been enabled, by a stroke of good luck from a cloudless sky, to take home to their wives, at night, as large a roll of crisp, new money (yellow-backed) as an inspector took home to his wife ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... in these lines had a fine effect in speaking. Mr. Quin here excelled himself; he never appeared a greater actor than at this instant, when he declared himself none: 'twas an exquisite stroke to nature; art alone could hardly reach it. Pardon the digression, reader, but, we feel a desire to say somewhat more on this head. The poet and the actor were friends, it cannot then be quite foreign to the purpose ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... I'd lamed myself in a lot of new places there would come the swimming lesson. I thought I could swim some, too. I learned one summer down at Far Rockaway. But it seems that was old stuff. They aren't doing that now. No, it's the double side stroke, the Australian crawl, and a lot more. One, two, three, four, five, six. Legs straight, chin down, and roll on the three. And if you dream it's a pleasure to have a big husk of an instructor pump your arms back and forth for an hour, and say sarcastic things to you when you get ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... said; adding, "she is naughty and strong." A peal of coarse laughter accompanied this stroke of wit. The girl was embarrassed; she hid her face on her lap. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... thief, than to reveal that tragical adventure. Good God! said the governor, thy judgments are incomprehensible, and we ought to submit to them without murmuring. I receive, with an entire submission, the stroke thou hast been pleased to inflict upon me. Then directing his discourse to me, My child, said he, having now heard the cause of your disgrace, for which I am much concerned, I will give you an account of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... a finishing stroke to poor Good. It is not pleasant to any man to learn that he has been made a tool of, but when the circumstances are as peculiarly atrocious as in the present case, it is about as bitter a pill as anybody can be called ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... mischief; that a man is secretly wounded, and though he be not sensible himself, yet the malicious world will find it for him; yet there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... till, the other was done:—then there were to be a pair of these curious articles!—and he was forced at last to sit quietly down to watch the proceeding of the work. It was night before the two were completed and furnished with straps and loops. When the last stroke was put to them, the Indian girl knelt down at Hector's feet, and binding them on, pointed to them with a joyous laugh, and said, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... The stroke given by their Greek guide with the metal knocker on the house-door was answered at once by a slave. As the master was at the market, the strangers were led by the steward, an old servant grown grey in the service of Theopompus, into the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... plandok turn back; then the wonderfully agile Saputan chief darted after it and actually caught it alive. Extraordinary agility is characteristic of most Dayaks. An army officer in his report of the Katingans describes how a Dayak "suddenly jumped overboard, drew his parang, and with one stroke cut a fish through the middle. Before we knew what had happened the material for our supper was ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... I hab nussed, cooked en don' diff'unt things. I wuk'ed fer one family fifteen y'ars en didn' miss a day. I has stayed at dis place fer de las' five y'ars. I had a stroke en wuz in de hospit'l a long time. I cain' git out; en 'roun' 'yer in de house, I has ter walk ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... part for the cattle-queen's daughter," she admitted, putting out a hand to stroke the lean, gray cat that jumped upon her bed from the open window. "Ket, it's a scream! I'll take my West before the camera, thank you; or I would, if I hadn't jumped right into the middle of this trick West before I knew what I was doing. Ket, ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... And, indeed, the last stroke of the oars had landed the boat on the treacherous bank, where it stuck fast. The girls watched her, eagerly, as the oars came up, dripping with mud, in her frantic efforts to ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... at her, a look of indecision increased on his face. Something of concern, and a trifle of tenderness gleamed in his eyes. It might have seemed for some seconds that he would put his arm around her, or stroke her with his palm and smooth away the wrinkles from her childish forehead. But—"Arcadian" feelings were in the past, so he began ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... about to commence a fresh 'jab' on the following Monday morning at six o'clock, and that he could start with them. So this time Newman was only out of work the Friday and Saturday, which was another stroke of luck, because it often happens that a man has to lose a week or more after 'finishing up' for one firm before ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... has, as a rule, its special relation to the verb of the same root: thus from dac, "strike," are derived daca, "weapon" or "hammer;", daco, a "stroke" or "striking" [as given] both masculine; daca, "anvil;" dacoo, "blow" or "beating" [as received]; and dake, "a thing beaten," feminine. The sixth form, daky, masculine, has in this case no proper signification, and not being wanted, is not used. Individual letters or syllables ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... his summing up. But when Burr was in the case,—Burr the wary, the vigilant, who