|
|
|
More "Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his share of censure. But after the insurgent colonies had proclaimed their independence, is it just to blame King George, as he often has been blamed, for his steadfast and resolute resistance to that claim? Was it for him, unless after straining every nerve against it, to forfeit a portion of his birthright and a jewel of his crown? Was it for him, though the clearest case of necessity, to allow the rending asunder his empire—to array for all time to come ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... to the criminal courts in New York City who, in addition to their literary capacities, are natural-born sleuths, and combine with a knowledge of criminal law, almost as extensive as that of a regular prosecutor, a resourcefulness and nerve that often win the case for whichever side they espouse. I have frequently found that these men knew more about the cases which I was prosecuting than I did myself, and a tip from them has more than once turned defeat into victory. But newspaper men, for one reason ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... Nevil and Roy go again, after their brief, beautiful interlude together, Lilamani discovered how those fifteen months of ceaseless anxiety and ceaseless service had shaken her nerve. Gladness of giving could now scarce hold its own against dread of losing; till she felt as if her heart must break under the strain. It did not break, however. It endured—as the hearts of a million mothers and wives have endured in all ages—to breaking-point ... and beyond. The immensity ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and in the grasp of death is a scepter that controls the living present. I propose that we shall govern ourselves! I propose that we shall let the past go, and let the dead past bury the dead past. I believe the American people have brains enough, and nerve enough, and courage enough, to control and govern themselves, without any assistance from dust or ghosts. That is my doctrine, and I am going to do what I can while I live to increase that feeling of independence and manhood in the American people.—We can control ourselves. I believe ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... liver, nervous centers, and elsewhere in the fetus. The frequent presence of poisons in the fetal skin demonstrates its physiologic importance. It has probably not a very marked influence on its health. On the contrary, accumulation in the placenta and nerve centers explains the pathogenesis of abortion and the birth of dead fetuses ("mortinatatite") Copper and lead did not cause abortion, but mercury did so in two out of six cases. Arsenic is a powerful abortive agent ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... course, ended the matter. No one living or dead had ever been found with nerve enough to withstand Felicia Grayson when she had ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... firm strong hand the last secret of muscle and nerve and bone was laid bare and the white face looked into the eyes of the audience through ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... ingenious method of wheedling, he persuaded the doorman to acquaint the lady with the fact of his presence, and when she came into the room where he awaited her he banked on his nerve to induce her to grant ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... eighty-two proved to be Kentucky's year of blood. The British at Detroit had strained every nerve to drag into the war the entire Indian population of the northwest. They had finally succeeded in arousing even the most distant tribes—not to speak of the twelve thousand savages immediately tributary to Detroit. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Census for 1782, 11,402.] So lavish had been the expenditure ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... her own. Frau von Erkel was scandalized that a French girl (she systematically ignored the German infusion in her daughters) should wish for hours of solitude. But Aimee had the national genius for pegging away, and her mother, who came in time to feel that one nerve was being gnawed with maddening reiteration, finally succumbed; ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... would not admit the qualifying condition. "'Twill be no less as it is," he declared. "Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will have plenty of time to set himself in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... thing so near and yet not accomplished, Ranny's nerve went. He began to be afraid, childishly and ridiculously afraid, of something happening to prevent it. He had a clear and precise idea of that something. He would die before he could file his petition, before he could get his divorce and ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... examination, turned to Grace with a grave look. "The young woman has experienced a terrible shock of some sort," he said. "She is very weak, and her heart action is bad." He took some tablets from a bottle in his medicine case, and called for a glass of water. "Severe nerve-shock of this sort is a serious matter," he exclaimed. "Sometimes it is fatal, at others the mind may be permanently affected. The young lady must be kept absolutely quiet, of course. We will hope for the best. Give her a tablespoonful ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... send Mammy Borden away just yet,—not till darkness comes to aid our effort," said Mr. Vosburgh, decisively. "You can serve me greatly, Merwyn, and your country also, if you have the nerve. It will require great risks. I tell you so frankly. This is going to prove worse than open battle. O Marian, would to God ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... my hands. I must justify it. But it has to be finished so that the lawyers may have the result in time for the trial. Johnson said this morning that I should have to get the last figure out before the twentieth of the month. Good Lord! Well, have at it, and if human brain and nerve can stand the strain, I'll win out at the other side. It means office-work from ten to five, and then a second sitting from about eight to one in the morning. There's drama in an accountant's life. When I find myself in the still early hours, while all the world sleeps, hunting through ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... presentiment of what would happen: she felt the blind hostility of the audience, felt it growing: she read Christophe's thoughts, and she was sure he would not go through to the end without an explosion: she sat waiting for the explosion while agony grew in her: she stretched every nerve to try to prevent it; and when at last it came, it was so exactly what she had foreseen that she was overwhelmed by it, as by some fatal catastrophe against which there was nothing to be done. And as she gazed at Christophe, who was staring insolently at the howling audience, their eyes met. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... while straining every nerve to obey his master's wishes about the invasion, and to blind the English by the fictitious negotiations, was not so sanguine as his sovereign. In truth, there was something puerile in the eagerness which Philip manifested. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of his kind, he did not enjoy music. It gave him exquisite anguish, racking him nerve by nerve, and ripping apart every fibre of his being. It made him howl, long and wolf-life, as when the wolves bay the stars on frosty nights. He could not help howling. It was his one weakness in the ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... them, had stirred Arden's sensitive nature to the very depths. Hiding his feelings from all save his mother, and often from her; appearing to his neighbors stolid and sullen in the extreme, he was, in fact, in his whole being, like a morbidly-excited nerve. He did not shrink from the world because indifferent to it, but because it wounded him when he came in contact with it. He seemed so out of tune with society that it produced only jarring discord. His father's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... impossible. There are no nerves in the placenta to carry impulses from the mother to the child. Even the blood streams of the two beings are kept apart; and though it is unheard of that the blood should carry nerve impulses, if that happened to be the case, it could not prove effective here, for the blood of the mother does not enter the child. It is nourished by food which passes from the mother's blood, to be sure, but there is no more reason to expect this nutriment ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... very overwrought condition by this time, and Logotheti reflected that if his nerve did not improve he would make a bad impression on ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... yielding too freely to passionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent. The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, passing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and brain, either under the guidance of self-control, or surgically safeguarded ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... the adjoining ducal mansion with a distinctly uncomfortable dowager still in command who can't even arrange her dinner-parties and fails to marry her sons to the right people. Perpetually Hatchways is wiping the eye of Holmer, and this touches the nerve of the great lady. Her sons, Wickford, the authentic but hardly reigning duke, and Lord Iveagh Suir, the queer impressionable (on whom the author has spent much pains to excellent effect), both take their troubles to Ernestine. And a young French aviator (this is a pre-War story), guest at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... or three men detailed to go out "in front" at night, to lie on the ground and listen for any undue activity in the German lines. They also listen for the digging of mines. It is nervous work and when Tommy returns he generally writes for a bos of "Phosperine Tablets," a widely advertised nerve tonic. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... passed him and sat down beyond. There were but few people around; it was hardly possible that he thought his movements had not been perceived by the man he was following. "As a sleuth you're an amateur," thought Evan. "You don't care whether I'm on to you or not. But I must say you have your nerve with you. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... would doubtless not be at a loss in dealing with a burglar, yet who would on no account face the terrors of a longish railway journey in sole charge of her two-year-old child, whilst to 'take the baby at night' once in a way during the nurse's absence from home is a nerve-shattering experience which necessitates at least one day's complete ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... to advance, experiencing the while the nerve atrophy, the systolic emotion of communicants, who, when the bell rings, approach the altar-rails to receive ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. The sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. A sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. Meantime a messenger was despatched to Sycamore for Fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. To his anxious inquiries the doctor ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a tent or wigwam which keeps off rain and wind. The first disadvantage of this shelter is, that the vital air which you take into your lungs, and on the purity of which depends the purity of blood and brain and nerve, is vitiated. In the wigwam or tent you are constantly taking in poison, more or less active, with every inspiration. Napoleon had his army sleep without tents. He stated, that, from experience, he found it more healthy; and wonderful have been the instances of delicate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... great lateral or diagonal motion of the ship. The great waves, I observed, go in packs like wolves. Now one would pounce upon her, then another, then another, in quick succession, making the ship strain every nerve to shake them off. Then she would glide along quietly for some minutes, and my coat would register but a few degrees in its imaginary arc, when another band of the careering demons would cross our path and harass us ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... deranged by the swift even beat of the flying feet, and his own—slower from the longer stride, and the sound of his breath. And for some clear moments he knew that his only concern was, to sustain his speed regardless of pain and distress, to deny with every nerve he had her power to outstrip him or to widen the space between them, till the stars crept up to midnight. Then out again would come that crowd invisible, humming and hustling behind, dense and dark enough, he knew, to blot out the stars at ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making others ridiculous. But the bishop himself was not conscious of any absurdity or loss of dignity. It was only the inconvenience that he felt just then. For he was fresh from a painful interview with Dr. Galbraith, and every nerve was jarring in response to the horror that had come upon him. His heart was wrung, and his conscience did not acquit him. He did recognize now, however, that Angelica was in no fit state of mind to be left alone, and sitting down beside a little table on which stood his constant companion and friend ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Father's house." What magic power lies in that word! It will draw the wanderer from the ends of the earth; will nerve the sailor, soldier, and explorer with indomitable endurance; will bring a mist of tears to the eyes of the hardened criminal, and soften the heart of stone. One night in the trenches of the Crimea the bands played "Home, sweet Home," and a great sob ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... he would be gone for two hours at least, and as Stedman did not feel capable of receiving any more nerve-stirring messages, he cut off all connection with Octavia, by saying, "Good-by for two hours." and running away from the office. He sat down on a rock on the beach, and mopped ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling. It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality—a richer supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money, because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and being loved. She had adored ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more than they wanted. They had not only withdrawn to a good distance, but they did not even have nerve enough to launch a counter-attack. The American advance had been so well prepared ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... starry heavens, or in the law and order of the atoms hiding from the most powerful microscope. All things came by chance or by design. They say there is no design. We wonder that the hand that wrote the lie was not palsied. It would be, if the same Creator that filled every muscle, nerve, bone, and tissue of the sacrilegious hand, with numberless proofs of design, were not a ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... fingers into the creature's eyes. If it can be done the alligator is sure to lose his hold, but it demands quickness and great presence of mind. When a reptile is tearing at one's leg, and hurrying one along under water, you can see that the nerve required to keep perfectly cool, to feel for the creature's eyes, and to thrust your finger into them is very great. The best plan, Frank, distinctly is to keep out of their ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... a sinking, all-gone sensation excessively unpleasant to feel. Perhaps its wearer had a touch of fever! Then the stout tradesman on the other side of the Convent sneezed suddenly, and W. Keyse, with every nerve in his body jarring from the shock, knew that he was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... right. To get down that tongue of rock to the lower snows of the couloir was a job that fairly brought us to the end of our tether. I can feel yet the sour, bleak smell of wet rock and ice and the hard nerve pain that racked my forehead. The Kaffirs used to say that there were devils in the high berg, and this place was assuredly given over to the powers of the air who had no thought of human life. I seemed to be in the world which had endured from the eternity before ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... envelopes because a Robinson relative had given him the job, and he hadn't the nerve to refuse it. He couldn't well refuse it, because of Thomas. Uncompanioned by Thomas he would probably have chosen instead to sweep a crossing or play a barrel-organ, or stand at a street corner ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his chair. "I shall be there, friend Pancho," he said, with a preposterous gasp. "I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the afternoon Terry had been dimly conscious that the headache had returned, that his face was flushed and hot, but the fast pumping blood seemed to energize his faculties. Never had he felt so keyed-up, so sinewy of nerve. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... delirium is termed an hallucination of the disordered organ; and may probably arise from the origin of one nerve of sense being more liable to inflammation than the others; that is, an exuberance of the sensorial power of sensation may affect it; which is therefore thrown into action by slighter sensitive catenations, without being obedient to external ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... cruel nerve to tell that to a man dying of starvation?" demanded Sergeant Noll with heat. "Kelly, it takes me four seconds to get my overcoat off, and only two seconds to get off the ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... wintry sky flashed for a brief space into glowing red—then, while the water looked like blood and the clouds like flame—then a few words sped along the telegraph wires that stilled my impatience, roused my soul, and braced every nerve and muscle in my body to instant action. They were plain, clear, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... long time this went on, and then the warriors ceased suddenly to sing, although they continued their dance. A moment later a cry which thrilled every nerve came from a far point in the dark background. It was the scalp yell, the most terrible of all Indian cries, long, high-pitched, and quavering, having in it something of the barking howl of the wolf and the fiendish shriek of a murderous maniac. The warriors instantly ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... am," he protested, with passion. "I used to do things. But since—since I've met you I've lost my nerve. I'm crazy for you. You let the other men run after you. Some of them aren't fit to—to—Oh, I'm sick all the time! Now it's longing and then it's jealousy. Give ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... suitable, in his opinion, to this extensive country, could be established in no other way.... He trusted, moreover, that in the changes and chances of time we should be involved in some war, which might strengthen our union and nerve the executive. He was of all men the most indiscreet. He knew that a limited monarchy, even if established, could not preserve itself in this country.... He never failed, on every occasion, to advocate the excellence of, and avow his attachment to, monarchical government.... ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the letter and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he had shown in handling his crayon. The "resemblance" soon sank beneath the waves, as prophesied, but Little O'Grady continued to ride on the topmost crest with unabated enthusiasm. "Whee! hasn't he got the nerve! hasn't he got the stroke! Doesn't he just more than slather it on!" he cried. "Catch the shadows in that green velvet! R-r-rip!—and the high light on that tan jacket!" he proceeded in a smothered shout, as he nudged ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... in her realization of the situation. She longed for her husband, and wondered how she was going to bear his absence much longer. If this sort of thing were to go on she felt that it would break her nerve entirely. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... is there any man who, having made a fortune at Monte Carlo, will admit that he owes it entirely to chance? Will he not rather attribute it to his wonderful system, or if not to that, at any rate to his wonderful nerve, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... the walls rise sheer out of the rocks and the water. At certain tides, the sea dashes against them and breaks back upon itself in froth and foam and angry boom. Sight and sound are a wonderful nerve tonic. Countless rocks rise like small islands in every direction, stretching far out to sea. On a calm day it is all lovely beyond the power of words. The sky is blue and brilliant with sunshine. The sea receives the dazzling rays and returns them ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... pleasantly on them. Then one of the men, fixing his eyes on my father's face, bent forward and suddenly struck his hand violently on the hilt of his broadsword and, rattling the weapon, half drew it from its sheath. This nerve-trying experiment was a complete failure, its only effect being to make my father smile up at the man even more pleasantly than before, as if the little practical joke had ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and Us too sacred for any mention in a Court of criminal law! But serve the Church by involving the Socialist and Revolutionary party! Think of the magnificent results which will spring from this act,—and nerve yourself to tell a lie in order ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... explaining anything just then. For he had bowed his head in his hands and was sobbing in great, heart-wrung sobs with Doctor Bartholomew's arms about him, sobs that told of the nerve-strain which gave them birth, that told of the tenseness under which he had lived these last weeks. And now the thread had snapped, and all the broken, jangling nerves of the man had been loosed and ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the idea to be communicated should be powerfully apprehended by the speaker or writer; and next, that he should employ words and phrases which might convey it in all its truth to the mind of another. The man who entertains such conceptions, will not unfrequently want the steadiness of nerve which is required for their adequate transmission. Suitable words will not always wait upon his thoughts. Language is in reality a vast labyrinth, a scene like the Hercinian Forest of old, which, we are told, could not be traversed in less than sixty days. If we do not possess the clue, we ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... to travel, but her father could not get away. He consistently spent his days in overworking, and his evenings in wishing he hadn't overworked. He was attractive, fresh, pink-cheeked, white-mustached, and nerve-twitching with ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... through the long hours of the night Philippa lay wide awake, every nerve, every faculty of her mind tuned to the highest point of tension, going over and over the ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... mesmerised, finding at his first effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... times, but it was de fust time dat was de sho 'nough 'citin' one. I courted dat gal for a long, long time while I was too skeered to ax her Daddy for her. I went to see her evvy Sunday jus' 'termined to ax him for her 'fore I left, and I would stay late atter supper, but jus' couldn't git up nerve enough to do it. One Sunday I promised myself I would ax him if it kilt me, so I went over to his house early dat mornin' and told Lida, dat was my sweetheart's name—I says to her: 'I sho is gwine to ax him today.' Well, dinnertime ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... difficulty to keep his labourers at their work, and unless he is constantly on the watch valuable time is lost daily. In the harvest, however, he has an advantage. The corn is reaped by piece-work, and the labourers therefore strain every nerve to do as much as they can. But then he must be on the lookout to see that ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... but man alive, you oughtn't to lose your nerve about it. You aren't the only one ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... and practiced observation had at once noticed her delicate physique and peculiar temperament. "You are a poet, you see, and as a wise man once remarked: 'The poetic temperament is one of singular irritability of nerve.'" ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... the fighting had stopped. The Moros had fled to the grove, from which a loud, nerve-racking ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... smiles, laughing and dancing with every ripple, as unconsciously as if no form dear to human hearts had gone down beneath it. Oh! treacherous, deceiving beauty of outward things! beauty, wherein throbs not one answering nerve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... this speech for several days; but was now rather surprised that he had the nerve to utter it. But the old man trusted him. Was not Francis almost ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... in Matadi's hands. So frightfully were they reduced by suffering and despair, that when the poor little surviving mid—a mere lad of sixteen—was helped up the side to the schooner's low deck his nerve entirely gave way, and he fell upon the planks in a paroxysm of hysterical tears, and wild, incoherent ejaculations of gratitude to God for having delivered him from a living death; while as for ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... in the grasp of old Boreas, the inhabitants did little except cower in their lodges around their fires and eat and sleep. This sort of existence grew almost intolerable to the brothers. With every muscle and nerve yearning for action, they became impatient and sometimes fretful. When they spoke of themselves as prisoners it was ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... to charm, his early numbers flow, Though strong, yet sweet—— Though faithful, sweet; though strong, of simple kind. Hence, with each theme, he bids the bosom glow, While his warm lays an easy passage find, Pour'd through each inmost nerve, and lull the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... This cold civility warmed the petitioner's speech. Her mother would have been satisfied, Madeline Desperiers would have been overwhelmed with grief and horror, to have heard this young girl's testimony in regard to prison-life. The old man, as he listened, sighed unconsciously, —for not every nerve in him was strung to cruelty. To one of his restless career what image of life more dreadful could have been presented than was in this testimony? To be shut away from human society so many years, patient, resigned, receiving the few comforts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... herself burning to her hair. She glanced at him quickly, but he averted his eyes and called her attention to a magnificent oak whose limbs trailed on the ground. Should I tell him? she thought, every nerve quaking. Should I? Then she set her lips in scorn. He spoke of "literary" people, she continued. It will be many a day before I am that. Meanwhile, as Helena would say, what he ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... with jewels, they had spread abroad the veil of her golden hair; yet now, as they led her forth in the midst of the band of knights, her brother Eric holding fast her hand, each man felt like a murderer when he beheld her face, whereon was no tear, wherein was no writhing of muscle, twitching of nerve, wherein was no sorrow-mark of her own, but only the sorrow-mark which God sent her, and which she ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... Darwin, and more especially Haeckel, lays on the relationship of the larva of the ascidia to the lancelet fish. Now the important testimony of K. E. von Baer, in his "Memoires de l'Academie de St. Petersbourg," Ser. vii, Vol. 19, No. 2, tells us that the nerve-ganglion {84} of the ascidia lies on the side of the stomach, and on that account can not be homologous with the spine of the vertebrates, but that the cord in the larva of the ascidia is nothing more than a support for the tail in swimming, which ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... he was the stronger of the two, and after a hard struggle succeeded in binding my hands and tearing my dress from my back. Then he picked up a rawhide, and began to ply it freely over my shoulders. With steady hand and practised eye he would raise the instrument of torture, nerve himself for a blow, and with fearful force the rawhide descended upon the quivering flesh. It cut the skin, raised great welts, and the warm blood trickled down my back. Oh God! I can feel the torture now—the terrible, excruciating agony of those ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... was the woman who had talked through the window, and who had restored the emerald. But that was impossible, since Mrs. Bolton habitually took more liquor than was good for her, and would not have the nerve to deliver the jewel, much less commit the crime, the more especially as the victim was her own son. Of course she might have found out Sidney's scheme to run away with the jewels, and so would have claimed her share. But if she had been in Pierside on that evening—and ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... performance in that garage. Had he really intended to steal the car, he would not have had the nerve to take the chances he had taken. He shivered when he recalled how he had slid under the car when the owner came in. What if the man had seen him or heard him? He would be in jail now, instead of splashing ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... accomplish; the siege should be pressed at once, the city taken at any cost, the expedition to Kertch resumed. Once only, under torment of the Emperor's reproaches and the Minister at War's remonstrances, his resolution and his nerve gave way; eight days of failing judgment issued in the Karabelnaya defeat, the severest repulse which the two armies had sustained; but the paralysis passed away, he showed himself once more eager to act in concert ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... she called on the spirits who watch round the brave, In peril to nerve, to assist and to save, Closed calmly her eyes, as one sinking in sleep, And urged her proud ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... thing or appearance which is perceived by the eye alone, independently of the form of the thing; subjectively, a sensation peculiar to the organ of vision, and arising from the optic nerve. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... neither sensation nor consciousness. The nerves themselves are but complex chemical structures; their molecular constitution is said to embrace as many as 20,000 atoms, chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. There must be continuity of this structure too, for to sever a nerve is to paralyze all beyond. If all knowledge comes through experience, and all experience comes through the nervous system, the possibilities depend upon the mechanism each one is provided with for absorbing from his environment, what energies ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... of numbers he was still far inferior to the enemy; no computation swelling them higher than three thousand horse, two of them light cavalry, and nine thousand foot. The strength of his army lay in his Spanish infantry, on whose thorough discipline, steady nerve, and strong attachment to his person he felt he might confidently rely. In cavalry, and still more in artillery, he was far below the French, which, together with his great numerical inferiority, made it impossible for him ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Government for the injuries done its people was righteous and proper. It was open to it to bear them under adequate protest, sympathizing with the evident embarrassments of the old cradle of the race; or, on the other hand, to do as she was doing, strain every nerve to compel the cessation of outrage. The Administration preferred to persist in its military and naval economies, putting forth but one-half of its power, by measures of mere commercial restriction. These impoverished its own people, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... particular kind of courage. It means courage of the nerve; vital courage. That first syllable of it, if you look in Max Mueller, you will find really means 'nerve,' and from it come 'vis,' and 'vir,' and 'virgin' (through vireo), and the connected word 'virga'—'a rod;'—the green rod, or springing bough of a tree, being the type of perfect human strength, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sides of the road until lost to sight in the woods, a long, well-ordered line of men in blue. What did that mean? and where had they come from? I was walking by the side of Enoch Wallace, the orderly sergeant of my company. He was a man of nerve and courage, and by word and deed had done more that day to hold us green and untried boys in ranks and firmly to our duty than any other man in the company. But even he, in the face of this seemingly appalling state ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... were thus hurrying on in his country Kosciuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 to ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... the paper up in terror every night To see if V.B.G. is up, or P.D.Q. is down; It does not fill his anxious soul with nerve-destroying fright To hear the Wall Street rumors that are flying 'bout ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... By wealth or talent: each man finds his place." "A miracle! if 'twere not told by you, I scarce should credit it." "And yet 'tis true." "Ah, well, you double my desire to rise To special favour with a man so wise." "You've but to wish it: 'twill be your own fault, If, with your nerve, you win not by assault: He can be won: that puts him on his guard, And so the first approach is always hard." "No fear of me, sir: a judicious bribe Will work a wonder with the menial tribe: Say, I'm refused admittance for to-day; I'll watch my time; I'll meet him in the way, Escort him, dog him. ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... of this power and of rhythm generally is a profoundly interesting subject; and now that recent advances in science tend to show that sound, heat, light, and possibly electricity and even nerve force are but different rhythmic forms of energy, and that matter itself may possibly be resolved eventually into different rhythmic motions, it does look as if rhythm may yet be found to contain even the secret of life itself. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... to yon heath that is lonely and bare, For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm; And I hurl'd the mock-lance thro' the objectless air, And in open-eyed dream proved the strength ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... drown," the kid said, "and one of them got discouraged and lost his nerve and didn't try to swim any more and he ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... who have lain for weeks in a crowded military hospital, who have battled day by day with death, now flushed with fever, now racked with agonizing spasmodic action in every nerve, can conceive the effect of the quiet, the pure air, the bracing freshness of the country. The stillness which reigned around,—the peaceful landscape beneath my window,—the balmy fragrance of the flowers,—the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... his leaders was shown when, in January, 1863, he assigned "Fighting Joe" Hooker to the command of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker had believed in a military dictatorship, and it was an open secret that McClellan might have become such had he possessed the nerve. Lincoln, however, was not bothered by this prattle, as he did not think enough of it to relieve McClellan of his command. The ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... not the causes of a disease. It is the frame of mind of the sluggard in the Bible who says, "There is a lion in the way." Younger people are apt to be irritated by what seems a wilful creating of apprehensions. They ought rather to be patient and reassuring, and compassionate to the weakness of nerve for which ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not an infallible sign of great mental refinement to bespatter our fellow-creatures, while every nerve is writhing in honor of our pigs, our cats, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he only knew that the birds rose with a whirr, and that then, above his head, burst an awful roar, almost splitting his ear drums, shocking every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never felt before. Even then in the confusion and horror of the noise he turned to the man, ears ringing, eyes dilated. As for Larsen, he declared afterward, to others and to himself even, that he noticed no nervousness in the dog, that he was ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... her in any other way than by telling her he would desert her, her deeply wounded pride could not have held out, and she surely must have found refuge in his arms. But her humiliation had been so very deep, and her mood was now such that every nerve was quivering with indignation; so, subduing the pleading of her heart, she sprang away from the outstretched arms. As she faced him the angry color again stole into her cheeks, and she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice: "There are things, Harold, that a woman cannot forgive and ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... rich, glossy hair, and rounded chin. 'Yes, yes,' it seemed to murmur mournfully. She turned away, and drawing stealthily near stooped once more quite low, and examined the face on the pillow with lynx-like concentration. And though every nerve revolted at the thought, she was finally convinced, unwillingly, but assuredly, that her husband was here. Indeed, if it were not so, how could she for a single moment have accepted the possibility that he was a stranger? ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... her, and she turned her head to take a furtive glance. She did not look away again, but with a strange mixture of fascination and squeamishness, she watched as the bleeding was stanched with sponges, each artery tied, and each muscle drawn aside, until finally the nerve was reached and removed; and she could not but feel both wonder and admiration as she noted how Dr. Armstrong's hands, at other times seemingly so much in his way, now did their work so skilfully and rapidly. ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... and apt to swerve; Lazy of limb, but quick of nerve. At length the water-bed took a curve, The deep river swept its bankside bare; Waters streamed from the hill-reserve— Waters ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... sister and Sir Joseph, Miss Mallowcoid had already seized more than one opportunity of disparaging the nerve specialist of Ashbury, and on the evening of the two proposals just described, when the Incandescent Gerald had retired to bed, the three had an animated discussion about ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... who had held out in the fire for days and weeks, to whom in exposed positions food could hardly be brought, on whose bodies the clothes were not dry, who, yet reeking with dirt and dampness, had the nerve for new ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... thought I detected a look which led me to suppose that I had not yet acquired the correct pronunciation of the word. We dined off the herring of lowly origin, and consigned the other to the garbage pail. Nerve as well as skill, I can assure you, is required to divide one herring into thirty-six equal parts. There is no occasion for alarm. I have not the slightest intention of starving these infants. To-morrow I go on a foraging expedition to the Mission commissariat department (there must ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Mr. Alcando quietly. "If I'm to do this sort of work in the jungle, along our railroad, I'll need to have my nerve stiffened." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... nerve on the stretch I strained my eyes to gain a clearer impression. A passing cloud left the room for a few moments in darkness, but, as the beams shone out full and clear once more, that shadowy figure seemed to gather substance, and I felt as if some ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... minute an alternate yelp from my ferocious followers made me only too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were stretched to ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... necessary point, and at once I stepped on the ledge, and without giving myself time to think, turned my face to the wall and began to edge myself slowly along it; my heart in my mouth, my flesh creeping, as I gradually realized where I was; every nerve in my ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... were they ready? Were they as full of courage and determination as were those Germans now so close to them? They, the handful of poilus whom the French High Command had alone spared for the protection of their front lines, had they the nerve, the grit, for a hand-to-hand combat? Shouts came from many a man, loud cheers burst from the throat of many a bearded veteran, while one young officer sprang on the battered parapet of a trench, and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... little Harry, however, she had gradually become tranquillized and settled; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve, once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and healthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from maladies which made them unfit for military service. The accident of being asked to distribute presents enabled me to see and talk with hundreds of them. It was a sweet and exhilarating yet rather nerve-racking experience. These young fellows, who had looked on death in its most horrible aspects, having had it for their duty to kill as many Germans as possible, and then to eat and sleep as if nothing had occurred—had they been degraded, brutalized, lowered in the scale of human creatures ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... him; but he changed his course, and came straight toward the car. I guess they thought it was empty. And then the other one came flying out from behind the bushes, and made for Allison; so I just leaned out of the car and shot. I don't know how I ever had the nerve, for I was terribly frightened; but he would have got Allison in another minute, and Allison didn't see him coming. He had a big club in his hand. I saw it as he went across in front of the window, and I knew ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... horrible! Are they there to taunt me, to reproach me, to accuse me? I say I did not do it; I am not to blame. How could I know that—that—what was it? Let me think. 'His blood is upon your hands.' Whose hands? Not mine, I swear; I could not do it; I have not the nerve, the courage for it. 'His blood is upon your hands.' Who said that? It was not said to me. But stay—was I to blame—was it my fault? Ugh! what a terrible thing it was to see him standing there with the rope round his neck, to know that they were going to take ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the fatal moment had arrived, the tribune who was in command called upon him to uncover his neck and stand forth courageously to meet his fate—he replied by exhorting the officer himself to be resolute and firm. "See," said he, "if you can show as much nerve in striking the blow, as I can in meeting it." To cut down such a man, under such circumstances, was of course a very dreadful duty, even for a Roman soldier, and the executioner faltered greatly in the performance of it. The decapitation ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... and instruction. From all parts of the State came demands—some from friends, some from enemies—urging us to do this, blaming us for not doing that, and these utterances were echoed in various presses, and rechoed from the State legislature. Every nerve had to be strained to meet these demands. I remember well that when a committee of the Johns Hopkins trustees, just before the organization of that university, visited Cornell and looked over our work, one of them said to me: "We at least have this in our favor: we ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... a one. Heading for the sea-coast, with a haste several sheriff's posses might possibly have explained, and with more nerve than coin of the realm, he succeeded in shipping from a Puget Sound port, and managed to survive the contingent miseries of steerage sea-sickness and steerage grub. He was rather sallow and drawn, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... Russian princes, a man of astonishing nerve and agility, in one of these conflicts sprang into a Tartar boat, smiting, with his war club, upon the right hand and the left, and, leaping from boat to boat of the foe, warded off every blow, striking down multitudes, until he finally returned, in safety, to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of the bloody butchery at Wyoming had aroused his iron nerve to its utmost tension against tories, and in this condition he was ordered with his regiment to Robinson's Farms, N. J. Here he breaks up a "nest" of tories, who were supplying the English with hay, ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... while; she looked alive, alert: one in whom the blood coursed swiftly, the spirit burned vigorously; one who would love her pleasure, who could be wayward and provoking, but who could also be generous and loyal; she looked high-bred, one in whom there was race, as well as temperament and nerve. ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... steady nerve and a thoroughly convincing roar. They have fought their kind and the elements for centuries and centuries, and know no fear. This, then, was the animal we sought in order to secure food for our dog teams. I can conceive of no form of big game hunting so conducive to great mental excitement ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... its lilt, would suddenly make me start up, wide awake, with every nerve in my body ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the hind quarters, mentioned by Dr. Provost, accords perfectly with the action of this poison, as it acts on the nerve centers, especially the cerebro-spinal centers, and produces spasms of the limbs, then of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... you the license and the ring, I guess you wouldn't have done it. You hadn't the nerve to back out ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... system of treatment we ever seek to nurse and stimulate those nerve-masses which constitute the sources of vital action. Every drop of alcohol does so much to weaken and destroy these. A certain quantity, if taken by the strongest man, will kill that man as surely as a bullet ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... 'among all the men I know in the wild country I have lived and worked in, I know none more fearless or of more unhesitating nerve.' ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... got our nerve back after a fashion, and went on, but, thunder! not one of us was worth a hang. I did thirty-six and thirty-seven, eleven, and won third place at that. Neither Fosgill nor Tanner equaled his first records and the event went to Bull at the ridiculous ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... disliked both her daughters, and she appeared not to care very deeply for her sons, but of the three she had a decided preference for Winn. Winn had a wicked temper, an unshakable nerve, and had inherited the strength of Sir Peter's muscles and the sledge-hammer weight of Lady Staines's wit. He had been expelled from his private school for unparalleled insolence to the head master; a repetition of his summing up of that gentleman's life ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... one o'clock, Emma McChesney and her son Jock. Suddenly Jock stopped eating. His eyes were on the door. "There's that fathead now," he said, excitedly. "The nerve of ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... her breast for him, all which, in the moment of the most unreflecting intoxication, she had ever felt for her lord, with the addition of feelings and sentiments, the existence of which she had never believed, but now knew in all their force! Love for the first time penetrated through every nerve of her body, and possessed her whole mind. Taught a theory of virtue by her husband, she was startled at wishes which militated against his honor, but no principles being grounded in her mind, they soon disappeared ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... however, fail to impart what must have been that effect of his personal presence which so drew all hearts to him in his day. The knight saw a man of middle age, of elastic, well-knit figure, and a flexibility and grace of motion which seemed to make every nerve, even to his finger-ends, vital with the expression of his soul. The close-shaven crown and the plain white Dominican robe gave a severe and statuesque simplicity to the lines of his figure. His head and face, like those of most of the men of genius whom modern Italy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Here is where you get a first-class, A No. 1, bath!" was the cry, and then the victim was sent flat on his back on the wooden slide. He let up a shriek of agony, and another shriek as he commenced to slide down. Then he lost his nerve completely, and uttered yell after yell, only ending when he struck the sawdust with such force that he turned a complete somersault and got some sawdust in ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... perfectly well, but something in my soul was broken. It was worn out. The thin spring had snapped. I could never fight again. Any loud noise made me shake all over. I knew that I could never face a battle—impossible! I should certainly lose my nerve and run away. It is a damned feeling, that broken something inside of one. ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... asked, quickly, while every nerve tingled with the mortification of being found out then and there in the one secret of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... verse will yield a higher percentage of pleasure than prose! You will reply: "We believe you, but that doesn't help us." Therefore I shall not argue. I shall venture to prescribe a curative treatment (doctors do not argue); and I beg you to follow it exactly, keeping your nerve and your calm. Loss of self-control might lead to panic, and panic ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... already said that I did not like Rogers for several good reasons. But he was a man of tremendous nerve, energy, and resource. Though his great strength had been wasted by starvation, so that he could hardly walk, he still remained the leader, ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... good deal of nerve for the pioneers of Fresno County to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in bringing water upon what the old settlers regarded as a desert, fit only to grow wheat in a very wet season. In other parts of the State the Mission Fathers had dug ditches and built aqueducts, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... velocity; and, then, at a moment when it was of the greatest importance to know precisely where the ship was, we were left to the painful uncertainty of conjecture, and theories that might be very wide of the truth. The captain had nerve enough, notwithstanding, to keep on the larboard tack until daylight, in the hope of getting in sight of the mountains of Terra del Fuego. No one, now, expected we should be able to fetch through the Straits; but it would be a great relief to obtain a sight of the land, as it would ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... cool,' I said to myself, knowing I should require all my nerve. In a few minutes I was in the midst of the hunt, to my great perplexity, and, passing most of the riders, Rawdon galloped on to the front. It had been a fortunate thing for me that the bit of moor we were ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... tiger hunt, he got me into an argument like this. A brute of a beast jumped into the middle of it. Courtlandt shot him on the second bound, and turned to me with—'Well, as I was saying!' I don't know to this day whether it was nerve or what you Americans ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... to hear," continued the little philosopher. "Ere yet Cheops built the Pyramids, or Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, yea, before the first sensation tingled in the first nerve made out of the dust, the beginnings were laid of these events of this day and hour, and, in particular, of that one which may well astonish you and grieve you—viz., that the locket is intended for and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... difficulty seemed to have been similar to that experienced by the calling ladies. He could observe no opening that promised anything but an ungracious plunge or an awkward stumble, and the ladies had been wrong in suspecting that his authority as a cleric would nerve him ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... thing she dreaded, the faint smile which barely touched at the corners of his mouth; and in his eyes a swirl of yellow light, half guessed at, half real. All her strength poured out of her. She felt her knees buckle, felt the fingers about the light revolver butt relax, felt every nerve grow slack. She was helpless, and it was not fear of the man, but of something which stalked behind him, inhuman, irresistible; not the wolf-dog, but something more than Satan, and Bart, and Whistling Dan, something of which they were ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... as though the crew of the Catamaran were now contending against fate, and without hope. This, however, was not the case; for there was still something like a hope to cheer them on, and nerve them to continue their exertions. What ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... arose a great semaphoric telegraph with its gaunt arms tossed up against the horizon. It has been replaced by an observatory, connected with an electric nerve to the heart of the great commercial city. From this point the incoming ships are signalled, and again checked off at the City Exchange. And while we are here looking for the expected steamer, let ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... not daring to land, and expecting each moment to hear the exulting yell or crack of a rifle that should announce his discovery, Donald was thus obliged to paddle doggedly forward within a hundred yards of the shore. His suspense was well-nigh unbearable. Every nerve was strung to its utmost tension. In each new indentation of the coast he expected to see the waiting fleet of canoes, and with each fearful backward glance he wondered at not finding them ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... excited. Claude still kept up his successful pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching. She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... seemed to vibrate when he grew anxious about her. The bond between him and his brother was equally strong, but in feeling different. Between him and Alister it was a cable; between him and his mother a harpstring; in the one case it was a muscle, in the other a nerve. The one retained, the other drew him. Given to roaming as he was, again and again he returned, from pure love-longing, to what he always felt as the PROTECTION of his mother. It was protection indeed he often had sought—protection from his ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and will at the last moment. The message was sent, the announcement of her death would be published in the morning, was already in print. Just that knowledge would serve as the final compulsion to do what she wished to do. She wrote lest her courage and nerve should at the last moment fail her, as to my knowledge they had ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... I didn't see them," Raskolnikov answered slowly, as though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly as possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. "No, I didn't see them, and I don't think I noticed a flat like that open.... But on the fourth storey" ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... She said: "While crossing Lake Michigan there was a terrible storm on, and as my husband was descending from the upper berth, the boat lurched and he struck me with his elbow." Phyllis said the judge smiled very broadly and gave her her decree on "Extreme Nerve," ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... slept but badly and that his wound troubled him much. It was well for Thekla that she was not obliged to take part in the conversation, for she would have found it impossible to speak quietly and indifferently, for every nerve was tingling with joy at Malcolm's last words. The prospect had seemed so hopeless that her spirits had sunk to the lowest ebb. Her mother had done her best to cheer her, but the count, weakened by pain and illness, had all along taken the most gloomy view. He had told himself ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... insufficient. But the Ladies made still greater sacrifices; the Sisters of Charity limited themselves to one meal a day, and Vincent, who had already reduced himself to the direst poverty, strained every nerve to help. ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... would have excited immediate and strong anxiety for its final result; while the friends of a republican government, who were still far more numerous than those of the other party, would have strained every nerve to procure a determination in their own favour; and the pretorian guards, the surest protection of Augustus, finding their situation rendered precarious by such an unexpected occurrence, would have readily listened to the secret propositions and intrigues of the republicans ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... head; his long arms dangled, pendulum-like, by his sides, while his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... I had not perceived—that you two young Englishmen, tenderfeet both of you, had realised what you were doing, had seriously faced the responsibility of resurrecting the dead. The letter to the cashier, the twenty-dollar bill I found in my coat- pocket—these were as scorpions. But I hadn't the nerve to own up. So I carried the money to the bank and ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... just lighted the big lamp in the hall—electricity had not yet found its way into the old house—and the warm cheerfulness of the homely scene went far to rehabilitating Simon's convalescent nerve. Ghosts did not fit into this atmosphere. Bates did—Bates was almost as satisfying as a cabbage. Of course, Ocky would promptly do her best to spoil it—! He could have dispensed willingly with the examination to which ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the well-modulated tones of culture. He watched him now as the fascinated toad watches the snake that is about to devour it. He saw the graceful limbs and symmetrical body motionless as a marble statue as the creature crouched in the concealment of the leafy foliage. Not a muscle, not a nerve moved. He saw the deer coming slowly along the trail, down wind and unsuspecting. He saw a buck pass—an old buck—and then a young and plump one came opposite the giant in ambush, and Schneider's eyes went wide and a scream of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... instantly, and was astonished, and laughed." In the Colophonian oracle, they were the spectators, not the prophetess, who had need thus to be put under the influence of the mesmeric glamour. Can it be that, in certain diseased states of the optic nerve, it really is subject to the illusion of seeing objects rise in air, as well as go round in horizontal motion? They who saw these sights in the adyta of temples, in caves and sacred groves, in initiations and oracular consultations, were all prepared by fasting, watching, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... as he placed some caviare on his toast. "You must not overlook the fact, which I have already stated to you, that she is a most difficult problem. You will have an interesting time taming her. For a man of nerve, I cannot imagine a more thrilling task. She is a woman who has restricted all her emotion for men, and could lavish it all upon the man, I imagine. In any case that is 'up to you,' as our ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... keep firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry and the pikes of the phalanx now pressed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius' nerve failed him, and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more favorably for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... I have the nerve to do it. From Europe I went to India, and there I risked my life for six years more ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... impossible further to analyse the series of little shocks his presence always communicated to my being; but there was that about him which made me instantly on the qui vive in his presence, every nerve alert, every sense strained and on the watch. I do not mean that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centres of my system to be ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of the nerve which conveys impressions of sound from the ear to the brain can be greatly increased by exercise and training, when the organ is in a condition of health. It can be so highly developed that the ear will ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so; and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to have him in a perfect trap—Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... was but one side of the man. On the other was the sweet-tempered, sympathetic comrade, always willing to help, never knowing how to refuse, generous with every nerve and fiber of his being. Think of a young musician, father of a family, who at the time of his death held positions as Associate of the Royal College of Music, Professor in Trinity College and Crystal Palace, Conductor of the Handel Choral Society ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... become the heir of incorporeal and divine things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16 "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that, drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that it is not your strength which is likely to give out, but your nerve," Katherine answered with a laugh; then went on in a graver tone: "I don't scold you when you play monkey tricks, as you did yesterday, but it is hard work not to despise you when I see you trying to escape the consequences of what you have done by sneaking off to bed, pretending ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... freshest freshman that ever entered Winthrop. What do you suppose he had the nerve to ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... a contemplative rather than a creative temperament, a fumbler and seeker, nevertheless Paul Cezanne has formed a school, has left a considerable body of work. His optic nerve was abnormal, he saw his planes leap or sink on his canvas; he often complained, but his patience and sincerity were undoubted. Like his friend Zola his genius—if genius there is in either man—was largely a matter of protracted labour, and has ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... finer organs of the mind; So the glad impulse of congenial powers, Or of sweet sound, or fair proportion'd form, The grace of motion, or the bloom of light, Thrills through Imagination's tender frame, From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive 120 They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul At length discloses every tuneful spring, To that harmonious movement from without Responsive. Then the inexpressive strain Diffuses its enchantment: Fancy dreams Of sacred fountains ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... at the mercy of the East in this matter, the former has the advantage. The East, rather than allow the present tendency of the commercial current to set well in toward the Gulf, and wear a channel for itself, should strain every nerve to keep it steadily moving toward its own maritime cities. The great cities of the Atlantic seaboard can better afford to construct a water-line over the mountains at their own cost than to run the risk of the Mississippi River becoming the commercial avenue for its vast valley and drainage, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the starry heavens, or in the law and order of the atoms hiding from the most powerful microscope. All things came by chance or by design. They say there is no design. We wonder that the hand that wrote the lie was not palsied. It would be, if the same Creator that filled every muscle, nerve, bone, and tissue of the sacrilegious hand, with numberless proofs of design, were not a long-suffering ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov—and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest. If I had lost my nerve!... Had I? Was it only ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... comparable. It had been the theory of many superficially-judging persons, he knew, that he was wasting that life in a surrender to sensations, but he had tasted of no pleasure so fine as his actual tension, had been introduced to no sport that demanded at once the patience and the nerve of this stalking of a creature more subtle, yet at bay perhaps more formidable, than any beast of the forest. The terms, the comparisons, the very practices of the chase positively came again into play; there were even moments when passages ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... girl's life has she a greater right to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling than during the period known among girls as "making up her mind." If she is the right kind of a girl, honest and delicate minded, it is nerve-racking to be talked about, and sacrilege to be talked to. Then the bloom is on the grape, which a rude touch ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... fiercely lowers— Smile when the victory is ours— Frown on the wretch who basely cowers— Mourn o'er each fallen hero's grave! Lend thus your favors whilst we smite! Full soon we'll crush this vandal host!— With woman's charms To nerve their arms, Oh! when have men ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... plenty of animals to be found with more brilliant abilities and livelier imagination than the Snail, but for gravity of demeanour and calmness of nerve who is his equal? And if a sound judgment be not behind such outward signs, there is no faith ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... lady trembled, but you could have applied all sorts of surgical devices for measuring nerve reaction to Mr. Middleton from the crown of his head to where his parallel feet held between them the copper bottle, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... in that distressing forenoon Captain Kendrick saw Miss Berry's nerve shaken. She clasped ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... that suits us in the south of England, but I can't face English winters after my long residence in this sunny land, and you must make up your mind to humour a restless old Anglo-Indian for the next few years to come. Perhaps by that time I may have regained my old strength and nerve, which have sadly failed of late. I will wire from Brindisi as ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... for silencing her forever, and for "removing" such a feeble old obstacle as this. Hilda knew means by which this could be effected. She knew the way by which the deed could be done, and she had nerve enough to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... a cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to run, stumbled, ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... reckoning, was not a very young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her features ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... organs whether food is agreeable to the palate or not, since they will digest it, if it is digestible at all. But it is not so indifferent after all, for the nerves of the tongue are connected with other nerves and with nerve-centres, so that the pleasure of the palate, or some pleasure, at any rate, even if it is only imagination, which can only originate in the central organ—the brain—often has an active effect on other organs. This ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... coming from the music-hall next door were mingled with the funeral march of the Eroica. People kept coming in and taking their seats, and turning their glasses on the audience. As soon as the last person had arrived, they began to go out again. Christophe strained every nerve to try and follow the thread of the symphony through the babel; and he did manage to wrest some pleasure from it—(for the orchestra was skilful, and Christophe had been deprived of symphony music for a long time)—and then ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... dream of touching Monk Lawrence! I bet even Gertrude Marvell hasn't nerve enough for that. Look ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a tall girl in tortoise ear-rings and curl-papers. Phoebe was assigned to "learn" me in the trade of "finishing." Somewhat to my surprise, she assumed the task joyfully, and helped me off with my coat and hat. From the loud-mouthed tirades as to "Annie Kinzer's nerve," it became evident that the assignment of the job of "learner" is one to cause heartburning jealousies, and that Phoebe, either because of some special adaptability or through favoritism, got the lion's ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... twilit hour exactly accorded with our mood, and it did not need the scent of the Vicar's ten-week stocks, wafted across the garden, to touch a nerve of memory. For it was twenty years since we had last sat in this place and talked, and the summer night seemed to be laden with tranquil thoughts, with friendship and old regard. . . . Twenty years ago I had been an undergraduate, and had made one of a reading-party under the Senior Tutor, who ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that went to my heart and sent a shudder through every nerve, for the darkness seemed so thick ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... of its range. They are one of the most pugnacious and courageous of birds attacking and driving away any feathered creature to which they take a dislike, regardless of size. Before and during the nesting season, their sharp, nerve-racking clatter is kept up all day long, and with redoubled vigor when anyone approaches their nesting site. They nest in any kind of a tree, in fields or open woods, and at any height from the ground, being found on fence rails within two feet of the ground or in the tops of pines ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... not only strained every nerve to turn out aviators and to produce airplanes, but the development of improved types of planes has not been overlooked, and we now have abroad several fine types of seaplane as well as airplane. The seaplane is merely an airplane with pontoons, It starts from the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... head of a bureau under Baudoyer," went on des Lupeaulx. "Have the nerve to do this; make yourself a true politician; put ideas and generous impulses aside; attend only to your functions; don't say a word to your new director; don't help him with a suggestion; and do nothing yourself without ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... darting from her husband, with whom she had been quarrelling on the way, pushed on, and, in a frozen marsh, amongst bulrushes, on a bitterly cold night, was delivered of a child. Grumous as she was, she picked herself up, and, with incredible nerve, walked ten miles to the Pas, carrying her live infant with her, wrapped in a rabbit-skin robe.] It was not in February, but in Meeksuo pesim, "The month when the eagles return"; not in August, but in Oghpaho pesim, "The month when birds begin to fly." When called upon they could ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... pressed tightly in my own, seemed to send an electric communication to every nerve in my body and eased my suffering and stilled my pain. That, I know, is not love; and perhaps I was mistaken when I ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... daring, had completely lost his nerve, and his teeth were chattering in his head. His father, on the other hand, was emotionless and ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cracking over his head, and burning rubbish is dropping around, and threatening to overwhelm him—it is in such circumstances, when the public know nothing of what is going on, and when no eye sees him save that of the solitary comrade who shares his toil and danger, that the fireman's nerve and endurance are tested to ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Afterwards he complimented himself on his remarkable self-control, and laughed as he likened his present alarm to that of a boy passing a graveyard at night. Nevertheless, he was now filled with an acute, very real sense of anxiety and apprehension; every nerve ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... during the use of them a necessity; just enough danger to a sensitive hide to make the game thoroughly English, for no game which puts a strain upon the player's strength and agility only, and none on his nerve, endurance, and temper, should take rank with the best of our ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... there is anything that can make one look worse than a first-class bilious attack I have never met it. One can walk round and do things when one is suffering all sorts of pain, or when one is trembling in every nerve, or when one is dying of consumption, but I defy anyone to be useful when one has an ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... in any other way than by telling her he would desert her, her deeply wounded pride could not have held out, and she surely must have found refuge in his arms. But her humiliation had been so very deep, and her mood was now such that every nerve was quivering with indignation; so, subduing the pleading of her heart, she sprang away from the outstretched arms. As she faced him the angry color again stole into her cheeks, and she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice: "There are things, Harold, that a woman cannot forgive and retain her self-respect. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... oxyhemaglobia to all the tissues of the body; and by the same affinity it retards all atomic or molecular changes in the muscular, secretory and nervous structures; and in the same ratio it diminishes the elimination of carbon-dioxide, phosphates, heat and nerve force. In other words, its presence diminishes all the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Major was destined to lead his Battery afield for many a long day with unshaken nerve. He was removed, and nursed and petted into convalescence, while the Battery discussed the wisdom of capturing Simmons, and blowing him from a gun. They idolised their Major, and his reappearance on parade brought about a scene nowhere provided ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... metal than ours, and they had many more of them. It was so dark that we had to get our fighting-lanterns hung up along the decks. Just fancy us then stripped to the waist, with handkerchiefs bound round our heads, and straining every nerve as we ran in and out, and cleaned and loaded our heavy guns, and blazed away as fast as we could. We were covered, too, with smoke and powder, and before long most of us were sprinkled pretty thickly with our own or our shipmates' blood. Such was the sight you would have seen ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... something chemical about such an analysis as this of Rosamond: "Every nerve and muscle was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique. She even acted her own character, and so well that she did not know it to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... read this plain, unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... strictness of discipline which would be necessary to render them effective, and from their habits of subordination already formed, this would be a task of less difficulty. Though morally most timid, they are by no means wanting in physical strength of nerve. They are excitable by praise; and directed by those in whom they have confidence, would rush fearlessly and unquestioning upon any sort of danger. With white officers and accompanied by a strong white cavalry, there are no troops in the world from whom ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Nantes. This attempt, however, failed; and it is generally admitted that they erred in not marching on Paris after their first successes. After gaining a sure base of operations, they should have strained every nerve in order to strike at the heart. And if distance and lack of supplies and equipment shortened their reach, they might at least have carried the war into the rich central provinces, on which ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... him to the battle— I would arm him for the fight; I would give him to his country, For his country's wrong and right! I would nerve his hand with blessing From the "God of battles" won— With His helmet and His armor, I would cover ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the idea had entered her mind, that she would lack the power to step boldly up on to the parapet and go over at once, as the bathers do when they tumble headlong into the stream that has no dangers for them. She had known that she must crouch, and pause, and think of it, and look at it, and nerve herself with the memory of her wrongs. Then, at some moment in which her heart was wrung to the utmost, she would gradually slacken her hold, and the dark, black, silent river should take her. She climbed up into ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... this mother of keenest expectation and highest hope would not be satisfied with what this charming but undeveloped girl of middle class parentage would bring him? Or was there, deep down in his own undeveloped nature, a secret nerve alive to ambitions yet unnamed, to hopes not yet formulated, which warned him to think well before he spoke the irrevocable word linking a chain which, though twined with roses, was nevertheless a chain which nothing on earth should have ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... a Doubting Thomas, could trace no visit of nerve specialist, nor yet of the family practitioner, to the official residence in Downing Street, and therefore he drew conclusions. In his own "Who's Who" T. X. noted the hobbies of his victims which, by the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... Morelos and of Yturbide, first emperor of Mexico, sits 6200 feet above the sea and claims 37,000 inhabitants. It is warm and brown with dust. Architecturally it is Mexican, with flat roofs and none of the overhanging eaves of Patzcuaro and Uruapan. From the "centro"—the nerve-center of the "torpid State," with two well-kept plazas, the plateresque cathedral of a pinkish stone worn faint and spotted with time, and the "seat of the powers of the State," all on the summit of a knoll—the entire town slopes gently down and quickly fades away ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... impulse was but a new baptism of the old Puritan spirit. Transcendentalism appealed to the private consciousness as the sole standard of truth and right. With kindred movements it served to quicken the ethical sense of a nation that was fast becoming materialistic and to nerve it for the conflict that sooner or ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... scatter downward through the night My maledictions dark and deep. I have more martyrs in your walls Than God has; and they cannot sleep; They are my bondsmen and my thralls; Their wretched lives are full of pain, Wild agonies of nerve and brain; And every heart-beat, every breath, Is a convulsion worse than death! Sleep, sleep, O city! though within The circuit of your walls there be No habitation free from sin, And all its nameless misery; The aching heart, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... America's projects, which might, hereafter, clash with the Aguinaldo party's aspirations. At the same time a group of agitators, financed by the priests in and out of the Islands, was straining every nerve to disseminate false reports and create discord between the rebels and the Americans, in the hope of frustrating their coalition. But, even then, with a hostile host before Manila, and the city inevitably doomed to fall, the fate of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Neville Court, and had the nerve in both ears cut for the toothache, and received relief ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... lady was no longer showy, and Saterlee, out of the tail of an admiring eye, began to see real beauties about her that had hitherto eluded him. Whatever other good qualities and virtues she may have tossed overboard during a stormy and unhappy life, she had still her nerve with her. So Saterlee ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... red-headed young man, glanced around in mild surprise. "They've got a nerve, calling you across town every two days!" he observed. "Whose problem are you supposed ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his alter ego in fact, It says much for the nerve of the Sultana that she dared so greatly on ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... and syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first, emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by my father from some surgical experiments ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased. The cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted window of a book-shop, trying to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal. My lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with scarcely the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that nothing had yet reached the father's ears. Indeed, when he recalled the awful countenance of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he says,[171] "is the direct action of the excited nervous system on the body, independently of the will, and independently, in large part, of habit. Experience shows that nerve-force is generated and set free whenever the cerebro-spinal system is excited. The direction which this nerve-force follows is necessarily determined by the lines of connection between the nerve-cells, with each other and with various parts of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... and my ambition. If thou wilt be kind, no softer loveliness shall be desired by me. George Robinson has never been untrue to his vows, nor shalt thou, O my chosen one, find him so now. For thee will I labour, straining every nerve to satisfy thy wishes. Woman shall henceforward be to me a doll for the adornment of whose back it will be my business to sell costly ornaments. In no other light will I regard the loveliness of her form. O sweet Commerce, teach me thy lessons! Let me ever buy in the cheapest market ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... heart must have leapt to his throat when he saw the little one in his way. But if it did it in no way affected his nerve. He knew that to turn the steering wheel but an inch meant certain destruction to the careening car and a broken neck for himself perhaps. Yet he braved this hideous fate and ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... assumption, in relation to the two last branches, both that the kingdom's preservation stands in necessity of these men's help, and that their help tends not to the undoing of a greater good, seeing there is no reason given to confirm these two points, wherein the nerve of the business lies. We refer to a reason of our denial of them given p. 22.(382) (2) It is true that the obligation to such a duty lies upon all, but that obligation is to be brought into act and exercise in an orderly ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... must bow. But look here; let's do the flowers. I was going to say, the will to be interested in him has died, and what else matters? I look on that disastrous episode (over which you were so kind) as the killing of a nerve in Helen. It's dead, and she'll never be troubled with it again. The only things that matter are the things that interest one. Bowing, even calling and leaving cards, even a dinner-party—we can do all those things to the Wilcoxes, if they find it agreeable; but ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... to me had only had the pressure upon them of the water escaping from the first. And now a good bold swim, and I could have been in the big pit-like opening between the two pairs of gates; but the spirit was gone, the nerve was absent and still clinging to the shelly piece of timber, I closed my eyes, for I felt that near as rescue seemed, I could do nothing to aid it. As for Hodson, in this time of dread, I had forgotten him—forgotten all but the ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... short cry, but loud, penetrating, terrible in its brevity, a cry that went through nerve and bone. One single inarticulate cry that agony and hatred had ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... sitting up, the first time for a week, and even to-day she is scarcely fit to do so; but she remembers that the month is coming round, and her rent will soon be due; and in her feebleness she will stretch every nerve to meet ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and bred. Miss Amelia, bringing in the tea-tray, was an unclassed being, neither maid nor mistress, but outranking either. She had tied on a white apron. She bore the silver tray with an ease which bespoke either nerve or muscle ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... observes, "We find in the mammalia nearly absolute identity of anatomical structure, bone for bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve—similar organs performing like functions. It is not by a vertical position on his feet, the os sublime of Ovid, which he shares with the penguin, nor by his mental faculties, which, though more developed, are fundamentally the same as those of animals, nor by his powers of perception, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... load, And near the ship came thundering on the flood. It almost brush'd the helm, and fell before: The whole sea shook, and refluent beat the shore, The strong concussion on the heaving tide Roll'd back the vessel to the island's side: Again I shoved her off: our fate to fly, Each nerve we stretch, and every oar we ply. Just 'scaped impending death, when now again We twice as far had furrow'd back the main, Once more I raise my voice; my friends, afraid, With mild entreaties my design dissuade: 'What boots the godless giant to provoke, Whose arm may ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... she had yielded up the rich treasures of her young heart. In both cases the great drawback to happiness was the absence of self-discipline, self-denial and self-conquest. They could overcome difficulties, brave danger, set the world at defiance, if need be, for each other, and not a coward nerve give way; but when pride and passion came between them, each was a child in weakness and blind self-will. Unfortunately, persistence of character was strong in both. They were of such stuff as martyrs were made of in the fiery ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... every side, and knowing that the South intend the destruction of this Union—were I to stand before the congregated world, I would declare it—I will hew slavery from crest to hip, from hip to heel, and cut my way through white, black, and yellow—nerve, muscles, bone—tribes and races, to the Gulf of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora were not formally engaged, but their betrothal was understood by all of us as a thing of course. He did not allude to the stranger; but as day followed day, he saw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually—so gradually that she scarcely noticed it—our cousin left Flora more and more with the soft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His treatment of her was so full of tact, he still walked and talked with her so familiarly that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... only. To live for thee shall satisfy both my heart and my ambition. If thou wilt be kind, no softer loveliness shall be desired by me. George Robinson has never been untrue to his vows, nor shalt thou, O my chosen one, find him so now. For thee will I labour, straining every nerve to satisfy thy wishes. Woman shall henceforward be to me a doll for the adornment of whose back it will be my business to sell costly ornaments. In no other light will I regard the loveliness of her form. O sweet Commerce, teach me thy lessons! Let me ever buy in the cheapest market and ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of will and nerve he forced his left hand across the gyrating key-bank to the Bergenholm switch. He snapped it, and in the instant of its closing a vast, calm peace descended, blanket-like. For, fortunately, the Berg still worked; the flitter and all her contents and appurtenances were inertialess. Nothing ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... talk of nerves and muscles, sense-organs, reflex arcs, stimulation, and muscular response, and we feel that somehow these things do not reach the core of the matter, and that they never can; that spirit is not nerve or muscle; and that intelligent conduct, to say nothing of conscious thought, can never be reduced to reflex arcs and the like—just as a printing press is not merely wheels and rollers, and still less is it chunks of iron. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... face. Eight o'clock, and they have been in saddle almost incessantly since yesterday afternoon, weighed down with the tidings of the fell disaster that has robbed them of their comrades, and straining every nerve to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... I doubt if that would reassure Cayley. The brown suit hid a secret, and therefore the brown suit had to be hidden. We all know that in theory the safest hiding-place is the most obvious, but in practice very few people have the nerve to risk it." ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... to carry out some sweeping act of confiscation, and this naturally added to the excitement. For the first time in Irish history a genuinely contested election took place. Both parties strained every nerve, both felt their future interests to depend upon the struggle. When at last all the members were collected it was found that the Government had a majority, though a narrow one, of twenty-four. Barely, however, had Parliament assembled, before a violent quarrel broke out ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... was severe; but it was insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain, and here am I. How queer!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... lot since you rescued us, and what we've just heard has given me the nerve to say it. Steve, of course, wouldn't dare suggest such a thing until we're safely back on Earth, so I will." Her deep brown eyes held his steadily. "All those girls got married—why, some of them have babies ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... I suspected that he had been drinking to nerve himself to what he regarded as a disagreeable but unavoidable duty. I calmed him as well as I could, and he ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... with the triumphant jeers of the excited councillors, but my friend's teeth were tightly clenched and his face blanched to the lips. Again and again cries of agony escaped him as the red-hot iron touched him, although he exerted every nerve to maintain a dogged silence. From his back, shoulders, and chest the brutal negro ruthlessly tore pieces, holding them up to the assembled court in triumph, while the air was filled with the nauseating odour of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... me. 'That was a wonderful shot!' he exclaimed. 'I could never have believed a woman could show such nerve and coolness.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... frantic women, set out for Versailles on the morning of the 5th of October, under the leadership of the ruffian Maillard who had distinguished himself at the capture of the Bastille. They overran the palace. The king again showed superb nerve; and the mob, abashed and admiring, calling "Long live the king!" withdrew to the courtyards. The unfortunate brawl in the courtyard followed; and the mishap of the night. The next day the Royal Family had to make their humiliating journey ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... you would be in no bad company. I have a sneaking fondness for the fellow myself, and it has been my ill-fortune never to meet him. By all accounts he is a gallant scoundrel, with a nerve of iron, whereas Crosby—Oh, no, whoever Galloping Hermit may be, he ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... (since the ear also has an apparatus by which various external differences in rapidity of vibrations are distributed into different parts of the organ). But this discriminated manifold is a manifold of pitches, not of positions. How does it happen that the manifold conveyed by the optic nerve appears in consciousness as spatial, and that the relation between its elements is seen ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... says, "appetencies; give him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and animal productions which we now ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... mad, and she was curious, and she was amazed, and she was disarmed; for the very nerve of his bringing me to her staggered her so that she could hardly believe she'd seen ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... He longed for human companionship. A peon, despite the danger otherwise, would have been welcome. The whole land took on fantastic aspects. It was not normal and healthy like the regions from which he came north of the Rio Grande. Every nerve quivered. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was evidently a fierce one. Oldershaw's blood, in spite of his principles, was quickly up, and he evidently thought very little about me or anything else, except getting on deck as fast as he could, and joining in the fray. Our crew strained every nerve to get alongside. As we pulled by, the shouts and cries increased. The whole deck seemed one blaze of fire from the rapid discharge of pistols and muskets, while every now and then fearful shrieks burst from the bosoms of those ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... one schoolmaster—strong on facing facts and callous to camouflage, and one temperamental cheese man. (It turned out afterward, however, that the janitor could make the best cheese of them all.) Developing a cheese business is a good deal like conducting a love affair—it blows hot and cold in a nerve-racking way. It is "the Public." You never can tell about the Public! Sometimes it wants small packages for a small sum, or large packages for more, but mostly, what it frankly wants is a large package for a small sum! ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... uncertainty; it seemed to be now at Donchery, now at Bazeilles; which, it was impossible to decide, there was such a ringing, buzzing sensation in her head. At last the feeling of suspense became so acute that she felt she could not endure it longer; she must know; every nerve in her body was quivering with the ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders and left the house in quest ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. So they wrestled there together In the glory of the sunset, And the more they strove and struggled, Stronger still grew Hiawatha; Till the darkness fell around them, And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hast seen me in that hour, When every nerve of life was new, When pleasures fann'd youth's infant flower, And Hope her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... of acting as well as writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of his character, and to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... injected intravenously in cats have no effect on respiration or blood pressure; hemolytic doses produce a sudden drop in pressure owing to liberation of potassium from the erythrocytes. The saponin increases the activity of the isolated frog heart, then stops it in systole. In frog nerve muscle preparations of this saponin reversibly interrupt stimulus ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... trembled and shivered a moment before they now became rigid and lifeless. The throttling grip of the poison at the base of his brain drew his head back until his muzzle was pointed straight up to the sky. Still he made no cry. For a space every nerve in his body was at ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... * * * * * * But that a father durst dishonour the bed of his firstborn, Folk all swear, and the house hapless with incest bewray; Or that his impious mind was blunt with fiery passion 25 Or that his impotent son sprang from incapable seed. And to be sought was one with nerve more nervous endowed, Who could better avail zone of the virgin ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... long talk, and Ostrello seemed to be angry about something. Then this Styles seemed to threaten Ostrello and the young man seemed to lose all his nerve and wilt. I never saw a fellow change so. 