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More "Clutches" Quotes from Famous Books



... absurd while accepting the assistance of an attendant who walks by my side and keeps me from falling by clutches at my waistbelt. ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... of "renegade," which, echoing from the dim recesses of the church, makes the prose version end on a note of perplexing irony, may be theatrically effective, but it can hardly be called logical. Gert has been disposed of. His sudden return out of the clutches of the soldiers is inexplicable and unwarranted. Worse still, he has only a short while previous been urging Olof to live on for his work. If Olof be a renegade, he is so upon the advice of Gert himself, and to call the concession made by Olof for the saving of his own life far-reaching ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... having been that morning informed that Barbarico was roaming in the mountains after prey, left his peaceful castle, in hopes of giving protection to whatever unfortunate creature should fall into the clutches of ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... Arms, and dreads the Smell of Powder; He'll not allow such Instruments about him, They're free from training now, they're in his Clutches. ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... is generally regarded as Hardy's finest work. Certainly in this novel of passion and despair he has conjured up elements that speak to the heart of every reader. The hand of fate clutches hold of all the characters. When Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit her husband's mother she sets in motion events that bring swift ruin upon her as well as upon others. At every turn of the story the somber ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... a thicket, the ruffling of the boughs awaked poor Jack, who, finding himself in the clutches of the Giant, was strangely surprised; for, at the entering within the first walls of the castle, he beheld the ground all covered with bones and skulls of dead men, the Giant telling Jack that his bones would ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... which were rare in America; piercing devices for capture, in lances, barbed spears, harpoons and arrows; traps for enclosing, arresting and killing, such as pens, cages, pits, pen-falls, nets, hooks, nooses, clutches, adhesives, deadfalls, impalers, knife traps and poisons; animals consciously and unconsciously aiding in capture; fire in the form of torches, beacons, burning out and smoking out; poisons and asphyxiators; the accessories to hunting, including such changes in food, dress, shelter, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the pork, consider the distinctive habits of both pig and Boy at meal-time, and see how nearly identical they are. Watch the innocent in bristles as he places his graceful right paw upon the ear of corn, while he shells and masticates. Turn to the innocent in broadcloth, and notice how he clutches the succulent turkey-leg, and how rapidly he polishes the femoral bone. Throw a second ear of the cereal in the trough, and observe how promptly the left paw secures it, lest it should be transformed ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... wife of the crazy oboist. The two women struggled to get at each other, their fingers curved for hairplucking, but others interfered—it would not be right to promote a street fight, when the cause of the trouble was almost in their clutches. A disappointed yell arose. Pobloff had sneaked away, overjoyed at the chance, and, as his front door succumbed to angry feminine pressure, he was safely hidden in the opera house which he reached by ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... water creatures for dinner. It looks as though it had four eyes, but it has not, just two, divided into upper and lower halves. The upper halves look up through the water and the lower ones down at the bottom of the brooks. So, you see, insects must step lively if they want to keep out of its clutches. ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... strong. Down crouch'd the man of sheep, and said, With shivering fright half dead, "Alas! that man should never be aware Of what may be the meaning of his prayer! To catch the robber of my flocks, O king of gods, I pledged a calf to thee: If from his clutches thou wilt rescue me, I'll raise my offering to ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... astonished if you hear me scream in my sleep. I feel sure I'll dream I'm up in that dark ombu-tree, and perhaps in the clutches ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... usually as high as the face, and one or two soft beats, just a tinkle, of the 4/4 time are struck on the inside of the gang'-sa by a small, light stick. Now and then the player, after having thoroughly acquired the rhythm, clutches the instrument under his arm for a half minute while he continues his dance ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... unable to close her eyes, unable to move. For there beside her, towering above her in horrible strength, with wildly grinning face and cruelly outreaching claws, stood the thing that gave explanation to the hunt outside and the shouting. Pauline was in the clutches of a gorilla. She fainted as she felt herself ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... Mr. Bennett. 'I hope none of your people are in his clutches. He is a very hard case to ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... communication Blanchard magically reappeared, announced his determination to marry Phoebe by subterfuge, and, the deed accomplished, take his punishment, whatever it might be, with light heart. Given time to achieve a legal marriage, and Phoebe would at least be safe from the clutches of millionaires in general. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... said he. "The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... ago he was hiding the dead falcon in his satchel, and now behold! he was a gallant knight who, unarmed, except for a dagger, which he forgot to draw, had conquered two sturdy knaves and a female accomplice, bristling with weapons, rescuing from their clutches Beauty (for doubtless the maiden was beautiful), and, incidentally, her wealthy relatives. Just then the lady, who had been dragged from the mule to the ground, where she still lay, struggled to her knees and looked up, thereby causing ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... which will absorb the excess of liquid unfavorable to successful observation. Outside its natural environment, the animal moves about violently and restlessly. With its body half out of the scabbard, this time composed entirely of fibrous matter, it clutches with its feet at the supporting plane. Then, contracting itself, it draws the scabbard towards it, half-raising it and sometimes even making it assume a vertical position. Even so do the Bulimi move along, lifting their shell as they complete each ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... her one afternoon, "I'd go crazy with the flea bitings of the Enemy. But you, bless your wicked soul, are an honest part of the game. I was bred from the beginning to fight floods. You attack in the open, like an honest vixen. Wait till I get my clutches on you again." ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... exclamations. When thus screaming, her movements are those of alternate tension and tremor. For one instant she clenches her hands, holds her arms out before her in a stiff semi-flexed position; then suddenly bends her body forwards, sways rapidly to and fro, draws her fingers through her hair, clutches at her neck, and tries to tear off her clothes. The sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles (which serve to bend the head on the chest) stand out prominently, as if swollen, and the skin in front of them is much ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... hopes, fears, temptations, distresses. To do him justice, it was her broken heart he thought of, not his own. To him she was only one of many possibilities; to her, he was the chance of a lifetime. She might never, he said to himself, "fall into the clutches of so decent a chap again." It was a wild wrestle between common sense and folly—so wild that he was relieved to hear a clock strike eleven, and to know ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... right foot being hooked into his left leg, in this way trying to draw Mr. Fraser towards him; the other paw was on his right leg. Mr. Fraser's chin and coat were covered with foam from the beast's mouth. He tried hard to draw himself out of the tiger's clutches. Fortunately the beast was not able to see him, as Mr. Fraser was a little to one side on the animal's blind side and the tiger's head was up. Suddenly seeing Mr. Fraser's orderly bolting, he jumped up and went for the man, and catching him he killed him on the spot. Mr. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... leave that girl in your clutches," flashed Roberts. "An' I ain't a-goin' to stand here an' argue with ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... Prince answered that he must once more try his luck, and, by one means or another, free his wife from the clutches of that fiend. His imperial ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... doomed! Signorina! what can you know of this frightful risk? You are going to the slaughter. You will be seized before the first verse is out of your lips, and once in their clutches, you will never breathe free air again. It's madness!—ah, forgive me!—yes, madness! For you shut your eyes; you rush into the trap blindfolded. And that is how you serve our Italy! She sees you an instant, and you are caught ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... without warning, at any hour of the day or night; or its approach may be slow and insidious, so that the victim does not at first realize what it is that fills her with that sensation of unrest. But once in the clutches of the idea she knows no happiness, no peace, until she has donned a kimono, gathered up two bath towels, a spray, and the green soap, and she breathes again only when, head dripping, she makes for the back yard, the sitting-room ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... Bethhoron hot for you! Prophane wretches, you daily wrangle and brawl and tell one another—"I will see you damned first!"—But I tell you the day will come when you will pray to Beelzebub to let you escape his clutches! And what will be his answer?—"I ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... shall get into its clutches, if not you, then most certainly I! And therefore I am going to be book-keeper ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... the Stores by an obliging sister-in-law. One thing to muddle away in wild-cat speculations a wife's money that, but for the procrastination of an easy-going father, would have been tightly tied up—quite another to bring himself so nearly within the clutches of the law as to make it possible for the Government of India to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... wilt mind thee for many a season How we met in the high voice of Hilda. Right fain I go forth to the spear-mote Being fitted for every encounter. There Cormac's gay shield from his clutches I clave with the bane of the bucklers, For he scorned in the battle to seek me If we set not the lists of ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... the police learned that the trouble had arisen from the attempt of the customer to eat the sandwich which had been served with his drink. The barkeeper objected, and, finding remonstrance in vain, resorted to physical force to rescue the sandwich from the clutches of the hungry stranger. The police restored the sandwich to the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... entirely distinct from it, is another and still stronger sentiment—the regard for chastity. Many an American officer whose brave wife accompanied him in a frontier war has been asked by her to promise that he would shoot her with his own revolver rather than let her fall into the clutches of licentious Indians. Though deliberate murder is punishable by death, no American jury has ever convicted a man for slaying the seducer of his wife, daughter, or sister. Modern law punishes rape with death, and its victim is held to have suffered a fate worse than ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... mum, are my solitary lady correspondent, and postscripts are a luxury in which you rarely indulge. But to proceed, as the novelists say. Some two years ago it was my good fortune to rescue a little yellow-skinned princekin from the clutches of a very fine young tiger (my feet are on his hide at this present writing), who was carrying him off as a tit-bit for his supper. He was terribly mauled, you may be sure, but his people followed my advice in their mode of doctoring ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... of breach of engineering ethics, however otherwise secure from the clutches of the law, occur to the writer, but the two just cited ought to serve. At best, the topic is unpleasant and by no means indicates the character of the profession as a whole. Where there is one engineer who will perjure himself in the fashion as set forth above there are many thousands of engineers ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... litte Wildnesses of Youth, tho' he made me his Heir, left Dad my Guardian till I came to Years of Discretion, which I presume the old Gentleman will never think I am; and now he has got the Estate into his Clutches, it does me no more good, than if it lay ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre

... under the shock of the sensations and ideas that crowded upon him. Everything clashed in his brain with tragic violence: certainty, joy, dismay, despair, fury. He was struggling in the clutches of the most hideous nightmare; and he already seemed to see a detective's heavy hand descending ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... idea of leaving Kitty this way, without a final effort to rescue her from the clutches of this fascinating adventuress. For you must admit that ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... Habeas Corpus—the very bulwark of our liberties—was repeatedly set at defiance by the underlings of the Ring, for the purpose of extorting money from some innocent man who had fallen into their clutches. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... again? I am in a position to make a rapid fortune, but I want twelve hundred francs—I must have them at all costs. Say nothing about this to my father; perhaps he might make objections, and unless I have the money, I may be led to put an end to myself, and so escape the clutches of despair. I will tell you everything when I see you. I will not begin to try to describe my present situation; it would take volumes to put the whole story clearly and fully. I have not been gambling, my kind mother, I owe no one a penny; but if you would preserve the life that ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... course, to the rushes of a peculiar growth which are to be found there in such abundance. I can conceive no nightmare more horrible to a player than one in which during his hours of troubled sleep he is in imagination vainly trying to rescue his unhappy ball from the clutches of these famous rushes. They stand full five feet high, strong and stiff like stout twigs, and they have sharp and dangerous points which seem as if they might be made of tempered steel. A kind of blossom appears ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... was as complete as it could well have been made in so short a time, and the partners were, quite naturally, discouraged. Toby retained sufficient presence of mind, amid the trouble, to rescue the crowing hen from the murderous clutches of Mr. Stubbs's brother, and the monkey scampered up the tent-pole, brandishing two or three of poor biddy's best and longest wing-feathers, while he screamed with satisfaction that he had accomplished at least a portion of the work ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis

... told him that she was in anything but a quiet state of mind. One glance towards the door behind him, however, and the reason of her anger was all too plain: A Mexican was vainly struggling in the clutches of Ashby. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... powerful hand was dragging him backward, and he threw himself down on the ground, and roared with fear. What had happened was that the flying end of his plaid had got jammed in the door, but he felt sure the evil spirit was holding him in its clutches, and it was some time before his startled wife could convince him that there was nothing there. The good woman gathered him up, and soothed him; and as soon as he could speak he told her in a shivering voice about the awful monster which ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... along Rietspruit until we reached the farm of Vaalbank, where we remained until the evening of the next day, June the 13th. That night I saw clearly that it was necessary for us to cross the line if we wanted to keep ourselves and our prisoners out of the clutches of Lord Kitchener; he had failed to find us at Kroonstad, and would be certain to look for us in the country to the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... rose up almost as tall as a steeple and suddenly laid his great clutches upon the Prince's shoulders, saying: 'I will do both, if you do but wrestle with me courageously. You must do it, for there is no other way of escaping ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... the condition of a man who was in the clutches of a woman, and that woman his wife, so he forgave the old man, for he had experience himself, "and went out to meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare." ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley

... I had escaped from their clutches I communicated at once with the military authorities, and reported the capture of these travellers. They immediately ordered me to take a detachment of men and set off in pursuit. This is our present errand. You ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... been an abnormal combination of the Wifely Woman with the heroic woman; but one cannot help thinking that probably she was not—that however strong her affection for Florestan, she would no sooner get him home than she would ask him how he came to be such a fool as to get into Pizarro's clutches. Anyhow, Ternina's conception of Leonora as a mixture of the contemptible will-less German haus-frau with the strong-willed woman of action, was to me a mixture of contradictions. Yet, despite all these things, the opera made the deep ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... Madeline explained to her guests. "She lives down-stairs, so we can't go in or out without falling into her terrible clutches." ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... he was quite puzzled. No one seemed to believe what he said. And it was a long time before he learned what had actually happened. At last a spiteful worker informed him that he had never been in the clutches of the Robber Fly at all. Peevish Peggy and some of her companions had played a trick on Buster—because of his boasting. She had seized him when he wasn't looking. And he had screamed so loud that the Robber Fly—who happened to be near—had ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey

... flash, was off across the gulch in full charge after the flying ape-man; but Tarzan's lead was too great—if he could find finger or foothold upon the sheer wall he would be safe; but should he slip from the wet rocks his doom was already sealed as he would fall directly into Numa's clutches where even the Great Tarmangani ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Maitre Quennebert, "if the baggage isn't making eyes at him already! But one who is drowning clutches at ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... this they gave Gerard. Then supper, and after it the old monk carried Gerard to his cell, and they had an eager chat, and the friar incidentally revealed the cause of his pantomime in the corridor. "Ye had well-nigh fallen into Brother Jerome's clutches. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... be a hard-working woman. It would not come amiss either if she had a little of her own, but let that be as it might, if only she was good-natured. Karna would have suited in all respects, both Lasse and Pelle having always had a liking for her ever since the day she freed Pelle from the pupil's clutches; but it was nothing to offer her as long as she was so set upon Gustav. They must bide their time; perhaps she would come to her senses, or something ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... the hag. "I am come to help you, not for any love I bear you, but to avenge myself on old Demdike. Do not interrupt me. My familiar, Fancy, has told me all. I know how you are circumstanced. I know Alizon is in old Demdike's clutches, and you are unable to extricate her. But I can, and will; because if the hateful old hag fails in offering up her sacrifice before the first hour of day, her term will be out, and I shall be rid of her, and reign in her stead. To-morrow she will ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... was summarily surrendered into slavery in Maryland, by United States Commissioner Ingraham, June 1, 1853. He was betrayed into the clutches of the kidnapper Alberti, by a ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... hardships, but we render the soldier happy and contented to serve his country. The knowledge that his family is protected by those at home, and supplied with all that is necessary, will remove from his mind all anxiety for their welfare. It will, besides, grasp them from the clutches of the wretches who are speculating and extorting, and will not only be an act of everlasting honor to those who perform this good work, but will aid our cause as much as if the parties were serving in the field. Many a man who now lies in the deserter's dishonored grave, would have ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... parsons,' 'old mother church,' etc. I remember your strictures on all who differ from you, your sweeping condemnation of classes and individuals, without the slightest allowance made for circumstances or temptations; and then, Mr. Yorke, doubt clutches my inmost heart as to whether men exist clement, reasonable, and just enough to be entrusted with the task of reform. I don't believe you are ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... yard was a grassy run divided into two parts, with small houses and wire-netted enclosures in each. At present one was devoted to a couple of mothers with clutches of ten and twelve chickens—all white Orpingtons. The mothers were stately, comfortable dames, and the chicks, round little creamy balls, very tame and fascinating. They came quite close to Norah as she stooped to feed them, and one chick, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... Ailbe would have none of it. He forbade them to touch the wolf. And he was so powerful and wise and holy that they dared not disobey him, but had to be content with seeing their hunt spoiled and their prey taken out of their clutches. ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown

... Rock Creek Cemetery with my cousin, Nan Tennant, to see the Adams tomb by St. Gaudens. It is a great work, and clutches at your heart. I sat for some time on the circular marble seat and looked at the beautiful bronze statue. It reminded me of the lines ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... my life of an unknown assassin," replied Landon; "but I am no minion of Rodrigo's, and I was even now seeking to escape his clutches." ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... a Mrs. Dene Hilyard, I know her already," he answered. "I used to meet her with her husband in London sometimes—and a pretty brute he was! I nearly ran away with her just to get her out of his clutches," ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... horse had said, and the third horse was safely bridled. Then the other horse spoke again: 'The magician's raven will try to eat us as we ride away, but throw it some of the oxen's flesh, and then I will gallop like the wind, and carry you safe out of the dragon's clutches.' ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... scrivener at Oxford. I will also take William Long with me, if he will go. He is a merry fellow, and has a wise head. He and Jacob did marvelously at Edinburgh, when they cozened the preachers, and got me out of the clutches of Argyll. With two such trusty followers I could go through Europe. I will ride over to Oxford ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... at me sweetly, and, like all women when stuck between the issues of a dilemma, or held in the clutches of truth, she ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... you are less than man; and, by the God of vengeance, when this hand clutches you, you shall not die as a man, but as ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself—fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay them will surely ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... trees in the gardens tugging at their feet and little frightened dolls shut up in the shops crying... and crying... because no one stops... you spin like a penny thrown out in the street. Then the man clutches her by the hair.... He always clutches her by the hair.... His eyes stick out like spears. You see her pulled-back face and her black, black eyes lit up by the glare.... Then everything goes out. Please God, don't let me dream ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... notice, that nothing can save yez. Look back upon your work an' see what yez desarve from the counthry. You began with a farm of sixty acres, and you took farm afther farm over the heads of the poor an' them that wor strugglin', until you now have six hundre' acres in your clutches. You made use of the strong purse against the wake man; an' if any one ventured to complain, he was sure to come in for a dose of the horsewhip from your tyrannical sons, or a dose of law from yourself. Now all that I've mentioned ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... clutches a rifle and feels at his belt enough ammunition for putting up a good and long fight. There is something exultant in the consciousness that, if attacked, one can render back a good account of himself, and that the American soldier has no cause to be afraid of any troops on earth. It is ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock

... shouted the bold Sir Alfred, and Connie heard a wild scuffle as he rescued his companion from the clutches of the old halter on which she had stumbled. Up the haymow ladder they hurried, and then slid recklessly down the hay-chutes. Presently the barn door was flung open, and the "Society" knocked Connie flying backward, ran madly around the barn a few times, and scurried under ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... kept on soothingly and firmly; and again the beast grew calm. At length Pete decided that his best place for the night, or until the storm should lift, would be by the warmth of this imprisoned and peaceable animal. Digging down into the snow beyond the clutches of the wind, he rolled himself in his blankets, crouched close against the caribou's flank, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... briers, and plunged through the punk of trees older than history, now rotting where they fell, slain by Time the Giganticide. Cancut then had us at advantage. Sometimes we had laughed at him, when he, a good-humored malaprop, made vague clutches at the thread of discourse. Now suppose he should take a fancy to drop down stream and leave us. What then? Berries then, and little else, unless we had a chance at a trout or a partridge. It is not cheery, but dreary, to be left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... ward of Mordent, just come of age. Impulsive, generous, hot-blooded. He resolves to be a rake, but scorns to be a villain. However, he accidentally meets with Joanna "the deserted daughter," and falls in love with her. He rescues her from the clutches of Mrs. Enfield the crimp, and marries her.—Holcroft, The Deserted Daughter (altered into ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... (clutches hold of it and drinks, trembling all over). Loukrya, Cook! I am drinking, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... is like a man standing on the edge of some precipice, and peeping over the brink to the profound beneath, and feeling his head beginning to swim. He clutches at the strong, steady hand of his guide, knowing that unless he is restrained, over he will go. 'Keep Thou back Thy servant ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and found Jack there; and as the lines on Jack's belt showed who he was, the giant lifted him up and laid him gently upon his shoulder, to carry him to his castle; but, as he passed through the thicket, the rustling of the leaves waked Jack; and he was sadly afraid when he found himself in the clutches of Blunderbore. Yet this was nothing to his fright soon after; for, when they reached the castle, he beheld the floor covered all over with the skulls and bones of men and women. The giant took him into a large room, where lay the hearts and limbs of ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... shade; but one sees on it remorse and agony, as the traitor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools which have been used in making it,—the cross to which his treason had doomed his friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... the centre of the stage, and on the throne from which the King has been hurled, the dying prince, conqueror and sovereign in this last supreme moment, dominates the scene of death and carnage, triumphant over all, even in the clutches of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... across the lawn to a table where Phillis in white apron and cap, with smiling countenance, was pouring tea from silver urns into dainty cups. So this was the young lady whom he had rescued from the clutches of the villains. What should he say to her? By no word or look must she know that he was conscious of having ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... couldn't touch him, he instinctively hurried back into his friend's room, knowing how unscrupulous many people, when thus engaged, were, and that if they got hold of him he would have no little difficulty in escaping from their clutches. ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... or ignored one request I have made you this morning. I have yet another. Let me lend you some money. Between comrades it is the most usual thing in the world, and I do not see how your sex intervenes. Let me keep you from that man's clutches. Then we can look out together for such employment—as would be more suitable for you. I know London better than you, and I have had to earn my own living. You cannot ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... amazed—let me but give him plenty of time, and he will demean himself in a way to prove his guilt as plainly as that twice two our four! Yes, he will keep hovering about me, describing circles, smaller and smaller, till at last— bang! He has flown into my clutches, and I have got him. That is very nice. You don't ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... received with delighted wonder, and forthwith conducted to the best bath-room available. Two hours later a little Austrian gentleman stepped forth, and the telegraph hastened to tell the news that Slatin, sometime Governor of Darfur, had escaped from the Khalifa's clutches. Here at last was a man who knew everything that concerned the Dervish Empire—Slatin, the Khalifa's trusted and confidential servant, almost his friend, who had lived with him, who was even permitted to dine with him alone, who had heard all his counsels, who knew all his Emirs, and moreover ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... resurrection of Christ. The truth is, that when our author closes his work, he cannot face the conclusions to which his premisses would inevitably lead him. They are too startling for himself, as well as for his readers, in their naked deformity; and with a noble inconsistency he clutches at these 'dogmas' to save himself from sinking into ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... in her life felt so tired. Suddenly a thrill of consciousness went up from her left hand—the hand that held her skirts—such a thrill as is known only to the sex that wills to have its pocket there. She made one or two convulsive confirmatory clutches at it from the outside, then, with a throe of actual despair, she thrust her hand into her pocket. It was a crushing fact, her purse was gone—her purse that held the possibilities of her journalistic future molten and stamped ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... pass. It was Josephine, pretty Josephine, for she was brave as well, and when her screams were heard, they ran to her assistance, and they arrived only just in time to rescue her, half strangled from Mademoiselle's clutches. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... letters of gold—TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing still, and always keep right side up. But very soon the young philosopher ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... running his head into danger, and wants carefully looking after, lest he get himself into mischief." Amos looked puzzled. "In other words," continued his brother, "I could not bear the thought of your getting again into the clutches of that horrid man; so I have come over, not to be a spy upon you, or any fetter on your movements, but just to be at hand, to give you a help if you ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... the man. That was the end of Lord Fawn's evidence-in-chief, which he would gladly have prolonged to the close of the day could he thereby have postponed the coming horrors of his cross-examination. But there he was,—in the clutches of the odious, dirty, little man, hating the little man, despising him because he was dirty, and nothing better than an Old Bailey barrister,—and yet fearing him ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... fortnight all, or nearly all, the surviving prisoners were bought out of their clutches; and then, after a final distribution of presents and a grand debauch at La Chine, the whole savage rout paddled for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... an easy matter to lay snares for Serge. He was a gambler. She could let him have ready money to satisfy his passion. Once in the clutches of the demon of play, he would neglect his wife, and the mother might regain a portion of the ground she had lost. Micheline's fortune once broken into, she would interpose between her daughter and son-in-law. She would make him pull up, and holding him tightly ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... been wiser to admit that Euripides has marred his own work by this grim tragic-comic encounter of crabbed age and youth. But it is true that one who has much to give, like Alkestis, gives freely; and one who has little to give, like Pheres, clutches that little desperately and is starved not only in possessions but in soul. For Browning the significance of the scene lies in the idea, which if not just is ingenious, that the encounter with Pheres has an educational value for Admetos; he detests his father because ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... meaning of that sudden cry of alarm I had so often heard proceed from the locust or cicada, followed by some object falling and rustling amid the leaves; the poor insect was doubtless in the clutches of this arch enemy. A number of locusts usually passed the night on the under side of a large limb of a mulberry-tree near by: early one morning a hornet was seen to pounce suddenly upon one and drag it over on the top of the limb; a struggle ensued, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... by now that Aunt Agatha had picked the wrong man for this job of disentangling Gussie from the clutches of the American vaudeville profession. What I needed was reinforcements. For a moment I thought of cabling Aunt Agatha to come over, but reason told me that this would be overdoing it. I wanted assistance, but not so badly as that. I hit what seemed to me the happy mean. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... the two harridans fighting out their quarrel on the floor. The loser is laid flat upon her back; the victress, belly to belly with her adversary, clutches her with her legs and prevents her from moving a limb. Both have their poison-fangs wide open, ready to bite without yet daring, so mutually formidable are they. After a certain period of waiting, during which the pair ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... year 1810 his opera "Sylvana" had been sung, as I have said, with Caroline Brandt in the title role. When, in 1813, he was given the direction of the opera at Prague, though he fell into the clutches of the Brunetti, he had unconsciously prepared himself a better, cleaner experience by engaging for the very first member of his new company this same Caroline Brandt, who happened to write him that she happened to be "at liberty," ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... Van Tromp was no marriage, and the ducats, dollars and diamonds bequeathed by Van Tromp to "my wife, Elizabeth," would instantly melt into air—into very thin air, so far as the Countess was concerned; provided, of course, they had not actually passed into her clutches. In fact, they were legally hers, for the will had been admitted to probate. Those of the family objecting could offer no valid opposition, and she had been put in possession, but, by a strange neglect on her part, left everything intact, save ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... clear," Malcolm said cheerfully, "that we must get your daughter out of the clutches of the emperor and ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... the Spirit, about several Arts, as Alchymy and Magick. To these Things the Spirit gave Answers, putting off the Resolution of these Questions for the present, promising it would make larger Discoveries as soon as ever, by his Assistance, it should get out of the Clutches of its Keeper, the Devil; and, if you please, you may let this be the third Act of this Play. As to the fourth Act, Faunus began, in good Earnest, everywhere to talk high, and to talk of nothing else in all Companies and at the Table, and to promise glorious Things to Monasteries; and talk'd ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... witness To any one's fitness To fill any place or preferment; We're often in waiting At junket FETING, And sometimes attend an interment. In short, if you'd kindle The spark of a swindle, Lure simpletons into your clutches, Or hoodwink a debtor, You cannot do better Than trot out a Duke ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... You fell into the awful clutches of that procuress and her accomplices. Poor, poor Anna! There are thousands of cases similar to yours, my poor child. Of course you did not know. They all say that. But go on with your ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... at all events a most faithful friend. Indeed, this wonderful being—invented by Monsieur" (with these words the prisoner pointed to Lecoq)—"was seemingly not satisfied at having once escaped the police, for, according to your account, he voluntarily placed himself in their clutches a second time. You gentlemen pretend that he conferred first of all with me, and next with the Widow Chupin. How did that happen? Perhaps after removing him from my cell, some of your agents obligingly shut him ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... evident displeasure of our [the Scottish] nation, yet, if Crawford were not cashiered, his [Cromwell's] colonels would lay down their commissions." There was a plot in all this, Baillie thought. The real purpose of the Independents was to bring Manchester out of the clutches of Presbyterianism, or, if that could not be done, to get him to resign, so that Cromwell might succeed to the chief command; in which case the Independents would be able to "counterbalance" the Presbyterians, and "overawe ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... new-model; Oblig'd the State to tack about, And turn you, root and branch, all out; To reformado, one and all, T' your great Croysado General. 