was never careless, never inattentive, who came into court only after an absolutely exhaustive preparation of his case, who held declamation in contempt, and knew how to quench its effect by a stroke of polite satire, or the quiet citation of a fact,—then Hamilton was obliged to have all his wits about him, and he was observed to be restless, busy, and serious. There are now but two or three venerable men among us who ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... from them their staves they threw, Their cruel swords they quickly drew, And freshly they the fight renew, They every stroke redoubled; Which made Proserpina take heed, And make to them the greater speed, For fear lest they too much should bleed, Which wondrously ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... but Leibel's heart leaped with joy. To get four months' wages at a stroke! With twenty-seven pounds ten he could certainly procure several machines, especially on the instalment system. Out of the corners of his eyes he shot a glance at Rose, who ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... the man's hand combined to form the infinitesimal space which separated Gavin from agonizing death. The snake's striking head missed the fast-retreating fingers by less than a hair's breadth. The fangs met on the wards of the rusty key Brice had caught up in his fingertips. The force of the stroke knocked the key clatteringly ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... owing to the bad paths, the snow, and sundry changes of direction, so that when night fell they had covered but eight miles of the ten. Turlough suggested that they push on and finish their business at a stroke, but Brian curtly refused. So the men made camp in lee of a cliff and proceeded to feast away the last of their provisions and wine, in confidence that on the morrow they would have more, or else ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... don't treat her well she'll think you're jealous," said Roger, and with this artful stroke he departed to carry out his experiment. "I'll teach my city lady that I'm not a clodhopper that other girls won't look at," he thought ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... regard of the king, and who is one of the most extravagant and dissipated, even of the courtiers here. For some time, it has been reported that he had nigh ruined himself by his lavish expenditure, and doubtless he thought to reestablish his finances by this bold stroke. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... great idea for their master-stroke of strategy came from a masculine source. Lena Dubarri, who was the captain-general of their thinking department, met Waldo Orpington in the Mall one afternoon, just at a time when the fortunes of the Cause were at their lowest ebb. Waldo Orpington is a frivolous little fool ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... than a single at lawn tennis. There is much scope for judgment and skill, e.g. in "dropping" (hitting the shuttle gently just over the net) and in "smashing" (hitting the shuttle with a hard downward stroke). The measurements of the court are shown on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... significant of dog, man, hat, and other short monosyllables; and when I guided his little hard hand to trace corresponding characters on the slate, it was indeed a work of time and patience to make him draw a single stroke correctly. His unmeaning grin of good-natured acquiescence in whatever I bade him do, was more provoking than downright rebellion could have been; and I secretly agreed with my friends that the attempt would prove a complete failure, while impelled, I hardly could tell how, to persevere ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... near. They were naked negroes, shining with oil and sweat. Standing up in the boat, with face to bow, they plunged their paddles perpendicularly into the water with a hiss, and drew them out with a gasp. A swirling circle of foam marked where each stroke had fallen, and the boat surged nearer through the swell, till, with a swish of backing paddles, it stopped alongside the ship's ladder, like a horse reined up. Out of the stern there stepped a little figure, just recognisable as a white man. His helmet was soaked and battered out ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... to some delicate invalids, very trying, but sun-stroke is almost unknown, and if the head is protected harm is seldom done by exercising even during the hottest ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... now running my father's store, as the old gentleman had a stroke and then another. The business is going to pot as rapidly as you would expect, but I haven't been able to kill ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his friend speak of feeling ill? No, not until a moment before the final stroke was made. Then Mr. Carwell had said he felt "queer," and had acted as though dizzy. The major, who was himself quite a convivial spirit, attributed it to some highballs he and his friend had had in the clubhouse just prior to ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... contempt alike of law and of honour necessary to commit so cold a murder. It was Theodoric himself who lifted his sword and hewed his enemy in twain from the shoulder to the loins. "Where is God?" Odoacer, expecting the stroke, had demanded. And Theodoric answered, "Thus didst thou to my friends." And after he said, "I think the wretch had no bones in ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... and palace above, as all these boats appear to be—is a noble vessel. The dimensions, as given me by the "clerk" or purser, are—length of keel 182 feet, breadth of beam 26 feet, depth of hull 6 feet, length of cabin 140 feet; two engines 6-1/2 feet stroke; two cylinders 18-1/2 inches in diameter; height between decks 9-1/2 feet; having a