'You can't do it!' I heard him say and Styles answered: 'I can and I will, if you try to interfere with my business.' Then they talked in a low tone and Styles went off in a buggy, saying he was going ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... lustful animal appetite is too powerful; it demands the sordid pleasures which the possession of gold makes possible. Nor will it be satisfied with anything else. A tramp gold-seeker is irreclaimable. His joy lies in his quest and the dreams of fortune which are all too rarely fulfilled Every nerve centre is drugged with his lust, and, like all decadents, he must fulfil the destiny which his own original weakness ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... had even the most elementary experience of driving, but Raymonde, as the elder, and the one who in general possessed the greater amount of nerve, boldly seized the reins and armed herself with the whip. Geordie released Dandy's head, and gave him a sounding smack as a delicate hint to depart, a proceeding which brought clouds of dust from his shaggy coat, and caused ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... hallway of the strange house and paused to look about him, his only emotion a keen interest that kept every nerve alert. The hallway round which he looked displayed no original features: it was a lofty, rather narrow space, the walls of which—painted to resemble marble—were defaced by time, by the passing of many skirts and the rubbing of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... deeply flushed, her eyes so bright that they looked dark as night; but Kitty, equally excited, her heart beating, every nerve highly strung, only showed her excitement by a dewy look in the great big grey eyes, and a wild-rose bloom on the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... of doing; nor indeed do we know how to adjust the action of the different parts, and to manage the repairs so as to get the best possible work out of it. Some overstrain it, others take needless trouble about the repairs. As yet the capacities of human muscle and nerve have never been adequately tested. We are carrying the experiments in this matter farther than they have ever gone before. We cannot know the full strength of a cord till it is broken; but we grow cautious when we see that the fibres are ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... boy? Is 't mine? and have they netted my young fledgeling? Now heaven support me, if they have! He'll own me, And share his father's ruin! But a look Would put him on his guard—yet how to give it! Now heart, thy nerve; forget thou 'rt flesh, be rock. They come, they come! That step—that step—that little step, so light Upon the ground, how heavy does it fall Upon my heart! I feel my child! (Enter Sarnem with Albert, whose eyes are riveted on Tell's bow, which Sarnem carries.) ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... moment of conception it is a minute, undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, just a single fertilized cell; at the moment of birth it consists of millions and millions of cells, which have become differentiated into numerous harmoniously working organs, and different tissues, such as brain and nerve tissue, muscular tissue, connective tissue, bone, cartilage, etc., etc. A truly wonderful process. And in the meantime this child, which is biologically a parasite (though it is not a nice name to call it by) draws its sustenance from the mother's blood, and the mother ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... music was bad enough in all conscience, whatsoever it might become when sung by youth or beauty. As it fell from the lips of Senora Moreno the air was a succession of vocal nasal disharmonies, high-pitched, strident, nerve-wracking. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... thirty of whom were Mormons, and only eight Mormons took part in the fight. I was an entire stranger to all who were engaged in the affray, except Stewart, but I had seen the sign, and, like Samson when loaning against the pillar, I felt the power of God nerve my arm for the fray. It helps a man a great deal in a fight to know that God ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... possibility of such work from any hand of man, and if not, where has the spirit that made it vanished, and what hope may men share of its return? Not one, if the day's work must mean labor in its most exhausting form; for many women, fourteen to sixteen hours at the sewing machine, the nerve-force supplied by rank tea, and the bit of bread eaten with it, the exhausted bodies falling at last on whatever may do duty for bed, with no hope that the rising sun will bring release from trial or any ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... gave him a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those days with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was the persistence of the quality called courage. Amongst a thousand nerve-destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would want to read ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... death involved, searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... were beautiful in their light of strength and happy content. She was no longer a struggling girl, battling with all circumstances, and fighting her way into work, but a woman, restful, yet not resting, in perfect success; for every nerve was still alert to further progress, and every wish and ambition had been sacrificed to one great desire, which would next year be satisfied; she was going to Europe. Masters and travel awaited her eager heart, and her own hand had carved the way. Her studio in New York was filled ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Alston was almost stunned. He had strained every nerve, yet here he was behind the children-pickers, behind the gray old women stiff with rheumatism and broken with childbearing and with doing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... year his yoke had been thrown off, his petty princes expelled, and Tirhakah reinstated as sole monarch over the "Two Regions."[14169] It was the determination of Asshur-bani-pal, on becoming king, to strain every nerve and devote his utmost energy to the re-conquest of the ancient kingdom, so lightly won and so lightly lost by his father. Baal's perfidy was thus forgiven or overlooked. A great expedition was prepared. The ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... no move to leave his seat, the steely fingers on his wrist ran up his forearm and pressed down hard upon a nerve-center. The pain was almost unbearable, and for the moment his arm was paralyzed. A quick jerk brought him to the ground. As he alighted, stumblingly, Maku caught him by the other arm. He was held in such a way that for the moment it seemed futile to struggle. Arima, meantime, spoke ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... said Peter; and the tone touched John, though he detested slang. "And what's croquet, after all, to a fellow that's used to exercise? I suppose I shall be all right again hunting, when I've got my nerve back a bit. At present it's rotten. A fellow feels so beastly helpless and one-sided. However, that'll wear off, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... once during the whole time. Sir Joseph Westmoreland, the great London nerve specialist, who advised ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... held the lance ready poised as we drew nearer and nearer, and I was ready with set teeth and every nerve tingling to deliver the thrust, when whish! splash! the brute gave its tail a tremendous lash, and darted away, swimming along with its back fin ploughing the water, and apparently as strong ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the door when they gave out nerve, either!" declared Tommy. "Here these boys come here and steal our grub and you seem to think they did a noble thing! ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... resolute and daring, had completely lost his nerve, and his teeth were chattering in his head. His father, on the other hand, was emotionless and impassive ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flinched as he saw it coming. His eyes were fixed upon the descending fist, his every nerve centered on the task of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... deck, his eyes peering about on all sides, trying to pierce the veil, every nerve taut, every sense alert. The girl crept close beside him, so that she touched him, and there she remained, while all the terrors of the ghostly ship arose to confront her. The weed-hung, slimy rails and wave-bitten deck stretched away in ever-fading perspective to the foremast where everything ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... soldier, with a wisp of something white in his hand, actually clambered out of the firing-trench and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Lucia had been thrilled and delighted to know that Olga so much wanted to come in after dinner and see the tableaux, so he found it quite easy to induce Lucia to nerve herself up to an ordeal so passionately desired. Indeed he himself was hardly less excited at the thought ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... still let me gaze upon thee, Let me strain ev'ry nerve with ravishment, And all my life be center'd in my vision. To see thee thus, to hear thy angel voice, It is, indeed, a luxury of pleasure!— Speak, speak again, for oh! 'tis heav'n to hear thee! Celestial sweetness dwells ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... while doing so. 'Here I sit,' he said, 'like a great ogre, eating up people's little hopes.' Then he showed me his waste-paper basket, and added—'But what am I to do? Look here!' I confess I never saw, except on pavement in coloured chalks, such nerve-twisting horrors as the paper sketches people sent." It is obvious from this that the writer never watched the pictures entering the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... soul. And I further make oath, O despisers of the offerings of my higher self, that I shall meet your every fresh wound with face the more uplifted because thereof, and to better meet all that you have to hand out to me, I shall keep company with the Spirit that makes nerve food of disasters ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... which each man studies the others. Suspicion is always the first impulse at such meetings. Their attitudes are exactly that of strange dogs which encounter each other for the first time, and walk round and round, with the hair on their backs raised, and with their tails straight out, every nerve on a tension, and every impulse ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... over sideways, glaring at me with his one strange eye. It was just about as close a shot as was William Tell's at the apple. But I knew that reputation for nerve depended on it, so I fired. As the duck rose ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... halting and the marching taken up afresh. Towards dawn everything grew silent. At first it would be broken occasionally by the hurried trot of cavalry or the shuffling footsteps of a straggler. Then it grew into the absolute silence of death. It was nerve-racking and terrible. One could almost hear the breathing of the listening people in all the other houses. I do not know how time went or what was the hour. I could endure the suspense no longer. They might kill me, but ... Ah well, at my age after nearly three years ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... last that she might be going too far, and she made an effort to pull up. But it was of no avail; Victor had got the bit firmly between his teeth, and nothing could hold him. Luckily, the girl did not lose her nerve, but waited until she could tire him out, and get him in hand again; and I verily believe she would have succeeded in mastering him, and turning him safely on his homeward course, had not the way been unexpectedly ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... effort at flapjack making proved an elegant success, since not one of the mess was left. But if the truth were told it would be found that the cook himself accounted for something like three-fourths of the number. And then he had the nerve to declare that he had made only one mistake, which was in limiting the amount of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... energy—probably that which is the main-spring of the universe. Modern science is more and more inclined to find the explanation of all vital phenomena in electrical stress and change. We know that an electric current will bring about chemical changes otherwise impracticable. Nerve force, if not a form of electricity, is probably inseparable from it. Chemical changes equivalent to the combustion of fuel and the corresponding amount of available energy released have not yet been ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... a correlation between nervous energy and physical energy is, however, pretty definitely proved by experiments along different lines. The first step in this direction was to find that a nervous stimulus can be measured at least indirectly. When the nerve is stimulated there passes from one end to the other an impulse, and the rapidity with which it travels can be accurately measured. When such an impulse reaches the brain it may give rise to a conscious sensation, and ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... Europe and sell it and so fill the treasury with honest gold!—not with this delusion of wealth, these sheafs of Promises to Pay the Government is issuing. Five million bales of cotton idle in the South! With every nerve strained, with daring commensurate to the prize, we could get them out—even now! To-morrow it will be too late. The blockade will be complete, and we shall rest as isolated as the other side of the moon. Well! Few countries or men are wise till ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... innumerable bad results. People who eat bread made from fine white flour naturally crave the food elements which have been eliminated from the wheat, and are thus led to an excessive consumption of meat, and the nerve-starvation and consequent irritability thus induced may also lead to the use of alcoholic drinks. We believe that one of the strongest barriers women could erect against the inroads of intemperance would be to supply the tables of the land ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... against odds and far within the enemy's country. He flew more than any of us, never missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his gasolene was giving out. His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime. The day he was wounded he attacked four machines. Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman's plane. One bullet cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a master pilot, escaped ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to nerve one for the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... you got to keep your nerve! Look here, Mount Hope ain't going to talk of anything but the McBride murder; you are going to hear it from morning to night, and that's one of the reasons you got to keep sober. You've done your best so far to queer yourself, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... occasion Cicely had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat. Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... dis or un to reverse the meaning: as, please, displease; qualify, disqualify; organize, disorganize; fasten, unfasten; muzzle, unmuzzle; nerve, unnerve. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered, ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had inspired that girl and for a ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... passing them from hand to hand. Of what tragedies were they not the cause! In August 1851, Antonio Sciesa, of Milan, was shot for having one such leaflet on his person. The gendarmes led him past his own house, hoping that the sight of it would weaken his nerve, and make him accept the clemency which was eagerly proffered if he would reveal the names of others engaged in the patriotic propaganda. 'Tiremm innanz!' ('come along') he said, in his rough Milanese dialect, and marched incorruptible to death. On ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman. And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in the day's trade. Other women wore such things, and perforce must buy them in a public manner. She had steeled her nerve to the ordeal, and now she flushed with a fine new confidence, for the clerk merely said, "Certainly, madam"—in the later shops of Newbern they briefly called you madam—and with a kind of weary, professional politeness fell to the work of equipping her. A joyous relief succeeded ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... resting for two nights on the right side, and for two nights on the left. It was deemed essential that the place to which a man resorted for this purpose should be unfrequented, where few or no persons had walked; and it must also be a place that tried the nerve, where there was some danger. Such situations were mountain peaks; or narrow ledges on cut cliffs, where a careless movement might cause a man to fall to his death on the rocks below; or islands in lakes, which could only be reached by means of a raft, and where ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... however, as conviviality developed among his reverend friends many defects, opinions, and failings, which he never suspected them to possess, so did he begin to gather courage and facility of expression. By degrees he proceeded modestly from the mild and timid effort at wit to the steadier nerve of moderate confidence—another step brought him to the indifference of a man who can bear an unsuccessful attempt at pleasantry, without being discomposed; the third and last stage advanced him to downright assurance, which having reached, he stopped at nothing. From this forward he began ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... basis of mind and its history. In the earliest stages of human embryology no nervous system whatsoever is present, and it is unreasonable to suppose that there is anything going on which corresponds to human thought. A little later a cellular tube is established as a primitive nerve axis, which at first is nearly uniform throughout its entire length and displays no differentiation into brain and spinal cord. Before long an enlargement of the anterior end expands and develops into a primitive three-parted brain. It is not yet a real brain, however, and it is entirely ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... as he was, he was somewhat innocent. He did not know that New York hotels are formidable only when your money gives out. To get past all these brass-buttoned lackeys and to go on as though he really had business within took no small quantity of nerve. However, he slipped by the outpost without any challenge and boldly approached the desk. A quick glance at the register told him that they had indeed put up at this hotel. He could not explain why he felt so happy over his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... necessary to render them effective, and from their habits of subordination already formed, this would be a task of less difficulty. Though morally most timid, they are by no means wanting in physical strength of nerve. They are excitable by praise; and directed by those in whom they have confidence, would rush fearlessly and unquestioning upon any sort of danger. With white officers and accompanied by a strong white cavalry, there are no troops in the world ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... on year after year, but her advance towards her expected goal was very slow. She would occasionally nerve herself to speak a few words of admonition in a small meeting, make a short prayer, or quote a text of scripture, but her services were limited to these efforts. She often feared that she was restrained by her desire that ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "Is it Hannah? why she always says she hasn't a nerve in her whole body. She's sometimes almost cross with me ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... is not given to all emigre's to become great capitalists or great leaders. Some who have the opportunity have not the ability, and the majority would not, for all the rewards that greatness offers, choose careers that entail long years of nerve-wracking, unflagging labor. But on a minor scale the same process of making over takes place. One case ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... continuing to do so. Still, Beatrice was vindictively determined upon one point. Let Keith Cameron cross her path, and she would do something she had never done before; she would deliberately lead him on to propose—if the fellow had nerve enough to do so, which, she told ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... whose great Citie Geryons Sons 410 Call El Dorado: but to nobler sights Michael from Adams eyes the Filme remov'd Which that false Fruit that promis'd clearer sight Had bred; then purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue The visual Nerve, for he had much to see; And from the Well of Life three drops instill'd. So deep the power of these Ingredients pierc'd, Eevn to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam now enforc't to close his eyes, Sunk down and all his Spirits became ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it ever, As o'er the ark of old; And here, O may we never In our great strife wax cold. Nerve every arm and spirit For each successful blow, Till Temperance shall inherit All ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... very pleasant chap," he remarked; "also he has a most astonishing nerve. He actually tried to bribe me for a copy of the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... I peered through them—and nerve and muscle were locked in the grip of a paralyzing awe. I felt then as one would feel set close to warring regiments of stars, made witness to the death-throes of a universe, or swept through space and held above the whirling coils of Andromeda's nebula to watch its birth ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... keep itself on a level in this particular with any two of its rivals in sea power. While it has not quite succeeded in this, the United States and Germany pushing it closely, it is well in the lead as compared with any single Power, and to keep this lead it is straining every nerve and fiber of its ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... and rejoined his comrades at the canoe. They pushed out into the river, but held the boat in the current by an occasional paddle-stroke, and waited listening. Back at the foot of the tree the captive strained every nerve and muscle in one mighty effort to break the cords that bound him; but it was useless, and he lay back with set teeth and rigid muscles, while his eyes sought in vain through their thick covering to see the approach of his foes. Presently a fierce outburst of howls ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... energy; and he now for some time encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry, and the pikes of the phalanx now gleamed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius's nerve failed him; and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... son, with such a sweet and brave honesty of simplicity he eyed me, and for the sake of Mary Cavendish, who might find his love for her precious, and I wished with all my heart that I might fling him to the floor where he stood; every nerve and muscle in me tingled with the restraint of the desire, for such an enhancement of a woman's beauty as was Mary Cavendish's that night, will do away with the best instincts of men, whether ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater rate than twenty to twenty-five ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... Vandeloup felt every nerve in his body tingling. Here was a chance to make money. If he only had a few hundreds he could buy up all the Magpie shares he could get and reap the benefit of the rise. Five hundred pounds! If he could obtain that sum he could buy two thousand five hundred shares, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... reach of his arrow, and so good and true was his aim, that it hit the animal hi the throat a little above the chest; the stag now turned again, but Wolfe was behind, and pressed him forward, and again the noble animal strained every nerve for the shore. Louis now shot his arrow, but it swerved from the mark, he was too eager, it glanced harmlessly along the water; but the cool, unimpassioned hand of Hector sent another arrow between the eyes ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid coursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... and material; of all goodness, human or Divine; the center of all thought, from brutal instinct to Deific wisdom; of all creations, from starry systems to man, and from man back again to invisible gas; of all action, from the imperceptible vibrations of nerve energy to the awful destruction of worlds. All creative potency lies within a Sun sphere. Light is life. The planets are but the offspring of light and life. So in this symbol, we read the source of the human Ego, of our own life. We are, as it were, the planets of the ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... West, the beautiful West, She shall look, and not in vain - For out of its broad and boundless store Come muscle, and nerve, and brain. Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - For out of the West ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... where men give and take hard blows. I ask you not upon the ship's deck at all, my friend, nor shall I require your company one step farther than the roof of the great sugar warehouse of Bomanceaux et fils. Still, it will require steady nerve to do even what little I require, and, if you doubt your courage, say so now, and I will seek among the slaves for stouter ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... tempted to kill and rob you. Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim's vengeance would some day overtake me. Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I beheld your spirit, and from that time fell ill. But how you managed to escape, and are still alive, is more than I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... traveller. After wandering many days over dry, and stony, and desert places, where the lip thirsted for the stream, is it not delicious to sit at the brink of a wild, impetuous torrent, to gaze on its white foam and breaking waves, till you can almost feel their gush in every nerve and fibre, and can bathe your very soul in them. And while you slowly smoke your pipe of purest tobacco, the sands of the desert, and their burning sun, rise again before you, when you prayed for even the shadow of a cloud on your way. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Arden's sensitive nature to the very depths. Hiding his feelings from all save his mother, and often from her; appearing to his neighbors stolid and sullen in the extreme, he was, in fact, in his whole being, like a morbidly-excited nerve. He did not shrink from the world because indifferent to it, but because it wounded him when he came in contact with it. He seemed so out of tune with society that it produced only jarring discord. His father's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... had kept his nerve through several years of racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive, wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition possible in the world of finance and commerce ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pause. "Does he want to ADOPT you?" Then more quickly and sadly, though also a little as if lacking nerve to push the research: "We couldn't give ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... outfit. From what I knew about Miss Dobson, I deduced that she would be a great success. That was all. Had I had the instinct that was given to those Emperors in stone, and even to the dog Corker, I should have begged Clio to send in my stead some man of stronger nerve. She had charged me to be calmly vigilant, scrupulously fair. I could have been neither, had I from the outset foreseen all. Only because the immediate future was broken to me by degrees, first as a set of possibilities, then as ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... exception to it. The periodical movements which characterize and influence woman's structure for more than half her terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the occasional pregnancies which test her material resources, and cradle the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power, not hinderances, to her. They are not infrequently spoken of by women themselves with half-smothered ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... interest of who could say what wretched frivolity, what preposterous policy; amid which she had been condemned so ignorantly, so pitifully to sit, to walk, to grope, to flounder, from the very dawn of her consciousness. Didn't poor Mr. Pitman just touch the sensitive nerve of it when, taking her in with his facetious, cautious eyes, he spoke to her, right out, of the old, old story, the everlasting ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... this rather good, remembering, as I did, that previous to our arrival, and before we knew how extensive was the bed, the skipper had been straining every nerve to reach the island before his rival, with the avowed intention of sweeping the shoal clean if he could before the arrival of the Kingfisher. I said nothing, however, but, seizing the bucket containing the pearls which I had gathered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... exhilarating stunt, that is. Before you know where you are, you've got to put two hundred and fifty-six pounds on an even chance to get one back. With a limit of four hundred and eighty staring you in the face, that takes a shade more nerve than I can produce. I did try it once—at Madeira. Luck was with me. After three hours I'd made four shillings and lost half a stone.... Incidentally, when a man starts playing Roulette on a system, it's time to pray for his soul. I admit there are hundreds who do it—hundreds of intelligent, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... is undoubtedly right," he said, looking down at Stevens. "But I am quite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade has a tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slim may run up against a ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... for the fallen house of Bourbon? There is no nerve in France that will respond to such an appeal. That house has no place in the affections of the people. It was forced upon them, at the point of the bayonet, in 1814. It has been tried a second time: found to be incurably despotic, and every indication attests that the revolution ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... beyond the rest. It fixed special forms—he the French sonnet. It felt the lives of all things running through it as a young man feels them in the spring woods—he gathered in the cup of his verse, and retains for us, the nerve of all that life which is still exultant in the forest beyond his river. His breeding, his high name, his leisured poverty, his passionate friendship, his looking forward always to a new thing, a creation—all this, was the Renaissance ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... history was reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; his deed is the final reaction against ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... frighten Sir Louis. The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more; who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there by any mode of escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage, no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup of coffee and brandy, in which the two ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it appear that I said you sang comic ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... dissolute manners of the voluptuous inhabitants; the ill effects of their example were not immediate: he did not fall into the commission of glaring enormities; but his virtue was secretly and imperceptibly undermined, his heart was softened by their pernicious society; and the nerve of resolution was slackened: he every day beheld with diminished indignation the worship which was offered to Venus; the disorders of luxury and prophaneness became less and less terrible, and the infectious air of the country enfeebled his courage, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... many and severe disappointments by this time, I found, had told on health and nerve, through long quarantines, expensive fumigations, and ruinous doctors' visits, which had swept my dollars into hands other than mine. However, with still a "shot in the locker," and with some feelings of our own in the matter of how we should ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... commencement of the voyage. When this is the case, the first night after leaving port will decide the question whether the officers or the men will have command of the ship. If the officers are not firm and peremptory; if they are deficient in nerve, and fail to rebuke, in a prompt and decided manner, aught bordering on insolence or insubordination in the outset, farewell to discipline, to good order and harmony, for the remainder ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... crept to the window. Two horsemen were at the gate. The door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his old nag at a weary gallop ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... furthest and darkest corner, tied him securely to a ring in the wall. His bonds were loose enough to permit him to lie down on the hard earth and stone floor, but he sat with his back against the wall, wide awake, every nerve tense and quivering. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... submit to it. Your very silence, my countrymen, may be construed a submission, and those who would perswade you to be quiet, intend to give it that turn. Will it be likely then that your enemies, who have exerted every nerve to establish a revenue, rais'd by virtue of a suppos'd inherent right in the British parliament without your consent, will recede from the favorite plan, when they imagine it to be compleated by your submission? ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... developed his idea, and I consented to try the experiment, though with grave scruples. It would require much nerve to talk to strange people upon an excitable topic; and a camp fever, which among other things I had gained on the Chickahominy, had enfeebled ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... dreaded the new experience of this first meeting with a woman-farmer, from whom he desired employment simply because he was very badly off, he was getting old, and Mr. Wellin's widow had treated him shabbily. He had lost his nerve for new ventures. But Miss Henderson had made things easy. She had struck him as considerate and sensible—a "good sort." He would do his best ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... battleships or cruisers can protect England's frontiers and secure imports from oversea. Technical progress, in the shape of submarines, has put into the hands of all England's enemies the means at last to sever the vital nerve of the much-hated enemy, and to pull him down from his position of ruler of the world, which he has occupied for centuries with ever-increasing ruthlessness and selfishness. What science has once begun ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was a Russki with long hair," says I, "or even a fiddlin' Czech, they might stand for it; but to ask 'em to listen to a domestic unknown from Bridgeport, Conn.——I wouldn't have the nerve, Snick. Why not take him around to the ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... of the verandah that had been turned into an extra ward by screening it off with native reed-fencing was Gilfillan, the most perfect patient. Propping his foot against the wall to correct the foot-drop that division of the nerve of his leg had caused, he had passed many sleepless nights in his ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... In many lives; through many a nerve she feels; From child to child the quick affections spread, For ever wand'ring, yet for ever fix'd. Nor does division weaken, nor the force Of constant operation e'er exhaust Parental love. All other passions change With changing circumstances; rise or fall, Dependent on their ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... serfdom encrusted with tyrannies. It was a gigantic social experiment, the results of which none could foresee. Alexander's predecessors had thought and talked of it, but had not dared to try it. Now the time was ripe, and the man on the throne had the nerve required for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... Tobacco.—Tobacco, of all nerve sedatives, is the most universally used. In moderation it could not be said that it is followed by any apparent ill effects in the majority of people, but if used in excess oftentimes sets up serious disturbances. It is peculiarly injurious to boys, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... instances the reader will see that the measures taken were both prompt, and such as would require more nerve than is possessed by the ordinary run of mortals. In the above cases, also, the bitten part was capable of being removed; but for a bite on the wrist, had such an extreme measure as immediate dismemberment ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... told no one, but he meant to, unless things got better. 'I haven't the nerve for this job, Davie,' he said; 'I'll have to resign. And it's a pity, for the place suits my health fine. You see I know too much, and I haven't your whinstone nerve and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... rest; for, although the six miles of country he had crossed was a trifle, as regarded distance, to a lad of nineteen, the rugged mountain-path by which he had come would have tried the muscles of a Red Indian, and the nerve of a goat. "You were wont to keep to time better in days gone by. Truly it seems to me a strange thing that I should thus be made a sort of walking post between my mother's house and this bay, all for the benefit of a man who seems to me ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... more in possession of the cup, was unable to get up sufficient nerve to make the fateful cast. He shook it as if he meant to wear a hole in the tin. He offered to let Husky shoot first, and when he refused tried to pick a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... though the object be absent, the Soul has presently the same {310} sensations, as it would have, if it were present. As, if one should knock on's head forcibly against a wall, the shaking, which the blow gives to the Brain, moving the interior extremities of the Nerve, which causes the sensation of Light, the Soul has the same sensation, which it would have, if it saw a thousand Candles: On the contrary, if the interior extremities of the nerves are not shaken, though the object be present, it causes no sensation; whence it comes, that if a strong Ligature ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... he blazed, "since when! I admire your nerve to ask that question of me! Since six years ago, when you first began living with me. Since the day when you and the boy,—and not a preacher within a hundred miles—" Words, a flood of words, were ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... usual order, and she seems to regard this as conclusive proof of their logical truth. She says, "The metaphysics of Christian Science, like the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... or consulate to take care of England's manifold interests. It seems strange that when thousands of British heroes of the army are dying brave deaths on the fields of battle, not a single British hero was to be found in the diplomatic corps with nerve enough to risk the inconveniences of a siege. The Ambassador of another country, who fled with the crowd, left in spite of orders from his king absolutely directing him to remain. Apparently he has sacrificed his career to his ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... father supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... own conditions. Mr. Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty wide enough to satisfy the demands of the most exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a singular stupidity in their hearers who impute ferocious designs to a man who cannot nerve his mind to the shooting of a deserter or the hanging of a spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... about him. He is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and breathes refined ether—in self-comparison with the prize-fighter. The man who walks in his sleep ignores the flesh and all its wonderful play of muscle, joint, and nerve. He feels that there is something godlike in the mysterious deeps of his being, denies his relationship with the brute, and proceeds to go forth into the world and express by deeds ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of manhood, and Mr. Muir had found the past week a trying one. He had been lured into an enterprise that at the time had seemed certain of success, even to his conservative mind, but unforeseen elements had entered into the problem, and it now required all his nerve, all his resources, to meet the strain. Neither Madge nor his wife knew anything of this. Indeed, it was not his habit to speak of his affairs to any one, unless the exigencies of the case required explanation. In this emergency he was obliged ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of such an exploit caused his flesh to creep. But he was not of that class of men who fall back dazed before the face of danger. Again and again, led by an impulse he was unable to resist, he studied that precipitous rock, every nerve tingling to the newborn hope. God helping them, even so desperate a deed might be accomplished, although it would test the foot and nerve of a Swiss mountaineer. He glanced again uneasily toward his companion, and saw the same motionless figure, the same sober ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... face as he went on with his meal. Not a nerve of it moved. If he felt any fear, at least he showed no ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... was still—silent— not a feature moved. The eyes are more untamable than the tongue. When the wild beast can not get out at the door, nothing can keep him from the windows. The eyes flash when the will is yet lord even of the lines of the mouth. Not a nerve of Hesper's quivered. Though a mere child in the knowledge that concerned her own being, even the knowledge of what is commonly called the heart, she was yet a mistress of the art of self-defense, socially ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... floor the element of execution feels it may more or less confidently DANCE; in which case puzzling questions, sharp obstacles, dangers of detail, may come up for it by the dozen without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart—when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment. Being "treated" is never, in a workable ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... whether I'll faint at the sight of real blood," she said, "but I shall know pretty well what to do if I can keep my nerve." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... could neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest. Her temples throbbed, her eyes ached; every nerve was a barbed wire; her soul was manacled by promises; she would not use her reason; the fever in her veins was not to be quelled, and the one agitating relief to her physical suffering was a constant perusal of David Rennes's letter. It was the first passionate love-letter ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds come to an end or because angry parents refuse any longer to support them, drift away from the hospital. Others find the examinations too hard for them; one failure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panic-stricken, they forget as soon as they come into the forbidding buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before they had so pat. They remain year after year, objects of good-humoured scorn to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... offered me half. You didn't see the brute look at me that night at dinner as much as to say: "You blasted fool!" It made me mad. That wasn't a bad jump-twice over. Nothing in the war took quite such nerve. [Grimly] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talent in the earth.' Our Lord would teach us all with that pregnant word the great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy, spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. Teach ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... ages. And though, from all that is known respecting them, this line of life had not been attended with much success or emolument, yet Columbus's zeal was not thereby damped; and his parents, still anxious that their son should pursue the same line which his ancestors had done, strained every nerve to give him a suitable education. He was accordingly taught geometry, astronomy, geography, and drawing. As soon as his time of life and his education qualified him for the business he had chosen, he went to sea; he was then fourteen years ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... all nerve sedatives, is the most universally used. In moderation it could not be said that it is followed by any apparent ill effects in the majority of people, but if used in excess oftentimes sets up serious disturbances. It is peculiarly injurious to boys, and should never be indulged in until ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... considered by many to detract from a doctor's value and to stand in the way of his career. Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not find this so. Although he was not a nerve specialist, his waiting-room was always full of patients. If he had been married, it could not have been fuller. Indeed, he often thought it ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... flows the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest. Her temples throbbed, her eyes ached; every nerve was a barbed wire; her soul was manacled by promises; she would not use her reason; the fever in her veins was not to be quelled, and the one agitating relief to her physical suffering was a constant perusal of David Rennes's letter. It was the first passionate love-letter she had ever received. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the hand into condition, and keeps it up to the mark, so that difficult compositions are more readily within the grasp, and the technical requirements in them are more easily met. When the hand is in fine condition, exhaustive technical practise in pieces is not necessary, and much wear and tear of nerve force is saved. In this technical practise, to which I give an hour or more daily, I use very simple exercises, but each one contains some principle of touch, movement or condition. Hand over thumb and thumb under hand; different qualities of tone; ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... something better. The spectacle of the heathen sage, who, amidst the thick gloom, the 'palpable obscure,' which involved this subject, gazed intently into the darkness, and 'longed for the day,'—who strained every nerve of an insufficient logic, and was willing to take even the whispers of hope for the oracles of truth, rather than part with the prospect of immortality,—is, to my mind, much more attractive. As to the originality ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab as ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... related in this story. The cunning savage has always thought it inadvisable to pick his fighting men till their courage had been thoroughly tested, and in dull days of peace the headmen of the tribes racked their brains to discover nerve-shaking ordeals to try the daring of the growing youth. The safety of the tribe depended upon the valour of the fighting line, and it would have been an inexcusable blunder to put the nervous ones ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... participated in," said the doctor out in the hall after he had finished telling us how near the sight of both eyes had come to being destroyed from not being kept drained. "And the two youngsters are the most remarkable I have yet encountered. Miss Phyllis, let me congratulate you on a nerve and a talent for imaginative description the like of which I have never met before. But please somebody explain that boy to me before I catch ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Evelyn, with shining eyes, "to think that all the time we were worrying about you and feeling sure you were lost, you were having the time of your life! Oh, if I'd only had the nerve ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... there is no question of pluck. I'm taking the bull by the horns because I must. Mr. Travers, I can't live in the same place with you and not know if you are going to explode the mine under our feet or not. I may have nerve, but I haven't ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... lightning glance, and surveyed the whole situation. He did not move, but his form was rigid, and every nerve was braced, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. He saw it all—the crowd of women, the calm face of Minnie, and the uncontrollable ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... would happen. And he knew that at a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would deliver this speech ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... been nervous and flurried the first time you were called upon to play the part of a man, it would have seemed to me but natural; now it gladdens me indeed to know that even in your first essay you should have thus shown that you possess nerve and coolness as well as courage. Anyone can rush into a fight and deal blows right and left, but it is far more rare to find one who, in his very first trial at arms, can keep his head clear, and be able to reply to a question, as Edgar says you did, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... Rather ought we, in Michelangelo's case, to dwell upon the remarkable sobriety of his life, his sustained industry under very trying circumstances, his prolonged intellectual activity into extreme old age, the toughness of his constitution, and the elasticity of that nerve-fibre which continued to be sound and sane under the enormous and varied pressure put upon it over a period of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... won't say that you can have everything you want—that means having nothing, in reality. But if you decide what it is you want most, YOU CAN GET IT." His eye caught hers for a moment. "Not everybody can, but you can. Only, if you want a big thing, you've got to have nerve enough to cut out all that's easy, everything that's to be had cheap." Dr. Archie paused. He picked up a paper-cutter and, feeling the edge of it softly with his fingers, he added slowly, as if ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... and get his saddle and bridle, for he rightly concluded that the savages had been so anxious to capture him that they had not time to go in and see if he had left anything behind him. It required considerable nerve to do this, but Elam had already shown that he had a good share of it. He had not gone many miles on his way until he began to meet some sheep-herders and cattle-men who were fleeing from their homes and going to the fort for protection. The men were ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... of the old merchant's mouth was something painful to witness. It seemed as if every nerve was pulled to its utmost tension by the excitement in his soul. He obviously had to make a strong effort to speak when he said, "Do you suppose, sir, that a merchant of my standing is going to leave his property ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... time; they were beginning 'to fear that old Morin's nerve had weakened at the eleventh hour, when they beheld a skiff approaching the shore. It glided closer, entered the shade of the bathhouse, then ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... all goodness, human or Divine; the center of all thought, from brutal instinct to Deific wisdom; of all creations, from starry systems to man, and from man back again to invisible gas; of all action, from the imperceptible vibrations of nerve energy to the awful destruction of worlds. All creative potency lies within a Sun sphere. Light is life. The planets are but the offspring of light and life. So in this symbol, we read the source of the human Ego, of our own life. We are, as it were, the planets ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her arrival, she could choose ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his face changed, with that look of real and cruel suffering which none can counterfeit. He leaned back against the penthouse, looking straight before him. Then she, seeing that she had touched the nerve in an unhealed wound, glanced sidelong at him, bit upon her sprig of rosemary again, turned, and with half-bent head walked slowly along to the next buttress; she turned again there, and coming back stood close before him, laying one hand upon his folded arm and looking ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough. Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brother to help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in white fighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim of the desert, a lump ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... guests were boating on the lake. When he had finished his cigar it would be time to join the party in the smoking-room. Cartwright was something of a gambler and liked the American games. They gave one scope for bluffing, and although his antagonists declared his luck was good, he knew his nerve was better. In fact, since he lost his money by a reckless plunge, he had to some extent lived by bluff. Yet some people ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... rifle, a gun which, with a slight twist of the wrist, will throw sixteen bullets in almost that many seconds. I have no doubt he will render his command very efficient and useful, for he has wonderful energy and nerve, and is, besides, sensible and practical. Colonel Harker is greatly disappointed because he was not confirmed as brigadier-general during the last session of Congress. He is certainly young enough to afford to wait; but he seems to fear that, after commanding a brigade for ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... been effectual, the flames flared up, and the soldiers strained every nerve to conquer them. Their cries mingled with the crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames, with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating of drums. The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied their clothes together ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they might go to bed. The experiment he was going to make demanded that the place should be cleared of any disturbing presence. He had been thinking it over for sometime past. He had sat in the private room of the great nerve specialist in London and had talked it over with him. He had talked of it with the duke on the lawn at Stone Hover. There had been a flush of color in the older man's cheek-bones, and his eyes had been alight as he took his part in the discussion. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... farisah): the phrase has often occurred and isour "trembled in every nerve." As often happens in Arabic, it is "horsey;" alluding to the shoulder-muscles (not shoulder-blades, Preston p. 89) between neck and flank which readily quiver in blood-horses when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and of nerve as he was, he could not help but shudder at the numberless traces of sudden and pitiless death ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... with him, revealed itself only in a more calm and leisurely demeanor; but when on stepping from the elevator he realized that his hands were like ice, he was for the moment irritated at his lack of nerve, and then he quickly bolstered himself up with the reflection that the day of destiny comes only once in a lifetime and one would have arrived at a state of vegetable stolidity to meet it unmoved. Then he laughed at himself for clinging so obstinately to the belief that this was ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of insulting God to serve the Pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the Emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country—in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the Emperor. So completely did their bigotry extinguish ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... from puny collectors to big burly fellows smothered with sufficient braid and decorations to pass as field-marshals. But one and all seemed to be entrusted with swords too big for them which clanked and clattered in the most nerve-racking manner. They strutted up and down the platform with true Prussian arrogance, jostling the fatigued, cursing the helpless who lounged in their path, ignoring the distress of the children, sneering at the pitiful pleadings of the women—in fact caring ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... devoted exclusively to the charge of their respective missions. Two or three times in the year, they all, or nearly all, assembled at Sainte Marie, to take counsel together and determine their future action. Hither, also, they came at intervals for a period of meditation and prayer, to nerve themselves and gain new ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Minute, and embryon; nerve from nerves arise; And blood from blood, by countless drops increased. Gold, too, from golden atoms, earths concrete, From earths extreme; from fiery matters, fire; And lymph from limpen dews. And thus throughout From primal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to walk now," said Krause, rising suddenly, and speaking in a low, trembling tone. I motioned to him to sit down again. He shook his head and remained standing, his brawny hand grasping the back of the chair to steady himself, for every nerve in his body ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... suppose you did mean the offer as an insult, Merriwell; and I presume I was too hasty. I am rather quick at times, and, as Dare says, I was beaten at my own game, which made me hot. You had nerve, Merriwell; take the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... of Hasdrubal caused intense anxiety at Rome. Every nerve was strained to prevent the union of the two brothers. The Consuls for this year (207) were GAIUS CLAUDIUS NERO, a patrician, and MARCUS LIVIUS, a plebeian. To the former was intrusted the task of keeping Hannibal in check in ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... thought she should be suffocated under it. An intolerable restlessness took possession of her, while the pain in her injured foot throbbed madly, the cut in her head seemed to burn, and her temples beat with an agonizing headache that contracted the muscles of her eyes. Every nerve in her body, every thought of her brain was a separate torture, and at the same time she felt herself without a stay, without protection, and wholly abandoned to some cruel influence, which tossed and tore her soul as the storm tosses the crowns ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... Listening with every nerve fiber on the alert, Bud found the night peopled with a multitude of sounds that on an ordinary occasion would have passed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... past, and happily forgotten by him. The present had still its possibilities, if only the past might remain forgotten. Surely she could rely on herself to find the nerve to go through what was, after all, a mere act of duty. Knowing, or rather feeling, that Fenwick would ask her to marry him as soon as he dared—it was merely a question of time—her duty was plainly to forewarn him—to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... been shot under me; again and again have I seen the comrades who walked beside me in an instant laid for ever in the dust; again and again have I been in the thick of battle, and of its mortal dangers, and never felt my heart shake, or a single nerve tremble: but now, helpless, manacled, imprisoned, doomed, forced to watch the approaches of an inevitable fate—to wait, silent and moveless, while death as it were crept towards me, human nature was taxed to the uttermost to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... place." "A miracle! if 'twere not told by you, I scarce should credit it." "And yet 'tis true." "Ah, well, you double my desire to rise To special favour with a man so wise." "You've but to wish it: 'twill be your own fault, If, with your nerve, you win not by assault: He can be won: that puts him on his guard, And so the first approach is always hard." "No fear of me, sir: a judicious bribe Will work a wonder with the menial tribe: Say, I'm refused admittance for to-day; I'll watch my time; I'll ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don Quixote and Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of Tappertit. But we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... excite my pity. I know they have strength to bear their sufferings, and that through them they are giving great glory to God. But I compassionate greatly those who are not Saints, and who do not know how to profit by suffering. They indeed awake my pity. I would strain every nerve to help and ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... a springless vehicle, two miles distant from the county-seat, the pains of labour came upon her. She steeled every nerve and had herself carried to the house of the county-physician whose daughter was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... business; he was the party in the quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who had never heard of him. Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side, naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... their work, and unless he is constantly on the watch valuable time is lost daily. In the harvest, however, he has an advantage. The corn is reaped by piece-work, and the labourers therefore strain every nerve to do as much as they can. But then he must be on the lookout to see that ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the cook's hand, 'shake! I never knowed a man like you afore,' says he. 'T' my knowledge, you're the on'y man in the Labrador fleet would do it. I'm proud,' says he, 't' take the hand o' the man with nerve enough t' marry Walrus Liz o' ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the earldom of Torrington and the command of the fleet; but his indolence suffered the seas to be swept by French privateers, and his want of seamanship was shown in an indecisive engagement with a French squadron in Bantry Bay. Meanwhile Lewis was straining every nerve to win the command of the Channel; the French dockyards were turning out ship after ship, and the galleys of the Mediterranean fleet were brought round to reinforce the fleet at Brest. A French victory off the English coast would have brought serious political danger; ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... They saved a good many, but if Jim had but been close enough he would have seen that his prophecy with regard to the sharks had proved only too true; for the voracious monsters, darting hither and thither, snapped up the unfortunate men before the very eyes of the comrades who were straining every nerve to save them, the fierce fish sometimes leaping half their length out of the water in their furious efforts to snatch their prey back even when the man had been hauled up on ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... trail all winter," was Shorty's comment. "An' them geezers, soft from layin' around their cabins, has the nerve to think they can keep our stride. Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be different. If there's one thing a sour-dough can do ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... before, when I prided myself on my knowledge of the stock market and its idiosyncrasies. Then, in the confidence of youth, I might have risen to a situation like this, might have tackled it and had the nerve to pull it through or blame the other fellow if I failed. Now I was neither youthful nor confident. Whatever I did would be, in all human probability, the wrong thing, and to do the wrong thing now meant, perhaps, ruin for the sick man ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... though the crew of the Catamaran were now contending against fate, and without hope. This, however, was not the case; for there was still something like a hope to cheer them on, and nerve them to continue their exertions. What ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... moreexquisite than Velasquez's. He knows as much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal. Why? A question of health. C'est un temperament de chatte. He cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like Velasquez. The expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell or Miss Alexander exhausts him, and he is obliged to wait till Nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has employed in writing letters signed "Butterfly" to the papers, quarrelling ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... "that I could make you understand, in your superb health, just all I mean by change of conditions. It means change of food, air, surroundings; every thing in short, which addresses itself to the senses. It means an entire new set of nerve impressions." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to the eye only under a powerful microscope. The 'worry,' the thought, the single idea grows upon one as time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this, one set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hare. We have already seen that some kinds of lizards and various snakes, when excited, rapidly vibrate the tips of their tails. It would appear as if, under strong excitement, there existed an uncontrollable desire for movement of some kind, owing to nerve-force being freely liberated from the excited sensorium; and that as the tail is left free, and as its movement does not disturb the general position of the body, it ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... with a morbid curiosity; and whenever J. P. was going up or down the gangway I always found myself, in common, I may add, with a considerable proportion of the ship's company, leaning over the side watching this nerve-racking exhibition. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... the albatross is master of the wind and waves. Sailors, straining every nerve to guide the laboring, struggling ship through tempestuous seas, look up, and see far above their heads the albatross calmly breasting the gale, its majesty unruffled, and its great out-stretched wings as motionless as on a still, sunny day. Its strength of flight is marvellous, and is said ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... most vital tissues of the body poorly nourished, and tend to produce innumerable bad results. People who eat bread made from fine white flour naturally crave the food elements which have been eliminated from the wheat, and are thus led to an excessive consumption of meat, and the nerve-starvation and consequent irritability thus induced may also lead to the use of alcoholic drinks. We believe that one of the strongest barriers women could erect against the inroads of intemperance would ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... rifles were in order and that they had plenty of ammunition. Then I made Stephen lie down to sleep, telling him that I would wake him to watch later on. This, however, I had no intention of doing as I wanted him to rise fresh and with a steady nerve on the occasion of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... declared war, Great Britain was straining every nerve and muscle in a death struggle with the most formidable military despotism of modern times, and was obliged to entrust the defence of her Canadian colonies to a mere handful of regulars, aided by ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him just once, but I suppose you won't tell me where he is. I don't dare let on to you how grateful I really feel to you, because I might lose my nerve and I've just got to hang on to that. It's my only asset in trade. We have to use lots of bluff. Besides, someway you make me feel contrary. Maybe I am the lightning ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... what was coming, or at least a possibility of it crossed his mind. If Mr. Gall had been a more observant man he would have seen that Mr. Juxon grew a shade paler and changed one leg over the other as he sat. But in that moment he had time to nerve ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... have no sense that he was placing himself in grave peril. He had no fear in his makeup, and his every nerve was centered on capturing the desperate, revengeful man who had not only assaulted Phil, but who had caused so much damage to the ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Suddenly he sat straight up in his chair, listening: he thought he heard a sound in the next room—it was impossible even to imagine of what—it was such a mere abstraction of sound. He listened with every nerve, but heard nothing more; crept to the door of the wizard's chamber, and listened again; listened until he could no longer tell whether he heard or not, and felt like a deaf man imagining sounds; then crept back to his own room and went to bed—all ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... journey he displayed his characteristic qualities, Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical inquiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction that distances were very great and that the weather would be bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hulls, while every ball found its way through their own towering sides. This time the San Martin was in the thick of it. Her double timbers were ripped and torn; the holy standard was cut in two; the water poured through the shot-holes. The men lost their nerve. In such ships as had no gentlemen on board notable signs were ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... had given orders to all the men of their mess that Halket was to be left in quiet, and no questions were to be asked him; and the men, fearing the Colonial's size and the Englishman's nerve, left him in peace. The men laughed and chatted round the fire, while the big Colonial ladled out the mealies and rice into tin plates, and passed them round to the men. Presently he passed one to Halket, who lay half behind him leaning on his elbow. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... she turned round majestically, but with an anxious heart, and walked away to her room, every nerve in her trembling. When she got there, Phoebe locked the door hastily, in genuine terror; and then she laughed, and then she cried a little. "And to think it was here all the time!" she said to herself, taking out the little Russia leather purse out ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... through his mind, he was not sorry to notice ahead of him the dust of the down stage. At that particular stretch of the road it would be less nerve-wearing to ride beside it a way. He overtook the wagon and to his surprise found McAlpin on the box. McAlpin, overjoyed to see him, explained with a grin he was filling in for a sick man. In reality, he had substituted for the northern ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the children in the house with the servants, while she went on with March to look up a dwelling of some sort in New York. It made him sick to think of it; and, when it came to the point, he would rather have given up the whole enterprise. She had to nerve him to it, to represent more than once that now they had no choice but to make this experiment. Every detail of parting was anguish to him. He got consolation out of the notion of letting the house furnished for the winter; that implied their return to it, but it cost him pangs ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and repassing the same heap of hedge-clippings as he went round the field. I think he used to feel surprised at himself, when he remembered how bold a rider he had been, and how utterly old age and bad health had taken away his nerve. He would say that riding prevented him thinking much more effectually than walking—that having to attend to the horse gave him occupation sufficient to prevent any really hard thinking. And the change of scene which it gave him was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... is strange," interrupted Gordon, looking at her with deepening interest. "You have the gift of the sympathetic listener. I noticed no disturbance, but I did come near fainting. I have had a hard day—one of fierce nerve-strain." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... said that unmoved person, squatting down on his heels and thrusting his hand inside David's shirt. "Only a faint. Why, where's your nerve? You're nearly as white as ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the one hand they restored the estates plundered by the Cromwellians thirty-six years before, and gave compensation to all innocent persons—while they strained every nerve to exclude the English from our trade, and to secure it to the Irish—while they introduced the Statute of Frauds, and many other sound laws, and thus showed their zeal for the peaceful and permanent welfare of the People, they were not unfit to grapple with the great military crisis. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... with the unctuous resin of the wood and the good draught I had given, my furnace worked so well that I was obliged to rush from side to side to keep it going. The labour was more than I could stand; yet I forced myself to strain every nerve and muscle. To increase my anxieties, the workshop took fire, and we were afraid lest the roof should fall upon our heads; while, from the garden, such a storm of wind and rain kept blowing in, that it ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... better, steadily and slowly moving up through all her relapses. My knee never gets the least better; it hurts to-night, which it has not done for long. I do not suppose my doctor knows any least thing about it. He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I assure you he ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from that they hear practically nothing. How much better it would be if they could be warned very definitely of coming suffering, if they are not now delivered from their sins. So long as there is sin there will be suffering. I am convinced that the nerve of the preacher's message is often cut by this want of a definite ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... action. Madly she struggled again and again to get her hind legs to work. All the force of desperate intent she brought to bear. It was like putting forth tenfold power to force the nervous fluids through their blocked-up channels as she dragged herself with marvellous speed downhill. What is nerve but will? The dead wires of her legs were hot with this fresh power, multiplied, injected, blasted into them. They had to give in. She felt them thrill with life again. Each wild shot from the gun lent vital help. Another fierce attempt, and ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... she went on, without heeding him, "I care nothing, for, as I tell you, I have their antidote at hand. You have known me for many years, tell me, did you ever see my nerve desert me? Do you suppose that I am a woman who would bear failure when I could choose death? No, George, I had rather pass into eternity on the crest of the wave of my success, such as it has been, and let it break and grind me to powder there, or else ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... opposite condition of hyperidrosis, and is characterized by diminution or suppression of the sweat secretion. It occurs to some extent in certain systemic diseases and also in some affections of the skin, such as ichthyosis; nerve-injuries may ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... came through the canon, for two pale-faces on horseback were cantering along at no great distance. They had not seen him, he was sure of that, although they were evidently looking for something. He let them pass and go on until he felt safe in following. Every nerve in his body ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, merrily whistling as ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... later. Stay at college till the term is up, and in the meantime try to land a job. However, you won't have any trouble to do that. Keep your nerve, boy, for your mother's sake. It's a hard blow, but we'll weather it, never ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... buccaneer by persuasion, seeming compliance, or by force, for a short space, all would be well. For she never doubted that her lover would come for her. Even if he had to come single-handed and alone to fight for her, she knew he would be there. Therefore, with every nerve strained almost to the breaking point to ward off his advances and to delay any action he might contemplate, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... honesty of intention, the admission that life and nights were short, lacking in the fever at the Eastlake dancing; here, rather than unsettled restraint, was the determination to spend every excited nerve on sensation, to obtain the last drop from glasses the contents and odors of which uniquely resembled the drinks of pre-prohibition. These girls, consciously animating their shapely bodies with the allurement if not the ends of creation, prostitutes of both temperament and fact, were, Lee Randon ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... How do you suppose? I'll go right now, before I lose my nerve. [She powders nose before ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... Covenanters were apprised, and for the third time the roads converging upon Edinburgh were filled with their dauntless ranks. They came on foot, on horses, and in wagons; old men with white locks and young men with iron nerve; ministers and elders, noblemen and commoners. These were men who were exalted into Covenant with the Almighty; they had tasted the sweetness of the liberty of the sons of God; they had felt the energy of the Holy ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... pursuit of learning interfered for several hours with the far more important object which she had at heart to-day; and it was not until two o'clock that she found herself at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was straining ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... were so obvious and unaffected. In general society people passed him over as a shy, harmless, unmeaning little man; but those who really knew him affirmed that his courage was not to be damped, nor his nerve shaken, by extremity of danger—that he was always ready with succour for the needy, with sympathy for the sorrowful. In short, as they tersely put it, that "his heart was in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... afield as she dared, while the doctor made his visit, which was apt to be a long one in the lonely country houses. This morning she had possessed herself of a square, thin volume which gave lists and plates of the nerve system of the human body. The doctor had nearly laughed aloud when he caught sight of it, and when Nan opened it with decision and gravity and read the first page slowly, she was conscious of a lack of interest in her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for the expenses of his family; for the last year it had not sufficed. It was necessary for the success of his business, or, he supposed, it was necessary that he should be considered a rich man; and he had harassed himself and strained every nerve to keep up appearances, and now he was saying to himself that this new claim upon him could not possibly be met. He was not a hard man, though he had sometimes been called so. At this moment, his heart was very tender over the widow and her children; ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... for his chief's welfare. He knew that he would succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole body ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... am tiring rapidly of this great fool who comes shouting and tramping into our home. And when I am annoyed beyond my nerve capacity, I ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... violently that the pipe dropped from his hand. A minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's nerve. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in this great event, for he felt in his heart that the honor of his country depended entirely upon the skill he displayed in riding the flying horse. He was also not a little concerned lest his secretary should fail to carry himself with becoming nerve, and encouraged him with promises to permit him to say things creditable to himself in his first letter to the New ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... emphatically from the old inventor. "I've got some courage but not enough for that. You see, the man that marries her has got to have the nerve to face the whole village—brave Zenas Henry, the three captains, an' Abbie Brewster, besides winnin' the girl herself. 'Twill be some contract. No, you can be mortal sure I shan't go meddlin' in no such love affair as ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language. Such English, graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable from its literary characteristics. Two things powerfully determined the style of these sermons. One was the intense hold which the vast realities ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Any special function of the mind may have in certain animal groups an especially high development, and we see certain parts correspondingly developed. The dog has certainly a keener sense of smell than the man—the part of the brain which is in direct connection with the olfactory nerve is correspondingly much bulkier in the dog's brain than in the human organism. Here too, of course, research may be carried to the subtlest details and the microscope has to tell the full story. Not the differences ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... might's well have the handlin' of it as let it rot where it's at. I tells him so an' agrees that if he tips off his cache to me I'll retaliate by givin' him the gun. He swears he ain't got no cache. He's blow'd everything he had, his nerve's gone, an' he's headin' fer Wolf River fer to gouge yeh out of some dinero. He claims yeh collected reward on them two yeh got in the Yellowstone an' what's more the dudes tuk up a collection of a thousan' bucks an' ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... forest starts back with dismay as he comes suddenly upon one of these venomous reptiles, and hears its ominous rattle when too near to escape. He must muster all his nerve, and strike it with his stick as it springs; for a wound from its fangs will, as he knows, bring certain death, far-away ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... soul, those senses of the mind—if I may be allowed the expression—which connect us with, and link us to those awful obscure realities—an all-powerful and equally beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope (p. 164) beams on the field: the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... too freely to passionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent. The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, passing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... Swiss magnetizer. He thought the whole thing a comedy; a week after, he attended a second exhibition, saw that the patient could not open his eyes, and concluded that this was ascribable to some physical cause. The fixity of gaze must, according to him, exhaust the nerve centers of the eyes and their surroundings. He made a friend look steadily at the neck of a bottle, and his own wife look at an ornamentation on the top of a china sugar bowl: sleep was the consequence. Here hypnotism had its origin, and the fact was established that sleep could be induced ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... must speak to, Terror still vibrates in her every nerve. Her fancy mingles fire with all she thinks of. Asleep, her soul seems busy; but awake, Absent: now less than brute, now more ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... cough; my friends said I had consumption; was reduced in flesh and nerve till the least work or exercise would ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and the appearance of the party above him, in devising the means necessary to his liberation. As it was, few men, unaccustomed to the giddy elevations of the mast, could have mustered a sufficient command of nerve to maintain a position on the ledge where he stood. Even he could not have continued there, without steadying his form by the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... say, a little in advance of it—by reason of the air banking up there. But having only his rule-of-thumb knowledge to apply in the premises, the apparent scientific contradiction of his own practical notions as to what was going to happen confused him and made him irritable—the nerve-stirring state of the atmosphere no doubt having also a share in the matter—as was made plain by his sharp quick motions, and by the way in which on the smallest provocation he fell to swearing at the men. And so the day wore itself out to nightfall: with the steel-gray ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... expressly for himself by the obliging and now defunct Don Pomponio, might be permanently abolished. It was not a pleasant prospect. Mr. Freddy Parker was rather too old to start knocking about the world again. He was losing what he called his "nerve." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... my whole finger and part of my hand shocked me with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted and wrenched out of joint all ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... could all read and write English; but adds, that the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would interfere with their business, caused it to be closed. Alas! this people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping the fruit ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... been over to Curraunbeg," said Priscilla, "to see how his old boat is looking. After what Jimmy Kinsella is sure to have told him about the way they're treating her he's naturally a bit anxious. I wonder will he have the nerve to charge them anything extra at the end for dilapidations. It's curious now that we don't see the tents on Curraunbeg. I saw them yesterday from Craggeen. Perhaps they've moved round to the other ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... jaws; but he put his hand ruefully to the back of his head where a bump marked the place where the girl had struck him and a moment later a half-smile played across his lips. He could not help but admit that she had tricked him neatly, and that it must have taken nerve to do the thing she did and to set out armed only with a pistol through the trackless waste that lay between them and the railway and beyond into the hills ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the "principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more "labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g., by Buffon in 1749 ("Oeuvres ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Has he not earned it, Signor Keralio? Is it not because of his courage and daring that you are here—ze master in this house? Who but Keralio would have had ze nerve to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... all its energies for the struggle of the election. Crassus and Caesar staked their money—whether their own or borrowed—and their connections to procure the consulship for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents, and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew, would keep his word. The aristocracy was in great perplexity, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... death, I see my dear mother and my revered grand-father. I strive to raise you; you push me from you, and shrieking cry—'Charlotte, thou hast murdered me!' Horror and despair tear every tortured nerve; I start, and leave my restless ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the thick of it," objected Barkleigh. "When the danger is so close you can see it, a woman's nerve isn't as good as a man's. It can't be. She ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... straight to the point. She wanted to talk to the people. She wanted to get at them. If she had been a man, she would have taken a chair and gone to Hyde Park. As it was, she hadn't the nerve for Hyde Park. At least she was afraid she hadn't. It might have to come to that. There was a trembling in her voice that annoyed her. She was so afraid she might cry. She wasn't out for anything crazy. She wanted only those things done that could be done if the people would but lift ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... As such, they characterize precisely those polar relationships of the second order on which the threefold structure of man, we found, is based. For from the physical, as much as from the superphysical aspect the nerve-system represents the 'dry' part, and the metabolic system the 'moist' part of man's being. The same is true of the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world at both poles. Here we have the antithesis between the 'dry' onlooker-relationship ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... fascinating book.... Pen and pencil sketches alike have grace, nerve, and humour, and are alive with ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the animals straining every muscle and nerve, their flanks heaving and flecked with foam. No sound broke upon the stillness of the night, save the rapid hoof-strokes of the mustangs, and occasionally the yelp of a coyote that was startled ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... He realized instinctively, with a tightening of his heart, that he was listening to one of the great songs of which Janin had spoken. It hung for a minute or more in his hearing, thrilling every nerve, and then died away. It stopped actually, but its harmony rang in Harry Baggs' brain. Instantly it had become an essential, a permanent part of his being. It filled him with a violent sense of triumph, a richness of possession that gave birth to a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... non-striped muscles in the body, and this action upon the muscular coats of the arteries, and especially of the arterioles, causes a great rise in blood-pressure shortly after its absorption, which is very rapid. The terminals of the vagus nerve are also stimulated, causing the heart to beat more slowly. Later in its action, the drug depresses the intra-cardiac motor ganglia, causing prolongation of diastole and finally arrest of the heart in dilatation. A ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he was somewhat innocent. He did not know that New York hotels are formidable only when your money gives out. To get past all these brass-buttoned lackeys and to go on as though he really had business within took no small quantity of nerve. However, he slipped by the outpost without any challenge and boldly approached the desk. A quick glance at the register told him that they had indeed put up at this hotel. He could not explain why he felt so happy over his discovery. There are certain exultations ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... school life is to some extent responsible; "the holidays," he adds, "are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and I think most boys 'fool about' with servants or their sisters' friends." Moll (Kontraere Sexualempfindung, 1889, pp. 6 and 356) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... straight. The match was continued at 10 balls more each. By this time things had become a little exciting. Over $1500 was bet; many were betting $4 to $1 against me, thinking that I would lose my nerve and go to missing. Mr. W. walked to the score for the third time and broke 9 balls out of 10 shot at; it then came my turn to shoot, and I hit nine balls in succession when I was interrupted by a big fellow who offered to bet $25 I would miss the 10th ball; this bet was ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... processes of mind which were called into operation the first time the stimulus in question started a mental reaction. The nervous system of man is so constituted that in the acquirement of knowledge, each time the nerve centers react to the same stimulus, the tendency so to react becomes stronger, under the mere presence of the stimulus, starts up an automatic sort of reaction, and we say that the child knows the meaning of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... his luxurious inner office with its deep rugs and eye-relaxing colors and its comfortable wide desk with its speaker box and telephones that were like the nerve wires of power, and sat down comfortably like a king on a throne or a mule skinner in the driver's seat with ten pairs of reins in each hand. He never felt completely awake and up to his full size in the morning until ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... be considering their carriage as a castle, and they looked as if their terror had made them physically incapable of leaving it. Coleman stood waiting. Behind him the clapper-tongued crowd was moving ominously. Marjory arose and stepped calmly down to him. He thrilled to the end of every nerve. It was as if she had said: " I don't think there is great danger, but if there is great danger, why * * here I am * ready * with you." It conceded everything, admitted everything. It was a surrender without a blush, and it was only possible in the shadow of the crisis when ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... impossible part of his task had been accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never wavered, and I could see a wonderful light in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, to which he was hanging by his chin, the line still held firmly in his teeth. Slowly he slipped his chin from the rail, and then hung suspended ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... him than the Laird of the Ewes, took to his natural arms, and dispatched Mr. Crawfurd a challenge to fight him on the Corn-Cockle Moor. No refusal was possible then, none except for a man of rare principle, nerve, and temper. The Laird of the Ewes had no pretensions to mighty gifts; so he walked out with his second one autumn morning when his reapers were flourishing their sickles, met his foe, and though without the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... parent lives In many lives; through many a nerve she feels; From child to child the quick affections spread, For ever wand'ring, yet for ever fix'd. Nor does division weaken, nor the force Of constant operation e'er exhaust Parental love. All other passions change With changing circumstances; rise or fall, Dependent on their object; claim ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... only the blacksmith outfit. She might have made perhaps twenty-four miles under such conditions, had it not been for the counteracting softness of the teams. Loaded, they would make from ten to twelve miles daily, which seems intolerably slow in these days of speed and nerve-wracking restlessness. But with six of the teams working steadily the outfit would transport upward of thirty tons twelve miles a day, which represents an enormous amount of provisions for man ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of a pound of beef. I'm surprised at Spondee!" continued Mr. Rightbody aggrievedly. "Exhausting his brain and nerve force by the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas. Even Mrs. Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the temperature of the stomach by the introduction ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... completely isolated in the dark, cold tube. The voices of his companions were not audible. It was a time to test the nerve of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... Jagerfeld has talked of you a great deal, and very enthusiastically," she said, in a musical, somewhat deep, resonant voice, which thrilled his every nerve like the sound of bells, and as he bowed, she added, smiling mischievously: "And of me to you; I watched you ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... refreshment of mind and body: I will not have it turned into a time of toil. I know you, Phillis; you would work till your poor fingers got thin, and your spirits were all flattened out, and every nerve was jarring and set on edge; and you would call that duty! No, darling,—never! Dulce shall keep her roses, and we will have battledore and shuttlecock every evening; but, if I have to keep the key of the work-room in my ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and lecturer, born, 1852. Is the author of "Studies on Life and Sense," "Leisure Time Studies," "Science Stories," "Chapters on Evolution," "Wild Animals," "Brain and Nerve," etc., and is a constant contributor on scientific subjects to the magazines and newspapers, contributing weekly "Science Jottings" to the "Illustrated ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there—she was always long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moment Ruyler, who had kept his nerve through several years of racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive, wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition possible in the world ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "Toxemia is the basic cause of all so-called diseases. In the process of tissue-building (metabolism), there is cell-building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism). The broken-down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve energy is normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated from any cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits) the body becomes weakened or ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... regulating their commerce and navigation, consists the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. She derived assistance and protection from us; and we reaped from her the most important advantages. She was, indeed, the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, the nursery and basis of our naval power. It is our duty, therefore, my Lords, if we wish to save our country, most seriously to endeavor the recovery of these most beneficial subjects; and in this perilous crisis, perhaps the present moment may be the only ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... way. In a little more than a half hour they were all ready and then they fled southward, Shif'less Sol, this time, leading the way, the guide Ross at the rear, eye and ear noticing everything, and every nerve attuned to danger. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