1200 Your greedy slav'ring to devour, Before 'twas in your clutches, pow'r, That sprung the game you were to set, Before y' had time to draw the net; Your spight to see the Churches' lands 1205 Divided into other hands, And all your sacrilegious ventures Laid out in tickets and debentures; Your envy to he sprinkled down, By Under-Churches in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits his upper crust, and says that it's like his blamed fat-headedness to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... was the Swift One, that she had that amazing aptitude for swift flight through the trees. She needed all her wisdom and daring in order to keep out of the clutches of Red-Eye. I could not help her. He was so powerful a monster that he could have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I carried an injured shoulder that ached and went lame in rainy weather and that was a mark of ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... no other chance offered, he might possibly get away by leaving that house and taking to the country roads. For he knows that, if he takes a train at any point, he won't ride five miles before he'll find himself in the clutches of a Secret Service man. Oh, he knows how well the trains and the steamboats will be watched. He dreads, even, that the country roads will ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... his body straight, as prize-runners run. The wagon, sideways, stretched across—a solid barrier, heaped up with fir boughs brought for firing from the forests; the mules stood abreast, yoked together. The mob following saw too, and gave a hoot and yell of brutal triumph; their prey was in their clutches; the cart barred his progress, and he must double like a fox faced with a ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... groaned as he thought of the hopelessness of his task;—to follow a full-grown bear into the deep woods at night, and recover safely from its clutches ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... over his face, as he thought of the fall of the Rooinek—of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his fingers ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... have been the grasp which could have held a knight so doughty as Arthur. Slipping from the monster's clutches, the King hacked at his adversary now in one place, now in another, till at length he smote the giant so mightily that Excalibur was buried deep in his brain-pan. The giant fell like an oak torn up by the roots in the fury of the winds. Rushing up as he ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... school hygiene. Every German child is under the supervision of the school dentist and the school oculist. It is thus that German cities have established their public pawnshops, and have saved the poor man from the clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that they have initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent. They have even established municipal beerhouses and Rathhauskeller. In one word, they have launched out in a hundred forms ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... to such unwonted length of speech. It was not simply that the Presbyterian blood carried with it reverence for the minister, but that he had a vivid remembrance of how, only a month ago, the minister had got him out of Mike Slavin's saloon and out of the clutches of Keefe and Slavin and their ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... hears him not, for the sound of his horse's galloping feet is lost in the roar of waters. But that cry comes to his ears, he sees the poised rock, and all grows clear to him. He leaps from his horse, and even as she looses the stone, clutches Swanhild's kirtle and hurls her back. The rock bounds sideways and presently is ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard

... Cherub!" said a motherly voice in the crowd. "I wonder if they are good to him. They look like cut-throats and murderers, but he is like the image of the little Saint John in church. Wolves, with a lamb in their clutches! Save us all! Suppose it ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown

... Louisa played their duets. Jim's stiff college manners and poor dear Bute's talk about his dogs and horses always annoyed her. If I took her to the Rectory, she would grow angry with us all, and fly, I know she would; and might fall into that horrid Rawdon's clutches again, and be the victim of that little viper of a Sharp. Meanwhile, it is clear to me that she is exceedingly unwell, and cannot move for some weeks, at any rate; during which we must think of some plan to protect her from the arts of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... we should be apt to regard these blessings as valueless, and to estimate them as our legitimate rights. For my own part, I was never so happy in my whole life as when I embraced you the other day, after escaping out of the clutches of the savages." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... Run, and deepening that dark stain upon our national escutcheon. His neglect to occupy Harper's Ferry in June, his failure to push on against Johnston when there was an opportunity to injure him, and his cool betrayal of the Unionists of Northern Virginia into the clutches of the rebel Thugs, will place the name of Patterson by the side of the names of Lee, Hull, Winder, and Buchanan, who, though not the open enemies of their country, were its false and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... enthusiastic and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found. In spite of all her brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation, her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors, the medical scheme took new hold of her, and seemed to her the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... story to tell if Injun had acted differently. But in the first place he was an Indian, and it was not in his blood to follow any fat white woman and rescue a boy from her clutches. In the next place he was Injun; he had his own personality. We Caucasians are apt to think that because the red and yellow people look pretty much alike, they all are alike. Then when we come to know them, and ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little regard for the ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... and she laughed aloud. She had undoubtedly gained information that Chauvenet had gone forth to seek; she had—and the thing was funny—served Chauvenet well in explaining away his presence in the mountains and getting him out of the clutches of the mountaineer, while at the same time she was learning for herself the fact of Armitage's whereabouts and keeping it from Chauvenet. It was a curious adventure, and she gave her hand smilingly to the ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... role, and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles. An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate, or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality of her house. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... while—an answer to her first question: He had protected her because she had run into his arms in her effort to escape the clutches of the man who had pursued her—Higgins. She remembered that while she had been at the window, watching Harlan when he had dismounted in front of the sheriff's office, he had seemed to make a ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... done by the moody person, with at the same time an unhappy realization that when the moods are on him, they are as real as they are unreal when he is free. To treat a mood as a good joke when you are in its clutches, is simply out of the question. But to say, "This now is a mood. Come on, do your worst; I can stand it as long as you can," takes away all nerve-resistance, until the thing has nothing to clutch, ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... Presbyterian blood carried with it reverence for the minister, but that he had a vivid remembrance of how, only a month ago, the minister had got him out of Mike Slavin's saloon and out of the clutches of Keefe and Slavin and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... tales of you, you conceive. And Nelchen means as much to me as once my mother meant to you, remember—She means youth, and happiness, and a tiny space of laughter before I, too, am worm's-meat, and means a proper appreciation of God's love for us all, and means everything a man's mind clutches at when he wakens from some forgotten dream that leaves him weeping with sheer adoration of its beauty. Ho, never was there a kinder father than you, monsieur. You have spoiled me most atrociously, I concede; and after so many years you ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... said, "what is wrong with me? What terrible pain is this that has me in its clutches?" The strength had gone out of the man, he could no ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... are upwards of half an ell in length, and it walks on these only, on the flat of the heavy part of the leg, so that it does not run fast. Its tail is very long, like that of a long-tailed monkey; if it eats, it sits on its hind-legs, and clutches its food with its forepaws, just like a squirrel or monkey. Their manner of generation or procreation is exceedingly strange and highly worth observing. Below the belly the female carries a pouch, into which you may put your hand; ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... each by an arm and leg and laying her upon her "Ventre" flat as a pancake, a fifth cracked his knout (whip) most fearfully over her head, and prepared himself to apply the said whip upon our poor landlady. By good fortune an officer rescued her from their clutches, but she shivered like a jelly when she described her feelings in her awkward position, like a boat upon the shore bottom upwards. Then she told us how her husband died of fright, or something very near it. Her account of him was capital, "Il etoit," said she, "un bon papa du temps ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... all he can," sez Phila. "He went right to the polls 'lection day and worked all day; for the Whiskey Power wuz all riz up and watchin' and workin' for its life, as you may say, bound to draw back into its clutches some of the men that Elder White, with the Lord's help, had saved. They exerted all their influence, liquor run free all day and all the night before, tryin' to brutalize and craze the men into votin' as the Liquor Power dictated. But Elder White knew what ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... weeks. It received, not without reason, the name of the 'middle passage'. Between, and sometimes on the decks, the wounded, the sick, and the dying were crowded— men who had just undergone the amputation of limbs, men in the clutches of fever or of frostbite, men in the last stages of dysentry and cholera— without beds, sometimes without blankets, often hardly clothed. The one or two surgeons on board did what they could; but medical stores were lacking, and the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... fire; and lights came starting forward, as it were, to the windows. The women were out with lamentations and vows of vengeance. I was in a state of horror unspeakable. Then came some three or four of the pressgang with a struggling sailor in their clutches, with nothing but his trousers on—his shirt riven from his back in the fury. Syne came the rest of the gang and their officers, scattered as it were with a tempest of mud and stones, pursued and battered by a troop of desperate women and weans, whose ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... about 1566. Sethon, we are told, was in possession of the arch-secrets of Alchemy. He visited Holland in 1602, proceeded after a time to Italy, and passed through Basle to Germany; meanwhile he is said to have performed many transmutations. Ultimately arriving at Dresden, however, he fell into the clutches of the young Elector, Christian II., who, in order to extort his secret, cast him into prison and put him to the torture, but without avail. Now it so happened that Sendivogius, who was in quest of the Philosopher's Stone, was staying at Dresden, and hearing of Sethon's imprisonment ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... meet me, thinking I was returning from Paris—had been arrested. Then I saw Mrs. Clear's advertisement saying she would betray me if I did not pay the money. I consented to meet her in order to implore her silence, and so fell into the clutches of the law. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... rose early, and got off as quickly as possible. We could not breathe freely until we were out of the clutches of Ouweek. Some of them, however, paid a farewell visit to the Sheikh, who received them very graciously, as politely as any Spanish bandit, and sent this message to me:—"Yâkob, go in amen (peace or security) to Ghat, fear nothing from any one, for you are under my protection." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... forest. They still bring me news of all that passes there. Cuthbert Trevlyn has found the lost treasure, and in finding it has killed one of the tribe. Hatred and greed have been alike stirred up. Many are bound together against him. If he cannot be snatched this night from the clutches into which he has let himself fall—oh, why would he not heed my warnings?—nothing can avail to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... opening kick, while his comrades thundered toward him to form a flying screen of interference. But the twisting ball bounded from his too eager arms, and another Yale back fell on it in time to save it from the clutches ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... old lot he'd worked with were left—men who had managed to keep clear and never be suspected when William Burns, the detective, was fighting the Macnamaras and their gang. Only one or two who'd been under suspicion wriggled out from Burns' clutches. A man named Carl Schmelzer was the cleverest. He went abroad, and was supposed to die in Germany. But he didn't die. By that time they were engaged in new enterprises, as the old ones were too risky; but they always pretended to be working for Labour ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... degenerated condition, and that they have offended their Prince, and that he is gone. Their sickness also pleaseth us, as does also your health, might, and strength. Glad also would we be, right horribly beloved, could we get this town into our clutches again. Nor will we be sparing of spending our wit, our cunning, our craft, and hellish inventions to bring to a wished conclusion this your brave beginning in ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... innkeeper of Leyden, loves Bertha, a village maiden, who dwells near Dordrecht. Unfortunately, her liege lord, the Count of Oberthal, has designs upon the girl himself, and refuses his consent to the marriage. Bertha escapes from his clutches and flies to the protection of her lover, but Oberthal secures the person of Fides, John's old mother, and, by threats of putting her to death, compels him to give up Bertha. Wild with rage against the vice and lawlessness of the nobles, John joins the ranks of the Anabaptists, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... advanced along Rietspruit until we reached the farm of Vaalbank, where we remained until the evening of the next day, June the 13th. That night I saw clearly that it was necessary for us to cross the line if we wanted to keep ourselves and our prisoners out of the clutches of Lord Kitchener; he had failed to find us at Kroonstad, and would be certain to look for us in the country to the west of ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... "you don't realize it's only the fact you can't see me that makes it possible. Why, I've clutched at you the way a drowning man clutches at anything. That I should get tired of you, feel you as a burden—it's unthinkable. I'm thankful you're blind. I shall always be glad you can't see. If you could—what sort of picture of me have ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... conversation with the Solicitor-General, Rich, into an admission that Englishmen could not be bound to acknowledge a supremacy over the Church in which other countries did not concur. In neither case was it clear that they came within the clutches of the law. Fisher, indeed, had really been guilty of treason. More than once he had urged Chapuys to press upon Charles the invasion of England, a fact unknown, perhaps, to the English Government.[936] The evidence it had (p. 333) collected was, however, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... her when I would n't get within fifty miles of her. Sometimes she 's pitiful to me; and then again I 've got to remember the fact that she 's a dangerous woman. Goodness only knows what would happen to a person who fell into her clutches when she 's got one of ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... now, sir, you see, by his prodigality, he is become my dependent; and accordingly I have made my bargain with him:—the devil a baubee he has in the world but what comes thro' these clutches— for his whole estate, which has three implicit boroughs upon it,—mark—is now in my custody at nurse;—the which estate, on my paying off his debts, and allowing him a life rent of five thousand pounds per annum, is ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... number of strangers. Quarrels arose among the French. A discontented group of adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt at piracy. They plundered two ships in the Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish governor. The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled back to the fort, which Laudonniere had built and named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant La Caille arrested them and dragged them to judgment. "Say what you will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if Laudonniere does not hang us I will never call him an honest man." The four leaders ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... sacrifices made for the cause of independence everywhere, from New Spain to the provinces of the River Plata and Chile. He deprecates the attitude of Europe, which does not intervene to save America from the clutches of an oppressive government, and proves that even for the good of Europe, the independence of America ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... did much. He and his fellow commander failed in their first object; but they were not idle, for they recaptured Leipzig and other towns that the Confederate army had taken, and snatched all Saxony, save Dresden, from its clutches. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... though he strove to keep his companionship a secret, there could be no doubt that most of his time at school was spent in the very pleasant company of Danny Murphy and "Hash" Tucker; and furthermore that, since the day she had saved him from old McAllister's clutches, Nancy Caldwell had been the bright, particular star of his existence. He had no doubt that Nancy returned his devotion, either; for she brought him big lumps of maple sugar and the rosiest apples, and ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... him in only five hundred ducat-diregno yearly, and that, unfortunately, he had contracted debts to the amount of six hundred. He added, with a sigh, that his only happiness was to feel himself out of the clutches of the monks, who had persecuted him, and made his life a perfect purgatory for fifteen years. All these confidences caused me sorrow and mortification, because they proved to me, not only that I was not in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... you're lost; besides, I couldn't "Come back" just then. However, I got into the slack water again, by some very showy, high-class steering. Still steering, fine as it is, is not all you require and hanker after. You want pace as well, and pace, except when in the clutches of the current, I had not so far attained. Perchance, thought I, the pace region in a canoe may be in its centre; so I got along on my knees into the centre to experiment. Bitter failure; the canoe took to sidling down river broadside on, like Mr. Winkle's horse. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... used to have a good deal of influence over Newton when he lived in our cottage as a boy. Don't you remember—I got him to go to school regularly, and saved him from the truant officer's clutches ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... hear it now in the room while the white bees are swarming without, and the storm clutches the windows. The bird sings not alone the requiem of heroes; he sings also sweet gentle songs of love, so many and so warm, of Northern fidelity and truth. He has stories in words and in tones; he has proverbs and snatches ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... went by the name of Blackstock, Greystock was my Lord Surrey, and Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the police is traditional. The 'unfortunate'—unhappy creatures!—are their pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The 'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his grasp. On one occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... the boughs awakened Jack, who, finding himself already in the clutches of the giant, was terrified; nor was his alarm decreased by seeing the courtyard of the castle all strewn with ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... least faith in the miracle-working power of the poison bottle, a metaphysical healer or the surgeon's knife. When health, wealth and hope are entirely exhausted, then the chronic sufferer grasps at Nature Cure as a drowning man clutches at a straw. But even though ninety percent of these cases which come to us are of the apparently incurable type, our total failures are ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... Heaven help me! as surely as Sathanas was his. And though, at last, I slipped his clutches, as you shall hear (more readily than, I trow, he will scape his lord in the end, for he still lives), yet it was an ill day that we met—an ill day for me and for France. Howbeit we jogged on, he merrily enough singing a sculdudery song, I something surly, under a grey ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... he told her one afternoon, "I'd go crazy with the flea bitings of the Enemy. But you, bless your wicked soul, are an honest part of the game. I was bred from the beginning to fight floods. You attack in the open, like an honest vixen. Wait till I get my clutches on ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... scent now, without a doubt," said the stranger. "Keep up your heart, young man, and we'll get the money out of this scoundrel's clutches just as certain as you got the birds from the Engelhorn for my friend. Jump into the carriage. Follow the dog, ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... shortest path which may lead to it. A native of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... of geniality and mildness. But in the character of Judas he represents, in every wrinkle of his face, and in every curl of his hair, and in every glare of his eye, and in every knuckle of his hand with which he clutches the money bag, hypocrisy and avarice and hate and low strategy and diabolism. The quickness with which he grabs the bribe for the betrayal of the Lord, the villainous leer at the Master while seated ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... a pretty speech to come from you, anyhow! as if you had not been engaged in mean acts half your life, for which you would have to swing, if the law should once get his clutches upon you." ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... you picked the envelopes out of waste-paper baskets, or such like, and then changed the addresses?' She nods again; still she dare not look up, but she is admiring his legs. When, however, he would cast the letters into the fire, she flames up with sudden spirit. She clutches them. ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... I have thought of your family, and I pardon you on their account; and since it is they who would suffer from your misconduct, I consequently send you with my pardon ten thousand francs in bank-notes. Pay with this sum all the English who torment you, and, above all, do not again fall into their clutches; for in that case ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... passed by the mouth of the nest and hearing a great scuffling, thought that within was a fox tearing somewhat; so he crept into the hole, to get at him, and coming upon the Cat, seized on her. When she found herself in the dog's clutches, she was forced to take thought anent saving herself and loosed the Mouse alive and whole without wound. Then the hound brake her neck and dragging her forth of the hole, threw her down dead: and thus was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... swappings required of his dragoons by Uncle Sam on those rare occasions when a regiment that has been dry-rotting half a decade in Arizona is at last relieved by one from the Plains. How it happened that we of the Fifth should have kept him from the clutches of those sharp horse-fanciers of the Sixth is more than I know. Regimental tradition had it that we got him from the Third Cavalry when it came our turn to go into exile in 1871. He was the victim of some temporary malady at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... poor Kohlhaas in Dresden when the Elector of Brandenburg appeared to rescue him from the clutches of arbitrary, superior power, and, in a note laid before the Chancery of State in Dresden, claimed him as a subject of Brandenburg. For the honest City Governor, Sir Heinrich von Geusau, during a walk on the banks of the Spree, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and negligent tenant, as rent. Let the produce be made equal to that of England, (and with common industry this might be made to exceed it,) and the share of the produce extracted as rent would only be about one-sixth. Yet Lord Normanby "burkes" this correct information, and clutches on the vague and unfounded assertions of Mr Wiggins, merely for the purpose of damaging the character of a body of men, who had already been sufficiently injured by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... frown. "Is it that you think to take me west to Norway, and cast me like a young goat among wolves? I had thought when you so blandly spoke to me yesternight that you were a man of honour. Haply Queen Gunnhild would reward you well if you should deliver me into her clutches. But this you shall ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... BOY, or CONRAD V., the last representative of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Romish Kaisers, had fallen into the Pope's clutches, who was at mortal feud with the empire, and was put to death by him on the scaffold at Naples, October 25, 1265, the "bright and brave" lad, only 16, "throwing out his glove (in symbolic protest) amid the dark mute Neapolitan multitudes" ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... convinced you that all you can do is to kill me? Don't waste your time in torturing me. It will neither open my lips nor compel me to take a character brush in my hand. If my daughter is dead, so be it. At any rate, she is at present beyond your clutches. You overreached yourself. Had you brought her back it is quite possible I might have surrendered. But I ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... nearly the color of the African, but darker; has the same black bill, and high protuberance on it, but without the dewlap under the throat; and has black legs and feet. She is only half the size of the other; is a more prolific layer,—frequently laying three or four clutches of eggs in a year; has the same character of voice; an equally high, arched neck, and is quite as graceful in the water. The neck of the goose in the cut should be one-third longer, to be an ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... my husband and prove his innocence before the whole world. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'll do it. I'll fight you, captain, to the last ditch, and I'll rescue my poor husband from your clutches if it takes everything I possess in ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... Francois had got his gun ready. This the latter soon did, and a load of small shot was fired into the blaireau's hips, which, although it did not quite kill him, caused him to back out of the hole, and brought him into the clutches ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... tracts and ballads was formed by me, when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into its present decent binding it had such charms for the servants that it was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since, and, I dare say, many that could not now be ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... tugging at an immense bundle, literally tooth and nail, as she alternated trembling clutches of the fingers with frantic bites ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... arisen from the attempt of the customer to eat the sandwich which had been served with his drink. The barkeeper objected, and, finding remonstrance in vain, resorted to physical force to rescue the sandwich from the clutches of the hungry stranger. The police restored the sandwich to the bartender ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... the direction which he had seen the damsel take. But finding no road or path through the forest, nor discerning any trace of a horse's hooves, he was—for that he found not the damsel—albeit he deemed himself safe out of the clutches of his captors and their assailants, the most wretched man alive, and fell a weeping and wandering hither and thither about the forest, uttering Agnolella's name. None answered; but turn back he dared not: so on he went, not knowing whither he went; besides which, he ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... Spirit, about several Arts, as Alchymy and Magick. To these Things the Spirit gave Answers, putting off the Resolution of these Questions for the present, promising it would make larger Discoveries as soon as ever, by his Assistance, it should get out of the Clutches of its Keeper, the Devil; and, if you please, you may let this be the third Act of this Play. As to the fourth Act, Faunus began, in good Earnest, everywhere to talk high, and to talk of nothing else in all Companies and at the Table, and to promise glorious Things to Monasteries; ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... spectators:—to delight, because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the manners of our country, which then could admit of such a representation; the simplicity, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... young of chimney swallows, woodpeckers, and orioles are very noisy. The latter, in its deep pouch, is quite safe from birds of prey, except perhaps the owl. The owl, I suspect, thrusts its leg into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocket-like nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons. In one case which I heard of, a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed woodpecker; being apparently ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... had drawn, either in favour of a new abbot or of the pensioner; and the cruelties with which this fierce Ayrshire lord treated the functionary who succeeded his uncle seem incredible to hear of. George Buchanan kept out of his clutches; but it was not till some years afterwards that we find the local tyrant bound over in sureties to leave the two lawful proprietors of these funds alone. So far as can be made out, Mary's grant to Buchanan was almost identical in date with the publication of the Psalms and the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... by the hounds, and the chase has begun, the hare will at times cross streams, bend and double and creep for shelter into clefts and crannied lurking-places; (30) since they have not only the hounds to dread, but eagles also; and, so long as they are yearlings, are apt to be carried off in the clutches of these birds, in the act of crossing some slope or bare hillside. When they are bigger they have the hounds after them to hunt them down and make away with them. The fleetest-footed would appear to be those of the low marsh ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... & world-embracing Christmas hope that all of us that deserve it may finally be gathered together in a heaven of rest & peace, & the others permitted to retire into the clutches of Satan, or the Emperor of Russia, according to preference—if they have ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... took the job off my hands." His face expressed a sort of gloomy dissatisfaction. Then without looking at Mose he went on: "That's one reason daughter looks so pert. She's free of that skunk's clutches now—and can hold up her head. She's free to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous thing"—submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew how odious to her was the presence of her ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... days later Marcian appeared at the castle He brought no intelligence of the lost ladies. As for their abode, it had been thoroughly pillaged; the treasure chamber was discovered and broken open; not a coin, not a vessel or ornament which had its price, not a piece of silk, had escaped the clutches of ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... begun my long deferred meal when Sandy entered. He was before his time, and he looked as solemn as a sick owl. I seized on him as a drowning man clutches ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... his fall, his limbs failing him, and his eyes beginning to close. The more slightly stricken king of beasts in the second [PLATE LXXI.], urged to fury by the smart of his wound, rushes at the chariot whence the shaft was sped, and in his mad agony springs upon a wheel, clutches it with his two fore-paws, and frantically grinds it between his teeth. Assyrian art, so far as is yet known, has no finer specimen of animal drawing than this head, which may challenge comparison with anything of the kind that either classic ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... is so great and mighty a tyrant, that none can pull us out of its clutches, but God; and that God is so good and loving to man, as to pull him indeed out of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... time, and he will demean himself in a way to prove his guilt as plainly as that twice two our four! Yes, he will keep hovering about me, describing circles, smaller and smaller, till at last—bang! He has flown into my clutches, and I have got him. That is very nice. You ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... prejudice, mamma, but instinct, like Argus's. That man is destined to do us some great wrong, if we do not escape out of his clutches." ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... for strength in her new duties; men are married by Scripture. The Bible attends them in their sickness, when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner escaping from shipwreck clutches this first of his treasures and keeps it sacred to God. It goes with the peddler in his crowded pack; cheers him at eventide when he sits down dusty and fatigued; brightens the freshness of his morning ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... counterbalanced only by improved management: and nine-tenths of the farmers lack the means thereto. Moreover, the farmer does not get for his product the price paid by the city: he has to deal with the middlemen: and these hold him in their clutches. The broker or dealer, who at given seasons traverses the country and, as a rule, himself sells to other middlemen, wants to make his profits: the gathering of many small quantities gives him much more trouble than a large invoice from a single large holder: the small farmer receives, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... "jay-hawkers." Steadily, silently, ominously, the train rolls along. As it is rounding a curve several ugly-looking fellows are seen running at speed towards the switch-lever at the next street-crossing. Excitedly the railway man clutches Drummond's elbow and points. Two troopers are ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... our Phoenix may not fall into the clutches of the De Sautys, to be made goose-meat of; rather may they themselves be utterly cast out,—into the land of giants that are hideous to look upon, and have but one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead,—into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... protection in this awful strait; it will never do for us to attempt anything which might result in their being left to the tender mercies of those ruffians forward. The only thing we can now hope for is a speedy and safe deliverance from their clutches by being landed somewhere; and we must pray that they will be induced to land us on some spot where we may not only be able to make ourselves safe, but also to secure the ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... man for a maid. North of the river and west of Temple Bar it is the intrigues of the highly compromised middle-aged which are supposed to be most worthy of attention on the stage. But Mr. DAVIES (luckily) is never afraid of being young. So he starts us off with a picture of Geoffrey in the clutches of drink and drugs just because Valentine has jilted him. True that when Valentine is finally married to another man Geoffrey is still in love with her, and receives her at midnight in his rooms; but by this time Mr. DAVIES has given us three excellent Acts in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... over-reach. Isn't deceit the foundation of all successful trade? The butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker, the banker, the broker—their business is all alike. A trader is a trader, one who clutches and fights his competitor and lays traps for his customers, in short, his victims. A trader is one who by hook or crook beats down the price at which he will buy below its market value and marks it up to the limit of his victim's credulity when he sells. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... him so well that at the end of the conversation, in exchange for the thousand francs, he handed to the Counsellor the promissory notes for four thousand francs each, which were made payable to two farmers, who were entirely in Daumon's clutches. The young man, in addition, pledged his solemn word of honor that he would never disclose that the Counsellor had anything ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... ought, for it is no great thing; and yet the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal with. The Judge has set about seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet at different places I am literally in his clutches—that I am a poor, helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all. This is one of the ways he has taken to create that impression. I don't know any other way to meet it except this. I don't ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... at last. It was on the lead flat of the tower above their cells. John had grown accustomed to go there after Compline, that he might look on London from that eminence and thank God that he had escaped from its clutches. The stars were out, and the city lay like a great monster around and beneath. Something demoniacal had entered into his view of it. Down there was the river, winding like a serpent through its sand, and here ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... between us. 'If you move at all when we pass through towns,' he went on, 'I stick this into you very deep.' Somehow, I knew that he meant to carry out his threats to the letter. At first I was more angry than hurt or even alarmed. Then I began to believe that I had fallen into the clutches of a lunatic, and grew horribly afraid. I saw that we were following the London road, and it oppressed me like a dreadful sort of nightmare to be speeding through a familiar district, a countryside dotted with the houses ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... tension and tremor. For one instant she clenches her hands, holds her arms out before her in a stiff semi-flexed position; then suddenly bends her body forwards, sways rapidly to and fro, draws her fingers through her hair, clutches at her neck, and tries to tear off her clothes. The sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles (which serve to bend the head on the chest) stand out prominently, as if swollen, and the skin in front of them is much wrinkled. Her hair, which is cut short at the back of her head, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... of, for her own private gain. That she left all family matters, irrespective of important or unimportant, under the sole control of Chia She; but that, whenever anything turned up, involving any receipts or payments, she extorted an unusual percentage, the moment the money passed through her clutches, giving out as a pretence: 'Well Chia She is so extravagant that I have to interfere and effect sufficient economies to enable us to make up our deficits.' And that she would not trust any one, whether son, daughter or servant, nor lend an ear to a single word of remonstrance. When she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... still stronger sentiment—the regard for chastity. Many an American officer whose brave wife accompanied him in a frontier war has been asked by her to promise that he would shoot her with his own revolver rather than let her fall into the clutches of licentious Indians. Though deliberate murder is punishable by death, no American jury has ever convicted a man for slaying the seducer of his wife, daughter, or sister. Modern law punishes rape with death, and its victim is held to have suffered a fate worse than death. The ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... it, if possible, and then only to regret that. I am this way about the most trifling things and about the most serious. I can't perform any duty well. In business and in social affairs, it is always with me. It has me in its clutches, a horrible monster dragging me down. My friends misinterpret me and wonder what I mean by doing so when all the time I want to do what is for the best and cannot for this tyrant who is ever present with me. I will ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... business. He's not so much of a rancher, but he has influence at Santa Fe and El Paso and Douglas. I made an enemy of him. I never did anything to him. He hates Gene Stewart, and upon one occasion I spoiled a little plot of his to get Gene in his clutches. The real reason for his animosity toward me is that he loves Florence, and Florence ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... fires, blue and red, and the saucer eyes and chattering teeth of legions of demons have uniformly interposed to frighten the delvers from their posts, and preserve the treasures from their greedy clutches. But notwithstanding the harrowing sensations connected with the name of Kidd, and his renown as a pirate, he was but one of the last and most inconsiderable of that mighty race of sea robbers who, during a long series of years ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the mouth and lower part of the face generally protruded like an alligator's, and gave him a truly diabolical appearance. I confess a thrill of horror passed through me, as I realised that two doubtless tenderly reared English girls were in the clutches of this monster. Once I thought I must have been dreaming, and that the memories of some old story-book I had read years ago were filling my mind with some fantastic delusion. For a moment I pictured to myself the feelings of their prosaic ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... fortune, but I want twelve hundred francs—I must have them at all costs. Say nothing about this to my father; perhaps he might make objections, and unless I have the money, I may be led to put an end to myself, and so escape the clutches of despair. I will tell you everything when I see you. I will not begin to try to describe my present situation; it would take volumes to put the whole story clearly and fully. I have not been gambling, my ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... he sneered, losing his temper; "we're in the clutches of a vulgar, skinflint Dutchman, and he'll wring us dry whether or not we curse him out. Didn't I tell you that Philip Selwyn had nothing to do with it? If he had, and I was wrong, our journey here might as well have been made to Neergard's ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... a dead Jew were tied down close to the palms of his hands, to preserve the deceased from the devil's clutches. While the body was being washed, an egg was put into a glass of wine, and the deceased's head anointed with the mixture. Those who were not reconciled to the departed, before his death, kissed his great toe and asked pardon, lest he should accuse them ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... enterprise, you became possessed of a broken leg, and were mean enough to abscond without paying the bill of your physician, Dr. Patton, whose unremitting attention saved you from your grave, and from the clutches of the Devil, sooner than the old fellow was prepared for your reception! If you had the honor of a first class thief, you would pay this medical bill out of the proceeds of the first public collection you take up, either in Missouri or Kentucky. And ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... dost thou vear that, friend Fanity? Shalt not need, man, chill keep him safe, che warrant thee. O, that chad him in my clutches, shouldst see, I trow, Whether chud keep him vast and safe, or no. I pray thee, good sweet Master Fanity, Speak one good word for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... liquid element a roach or gudgeon, which cannot escape her jaws, opens them wide to swallow the little fish; so did Mrs. Slipslop prepare to lay her violent amorous hands on the poor Joseph, when luckily her mistress's bell rung, and delivered the intended martyr from her clutches. She was obliged to leave him abruptly, and to defer the execution of her purpose till some other time. We shall therefore return to the Lady Booby, and give our reader some account of her behaviour, after she was left by Joseph in a temper of mind not greatly different ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... Captain Cuffe. 'Smees' is very much as an Italian would pronounce 'Smith,' as, you know, the French call it 'Smeet.' It will turn out that this Mr. Raoul has seized upon the first English name he fell in with, as a man overboard clutches at a spar adrift or a life-buoy; and that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the collar once more, and, escaping at last from the clutches of that enemy, laid it on the table and unlaced his boots. An attempt to remove his coat was promptly frustrated ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... newly taken from the nests, had been found on Deborah's dressing-table; but Deborah indignantly denied all knowledge of the means by which they had got there. There was a mystery about it to every one, for fresh clutches were seen there every morning, and the innocent Deborah made no attempt to conceal them. Where, then, could they come from but from some nests of the colony of seagulls which lived in the haughs that dropped down into the sea from Rhaby Hills? But no woman, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... poised, before she took her awful plunge, how the doomed souls stood on her decks and lifted their trembling voices in unison with the brave orchestra to the strain of "Nearer My God to Thee,"—something clutches at our heartstrings, and we find the divine reality trying to come to the surface to express itself in that universal friendship out of which heroes are made. When we stand by the bedside, watching the fitful, final breaths of a well-loved child, or of an old, honored and faithful mother, there ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... before," continued Stacy, with business precision, "although I and two other men are guardians of her property, and have saved it from the clutches of her husband. They told me she was handsome—and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... every spectator. On a rectangular stone pedestal lies the life-size bronze figure of Baudin, draped to the breast in a cloak, the left hand hanging in the relaxation of death, while the right convulsively clutches a symbolical table of laws, with the inscription "La Loi," through which passes a treacherous rent. Baudin's face is that of a middle-aged man, with commonplace features, smooth-shaven lips and chin, and the regulation whiskers. But this ordinary countenance becomes grand and heroic ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... laughter in the far corner of the room where he ran to when he had achieved his trick, and he was so helpless from the excess of his cachinnation, that the old lady cuffed him without his being able to defend himself. At last he contrived to get out of her clutches and jammed her against the wall with a table so tightly, that she roared "Murder!" The report of the pistol ringing through the house brought all its inmates to the spot; and there the cries of murder from the old lady led them to suppose some awful tragedy, instead of a comedy, was enacting inside; ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... mind to let the President out of his clutches so easily, and a long conversation followed, during which he forced his antagonist into the position of urging him to take the Treasury in order to prevent some undefined but portentous mischief in the Senate. All that could be agreed upon was that Ratcliffe should ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... in Heaven's name, won't you let me be your friend? You make a scoundrel of me, borrowing money from another man to get out of my clutches." ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... weapons of capture, which were rare in America; piercing devices for capture, in lances, barbed spears, harpoons and arrows; traps for enclosing, arresting and killing, such as pens, cages, pits, pen-falls, nets, hooks, nooses, clutches, adhesives, deadfalls, impalers, knife traps and poisons; animals consciously and unconsciously aiding in capture; fire in the form of torches, beacons, burning out and smoking out; poisons and asphyxiators; the accessories to hunting, including such changes in food, dress, shelter, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... diplomat; but as a friend, and, believe me, a disinterested friend, let me warn you that you are contending against irresistible forces. You can no more resuscitate your old Greenford than you can any other dead body. You have kept the church from my clutches, it is true, though for that matter I wouldn't have offered to buy it if I hadn't thought no one cared about it—but what do you mean to do with it now you have it? You cannot bring back the old Greenford families from their ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... instruction of the gaping multitudes, it was necessarily a pretty crude affair. Satan was introduced as the clown, and laughter was provoked at his discomfiture when routed, or at the destruction of those who wilfully cast themselves into his clutches. It is not strange that the pious and learned St. Augustine, in the fourth century, regretted the polished dramatic performances at Alexandria that in his youth had afforded him so much genuine enjoyment. Among the people the church play became so popular that ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... on the belt. Without ado, he took Jack on his shoulders and carried him towards his castle. Now, as they passed through a thicket, the rustling of the boughs awakened Jack, who was strangely surprised to find himself in the clutches of the giant. His terror was only begun, for, on entering the castle, he saw the ground strewed with human bones, and the giant told him his own would ere long be among them. After this the giant locked ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... poor animals in a vital spot. Then the butcher need not use his knife, for meat is precious, and even the sick horses that die, and whose bodies are ordered to be buried quickly, are not safe from the clutches of ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... you followed Mabel out of the pavilion—the night that man gave her the false message?" Jack thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and looked very serious—for him. "To tell the truth, Cora," he began, "I had to make love to Mabel to get her out of his clutches." ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... that girl of his?" asked Hewson, "the last one he's been living with? You remember she came in on the boat with us. Poor little kid! Blast that man anyway. He's not content with women of his own kind, he's got to get his clutches on the best of them. That was a good little girl before he got after her. If she was a friend of mine I'd put a bullet in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... ground in order to pull out the basket. His fingers had just clasped the handle when there came a sudden interruption—a rush, a growl, and some very sharp teeth had inserted themselves into the back of his ragged jacket. Poor Moses found himself, to his horror, in the clutches of a great mastiff. The creature held him tight, and laid one heavy paw on him to ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... Cancaline has stolen the Princess away. You must know that she is a cruel fairy who hates me, and as she is older than I am and has more power, I can do nothing against her. I know no way of rescuing Delicia from her clutches.' ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various

... our babes and our women!" said the old Marquis shuddering, "if they fall into the clutches of Santerre, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... play by slowly moving her tail. Gesner considered her tail as the indicator of her moods. The kittens, while they may not understand what this means, are greatly excited by the movement, their eyes sparkle, their ears stand erect, and slowly one after another clutches after the moving tail. Suddenly, one springs over the mother's back, another grabs at her feet, while a third playfully slaps her in the face with his tiny, soft, cushioned paw. She, patiently and mother-like, lovingly submits ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... looked upon as a shrewd lawyer; but yet he did not shine in court. He must therefore, to make those thirty thousand francs a year which he was credited with doing, have some special line of business. He assayed rather risky matters, which might bring both parties into the clutches of the criminal law, or, at any rate, leave them with a taint upon both their names. A sensational lawsuit is begun, and the public eagerly await the result; suddenly the whole thing collapses, for Catenac has acted as mediator. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... of the situation filled me with dismay. Lord Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new meaning. They were safe enough, I believed—but the sapphire! If he disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his clutches? That she had some plot of her own of which the bishop would eventually be the victim I did not doubt, or why had she not made her bargain with him long ago? But supposing she took fright, lost her head, allowed her son to wrest the jewel from her, or gave consent to its being ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... in the devil's clutches, was held fast there as with a charm, and had no power to go without the circle, till I was engulfed in labyrinths of trouble too great to get ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... and she wears low heels; she needs no pretence to make her foot look smaller; she runs so quickly that he has only just time to overtake this new Atalanta when he sees her so far ahead. Then he starts like an eagle dashing upon its prey; he pursues her, clutches her, grasps her at last quite out of breath, and gently placing his left arm about her, he lifts her like a feather, and pressing his sweet burden to his heart, he finishes the race, makes her touch the goal first, and then exclaiming, "Sophy ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... preserve unassailable personal cleanliness. No doubt L—— was disappointed to be deprived of a few possible heads upon which to demonstrate his quaint skill, but we succeeded in escaping from his clutches. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... goaded into granting him another wish. "Then," said the trembling tailor, "I wish thou wert riding back again to thy quarters on yonder dun horse, and never able to plague me again, or any other poor wretch whom thou has gotten into thy clutches!" ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... eggs. As the bird, usually a very shy one, flew off on my approach and remained close by while I was examining the nest, I have no doubt of its identity. Whether she would have laid more eggs I cannot say, but I fancy not; three seems to be the usual number judging from the two clutches taken. The other nest I found on the 8th of this month just completed. It was in much the same position as the last, viz. a bank by the roadside, and as it was near my bungalow I watched to see how the eggs were deposited. The bird laid one egg each day on the 11th, 12th and 13th, and ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... not come there to talk to ladies. He soon managed to escape from Mrs. Rice's clutches in order to have a serious talk with his old friend Payne, which resulted in the latter adroitly gathering the older and more dependable men together outside the building on the pretext of inspecting the future polo ground. In reality it was to afford Dermot an opportunity of disclosing ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... unprincipled upstart played the vampire with his tenants, and turned his estate into a scene of oppression and poverty. Nor was this all; he had been endeavoring to bring the property more and more into his own clutches, a point which he would ultimately have gained, had not the Colonel's late succession to so large a fortune enabled him to meet ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... and respected, than in the hands of two young students, bachelors and Spaniards, who, as I can myself bear witness, are but little disposed to lose occasions for amusing themselves. Now that you are unwell, they treat you with respect; but if you get well and remain in their clutches, Heaven alone will be able to help you; for truly, if my cold disdain and repulses had not been my safeguard, they would long since have torn my honour to rags. All is not gold that glitters. Men say one thing, but think another: happily, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Christians, but I think we are fiends! Mercifully I had friends at court—some old bell-ringers who had been in the Cathedral and who remembered the gardener's widow. I wanted everything, even money, to get this unhappy girl out of the devil's clutches." ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... that, Mrs. Precipitancy; but what would you have me do? I don't want to believe the girl a trickster." After a pause he said: "Kate, I never felt less of a man than I acknowledged myself to be as I turned away, leaving her in the clutches ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... head of these large corporations take but small note of the ethical distinction between honesty and dishonesty; they draw the line only this side of what may be called law-honesty, the kind of honesty necessary in order to avoid falling into the clutches of the law. Of course the only complete remedy for this condition must be found in an aroused public conscience, a higher sense of ethical conduct in the community at large, and especially among business men and in the great profession of the law, and in the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... the ball, but he did not look on one side—had he done so, he would have perceived Bracebridge springing along with his stick ready to strike. Strike he did too, and away flew the ball out of Blackall's very clutches. Blackall's rage now burst forth—twice he struck Ernest across the shins, and though the latter managed to break the force of the blows, he was much hurt. Then the bully lifted up his stick and struck Ernest on the arm more than once. He was about to repeat the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... are Herschel, who is giving the world a marvellous insight into the constitution of the universe; and Hutton, who for the first time gains a clear view of the architecture of our earth's crust; and Jenner, who is rescuing his fellow-men from the clutches of the most deadly of plagues; to say nothing of such titanic striplings as Young and Davy, who are just entering the scientific lists. With such a company about us we are surely justified in feeling that the glory of England as a scientific centre has not dimmed in ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... a good one that it was at once approved of, and immediately the goat ran halting before the hunter, and appeared to be so feeble and faint that her pursuer thought he had her safe in his clutches again, and so, laying down his sack, ran after the goat with all his might. That cunning creature suffered him now and again almost to come up to her, and then led him another wild-goose chase till at last she ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... which he won't feel in a year from now. The thief, the rascal, the scoundrel, as you call him so fluently, has escaped for now, perhaps, with his ill-gotten gains, but he is a hunted thing, living with a black terror of being found out—a terror which clutches him when he prays and when he dances. It's the thief I'm sorry for—I'm sorry for him—I'm sorry for him." Her voice was agitated and ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... being uneasy as long as they remained on the scene of his recent exciting experiences. Mr. Watson advised them all not to stray far from the hotel, as there was no certainty that Il Duca would not make another attempt to entrap them, or at least to be revenged for their escape from his clutches. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... his orders to proceed with the 49th to Canada. Europe was still in the clutches of war. Great opportunities awaited the soldier of fortune in the struggle waging in the Peninsula. The prospect for military advancement in Canada was not encouraging. America was at peace. Canada was but slowly developing. While her exports of lumber and fish attracted the attention ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... think that after Peter Rabbit's very, very, narrow escape from the clutches of Old Granny Fox that Jimmy Skunk, Unc' Billy Possum, Peter Rabbit, and Prickly Porky would have been satisfied with the pranks they already had played. No, Sir, they were not! You see, when danger is over, it is quickly forgotten. No sooner had Peter been made ...
— The Adventures of Prickly Porky • Thornton W. Burgess

... mean by great wrong? Would you have had her married to a wild fly-by-night, that accident made an earl and nature a deer-stealer? that has not wit enough to eat venison without picking a quarrel with monarchy? that flings away his own lands into the clutches of rascally friars, for the sake of hunting in other men's grounds, and feasting vagabonds that wear Lincoln green, and would have flung away mine into the bargain if he had had my daughter? What do you mean by ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... traitor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools which have been used in making it,—the cross to which his treason had doomed his friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away in the madness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... said he, "you were determined to leave Mrs. Hoggarty in Brough's clutches at the Rookery, and I was determined to have her away. I resolved to kill two of your mortal enemies with one stone as it were. It was quite clear to me that the Reverend Grimes Wapshot had an eye to your aunt's fortune; and that Mr. Brough had similar predatory intentions regarding her. Predatory ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray









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