fire-engine and hose; berth accommodation for 73 cabin-passengers, but often has more. Unexpectedly, we had got on board the ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... rage of the fire, were kindled more in furie towards the lords, and so to reuenge themselves of them, they brought them foorth of the abbei where they had them in their hands, [Sidenote: Abr. Fl. out of Tho. Walsin. pag. 404.] and in the twilight of the euening, stroke of their heads. The earle of Salisburie (saith Thomas Walsingham) who in all his life time had bene a fauourer of the Lollards or Wickleuists, a despiser of images, a contemner of canons, and a scorner of the sacraments, ended his daies (as it was reported) ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... of me own niggers, an' it's himself that won't be asked to do a stroke of work for a week, but have the same to git well in," said the tyrant as the colonel ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the reader with a gallery of portraits and a collection of anecdotes." This reserve is particularly disappointing when a striking and original figure like Voltaire passes across the field, without an attempt to add one stroke to the portraiture of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the other girls tossed their heads with the affectation of a sneer, and with pretended indifference to this astonishing stroke of fortune? And that fatal evening when I provoked my little beauty's wrath, and in all the receding opportunities of "Post-Office" and "Copenhagen" she had turned her face and rosy lips away from me, until ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... never will, you miserable object," says the beggarman. "You're going to die now, and I'll give you your choice to die either by a hard squeeze of wrestling, or a stroke of the sword." ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... of friends, what a fine stroke of business you have done for me by bringing back Peace! Formerly my sickles would not have sold at an obolus apiece; to-day I am being paid fifty drachmae for every one. And here is a neighbour who is selling his casks for the country at three ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... dexterous. At the moment in which the matador hits the bull, the pointed horn must be within an inch or two of his heart, and if he were to fail he must himself be the victim. When he succeeds in levelling to the ground with a single stroke his furious and irresistible enemy, the music strikes up, the applauses of the amphitheatre are showered upon the conqueror, he stalks proudly round the area, strewed with dead horses, and reddened with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... that if Madame came to the doorway, saying, "Miss Rabbit, just half a second, please," and the forewoman was absent for half an hour, then some matter of supreme importance was being discussed. The establishment was in close touch with the military service at home and abroad, and the best stroke good fortune could make in favour of Hilbert's was to arrange a stately ceremonial in India, some alteration in the dress of officers, or anything that made uniforms necessary. The girls' workroom, even at ordinary times, presented an aspect of enormous wealth, with everywhere a display of ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... that lay in festering heaps! The breathing pestilence that rose like smoke! The shriek that from the distant battle broke! The mine's dire earthquake, and the pallid host Driven by the bomb's incessant thunder-stroke To loathsome vaults, where heart-sick anguish toss'd, Hope died, and fear ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... any possible hand in his defeat, Leyden gathered superhuman strength out of his desperation and tore loose his knife hand. His other hand, at Vandersee's throat, had grown white and numb from its own efforts that had not changed the Hollander's expression one bit; but now, in a last swift up-stroke of the knife, the cornered rat saw victory ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... they discussed it close, and this way and that way, until at last Landlord Oke had roughed-out a crew. There was no trouble about a stroke. That thwart went nem. con. to a fellow called Seth Ede, that worked the ferry and had won prizes in his day all up and down the coast: indeed, the very Plymouth men had been afraid of him for two or three seasons before he gave up racing, which was only four years ago. Some doubted ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trouble in his face: he would have preferred that somebody else should have broken his news to me. But he sighed, and went on without flinching. "My father had a paralytic stroke in December," he explained in his deliberate, gentle voice. "When once our eyes were opened we could easily comprehend that for months his mind had been failing. When the bad news came the accumulation of trouble was too much for him. We thought at first nothing could save him, but he rallied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Mrs. Wentworth. "If I had not been such a fool I might have seen. It is all plain to me now. Your harassment—my folly—it came to me like a stroke of lightning." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... it appeared, did visit the cathedral and the boy was there. He was waiting for us on the platform at the railway station at half-past nine. He talked half the night to Thompson about his wonderful stroke of luck. Just as I dropped off to sleep I heard Thompson quoting Shakespeare. It was, to the best of my belief, the only time in his life that ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... sat down and propped the letter against the inkstand and stared at the address in her careless hand: "The Right Honourable Sir Cloud Malpas, Baronet." She had written the address in full like that as a last stroke of sarcasm. And she ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... was sitting down without any work in her hands, and could stop to stroke Patty's hair and kiss her "lips like snips of scarlet," which made the little girl happier than anything else in the world. Mr. Starbird sat in a large armchair, holding a skein of yarn for Dorcas, who sat in ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... willing to lend a helping hand to the financial rehabilitation of such countries because this financial rehabilitation and the protection of their customhouses from being the prey of would be dictators would remove at one stroke the menace of foreign creditors and the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... feet long and half a foot broad, which was lashed to the pole and so formed a kind of cross. There was but one for each canoe. The paddler of this coracle made directly for the opposite shore; every stroke he gave turned his "dish" almost entirely round; to recover his position and go on his intended route, he must give a stroke on the other side, which brought him up again; and so on till he got over, not without drifting down ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... whole head than Hans, and Hans was not little. "Thy name is now Fir-twister," said Hans to him. Thereupon they went further and heard something knocking and hammering with such force that the ground shook at every stroke. Shortly afterwards they came to a mighty rock, before which a giant was standing and striking great pieces of it away with his fist. When Hans asked what he was about, he answered, "At night, when I want to sleep, bears, wolves, and other vermin of that kind come, which sniff and snuffle about ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... steadfastness; but the blackamoor when he drew near deemed the Prince too slight and puny to fight and was minded to seize him alive. Khudadad, seeing how his foe had no intent to combat, struck him with his sword on the knee a stroke so dour that the negro foamed with rage and yelled a yell so loud that the whole prairie resounded with the plaint. Thereupon the brigand, fiery with fury, rose straight in his shovel-stirrups and struck fiercely at Khudadad with his huge sword and, but for the Prince's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... shilling. It was the Arab middlemen that made the difference: the enemies of Christendom, intrenched in Jerusalem and Egypt, guarded the easy highways to the East and took rich toll of all its commerce. What a stroke for State and Church if Europe, uniting with the Ilkhans of Persia, could establish direct connections with the Orient, eliminate the infidel middlemen, and divide with Mongol allies the fruits ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... out there," he sighed; and then, abruptly, as if invisible shears at a single stroke had cut every muscle in his body, he swerved, drooped on Faxon's arm, and seemed to sink into ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Try again, pipeshanks! Weel hit, Grocer! That had him, Wullie!—ye'll be a corporal afore yer auntie! Haw, Mac, that was a knock-oot, if it had struck! Cheer up, Private Thomson; gi'e him the kidney punch on his whuskers! Guid stroke. Grocer!—fair on his goods' entrance! We'll be payin' for to see ye in pictur' hooses yet—the Brithers Basher! Gor, this is better nor a funeral! Keep it up, lads!' And ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... the deck. "The motors are so light that they develop two horse power for every pound of their weight; while, to keep the frames thin, the necessary power is obtained by terrific speed of the moving parts, as though a steam engine, to avoid great pressure in its cylinders, had a long stroke and ran at great piston speed, which, however, is no disadvantage to the rotary motion of the electric motor, there being no reciprocating cranks, etc., that must be started and stopped at each revolution. "To obviate the necessity of gearing ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke, They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke: 'Twas ROBINSON—a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... the nicest thing the ring has brought us yet," said Mabel, through a languid but perfect side-stroke. ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the finest country in the world for making gardens speedily. In the rainy season vegetation springs up at once, as at the stroke of an Enchanter's wand. The Landscape gardeners in England used to grieve that they could hardly expect to live long enough to see the effect of their designs. Such artists would have less reason, to grieve on that account in this country. Indeed even in England, the source of uneasiness ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... there, they stood excommunicated; and he adds, 'possibly when a writ de excommunicato capiendo is taken out, and they find they have 7 l. or 8 l. to pay, they run away, for the greatest part of the occupiers of the land here are so poor, that an extraordinary stroke of 8 l. or 10 l. falling on them is certain ruin to them.' He further states that, to his own knowledge, many of the clergy had chosen rather to lose their 'small dues' than to be at a certain great expense in getting them, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... upp in their folde. They laied wagers with suche as with one thruste of a sworde, woulde paunche or bowell a man in the middest, or with one blowe of a sworde most readily and moste deliverly cut of his heade, or that woulde best perce his entralls at one stroke. They tooke the little soules by the heeles, rampinge them from their mothers brestes, and crusshed their heades against the cliftes. Others they caste into the rivers, laughinge and mockinge; and when they tombled into the water, they saied: Nowe shifte for thy selfe suche a ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... and struck; || deep entered | in her side The piercing steel, || with reeking purple dyed: Clogged | in the wound || the cruel | weapon stands, The spouting blood || came streaming o'er her hands. Her sad attendants || saw the deadly stroke, And with loud cries ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the "Grondwet" (Constitution), was the highest legal authority, was by one stroke of enactment rendered subservient and subordinate to the First Volksraad. The then Chief Justice (Kotzee) was ignominiously deposed for honourably contending against the grave departure from right and justice in subverting the sacred prerogative due to ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... the rat was toppled from his unsteady perch and fell among the strawberries. His head ringing from the stroke of that sturdy black wing, his plump flank smarting and bleeding from a fierce jab of that pointed beak of the imp's, he squeaked with rage and clambered up again to the battle. Mr. Rat, you know, is no ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wound finished the killing of the fainting Piera. The blood shed served to infuriate more the barbarous executioners who in order to give the finishing stroke to the martyr, as an unrivalled expression of their savage ferocity, thrust a red-hot iron into his mouth and eyes. That same night these treacherous and ferocious tyrants whose sin made them hate the light, buried the body in the darkness ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... are unmistakable. The way in which he attempted to sever Christianity from the Old Testament was a bold stroke which demanded the sacrifice of the dearest possession of Christianity as a religion, viz., the belief that the God of creation is also the God of redemption. And yet this innovation was partly caused by a religious ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Caius-men bend to their oars the moment they see the last gun flash. On they come at a good rate, the Caius-men, who are first, taking it quite easy, when suddenly there is a shout: 'Trinity! Trinity! Go it, Trinity!' Trinity is now overhauling Caius at every stroke; and the partisans of the respective boats fill the air with their shouts. 'Now, Keys (Caius)!' 'Now, Trinity!' 'Why don't you pull, Keys?' 'Now you have 'em, Trinity!' 'Keys!' 'Trinity!' 'Now's your chance, Keys!' 'Pull, Trinity!' 'Pull, Keys!' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... money. There must have been half a ton of it. I think it takes a double handful of pice to make an anna, and 16 annas to make a rupee; and even in those days the rupee was worth only half a dollar. Coming back over their tracks from Baroda, they had another picturesque stroke of luck: "'The Lohars of Oodeypore' put a traveler in their charge for safety." Dear, dear, across this abyssmal gulf of time we still see Feringhea's lips uncover his teeth, and through the dim haze we catch the incandescent glimmer of his smile. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... individual laborers. This went on, largely without James' knowledge, until Grady felt sure that a majority of the men were back in his control. This time he was determined to carry through the strike without the preliminary vote of the men. It was a bold stroke, but boldness was needed to defeat Charlie Bannon; and nobody knew better than Grady that a dashing show of authority would be hard for James or any one ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe with heaved stroke Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt Or fright them ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... to the Pasiegos, are the best cudgel-players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and, in another moment, with a dexterous blow, struck the sword out of his hand, sending it ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... outdo (in an attack): pres. sg. ws si hond t strong, se e mca gehwane ... swenge ofer-shte, onne he t scce br wpen wundrum heard (too strong was the hand, that surpassed every sword in stroke, when he [Bewulf] bore the wondrous weapon to battle, i.e. the hand was too strong for any sword; its strength made it ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... and used him more, for his purposes as a humourist than for his purposes as a sentimentalist. Nay, it is on the rare occasions when he deliberately sentimentalizes with Captain Shandy that the Captain is the least delightful; it is then that the hand loses its cunning, and the stroke strays; it is then, and only then, that the benevolence of the good soldier seems to verge, though ever so little, upon affectation. It is a pity, for instance, that Sterne should, in illustration of Captain Shandy's kindness of heart, have plagiarized (as he is said ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... stroke of diplomacy," said one club-man to another, "and worthy of Hugh Mainwaring himself! There is no show for him, anyway, and it's much better policy to yield the point now, don't you see, than to fight it out along with that pig-headed ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... of fairy ban and spell;— The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak; And he has awakened the sentry Elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the Fays to their revelry; Twelve small strokes on his tinkling bell— 'Twas made of the white snail's ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... bold stroke was a rare one, for the crew, consisting of five men and a boy, were all forward, earnestly endeavouring to pick acquaintance by means of signs with the convalescent Russians, while Gaff and Haco were still below at breakfast, so that Billy had the after part of ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... English, but had come to understand a good deal during his travels with Dr Livingstone. He wrinkled his visage and showed his brilliant teeth on receiving the order. Muttering a word to the men, and giving a vigorous stroke, he shot up alongside of the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... had tied them up with bast only a week or so before, and now half were rotten and half had shot up into tall slender growths. He had the hoe in both hands and slogged. Great wipes he made, and at each stroke ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... but it died away, and I returned to my store to await the dread result that must follow this failure to take up my paper. I looked at the slow-moving hand on the clock, and saw minute after minute go by with a stoicism that surprised even myself. At last the stroke of the hammer fell; the die was cast. I would be protested, that greatest of all evils dreaded by a man of business. As to going home to dinner, that was out of the question; I could not have eaten a mouthful to save me. All I had now to do was to wait for the visit ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... forward and made a powerful stroke at its neck; but the blow fell short, and cut off, instead, one of the Gigaboo's ten legs. Quick as lightning the monster put out a claw and nipped the Prince's arm which held the sword, cutting it from its body. As the sword fell the Prince caught it in ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... shaking him by the hand. "I leave it with you. It will be a great day when you bring us the news. It's just the last stroke that will bring them all ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... intimation of danger to the fish was the sharp spear crashing through the strong bony scales, through flesh and vertebrae, into the spinal cord, just behind the head. So instantaneous was the death of the great sturgeon under this fatal stroke that there was not even the usual spasmodic spring. Like as a log might have lain there on the water, so did the great fish. The only movement was, as is the case with most large fish thus killed, he rolled over, and at once began to float away on ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... except when the child was asleep, Hester had never felt a moment's safety: not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile and odd ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the two racers went, with no apparent effort, until half the distance to the log had been covered. It was then that the watchers noticed the change. Betty lengthened her stroke a trifle and forged ahead, while Frank still kept the same ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... shows his nerve. It is the critical instant of the sitting, it is the only instant when his eyes are not fastened on his sitters, and I confess that his coolness won my admiration. On one occasion, when the question was written in a back-hand with a very light stroke and close to the upper edge of the slate, he looked at it three several times before he could read it. Moreover, it was a question out of the common, relating to the species of a hawk and not to a Spirit, and required ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... "trust Small Sam Small t' be off for the ice on the stroke o' the hour for swilers' sailin'—an' a few minutes t' win'ward o' the law. An' the Royal Bloodhound had heels, too—an' a heart for labor. With a fair start from Seldom-Come-By, Skipper Sammy beat the fleet t' the Funks an' t' the first drift-ice beyond. March days: nor'westerly ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... stroke, the battle of Kavaripak was won. The sound of the musketry fire, and the immediate cessation of that of the enemy's guns, told Clive that the grove was captured. A few minutes later fugitives, arriving from the grove, informed the commander of the enemy's ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... them. Naturally, we had to slow down long before we got to them; but even then we shot past like a whirlwind and were compelled to circle back between them and the shore. They had rowed steadily, rising from the thwarts at every stroke, up to the moment we passed them, when they recognized Charley and me. That took the last bit of fight out of them. They hauled in their oars and sullenly submitted ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... pistol-shot; every blow tore off a strip of flesh; and after every ten strokes the giraf became so heavy with blood that, it had to be wiped before the operation could be continued. She never said a word, nor even groaned. When she was removed, after the hundredth stroke, the naked ribs and the back-bone were visible through the flowing blood: the whole of the flesh of the back having ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... between them. Looking at his face, Hazel again had an impulse for flight. When he said, 'I want to stroke that silk dress,' and came towards her, knocking the candle over as if by accident, she ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... course of his young life, many scores of giants, wizards, dragons, and other enemies of mankind, his sister the while keeping watch over his blindness, and calling to him when and where to deliver the deadly stroke. But to-day the heat disinclined them for these dramatic exertions, and they sat quiet, even on reaching the point at which Jack the Tinker, his friend Tom, the good-natured giant, and Tom's children, young Tom and Jane, fare forth with slings ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... begun her life in Detroit. Children played about, brown Indian babies, grave-faced even in their play, vivacious French little ones calling to each other in shrill patois, laughing and tumbling and climbing. Had she once been wild and merry like them? Then Pani would babble of the past and stroke the soft curls and call her "little one." What ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... together his fragmentary thoughts and impressions, seeking to bridge over from last night to to-day. So she talked softly with him, soothing him alike with the tenderness of her voice and the pressure and gentle stroke of her hand upon his hand and arm. He had had an accident but was going to be all right from now on. But he must not be moved for a little. Therefore Engle would come soon, and perhaps Mrs. Engle with him. And a wagon bringing a real bed and fresh clean ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... a good business stroke, not harming the young ones. We will get very good terms; very ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... complete destruction of vitality of the tissues, such as would occur in charring from direct contact with flames or from escaping steam. Besides the burns caused by flames and steam, there are other causative agents, such as chemicals (caustic alkalis and acids), lightning stroke, and occasionally the broken trolley wires of electric railways. When a large surface of the skin is burned or scalded, the animal (if it does not die at once from shock) will soon show signs of fever—shivering, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... length, hoping that he might chance to meet with the same fate as his father, and wound up by placing him in command of one of his largest and most unseaworthy East Indiamen, in the full expectation that both captain and vessel would go to the bottom together, and thus enable him, at one stroke, to make a good round sum out of the insurance offices, and get rid ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... there was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style, which increased the desirableness of their being separate.—It might be only her own consciousness; but it seemed as if an angel only could have been quite without resentment under such a stroke. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... chances of the hunt may delay, they do not cease chirping and calling by their cries. But the parents are not alone in hearing these appeals. They may also strike the ears of the alligator, who furtively approaches the imprudent singers. With a sudden stroke of his tail he strikes the reeds and throws into the water one or more of the hungry young ones, who are then at his ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... were such, that, for the greater part of the time, he was a dead weight upon her hands; although not habitually intemperate, he was indolent and good-for-nothing to a degree, lying in the sun half his time, when the weather was warm, and never doing a stroke of work until driven to it by ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... made a stroke at the pistol with his sabre, but failed to reached it. The Confederate pulled the trigger, and it must be confessed that the young man who had fought so bravely since joining the Riverlawns gave himself up for lost. Even to Deck ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... understand. The writing was all of the same order, but while the confession and the inscription in the book were similar, letter for letter, in the note to me there were differences, a change in the "t" in Benton, a fuller and blacker stroke, a variation in the terminals of the letters—it ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... earth which marked Herr Haase's excavations; they had an instant in which to note, faint as the whirring of a fly upon a pane, the buzz of some small mechanism within the thing. Then, not louder than a heavy stroke upon a drum, came the detonation of the buried cartridges in the first hole, and the earth above them suddenly ballooned and burst like an over-inflated paper-bag and let through a spit of brief fire and a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... at times, his spread-eagleism there was shrewdness behind it. The idea that he proposed a ridiculous foreign policy at a moment when all his other actions reveal coolness and calculation; the idea that he proposed it merely as a spectacular stroke in party management; this is too much to believe. A motive must be found better ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the ebb. Nothing can be lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train comes lumbering along the railway bridge, puffing white smoke into the placid blue. Then we strike down Cannaregio, and I muse upon processions of kings and generals and noble strangers, entering ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... let us off with this, however. 'The wages uv sin is deth,' and we hed not reseeved full pay ez yet. He instigated South Karliny to rebel; he indoosed the other Democratic States to foller; he forced the Northern Democrisy to support em, and so on. That wuz the final stroke. Dickinson, and Cass, and Dix, and Todd, and Logan, all left us, and wun by wun the galaxy uv Northern stars disappeared from the Democratic firmament, leaving Noo Gersey alone, and last fall, my ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... Diane sank on her knees, but not to pray—rather to escape the consolations of the two priests and be alone with her thoughts. And her thoughts were not of her father. The stroke had fallen; but not yet could she feel the pain. He was happy; he alone of them all had kept his quiet vow, and died disdaining defeat; whereas she—ah, there lay the terrible thought!—she had not merely failed, had not been overpowered. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life back to a period which, as Sir William Logan has observed, is as remote from that during which the Cambrian rocks were deposited, as the Cambrian epoch itself is from the tertiaries. In other words, the ascertained duration of life upon the globe was nearly doubled at a stroke. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley |
