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More "Stave" Quotes from Famous Books



... Ans.—To win victory, stave off defeat or prevent lines from being entered. It may be launched either at the enemy's strong or weak points depending on conditions. If enemy are beaten off and disorganized at some point, it may be good opportunity to follow up the advantage by counter attack. Also at other ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... corn-field. Nothing signaled her destruction except the exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... hatched, and from there men take their first step on the road that leads to the gaol. The place is often crowded at night—there is scarcely room to sit or stand, the atmosphere is thick with smoke, and a hoarse roar of jarring voices fills it, above which rises the stave of a song shouted in one unvarying key from some corner. Money pours in apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... four dreary passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the Ladder of Learning for the astonishment of a visitor; and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons, which ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... than half her fortune, and he has had another thousand since from her. Then came efforts to stave off ruin and prevent exposure; struggles on all our parts, and sacrifices, that' (here Mr. Essex Temple began to hesitate)—'that needn't be talked of; but they are of no more use than such sacrifices ever are. Pump and his wife are ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... spoke with anger. She would stave off as long as possible the principal question—that of marriage. Sudden proposals, too, emanating from others, always nettled her; it narrowed ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... Australian who has heard the ludicrous note of the bird and seen its comical, half-stupid appearance, the origin of the name seems obvious. It utters a prolonged rollicking laugh, often preceded by an introductory stave resembling the opening passage ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... frantic appeal from the stroke of the Johnson boat, and his men strove to answer and stave off that terrible spurt. But they had spurted too often already, and another and a greater was more than they could bear. Their time became ragged; some splashed and dragged, and the boat was a beaten one ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... rights of every description "—At Sollier they destroy the mills belonging to M. de Forbin-Janson. They sack the house of his business agent, pillage the chateau, and demolish the roof, chapel, altar, railings, and escutcheons. They enter the cellars, stave in the casks, and carry away everything that can be carried, "the transportation taking two days;" all of which cause damages of a hundred thousand crowns to the marquis.—At Riez they surround the episcopal palace with fagots, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Turks on the one hand and Normans on the other, while the crusaders who passed through his territory proved more troublesome than either. He managed to hold the empire together in spite of these troubles, and to stave off the doom that impended all through his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... I said, sweeping off my cap in true outlaw fashion, "the way is long and something lonely; methinks—we will therefore e'en accompany you, and may perchance lighten the tedium with quip and quirk and a merry stave or so." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... had separated herself from the sculptor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. At a distance, she still heard the mirth of her late companions, who were going down the cityward descent of the Capitoline Hill; they had set up a new stave of melody, in which her own soft voice, as well as the powerful sweetness of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... many debts of her own; she will have to disavow her protege, which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... out, or sun or rain, Or sallow leaf, or summer grain, Beneath a wintry morning moon Or through red smouldering afternoon, With simple joy, with careful pride, He plies the craft he long has plied: To shape the stave, to set the sting, To fit the shaft with irised wing; And farers by may hear him sing, For still his door is wide: "Laugh and sigh, live and die,— The world swings round; I know not, I, If north or south ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... entering it in January, 1842, when the port had just been thrown open and while the British army was still there, and leaving it in January, 1845. In that short time, notwithstanding interruptions from sickness and of voyages in search of health, or rather to stave off death till others were ready to take his place, he laid a good foundation, doing a work that told and was lasting. I met him only once. It was at his father's house in New Brunswick, after his work at Amoy-after all his public work was done and he ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... with his head upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to be near ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... me a moment with surprise, and after exclaiming, "How are you, my boy?" gave the bench a salutary kick, and whistled more vigorously than ever "Nix my Dolly;" and having gone through the stave, he turned to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... Germans eat six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese sandwiches, blutwurst ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... Point Cottage to me on the 12th of April, 1873, Dr. Ryerson said:—Some days I have felt quite young; but upon the whole, I doubt whether the means which have been so successful in the past in renewing my strength, can be of much use any longer to "stave off" old age. A medical gentleman here from Port Rowan said yesterday, I looked the perfection of health at my age; but my strength I feel already to be "labour and sorrow." So true are the words of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... is, if I can help Description; and I won't reflect,—that is, If I can stave off thought, which—as a whelp Clings to its teat—sticks to me through the abyss Of this odd labyrinth; or as the kelp Holds by the rock; or as a lover's kiss Drains its first draught of lips:—but, as I said, I won't philosophise, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... period of the 1862 campaign, the most glorious to the Confederacy, Lee was Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies. But when Lee left Richmond for the Northern border, Davis once more assumed supreme control, retaining it until it was too late to stave off ruin. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... think it has been any particular element," she broke in, trying desperately to stave off what she felt in his tone. "I love the wild, where I can ride, and ride, and never meet a human being—where I can dream and dally and feast my eyes on a landscape man has not touched. I have lived most ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... he took me by the ear and said I couldn't come no 'Daisy' business on him the second time. He said he knew I wrote the letter, and for me to go up to the store room and prepare for the almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he went down stairs and broke up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me with. Well, I had to think mighty quick, but I was enough for him. I got a dried bladder in my room, one that me and my chum got to the slotter house, and blowed it partly up, so it would be sort of flat-like, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... I was able to think clearly now that the baleful eyes were off me. Here I was shut up for the night with the ferocious beast. My own instincts, to say nothing of the words of the plausible villain who laid this trap for me, warned me that the animal was as savage as its master. How could I stave it off until morning? The door was hopeless, and so were the narrow, barred windows. There was no shelter anywhere in the bare, stone-flagged room. To cry for assistance was absurd. I knew that this den was an outhouse, and that the corridor which connected it with the house was at ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he saw her so offended, Fixed himself firmly in his arms and seat, He rests his lance, but holds the stave suspended, So that it shall not harm her when they meet, She that to smite and pierce the Child intended, Pitiless, and inflamed with furious heat, Has not the courage, when she sees him near, To fling, or do ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... has developed from an old Germanic verb that means to scratch and the Germanic name for the beech. Our earliest books were wooden tablets on which inscriptions were scratched. The word book itself comes from Anglo-Sax. b[o]c, beech; cf. Ger. Buchstabe, letter, lit. beech-stave. Lat. liber, book, whence a large family of words in the Romance languages, means the inner bark of a tree, and bible is ultimately from Greek {byblos}, the inner rind of the papyrus, the Egyptian rush from which ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... specify what further measures the South demanded, in sharp, incisive terms, but this extract suffices to show that our leaders used every power of tongue and moral suasion to stave off bloodshed. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... mobilization, he said, would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first, notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would have been an ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... foolish man, can't you see that it's you I want?" And she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know she gladly will. As for me, of ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... to me recently, in his most earnest and persuasive manner, that it was my duty to write a book about the American composers, exposing their futile pretensions and describing their flaccid opera, stave by stave. It was in vain that I urged that this would be but a sleeveless errand, arguing that I could not fight men of straw, that these our composers had no real standing in the concert halls, and that pushing them over would be an easy ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eyes? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave— Unmeet for this desirous morn— That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... down a dark flight of steps, damp and slippery. The ooze and slime rendered his footing tedious and insecure. Soon he recognised the mighty voice of Gideon bellowing forth a triumphant psalm. Another stave was just commencing as the door opened, and the torch glared lurid and dismally on the iron features and grisly aspect of the captive. A pair of rude stocks, through which Gideon's long extremities protruded, stood in the middle of the dungeon. He scowled terrifically at the intruders; ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... twain, His good buff jerkin crimsoned o'er with many a gory stain; Yet still he waves his banner, and cries amid the rout, "For Church and King, fair gentlemen! spur on, and fight it out!" And now he wards a Roundhead's pike, and now he hums a stave, And now he quotes a stage-play, and now he fells ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... two minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. Behind the battered and tottering Crimson wall a figure raved and ranted and roared, entreating his teammates to stave off the Bulldog's advance. He stamped from end to end in the churned up sod, prodding each player in a vicious manner. But there was no visible stiffening of the Harvard defense at the savage barking of its quarterback. The team was crushed after ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman

... attached to no particular denomination, the meeting-houses on every side, hardly excepting the Quakers themselves, delighted to see him drive up on Sundays and tell an anecdote to the children and sing a little air, half-hymn sort, half stave, but always given with a good countenance, which apologized for the worldly notes of it. If any severe interpreter of Christian amusements took the people to task for tolerating such a universal and desultory character, there were others to rise ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... & Co.'s Improvements. The Simplest and Best in use. Also, Shingle, Heading and Stave Jointers, Equalizers, Heading Turners, Planers ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various

... 'and do not, the things which I say?' (Luke 6:46) He cannot abide to be reputed the Lord of those that presume to profess his name, and do not depart from iniquity. (Ezek. 20:39) The reason is, for that such do but profane his name, and stave others off from falling in love with him and his ways. Hence he says again 'Behold, I have sworn by my great name, saith the Lord, that my name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and I will go up gently towards the window. She may see me. She will see me as I step into the moonlight. At least I know an air by which she will recognize me, if I do but hum a stave." ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... fires assumed a whiter heat. In the Convention the Union men no longer utter denunciations against the disunionists. They merely resort to pretexts and quibbles to stave off the inevitable ordinance. They had sent a deputation to Washington to make a final appeal to Seward and Lincoln to vouchsafe them such guarantees as would enable them to keep Virginia to her moorings. But in vain. They could not obtain ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... follow many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. 'Tis still the fashion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim struggle in the face of a desperate risk surpassed any remembered exhibition of fencers' skill with the steel. The trunk was bending visibly beneath the hewers, the river frothed more at their feet, and the giant logs were rolling, creeping, shocking close behind, ready to ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... upon another point—the prodigious interest manifested by the public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... of their toil and asked for a little rest, Frodi answered: "Ye shall sleep no longer than the cuckoo is silent, or while I speak one stave." Then the giant-maids ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday

... whether Elizabeth's policy had been dictated by a most consummate, if by no means elevated, state-craft based upon an abnormally astute calculation of risks and chances, or merely by a desperate desire to stave off an immediate contest, whatever shifts might be involved; whether it was in fact peculiarly long-sighted, or opportunist to the last and lowest degree; it had been actually a complete success. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... the first time he had heard the sonata played. He knew that his memory of the piano falsified still further the perspective in which he saw the music, that the field open to the musician is not a miserable stave of seven notes, but an immeasurable keyboard (still, almost all of it, unknown), on which, here and there only, separated by the gross darkness of its unexplored tracts, some few among the millions of keys, keys of tenderness, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... thought of having to testify and she asked me all the questions she could think of on what to do and what to say. I reassured her, telling her the district attorney was friendly to Jim and that I was confident our testimony as to Helen's words would stave off any indictment until Helen ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... was soft, and procuring a barrel-stave, the homicide went at the labor of digging a grave ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton

... the problem, the government temporized and resolved to stave off the difficulty. A commission was appointed to visit every parish in Ireland and report the state of affairs to Parliament, when everybody already knew what this state was,—one of glaring inequality ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... again if called to show its sterling qualities. And with this in the hands of Thad Brewster, who was a perfectly fearless chap, according to his churns, who did not know that his boy heart could hammer in his breast like a runaway steam engine, why, they surely ought to be able to stave ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... either of which is subject to grievous penalties. If he be the possessor of a decent coat and hat, and can scrape any acquaintance with any one concerned, he may get introduced to that overworked and greatly perplexed official, the under-sheriff, who will stave him off if possible,—knowing that even an under-sheriff cannot make space elastic,—but, if the introduction has been acknowledged as good, will probably find a seat for him if he persevere to the end. But the seat when obtained must be kept in possession from morning to evening, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... country. You know this to be the fact, and we challenge you as truthful men to deny it, that for many years it has been a favorite idea with some of your statesmen, and not of leaders of the Democratic party only, to stave off the troubles that were rapidly growing out of the slavery question, by having recourse to a 'distraction' based on the acquisition of Cuba. You know, or ought to know, that the very man who is now at the head of the Southern Confederacy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... Then he rolled a couple of huge casks on one side as if they had been light balls, and seized one of the large thick beams which had not yet been worked at "Marry, master," he cried, "marry, this is good sound oak; I wager it will snap like glass." And thereupon he struck the stave against the grindstone so that it broke clean in half with a loud crack. "Pray be so kind," said Master Martin, "pray have the kindness, my good fellow, to kick that two-tun cask about or to pull down the whole shop. There, you can take that balk for a mallet, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... the matter to the Confederate authorities. The Cabinet, in a fateful session at Montgomery, hesitated—drawn between the wish to keep their hold upon the moderates of the North, who were trying to stave off war, and the desire to precipitate Virginia into the lists. Toombs, Secretary of State in the new Government, wavered; then seemed to find his resolution and came out strong against a demand for surrender. "It is suicide, murder, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... almost unsurpassed in the annals of criminal insensibility. Nero fiddling over burning Rome, Thurtell fresh from the murder of Weare, inviting Hunt, the singer and his accomplice, to "tip them a stave" after supper, Edwards, the Camberwell murderer, reading with gusto to friends the report of a fashionable divorce case, post from the murder of a young married couple and their baby—even examples such as these ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... there is another important consideration. Work is at a standstill. Mobiles and Nationaux who apply forma pauperis receive one franc and a half per diem. Now, at present prices, it is materially impossible for a single man to buy sufficient food to stave off hunger for this sum, how then those who depend upon it for their sustenance, and have wives and families to support out of it, are able to live, it is difficult to understand. Sooner or later the population will have to be rationed like soldiers, and, if the siege goes on, useless ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... Matt Quintal," returned the other, who was beginning to talk rather thickly, so powerful was the effect of the liquor on his unaccustomed nerves; "I shay, ole feller, you used to sing well once. Come g-give us a stave now." ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... happier ghosts that waned away— Whither, who knows?— Ghosts that come back with music and the may, And Spring's first rose, Lover and lass, to sing the old burden through, Stave and refrain: Look for me once, lest I should look for you, ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... ways an itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... an English school or a school in France?" said Mr. Short, taking the indulgent cue, to avoid offence and stave off resistance. But his affectation of meekness was more provoking than his sarcasm. Bessie fired up indignantly at ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... said a voice from almost over his shoulder. "And watch where you're going if you don't want to stave ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... thirst!" exclaimed he who had been toasted, snatching the cup away. "Art thou altogether unslakable? Is thy belly a lime-kiln? Nay, shalt taste not a single drop more, Hubert, till we have a stave. Come, tune ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister

... on in a lodging-house for homeless men. This was called a "Five Cent Flop" house. My pals were not able at times to raise the five cents a day to buy sleeping quarters. It was late fall and too cold to sleep in the "jungle" down by the levee. The poor fellows were able to stave off starvation by visiting various free lunches during the day. Every night I arrived with my dollar, and that meant beer and beds for a score. I also brought along a flour sack half full of biscuits, cold pancakes, corn bread, chicken necks and wings and scraps of roasts and steaks. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... their goods, others to get paid for what they had allowed the sailors to take up upon credit. But the first lieutenant would not allow any of them to come on board until after the ship was paid; although they were so urgent that he was forced to place sentries in the chains with cold shot, to stave the boats if they came alongside. I was standing at the gangway, looking at the crowd of boats, when a black-looking fellow in one of the wherries said to me, "I say, sir, let me slip in at the port, and I have a very nice present to make you;" and he displayed a gold ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself to drag him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom, lightly sweating as a frightened horse ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... broke into song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of "The Mermaid"; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... peace on earth to all men of goodwill," persisted Joseph. "It is Christmas morning, mother." And he began to troll out the stave of a carol, "Simeon, that ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... to each other;" and when the amateur players had played themselves out, and exhausted their powers of contributing to each others' amusement, it is probable that "recourse to ourselves," in the exact sense of the phrase, was found ineffective—in Sterne's case, at any rate—to stave off ennui. To him, with his copiously if somewhat oddly furnished mind, and his natural activity of imagination, one could hardly apply ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... Determined not to be outwitted by the Norman, Ansgar (so the story goes) summoned a meeting of the eldermen (natu majores) of the City—the forerunners of the later aldermen—and proposed a feigned submission which might stave off immediate danger. The proposal was accepted and a messenger despatched. William pretended to accept the terms offered, and at the same time so worked upon the messenger with fair promises and gifts that on his return he converted his fellow citizens and induced them by representations ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... complained that they had no support, and that everybody they took in became useless as soon as they were in office—Ellenborough, Rosslyn, Murray. It was evident, however, that she did contemplate their loss of office as a very probable event, though they do not mean to resign, and think they may stave off the evil day. In Downing Street we met George Dawson, who told us the funds had fallen three per cent., and that the panic was tremendous, so much so that they were not without alarm lest there should be a run on the Bank for gold. Later in the day, however, the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... dispelled by a statement from President Cleveland, on the 23rd of April, declaring flatly and unmistakably that redemption in gold would be maintained. But the financial situation throughout the country was such that nothing could stave off the impending panic. Failures were increasing in number, some large firms broke under the strain, and the final stroke came on the 5th of May when the National Cordage Company went into bankruptcy. As often happens in the history ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... a stave of Robin Hood; maybe that shall hasten the coming of one I wot of." And he fell to singing in a clear voice, for he was a young man, and to a sweet wild melody, one of those ballads which in an incomplete and degraded ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... any member wishes to divide his time, he can do so; but he can only occupy ten minutes in all. We are called to deliberate, as well as to act. We are asked if we wish to stave off final action? I answer, No. I want speedy action. But at the same time let us have deliberation. I wish to give a vote ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... three of them would easily be able to overcome Oscar, who did not appear to be very brawny in build. But if he had accomplices near at hand even his capture might not prove sufficient to stave off the danger. ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... swarming all round the camp, and the French soldiers told off for our protection either could not or would not keep them out. Montcalm, in great anxiety, came over himself seeking to restore order; but the Indians were drunk with blood, and would not listen to him. He begged us to stave in our rum barrels, which was instantly done; but the act provoked the savages, and they pounced upon our baggage, which had been reserved to us by the terms of the treaty. We appealed to the Marquis; but he advised us to ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... unless you would like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation end without any more pointed remarks. If I chose, you know, I could drop you overboard in sight of your men, to swim ashore. My guns would stave your longboat all to pieces. But I've stayed long enough to give the lads a chance to have a good meal and a bit of fun—nothing's better than dancing, for the spirits, dad always said it was better than either fighting or dicing on shipboard. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... it self; Scriblets for painters first draughts are also made of its coals; and the extraordinary candor and lightness, has dignify'd it above all the woods of our forest, in the hands of the Right Honourable the White-Stave officers of His Majesty's Imperial Court. Those royal plantations of these trees in the parks of Hampton-court, and St. James's, will sufficiently instruct any man how these (and indeed all other trees which stand single) are to be govern'd, and defended from the injuries of beasts, and sometimes ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... by the war; we did not have anything when the war commenced, and so we held our own. I secured a common school education, and at the age of twelve I left home, or rather home left me—things just petered out. I was slush cook on an Ohio River Packet; check clerk in a stave and heading camp in the knobs of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia; I helped lay the track of the M. K. & T. R. R., and was chambermaid in a livery stable. Made my first appearance on the stage at the National Theatre in ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... streets, the exodus from the theatres would be streaming towards cars and ferry. It was time we were on board again. Often there would be a crowd of us bound for the wharves. It was a custom to tramp through 'sailor-town' together. On the way we would cheer the 'crimps' up by a stave or two ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... was floating alongside the ship which it belabored with thumps that jarred the hull. It was likely to stave in the skin of the vessel and Captain Wellsby shouted to his men to hack at the trailing cordage and send the mast clear before it did a fatal injury. A dozen men risked drowning at this task while the others guarded the after cabin lest the pirates attempt a sally. These besieged rogues ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... the kind that takes you by storm, Captain Kirby is one that will lay siege. He doesn't come so often as the other, he doesn't stay so long, he doesn't say so much; but he is the kind that sticks. I may be able to stave off the lieutenant, but I shall have to have it out with ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... further words. The four quickly made for the gates. They opened and closed them quickly. Each held a stave that seemed not unlike a young tree, of which a number ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe

... with the roadway running to the gates. Angry at my own folly for lingering so long about the ships, I continued cautiously forward, trying each step of the way. Presently I heard a sound of footsteps before me, and then a voice raised in a stave of song. There followed a loud oath and the splash of a heavy body ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... of a stout pole, five feet in length, is firmly fixed; to strengthen their hold, a number of supports are nailed round the outside of the former, and also closely round the latter. The tar is then put into the barrel, and set on fire; and the remaining one being broken up, stave after stave is thrown in, until it is quite full. The 'cl[a]vie,' already burning fiercely, is now shouldered by some strong young man, and borne away at a rapid pace. As soon as the bearer gives signs of exhaustion, another willingly takes his place; and should any ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... whatever woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid creatures, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... ring, thrust the net into a pocket, shut up the handle to a two-foot stave, and slid the cane-ring round his waist. Stalky led inland to the wood, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile from the sea, and reached the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... exactly under any of these heads; as between 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... wonder! It's quite true that when one feels in danger one talks like mad to stave it off, even when one doesn't quite want to ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... Atterby-Smiths had so far effectually put a stop to any talk of such matters and even if Lady Ragnall should succeed in getting rid of them by that morning train, as to which I was doubtful, there remained but a single day of my visit during which it ought not to be hard to stave off the subject. Thus I reflected, standing face to face with those mummies, till presently I observed that the Singer of Amen who wore a staring, gold mask, seemed to be watching me with her oblong painted eyes. To my fancy a sardonic smile gathered ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the beginning, but when you are warmed to the job you are disposed to silence, drop perhaps one behind the other, and reserve your talk for the inn table and the after-supper pipe. An occasional joke, an occasional stave of song, a necessary consultation over the map—that is enough ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... there from his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: Yet if he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power, (that is,) comes to church in his best clothes, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Halmaheira as it is called by the Malays and Dutch, seems to have been recently modified by upheaval and subsidence. In 1673, a mountain is said to stave been upheaved at Gamokonora on the northern peninsula. All the parts that I have seen have either been volcanic or coralline, and along the coast there are fringing coral reefs very dangerous to navigation. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... cried Michael. 'There's fire for—your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies—a sort of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head.' ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... enjoying our work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire, and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly knows that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... broke it. There has been a dreadful scene. I never imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone—we think he ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... top of all these troubles this new danger of being turned out on the roadside! For where are they to get four dollars, or two, or one even, to stave Conolly off? Certainly his father was away too long; but surely, surely, thought the boy, he would get back in time to save his home! Then he remembered with horror, and a feeling of being disloyal to his father for remembering, that terrible day, three years before, when big Baptiste had come ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... see the office she give me! She rip and stave and tear! She talk of political slander, and libel, and disgrace, and all that. She rise up big right afore me, and come nigh swearing she would kill such a David Lockwin on sight. There wasn't no such a David Lockwin at all. Her husband was a nobleman. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... was done; and so greatly was he revered for his exalted character, so universal was the confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and sound judgment, that, so long as he remained President, the party that surrounded him was immovable as a mountain. His policy was to stave off a rupture with England, and, if possible, to bring that power into pacific and rational relations with the United States. The government aimed to keep itself clear of entanglement with all foreign politics; to maintain ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... dear old land is thine, And thou a traitor slave of it: Think how the Switzer leads his kine, When pale the evening star doth shine; His song has home in every line, Freedom in every stave of it; Think how the German loves his Rhine And ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... a sudden thought. With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did not. Their course ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... childhood up, and shown him, through all his years, Great-heart lungeing at Giant Maul, and Apollyon breathing fire at Christian, and every turn and town along the road to the Celestial City, and that bright place itself, seen as to a stave of music, shining afar off upon the hill-top, the candle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... any of so foul a crime Be guilty? Ah! how nearly, thyself, Reft was the solace that we had in thee, Menalcas! Who then of the Nymphs had sung, Or who with flowering herbs bestrewn the ground, And o'er the fountains drawn a leafy veil?- Who sung the stave I filched from you that day To Amaryllis wending, our hearts' joy?- "While I am gone, 'tis but a little way, Feed, Tityrus, my goats, and, having fed, Drive to the drinking-pool, and, as you drive, Beware the he-goat; with his ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... humbled him. His was a simple soul, and took its responsibilities seriously. He sought not to inquire for what high purpose Providence had so signally intervened to stave off from the East and West Looe Artillery the doom of common men. He only prayed to be equal to it. The Doctor's statistics had, in fact, scared him a little. I am ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... fantastical and bewitching thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually set upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, and detain them, they cannot, I say, go about their more necessary business, stave off or extricate themselves, but are ever musing, melancholising, and carried along, as he (they say) that is led round about a heath with a Puck in the night, they run earnestly on in this labyrinth of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well or willingly ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... which materially lessen the manual labor of preparing the crop for market. Each hogshead is branded with the name of the owner, and thus shipped to his commission-merchant, when the hogshead is 'broken' by tearing off a stave, thus exposing the strata of the bulk to view. Of late years some planters have been guilty of 'nesting,' or placing prime leaf around the outer part and an inferior article in the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... returned from a hard three months' campaign. For any one to question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to crush ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... government working drawings and specifications, pay-rolls, etc. In addition to its door, fastened at night with a padlock, and its one glass window, secured by a ten-penny nail, the shanty had a flap-window, hinged at the bottom. When this was propped up with a barrel stave it made a counter from which to pay the ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... up and removed The dead trunks and the fallen trees. He dressed and regulated The bushy clumps and the (tangled) rows. He opened up and cleared The tamarisk trees and the stave trees. He hewed and thinned The mountain mulberry trees. God having brought about the removal thither of this intelligent ruler, The Kwan hordes fled away[2]. Heaven had raised up a helpmeet for him, And the appointment he had ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... for it looks out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair one is ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... lips to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave off the real, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... him, either in London or in the country;—would open their houses to him, and lend him their horses, and provide him with every luxury which the rich enjoy,—except ready money. When the uttermost stress of pecuniary embarrassment would come upon him, they would pay something to stave off the immediate evil. And so Burgo went on. Nobody now thought of saying much to reproach him. It was known to be waste of words, and trouble in vain. They were still fond of him because he was beautiful and never vain of his beauty;—because in the midst of his ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... leading to the top of a near-by hill. To reach this hill the water after its diversion from the Mokelumne river at the dam, flows twenty miles through a canal or ditch and then through 3,000 feet of wooden stave pipe. Although California ranks second in water-power development it is easily the first in the number of its stations, and also be it said, California was the first to realize the possibilities of long distance electrical energy. The line from ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... for poor Mr Ashurst I'd be afther singing yer a stave to prevent you from getting down-hearted," exclaimed Mike, "though it would not do just now, lest the poor young gintleman might be thinking we were ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... peaceful prebendary shares." "What is a Church?"—Our honest Sexton tells, "'Tis a tall building, with a tower and bells; Where priest and clerk with joint exertion strive To keep the ardour af their flock alive; That, by its periods eloquent and grave; This, by responses, and a well-set stave: These for the living; but when life be fled, I toll myself the requiem for the dead." 'Tis to this Church I call thee, and that place Where slept our fathers when they'd run their race: We too shall rest, and then our children keep Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep; ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... sing a stave To match their strumming? I would have The manly bass of Hobbes's voice; But Unwin's house is Hobbes's choice. George! you've a ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... the gentlemen of Beauce," insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. "Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank." The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring harmony among ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... this he sat up to watch me at work and very eager to aid me therein. "So you shall, sir," said I, and having tapered my bow-stave sufficiently, I showed him how to trim the shafts as smooth and true as possible with a cleft or notch at one end into which I set one of my rusty nails, binding it there with strips from my tattered shirt; in place of feathers I used a tuft of grass and behold! my arrow was complete, and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... leader was of knowledge great, Either for charge or for retreat. He knew when to fall on pell-mell; To fall back and retreat as well. 160 So lawyers, lest the bear defendant, And plaintiff dog, should make an end on't, Do stave and tail with writs of error, Reverse of judgment, and demurrer, To let them breathe a while, and then 165 Cry whoop, and set them on agen. As ROMULUS a wolf did rear, So he was dry-nurs'd by a bear, That fed him with the purchas'd prey Of many a fierce and bloody fray; 170 Bred up, where discipline ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... help it. [She looks up affectionately]. Tom made me. [She looks down again quickly to conceal the effect of this blow. He whistles another stave; then resumes]. I had a sort of dread of returning to Ireland. I felt somehow that my luck would turn if I came back. And now here I am, none ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... conducted down a dark flight of steps, damp and slippery. The ooze and slime rendered his footing tedious and insecure. Soon he recognised the mighty voice of Gideon bellowing forth a triumphant psalm. Another stave was just commencing as the door opened, and the torch glared lurid and dismally on the iron features and grisly aspect of the captive. A pair of rude stocks, through which Gideon's long extremities protruded, stood in the middle of the dungeon. He scowled terrifically at the intruders; but suddenly ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... of weak performance, the conscious nature striving to keep up its self-respect by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action. As in such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost painless. How did Coleridge ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their neighbourhood. But there ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... they roared out this stave they whirled round the fire, dropped and rebounded from their knees, and again whirled round as the chorus was again repeated. The rippling of the waves upon the pebbly margin where we were seated filled up the pauses of the song with a milder and not more monotonous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... campaign. For any one to question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... men on watch began to sing, and his song was an old sea stave that had a swing and roll in its rough tune that was like the broken surge of sea water, even while it was timed to the fall of oar blades into the surf. One may not say how old those songs are that the ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... whatever I do not wish the other fellow to take away from me, so build your dam and be damned to you. Of course, if you complete your contract eventually, you will force me to pay you for it, but in the interim you will have had to use clam-shells and woodpecker heads for money. I know I can stave off settlement of your judgment for a year; after that, should I acquire title to the Rancho Palomar, I will ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... you he bath a stave, Latest of the bright bevy. On gentle hearts and spirits brave The toll of love you'll levy. We trust that fortune may prove fair, And life's long pathway rosy, And love attend the Royal pair, The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... hawk as well as Phil Royle, the falconer—diet a fighting-cock as well as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute himself, and which he was unwilling should ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... bow as he spoke, and the string twanged with a rich deep musical note. Aylward leaned upon his bow-stave as he keenly watched the long swift flight of his shaft, skimming smoothly down ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the roadway running to the gates. Angry at my own folly for lingering so long about the ships, I continued cautiously forward, trying each step of the way. Presently I heard a sound of footsteps before me, and then a voice raised in a stave of song. There followed a loud oath and the splash of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... me, Mr Jonas, if I close this door a moment, will you?' said Pecksniff. 'This may be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold, as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... ascent is broken By stairways that were made there in the age When still were safe the ledger and the stave, ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... Guttorm," continued Ulf, turning to the bluff old warrior, "since thou hast shown thy readiness to rebuke, let us see thy willingness to entertain. Sing us a stave or tell us a saga, kinsman, as well thou knowest how, being gifted with more than a fair share ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... good for the world—necessary for the stability of the social order. He is their embodiment: he is the most emblematic figure in the modern world that I know—in this country, at any rate—representing so much that is good in the great traditions which have got to go. And to stave off that day he will do almost anything. He would even—if he thought it would enable him the better to prick some of his bubbles—he would even take office under ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... 'except that one shuffles off unpleasant subjects! I did fancy I could stave it off till Oxford was over, and I was free of the men there; but that notion might have been a mere excuse to myself for putting off the evil day. I was too much in debt, too, for an open rupture with you; and as to her, I can truly say that my sole shadow ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fashion just what Secretary Lansing attempted to obtain when he suggested to the Entente nations an agreement on the arming of merchantmen, how this government was informed by Germany of her intention to destroy armed merchantmen without giving the passengers a moment of warning, and how, in order to stave off such a contingency, we tried as the friend and in the interest of humanity to get an agreement between both sides that would bring submarine warfare within ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... might be possible to stave death off for a time if a way could be found of setting up a reaction in the lower extremities; but if the symptoms do not abate by to-morrow evening, it will be all over with him, poor old fellow! Do you know what has happened to bring this on? There must have been some violent shock, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... have echoed o'er the arsenal, Keeping due time with every hammer's clink, As a good jest to jolly artisans; Or making chorus to the creaking oar, In the vile tune of every galley-slave, Who, as he sung the merry stave, exulted He was not a shamed ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... to disturb ye in your present frame of mind. All the morning I felt more ashamed than I cared to own at the thought of how the neighbours, great and small, would laugh at what they would call your folly, when they knew what had happened; so I resolved to take this step to stave it off, if so be 'twas possible. And when I saw Mrs. Garland I knew I had done right. She pitied me so much for having had the house cleaned in vain, and laid in provisions to waste, that it put her into ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... she had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words, "beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long, endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were advancing ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... for the time, the rest being occupied with the barrels of paraffin, and the first intimation they had of his separation from them was the report of his gun and the whizz of his bullet. "Bang, bang," both barrels, and his first bullet it seems went through the cask of sulphur, smashed out a stave from the further side, and filled the air with yellow dust. Redwood had kept his gun in hand and let fly at something grey that leapt past him. He had a vision of the broad hind-quarters, the long scaly tail and long soles of the hind-feet of a rat, and fired his second ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... they had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the Ladder of Learning for the astonishment of a visitor; and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... all I could to stave off the blundering idiot; but I guess you are in for it! The jig ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... rope serves to haul the boat in and out, and the stanchions serve to keep her fast, so that she cannot swing to either side when the rope is hauled tight: for the sea would else fill her, or toss her ashore and stave her. The better to prevent her staving and to keep her the tighter together there are two sets of ropes more: the first going athwart from gunwale to gunwale, which, when the rowers benches are laid, bind the boats sides so hard ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... galley had a long, low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy's ship. Motive power was supplied by two banks of oars, the upper ones resting in rowlocks on the gunwale, the lower ones in rowlocks pierced in the timbers of the vessel's side. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... with woad, whatever woad is; I remember reading about it in the histories of England; all the early Britons used it. And carrying nice, knobby stone creeks to stave in our heads! It would be nice to meet a hundred or a thousand of them, eh? Rather a different matter from dealing with a horde of those anthropoid creatures, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... coloured and hung her head. She was still quivering with the shame of her public torture. She could still see Manvers' eyes stare chilly at the wall before them, and believe them to grow colder with each stave of her admissions. Her one consolation lay in the thought that she could please him by amendment and save him by a conviction; so it was hard to be petted by Sister Chucha. She would have welcomed the whip, would ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... went through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... now, you young fool? I'm almost sorry I went to the bother of trying to save you from the clutch of the law. What are you complaining about, I'd like to know? Get another fish, if you expect to stave off your hunger; the first of the spoils always goes to ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... dealing with the problem, the government temporized and resolved to stave off the difficulty. A commission was appointed to visit every parish in Ireland and report the state of affairs to Parliament, when everybody already knew what this state was,—one of glaring inequality and injustice, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... A stave had sprung, and the pressure made the deep-red fluid gurgle out in a flood. The white dust of the road, became ruddy. The young carter had just enough presence of mind to roll the heavy wine-cask into ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... do it!" he virulently admonished his parent, a resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full rich voice, "Bye-oh, Baby!" Bob vociferated anew, "Don't you begin ter dare do it!" every inch a man ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Sowerby's tone about money at different times. When he wanted to raise the wind, everything was so important; haste and superhuman efforts, and men running to and fro with blank acceptances in their hands, could alone stave off the crack of doom; but at other times, when retaliatory applications were made to him, he could prove with the easiest voice and most jaunty manner that everything was quite serene. Now, at this period, he was in that mood of superhuman ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... the spare spars, Watkins, and fasten them to float in front of her bows like a triangle. Matthews, catch hold of that boat-hook and try to fend off any piece of timber that comes along. You get hold of the sweeps, lads, and do the same. They would stave her in like a nut-shell if ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty

... could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull, with now and again a mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside, weighty enough, you would have supposed, to stave the ship. But though the Laughing Mary was not a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her kind ever launched, built mainly of oak and put together by an honest artificer. Nevertheless her continuing to float in her miserably torn and mangled condition was so great a ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her—reading my own poems—anybody's poems—to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, and ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... would go 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery, come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks pa—well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very much these days. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... accompany Eric on his voyage to Greenland, and made his preparations to give up his farm. Upon the ship with Heriulf was a Christian man from the Hebrides, he it was who composed the Sea-Rollers' Song, which contains this stave:[47-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... She could stave off the worst by not looking at him, by looking at other things, impersonal, innocent things; the bright, yellow, sharp gabled station; the black girders of the bridge; the white signal post beside it holding out a stiff, black-banded arm; the two rails curving there, with the flat ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair

... occasion to visit my lawyer in Chancery Lane, he was with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, &c., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help enquiring that of Sheridan. 'Oh,' replied the attorney, 'the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine-merchant, my client.'—'Well,' said I, 'and what do you mean to do?'—'Nothing at all for the present,' said he: 'would you have us proceed against old Sherry? what would be the use of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... and tired. We will go to St. Bertin at once, and you shall be feasted royally. Hearken, villains!" shouted he to the peasants. "This ship belongs to the fair sir here,—my guest and friend; and if any man dares to steal from her a stave or a nail, I will have his thief's ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... other big men in the business kept faith with him. Now and then, when the British Intelligence were too hot on the trail, Parrish and Marbran would give away one of the small fry belonging to the organization and thus stave off suspicion. They could do this in complete safety, for so perfect was their organization that the small fry only knew the small fry in the shallows and never the big fish ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... a chance at us, more like!" he grumbled. "My opinion, the blighters have shot and burnt themselves into a state o' mind; bloomin' delusion o' grandeur, that's what. Wildest of 'em will rush us to-night, once—maybe twice. We stave 'em off, say: that case, they'll settle down to starve ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... for the first half of their onward march; and as they could follow a plain trail for the remainder of the way, they had no further need of their guide's services. They promised to visit Eb at his bark hut on their return journey, to bid him a final farewell, and hear one more stave of:— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... think so. I thought of trying to stave him off for a few days, but then I thought, 'Why, he'll see through that game and he'll go on with his scheme for sewing us up just the same.' You see, there's no good saying we're afraid. So I told him that we didn't mind him a bit; said he could go out and have all the fun ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... &c. (means of restraint) 752; hold back, counterpoise. [person who hinders] damper, wet blanket, hinderer, marplot, killjoy; party pooper[coll]; party crasher, interloper. trail of a red herring; opponent &c. 710. V. hinder, impede, filibuster [U.S.], impedite[obs3], embarrass. keep off, stave off, ward off; obviate; avert, antevert|; turn aside, draw off, prevent, forefend, nip in the bud; retard, slacken, check, let; counteract, countercheck[obs3]; preclude, debar, foreclose, estop[Law]; inhibit &c. 761; shackle &c. (restrain) 751; restrict. obstruct, stop, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom I have hitherto said nothing, except to note that he was one of the crew. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... ones, which are brilliantly scoured every time they are in use. Tin pitchers are used in some places, while pails of wood in cooper-work are employed in others. A pail of oak, having thin staves bound together by bright iron hoops, with a handle formed by a stave projecting upward, is convenient for the purpose, and may be kept clean and sweet. One nine inches in diameter at the bottom, eleven inches at the top, and ten inches deep, with an upright handle or leg of five inches, has a capacious enough mouth to receive the milk as it descends; and ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's end for singing ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... other maid," he thought, "would ride on until she dropped? Would meet discomfort at every turn with a jest or a merry stave?" ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... with a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? Has Dr. Worth ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of all to get the shrouds on one side cut through, so that the mast might come to the surface alongside instead of disturbing the balance of the boat below; and then they must climb up on the swaying bottom of the boat and stave in the key-holes, to let out the air which kept the boat too high in the water, and so ease her. After great exertions they succeeded, and Elias, who had got up on the top first, now helped the other two up ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... and he drew it home, With madness, to his bosom: the white foam Was o'er its strings; and on the streaming sail He wiped them, running, with his fingers pale, Along the tuneless notes, that only gave Seldom responses to his wandering stave! ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... be noted that so far as the positions of the notes on the stave are concerned, the key of A[b] is as easy to sing in as the key of A, D[b] as D, and so on. This fact is sometimes overlooked, and unnecessary difficulties ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home

... dangers of the northern shore, which was to leeward; towards this broken land, however, and lee-shore, the ship settled very fast, notwithstanding our utmost efforts: In this pressing emergency we were obliged to stave all the water-casks upon the deck, and between decks, to clear the vessel, and to make her carry better sail, and at length, happily escaped the danger which threatened us. After we got clear of those islands, and drew off from the Streight's ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth a million to the depredator might have been made. "Seems to me," ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... descendant and worthy representative!" This example was followed by all the gentlemen present. The harp struck up a triumphal strain; and, the old squire already mentioned, vociferating the first stave, they sang, or ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... at variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will not have ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... "Begin you the stave, reverend sir," cried they all, "and never did the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the threshold Herdegen saw through their purpose, and had no sooner shut the door than he drew his hunting knife. Then the old beldame gripped him by the throat and clawed him tooth and nail; one of the ruffians beat him with a stave torn from the bedstead till he weened he had broken or bruised all his limbs, while the other, whose hands were yet bound, pressed between him and the door. In truth he would have come to a bad end, but that the younger woman saved him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... speaking, political than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honorable gentlemen who are opposed to this description ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... The Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... rage seizes him, his face crumples, his little fists clench in fury, he tightens them like knots in string and waves them about. "Alors quoi? Ah, if I had hold of the mongrel that did it! Talk about breaking his jaw—I'd stave in his bread-pan, I'd—there was a whole Camembert in there, I'll go and look for it." He massages his stomach with the little sharp taps of a guitar player, and plunges into the gray of the morning, grinning yet dignified, with his awkward outlines of an invalid in a dressing-gown. We hear ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... breath of relief. The boy was going to show good sense and willingness after all. "I guess you'd better learn barrel-making first," said he. He rose. "I'll take you to the foreman of the cooperage, and to-morrow you can go to work in the stave department. The first thing is to learn to ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... up to fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!" and the gang relieved, streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton water-butts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats then began to arrive, so many per day, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... So as to stave in those ribs of yours that have grown callous to blows! (to trader) Out of my way, and let me murder the rascal that always sets me afire with rage, that never lets one order from me suffice for one job, the criminal, but keeps me commanding and growling the same thing a ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... what ails ye the nicht?" asked Walker in hurried alarm, wondering wildly how he could stave off the chastisement which he knew from Geordie's voice he might expect. "Talk sensibly, man. Try an' ha'e some sense. What's the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... act iv., scene 1; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken throughout by Rosalind and Orlando, compare, for example, the first speech of all, Orlando's speech to Adam, with what passage it shall please you to select—the Seven Ages from the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as Othello's farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive, if you have any ear for that class of music, a certain superior degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... truth, that his hold may be firm and his stab sure; yet the world know not that, and they trust him, and he is singled out as a pattern-man for youth to follow; and so—but we all play parts—all, all! And now for a stave of a song: Hurrah for the free trade!—a shout for the brave Buccaneers!—a pottle of sack!—and now, sir, I am myself again! The brimstone smell of that dark ruffian nearly overpowered me!" So saying, he passed his hand ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... impalement in a woman of forty-five who, while attempting to obtain water from a hogshead, fell with one limb inside the cistern, striking a projecting stave three inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. The external labia were divided, the left crus of the clitoris separated, the nymphae lacerated, and the vaginal wall penetrated to the extent of five inches; the patient recovered by the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... Judah. "When I go up to the depot he'll stand right in the middle of the railroad track and go to sleep. I have to whale the timbers out of him to get him awake enough to step ahead so's a train of cars won't stave in his broadside. But get him home here where he can see the barn, the place where he knows I stow the oats, and he wants to run right over top of a stone wall. Can't hardly hold him, I can't. Who-a-a!... Well, Cap'n Sears, here ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... do, and as soon as one gets to Cockleham an irresistible inclination seizes one not to do them to-day. If anybody says it is a good day for bathing you say it is better for boating. And if they agree you wonder if, after all, golf.... And so you preserve your independence and feel rested and stave off for a little while the evil day. But only for a little. Very soon, for lack of alternative suggestions, you are bound to be dragged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various

... least twenty-five dollars not to mention the two ash breezes that went with her. That helps some. What're you goin' to do now? Lay the Maggie alongside the bark? I wouldn't if I was you. The sea's a mite choppy an' if you bump the Maggie agin the bark she'll do one o' two things—stave in her topsides or bump that top-heavy deckload o' vegetables overboard. An' if that happens," he reminded Scraggs, "you'll be doin' your bookkeepin' with red ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... of 'em!" he uttered, as the cathedral clock rang out the hour, and his boots threatened to stave in the floor. "If I stand this life much longer, I'll be shot! It's enough to take the spirit out of a fellow; to wear the flesh off his bones; to afflict him with nervous fever. What an idiot I was to let my ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty belly. You ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... break thy young pate," said Adam, "if thou darest to lift a finger to me." And then, in defiance of the young Drawcansir's threats, with a stout heart and dauntless accent, he again uplifted the stave. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... non-appearance at a half-holiday game was a fine of sixpence. Constant absence was likely in time to lead to a more or less thrilling interview with the captain of cricket, but a very occasional attendance was enough to stave off this disaster; and as for the sixpence, to a man of means like Farnie it was a mere nothing. It was a bad system, and it was a wonder, under the circumstances, how Beckford produced the elevens it did. But it was the ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... girls working for themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old- fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father's wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda's earnings being large enough to stave off ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... in the next morning's papers, for effect. While I was talking with Captain Folsom, Height came into the room to listen. I admitted that the effect of such a publication would surely be good, and would probably stave off immediate demand till their assets could be in part converted or realized; but I naturally inquired of Folsom, "Have you personally examined the accounts, as herein recited, and the assets, enough to warrant your signature to this ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... her own; she will have to disavow her protege, which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... soldiers told off for our protection either could not or would not keep them out. Montcalm, in great anxiety, came over himself seeking to restore order; but the Indians were drunk with blood, and would not listen to him. He begged us to stave in our rum barrels, which was instantly done; but the act provoked the savages, and they pounced upon our baggage, which had been reserved to us by the terms of the treaty. We appealed to the Marquis; but he advised us ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... "Stave the miller off him," said Murray, "or he will worry him dead. The Abbot, my lord, offers us the hospitality of the Convent; I move we should repair hither, Sir Piercie and all of us. I must learn to know the Maid of Avenel—to-morrow I must act as her father—All Scotland shall ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... soon as his voice filled the night, the woman's faltered and died; and he, holding on for a stave or more, would stop on a note that had a wailing fall, and the lapping of the waves or cry of hidden birds take up the rule again. This did not often obtain. Mostly he watched out the night, sleeping little, talking none, but revolving in his mind the ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... ballast they chucked over to stave the bottom," growled Dick Bannock, beginning to row. "If I hadn't shoved her off, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... in the annals of criminal insensibility. Nero fiddling over burning Rome, Thurtell fresh from the murder of Weare, inviting Hunt, the singer and his accomplice, to "tip them a stave" after supper, Edwards, the Camberwell murderer, reading with gusto to friends the report of a fashionable divorce case, post from the murder of a young married couple and their baby—even examples such as these pale before the levity of the "little demon," as the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... been segregated in pools; that in the great civilization of China, for example, humanity has pursued its own interlacing system of inheritances without admixture from other streams of blood. But such considerations only defer the conclusion; they do not stave it off indefinitely. It needs only that one philoprogenitive Chinaman should have wandered into those regions that are now Russia, about the time of Pericles, to link east and west in that matter; one Tartar chieftain in the Steppes may have given a daughter to a Roman soldier and sent ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... thou then speak of cowardice in me, thou craven heart!... A clever scheme hast thou devised to stave off death forever, if thou canst persuade each new wife to die ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... The Spaniard was firing her guns as she came on, the Nashville was replying. Captain Long was working to stave off the impending disaster. Hastily the engineer got up steam. The gun-boat was well ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott

... mates in my boat to stop quiet with me. Presently I heard a yell from the camp, which was about three hundred yards away. 'That's mischief,' says I. I had scarce spoken when there was a yelling fit to make your har stand on end, and I heard pistol-shots. 'Quick,' lads, says I, 'catch up a hatchet and stave a hole in the other boats, and push ours a little way out from the bank.' We warn't long in doing that, and ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... thus mould to suit their wishes. Only in autumn days, as summer slowly faded, would their confidence again be dashed by doubts and misgivings at symptoms of decay, which told how vain were all their efforts to stave off for ever the approach of winter and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... as he had guessed the hellish design of his enemies, hastily abandoned all attempts to stave in the door, and rushed to the rear-most room of the house with the intention of escaping into the garden through ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song - O, you envy the blessed death that can ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold of the chamber, he paused, and ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... laughed Robin, leaning on his long bow-stave. "Now, this brave Fool having saved Robin his life, Witch, the which, Witch, was good thing for Robin, our Fool next saved thee, Witch, which was nought to Robin, in the which, Witch, Robin did not joy; for thou, old Witch, being witch, art therefore full o' witcheries ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... divine; Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear, Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear; Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme For sages' ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... first resolve, which, in its mere animal estate, we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... Surveyor-General himself—soon after the close of the war of 1812, and it remained intact until a year or two after the town of York became the city of Toronto, when it was partly demolished and converted into a more profitable investment. The new structure, which was a shingle or stave factory, was burned down in 1843 or 1844, and the site thenceforward remained unoccupied until comparatively recent times. When I visited the spot a few weeks since I encountered not a little difficulty in fixing upon the exact site, which ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... my head ... but one thing out-stood: I must do my duty by my barrel stave ... as the farmer leaped into the circle he did not notice me staggering on the outskirts. I rushed up and let him have the barrel ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... BUNG-STARTER. A stave shaped like a bat, which, applied to either side of the bung, causes it to start out. Also, a soubriquet for the captain of the hold. Also, a name given to the master's assistant serving his apprenticeship ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... go up gently towards the window. She may see me. She will see me as I step into the moonlight. At least I know an air by which she will recognize me, if I do but hum a stave." ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... amply sufficient for much larger boats than ours; but it was impossible always to avoid concealed dangers, over which the waters did not cause the slightest ripple. The large boat struck on a sharp rock, and with such violence as to stave her bottom; she was immediately unladen, and temporarily repaired without injury to the cargo. Although the river is extremely low, there is a very large body of water in it; the outer banks are nearly a quarter of a mile wide, and far out ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... down to it," he continued, "killing a man, no matter what he's done to you, is a serious business. I propose we make one more attempt to stave this thing off. Let's see if we can't get to talk with the marshal himself; at any rate, warn him of the danger of going any further. Boys, let's not fire the first shot. What ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... composer's score. In vain Raoul cries, "Speak on, and prolong the ineffable slumber of my soul." Valentine cannot "prolong." It is evident that an unaccustomed fire devours her. Her b's and her c's above the stave were dreadfully shrill. He struggles, he gesticulates, he is all in ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... make a "rough-and-ready" hammock, by taking apart a flour barrel or sugar barrel, and in the end of each stave bore a three-quarter inch hole with a heated poker, or bit and auger. Then lace thin rope (clothes line is good) through the holes. This can be accomplished easily by noting method of lacing in figure "A." The stay-blocks "B" should be 12 inches long. Figure ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... at his men, but they rather avoided his eyes, and then his glance wandered to the old convict, but he did not appear to take the hint, and returned the stave with one of mildness. Fred's turn came next, and in him the right man ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... enough, he uttered a mocking laugh as he stepped to a rough shelf and took a little pail-like vessel with one stave prolonged into a handle from the place where it had been left clean by the last occupant of the hut, and as he stepped with it to the open door something ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... of me in wax before the fire, and whistle and caper to it, and purr and pray, and chant a hymn to Hecate while it melts, entreating and imploring her that I may melt as easily—and thou wouldst, in thy equity and holiness, strangle him at the first stave ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... his voyage to Greenland, and made his preparations to give up his farm. Upon the ship with Heriulf was a Christian man from the Hebrides, he it was who composed the Sea-Rollers' Song, which contains this stave:[47-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... now nearly sixty years of age, and have quit fighting, but I can to-day batter down any ordinary door or stave in a liquor barrel with "that old head of mine;" and I don't believe there is a man living (of near my own age) who can whip me in a rough-and-tumble fight. I never have my hair clipped short, for if I did I would be ashamed to take my hat off, as the lines on my old scalp look ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... husband than your first. It'll be your own fault if you don't soon get another and a proper young man into the bargain. Here's his health likewise. What! mum still. You're the first widow I ever heard of who could withstand that lure. I'll try the effect of a jolly stave." And he ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... were chiefly written: and the verb "write," which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards supplied the place of these materials. Real paper, manufactured from the pellicle of the Egyptian reed or papyras, was still used occasionally ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... wife nor child, nothing but his own carcass. One can always get one's self out of a difficulty, but the others who had households and brats! Rousselet had five. Matters were not going to be very cheerful at home. He must rely on charity or credit, he did not know what, but something to stave off that distress, real and sad distress, since ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... that!" said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... to-day. If anybody says it is a good day for bathing you say it is better for boating. And if they agree you wonder if, after all, golf.... And so you preserve your independence and feel rested and stave off for a little while the evil day. But only for a little. Very soon, for lack of alternative suggestions, you are bound to be dragged in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various

... field He fell beneath the foeman's glaive, But still reclining on his shield, Expiring sung the exulting stave:- "My life it is my country's right, My heart is in my lady's bower; For love and fame to fall in fight ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... poor Louise some succour have! She will not long your bounty crave, Or tire the gay with warning stave; For Heaven has grace, and earth a grave ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... cannon were made up of gunpowder packed in a paper bag or case. For many years after the introduction of cannon the powder was introduced into the bore by means of a scoop-shaped ladle fixed to the end of a long stave. The ladle was made of the same diameter as the shot, and it had a definite length so that it was filled once for the charging of small guns but for larger guns the ladle had to be filled twice or even thrice. The rule was to make ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Church?"—Our honest Sexton tells, "'Tis a tall building, with a tower and bells; Where priest and clerk with joint exertion strive To keep the ardour af their flock alive; That, by its periods eloquent and grave; This, by responses, and a well-set stave: These for the living; but when life be fled, I toll myself the requiem for the dead." 'Tis to this Church I call thee, and that place Where slept our fathers when they'd run their race: We too shall rest, and then our children keep Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep; Meanwhile ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... same now. Dick ought to know. But at least there must be no warfare here in this warm patch of shelter snatched out of the cold and dark. His hand was on Old Crow's journal, Dick's inheritance, he thought, as well as his, and now a fortunate pretext to stave ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The Christ Church Psaltery, about 1370, has musical notation ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... to sign this paper, with the intention to publish it in the next morning's papers, for effect. While I was talking with Captain Folsom, Height came into the room to listen. I admitted that the effect of such a publication would surely be good, and would probably stave off immediate demand till their assets could be in part converted or realized; but I naturally inquired of Folsom, "Have you personally examined the accounts, as herein recited, and the assets, enough to warrant your signature to this paper?" for, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... strictly speaking, political than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honorable gentlemen who are opposed to this description of Union, admit that we must do something, and that that something must not ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to be ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... Emperor of Pegu 155 Or Spanish potentate Don Diego. This leader was of knowledge great, Either for charge or for retreat. He knew when to fall on pell-mell; To fall back and retreat as well. 160 So lawyers, lest the bear defendant, And plaintiff dog, should make an end on't, Do stave and tail with writs of error, Reverse of judgment, and demurrer, To let them breathe a while, and then 165 Cry whoop, and set them on agen. As ROMULUS a wolf did rear, So he was dry-nurs'd by a bear, That fed him with the purchas'd prey Of many a fierce ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... made on the occasion, of a church dedicated to Our Lady, in the place where the church of St Mary Redcliff now stands. There is life and force in the details of this tourney; and the songs of the minstrel are good, especially the first, which is a gallant hunting stave in honour of William the Red King, who hunts the stag, the wolf, and "the lion brought from sultry lands." The sentiment conveyed in the burden of this spirited chorus sounds oddly considerate, as the command issued by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... nothing is the matter. But if he merely answers "No-o-o!" he means yes, and in order to stave off sea-sickness he ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... Some promising opportunity might come up, and I don't see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are only about twenty men on board this machine, I don't think they can stave off two ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... jar, with a narrow mouth, that, like the sepulchral urns of our ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand, without the assistance of the potter's wheel; and to one of the fragments there stuck a minute pellet of gray hair. From under another heap he disinterred the handle-stave of a child's wooden porringer (bicker), perforated by a hole still bearing the mark of the cord that had hung it to the wall; and beside the stave lay a few of the larger, less destructible bones of the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... deadly hurt to the other: "Friend, when I am dead, bury me in my native France, with my cross of honor on my breast, and my musket in my hand, and lay my good sword by my side." Until this time the melody has been a slow and dirge-like stave in the minor key. The old soldier declares his belief that he will rise again from the clods when he hears the victorious tramp of his Emperor's squadrons passing over his grave, and the minor breaks into a weird setting ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... cheer him up by talking to him of my home, and how he might find his relations and friends, and then I bethought me that I would sing a song. I don't suppose that many people have sung under such circumstances, but I managed to strike up a stave, one of those with which I had been accustomed to amuse my messmates in the Naiad's forecastle. It was not, perhaps, one of the merriest, but it served to divert Clem's thoughts, as well as mine, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child's dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of a dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... he resolved, in justice to the dear girl, that he would break loose from his fetters, as we call our weakness. Behold, Rose met him descending the stairs, and, taking his hand, sang, unabashed, by the tell-tale colour coming over her face, a stave of a little Portuguese air that they had both been fond of in Portugal; and he, listening to it, and looking in her eyes, saw that his feelings in—the old time had been hers. Instantly the old time gave him its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... fixed; to strengthen their hold, a number of supports are nailed round the outside of the former, and also closely round the latter. The tar is then put into the barrel, and set on fire; and the remaining one being broken up, stave after stave is thrown in, until it is quite full. The 'cl[a]vie,' already burning fiercely, is now shouldered by some strong young man, and borne away at a rapid pace. As soon as the bearer gives signs ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... toil at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy song in the noonday ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... carry on a conversation, not unamiably, in a sort of hexametrical stichomythia. The maiden modestly seeks to restrain the amorous impatience of her lover, and the scene ends with a song between the two composed in 'Asclepiades.'[228] Of this literary curiosity Amyntas' opening stave may ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... doing lay her safety, and kept her fully employed, so much so, indeed, that from sheer lack of time she was able to stave off the faintness which had threatened to overpower her. After a time her father came to himself, and Erica's face, which had been the last in his mind in full consciousness, was the first which now presented itself to his awakening gaze. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... land is thine, And thou a traitor slave of it: Think how the Switzer leads his kine, When pale the evening star doth shine; His song has home in every line, Freedom in every stave of it; Think how the German loves his Rhine And worships ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... John's realized that a crisis had come in his life, —a crisis he had tried to stave off in vain. And yet there was a period during which he pursued his shrunken duties as though nothing had happened to him; as a man who has been struck in battle keeps on, loath to examine, to acknowledge the gravity of his wound; fearing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... their embodiment: he is the most emblematic figure in the modern world that I know—in this country, at any rate—representing so much that is good in the great traditions which have got to go. And to stave off that day he will do almost anything. He would even—if he thought it would enable him the better to prick some of his bubbles—he would even take office under ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... shall not descend On that name till a stave hath been sung. The Muse is antiquity's friend, And in praise of the past will give tongue. If CRACKNALL, the Tantivy Whip, Claimed song, they're but parvenu snobs Who say that the lyre should let slip The memory of ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... child, is enough for any trousseau. And what have you to wait for? It will suit me too, much best. If we put it off till the autumn I should be terribly busy—absolutely taken up—with Arthur's election. Sir Louis Ford tells me they cannot possibly stave off going to the country longer than November. And of course this time I shall have not only the usual Liberal gang—I shall ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... nations an agreement on the arming of merchantmen, how this government was informed by Germany of her intention to destroy armed merchantmen without giving the passengers a moment of warning, and how, in order to stave off such a contingency, we tried as the friend and in the interest of humanity to get an agreement between both sides that would bring submarine warfare within ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... was clear of his enemies, several other facts impressed themselves upon his mind—facts which were both important and unpleasant. In the first place, he had not eaten a mouthful of food since morning, and he was hungry. He had swallowed enough water to stave off the more uncomfortable sensation of thirst, but water is not worth much to appease the hunger. He felt the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)

... of great works of literature and art is as necessary for the continued development of either one or the other as death is for that of organic life. We fight against it as long as we can, and often stave it off successfully both for ourselves and others, but there is nothing so great—not Homer, Shakespeare, Handel, Rembrandt, Giovanni Bellini, De Hooghe, Velasquez and the goodly company of other great men for whose ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... the ring, thrust the net into a pocket, shut up the handle to a two-foot stave, and slid the cane-ring round his waist. Stalky led inland to the wood, which was, perhaps, a quarter of a mile from the sea, and reached the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... cultivated that gentleman's acquaintance, and been received at his lodgings several times with considerable cordiality and lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in his musical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge SWEENEY'S ear as to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, to the effect that Saint PETER'S of Rome, with pontifical dome, would by ballot Infallible be; but for making Call sure, and Election secure, Saint Repeater's of Rum beats the See. With finger in ear to allay the tickling sensation, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... and overrunning luxury of Spenser appear in the very structure of his verse. He found the ottava rima too monotonously iterative; so, by changing the order of his rhymes, he shifted the let from the end of the stave, where it always seems to put on the brakes with a jar, to the middle, where it may serve at will as a brace or a bridge; he found it not roomy enough, so first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added line over into an alexandrine, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... sequence, running up and down the gamut and in and out, as if the notes of the composer had suddenly become animated, and, like some kind of tiny, big-headed, long-tailed goblins, were chasing one another in and out of the five lines of the stave, leaping from bar to bar, never stopping for a rest, making fun of the flats and sharps, and finally pausing, breathless and tired, as the player now finally laid down the bow, took out a fine laced handkerchief, and began to wipe his fingers ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes before the dawn whistled down them. In the centre of the Square of the Mosque a man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in by gun-butt or bamboo-stave. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... it. He is black, and therefore he is guilty. No colored lawyer would be allowed in the jail, if one should dare to go there. No white lawyer will intervene. He'll be lynched to-night, without judge, jury, or preacher, unless we can stave the thing off for a ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... determined to accompany Eric on his voyage to Greenland, and made his preparations to give up his farm. Upon the ship with Heriulf was a Christian man from the Hebrides, he it was who composed the Sea-Rollers' Song, which contains this stave:[47-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... was Lysias coming? His letter said nothing about such an intention, and took for granted that all the materials for a decision would be before Felix. Lysias could tell no more. The excuse was transparent, but it served to stave off a decision, and to-morrow would bring some other excuse. Prompt carrying out of all plain duty is the only safety. The indulgence given to Paul, in his light confinement, only showed how clearly Felix knew himself to be doing wrong, but small alleviations do not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... good job now, Tom, that we anchored where we did, instead of in the direct line of the tide, for one of those timbers would stave a hole in her bow as if she ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... as indicated in the composer's score. In vain Raoul cries, "Speak on, and prolong the ineffable slumber of my soul." Valentine cannot "prolong." It is evident that an unaccustomed fire devours her. Her b's and her c's above the stave were dreadfully shrill. He struggles, he gesticulates, he is all in ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... him that the odor, so near the cabin, would be unpleasant to every one, and might have a tendency to exasperate the owner of the liquor. He cast about him, therefore, for the means of removing the casks, in order to stave them, at ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... akin to astonishment that he could bide his time so patiently, without any pang of anxiety, or hope, or agonizing misgiving. He thought of Irene, but only of her welfare. If he were not brought down by a chance bullet early in the fray, he felt quite certain of being able to stave off the final rush long enough to give Abdur Kad'r a breathing spell, he had sufficient confidence in that wily old Arab's resources to believe that he would outwit his pursuers, provided they lost a good deal of ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... young peasant, brought up in a home of severe simplicity, where gentleness and kindness were taught and practiced, pitied the woman and her children in their sad plight and loaned her the needed interest payment to stave off ejection from her home. Thereafter, he looked after her family until the oldest son was able to manage his ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... What sweet dreams, what visions of a life established on a basis of work! Mentally he found new quarters, and settled himself in them; it would not have taken much to set him making a purchase or two. He could only stave off impatience by ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... into song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of "The Mermaid"; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good deal of ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... just now," said Ralph, "so perhaps that has given it a flavour. Oh, you needn't distress yourself! Ants are quite wholesome, I assure you. There are a frightful lot of them crawling about here, though. I think we shall have to move on a stave." ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and consummate ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... around in the darkness, seeking to locate the stalls. At that instant a horse neighed outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never speak again—don't ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... he spoke, and the string twanged with a rich deep musical note. Aylward leaned upon his bow-stave as he keenly watched the long swift flight of his shaft, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ill he could not say: change, he knew no more—change with inscrutable veiled face, approaching noiseless. With the feeling came the vision of a concert-room, the rich hues of instruments, the silent audience, and the loud voice of the symphony. "Destiny knocking at the door," he thought; drew a stave on the plaster, and wrote in the famous phrase from the Fifth Symphony. "So," thought he, "they will know that I loved music and had classical tastes. They? He, I suppose: the unknown, kindred spirit that shall come some day and read my memor querela. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... factory, with a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its operations—that ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... being a little back at the moment. It made me swallow once or twice, I can tell you. Sudden as the blow was, I had countered, in the automatic sort of way that a man who knows anything of boxing does. It was only from the elbow, with no body behind it, but it served to stave him off for the moment, while I was making inquiries about my windpipe. Then in he came with a rush; and the crowd swarming round with shrieks of delight, we were pushed, almost locked in each other's arms on to that ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... a bold stave to the old bald Time, Telling him that he is too insolent Who thinks to rase thee from my heart or rhyme, Whereof to one because thou life hast given, The other yet shall give a life to thee, Such as to gain, the prowest swords have striven, And ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... you." And therewith he turned away; but of those others who heard the tale there were more than one or two who praised it much, and deemed it marvellous as might well be that a child should have faced and slain those three monsters who had put two stout men to flight. And one man made up this stave, which was presently sung all about the Eastern Mote, and went over the water with the tale to ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... tolerbul well ter-day," he said. "Dun know for sar-tin, but looks like the pickin' wus heap handier than at fus'. Look yere, Lizay: ef I know'd I'd git more'n a hunderd I'd he'p yer 'long: I'd give yer the balance. Couldn't stave off all the floggin', but I might save yer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... unskilled labour is paid so lightly on these teeming shores of the Terra di Lavoro; saddled already with children he cannot make up his feeble mind to emigrate; in short, to go a-coralling is his sole chance, if he wishes to keep his home together and to stave off charity or starvation from his young ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to, something that would stave off the pressure ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... You couldn't stave the Bishop off, though. He had to hear the whole yarn, and the minute he gets it straight he ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... train a hawk as well as Phil Royle, the falconer—diet a fighting-cock as well as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute himself, and which he was unwilling should reach ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... want you to do. It won't be long! There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty belly. You ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... who had agreed to attend to the matter. He received me most graciously, told me how delighted he was to see me, how it pleased him to see that we came to him with our little troubles, etc. He kept off the subject of the laisser-passer as long as he could, but when he could stave it off no longer he said that he must ask me to see von Herwarth, who had been placed in charge of all matters regarding passports, etc. I made a blue streak over to Herwarth's office, and saw him after a little delay. He kept me as long as he could, and told me all that he knew about ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... would be scarcely possible to pick them all up. The only thing to be done was to pull away with might and main; sometimes, in spite of all their efforts, the raft seemed drifting back to the shore; at others the waves sent it rushing forward, threatening to stave in ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... compulsion. What mad adventure was this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... North, La Chesnaye became a director. No one knew better than he how bitterly the monopolists of Quebec would oppose Radisson's plans for a trip to Hudson Bay; but the prospects were alluring. La Chesnaye was deeply involved in the fur trade and snatched at the chance of profits to stave off the bankruptcy that reduced him to beggary a few years later. In defiance of the rival companies and independent of those with which he was connected, he offered to furnish ships and share profits with Radisson and Groseillers for a voyage ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... superior will, to hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present resistance—to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man to their demand for ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy's ship. Motive power was supplied by two banks of oars, the upper ones resting in rowlocks on the gunwale, the lower ones in rowlocks pierced in the timbers of the vessel's side. An upper deck, supported by stout posts, ran ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his loves ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the collection of which the trees yielding them are entirely destroyed, and by practically suggesting to them the policy, or rather the impolicy, of imposing the heavy due of $1 per registered ton on all European Shipping entering their ports, whether in cargo or in ballast, scarcely tended to stave off their collapse, and the Borneans must have formed their own conclusions from the fact that when they gave up portions of their territory to the BROOKES and to the British North Borneo Company, the British Government ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... short tale, of a somewhat grisly character, which Abner had composed during the holiday season. Bond had taxed him with using this work as a buffer to stave off other work of a practical nature such as was abundantly offered by Giles and his father about the farm; and, to tell the truth, Abner had limited his physical exertions to half-hour periods ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... Gladiateur, with reversed engines, hung against the current above the bridge of Saint-Benezet and slowly drew in to the bank. Our answering cheers went forth to them through the darkness, and a stave or two of "La Coupe" was sung, and there was a mighty clapping of hands. And then the gang-plank was set ashore, and instantly beside it—standing in the glare of a great lantern—we saw our Capoulie, the head ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... A picture of the hearse and the mutes rose up in my mind, and it was at that very moment that the song of the bird broke out again, and just above my head in the larches an ugly, shrilling song of about a dozen notes with an accent on the two last, a stupid, tiresome stave that never varied. "What bird can it be," I cried out, "that comes to interrupt my meditations?" and getting up I tried to discover it amid the branches of the tree under which I had been lying. It broke out again in another tree a little farther away, and again in another. I followed it, and it ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... where beyond Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns th' englutted ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... immortal memory of Headlong Ap-Rhaiader, and to the health of his noble descendant and worthy representative!" This example was followed by all the gentlemen present. The harp struck up a triumphal strain; and, the old squire already mentioned, vociferating the first stave, they sang, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim struggle in the face of a desperate risk surpassed any remembered exhibition of fencers' skill with the steel. The trunk was bending visibly beneath the hewers, the river frothed more ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... council authorised a constable, upon a magistrate's warrant, granted on the belief of any person that ale, beer, or spirits were sold, to break open the house and seize the liquor; and unless the owner could satisfy the magistrate, the constable was permitted to stave and destroy the vessels. For the sale, not only were heavy penalties imposed, but unless paid the offender was liable to perpetual imprisonment; and even appeal was prohibited, except the penalty was first paid: one-half to the informer. This ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... o'clock, the drummers of the regiment began to beat their drums as hard as they could stave, and I saw men running in every direction, and the camp soon became one scene of hurry and excitement. I asked some one what all this hubbub meant. He looked at me with utter astonishment. I saw soldiers running to their tents and grabbing their guns and cartridge-boxes and hurry ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... if she had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words, "beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long, endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were advancing in ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... beyond that. Now I thought nothing of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... the soul does make strongly for the recovery of the patient, through inspiring him with hope and confidence. But it cannot always stave off death. If, in spite of the operations of one soul-catcher, the patient's strength still sinks, some other practitioner is usually called in for consultation. In the case of a chief the help of three or even four may be ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... ambassador found it difficult to make headway, although he assured the queen of the immediate punishment of the perpetrators, and the arrest and recall of the Governor of Jamaica. Only by the greatest tact and prudence was he able to stave off, until an official disavowal of the expedition came from England, an immediate embargo on all the goods of English merchants in Spain. The Spanish government decided to send a fleet of 10,000 men with all speed to the Indies; and the Dukes of Albuquerque ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... a very neat gentlemanlike little man, perfectly well bred, and full of French phrases. Then came Mr Eschylus Stave, a tall, raw—boned, well—informed personage; a bit of a quiz on occasion, but withal a pleasant fellow. Mr Isaac Shingle, mine host, a sallow, sharp, hatchet—faced, small, but warm hearted and kind, as I often experienced during my sojourn in the west, only sometimes a little ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... the office she give me! She rip and stave and tear! She talk of political slander, and libel, and disgrace, and all that. She rise up big right afore me, and come nigh swearing she would kill such a David Lockwin on sight. There wasn't no such a David Lockwin ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... house-Servants—male and female—all negroes or mulattoes. There are shrieks, intermingled with speeches, the last in accent of piteous appealing; there is moaning and groaning. But where are the shouts of the assailants? Where the Indian yell—the dread slogan of the savage? Not a stave of it is heard—nought that resembles a ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... Quarter, and thou must always find something to say against them. At last your talk will come to Rangrivervale, and then thou must say, there is small choice of men left in those parts since Fiddle Mord died. At the same time sing some stave to please Hrut, for I know thou art a skald. Hrut will ask what makes thee say there is never a man to come in Mord's place; and then thou must answer, that he was so wise a man and so good a taker up of suits, that ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... To an Australian who has heard the ludicrous note of the bird and seen its comical, half-stupid appearance, the origin of the name seems obvious. It utters a prolonged rollicking laugh, often preceded by an introductory stave resembling the opening passage of a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... divers—usually Kanakas, or South Sea Islanders—and having arrived at the ground they propose fishing, a sort of head-quarters is established on some convenient island, where vegetables are planted, to stave off the scurvy that would otherwise soon attack the adventurers. This done the little vessel proceeds to the edge of the reef, and begins ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... of these heads; as between 'ounce' and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, escaping ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... William Dent!" cried Michael. "There's fire for your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies—a sort of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... chirrup May furnish a stave; The ring of a rowel and stirrup, The wash of a wave. The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes, That chimes through the pauses and hushes Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes, The ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... served with a care and celerity, and with hot viands and irreproachable potables, that made one think of the "Arabian Nights," I offer my experience and my opinion with some confidence. You can get enough to stave off hunger for a few pfennigs, you can get a meal for something under twenty-five cents, and the whole twenty-five cents will include a glass of the best beer in the world outside of Munich. If you care to spend fifty cents there are countless restaurants where you can have a square ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... To stave off the ordeal he saw himself forced to invent a new set of doubts and objections. On his next visit to the house of Mitri, he owned himself convinced of the vanity of the Protestant faith, but hinted at an inclination towards ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... lay and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June, And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone Seemed to mingle with its burthen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... possible, that is the way to starve it. Lady Elizabeth was a bad ambassador; and Cousin George, when he took his leave, promising to be ready to meet Sir Harry at twelve on the morrow, could almost comfort himself with a prospect of success. He might be successful, if only he could stave off the Walker and Bullbean portion of Mr. Hart's persecution! For he understood that the success of his views at Humblethwaite must postpone the payment by Sir Harry of those moneys for which Mr. Hart and Captain Stubber were so unreasonably greedy. He would have dared to ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... earth's vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... concerned about this, by reason of his anxiety regarding Tara herself. He felt that another bout of the illness in which she had nearly lost her life in the early days would almost certainly be fatal, and the steps he took to stave this off kept him very busy. In addition to this, a carpenter had to be set to work in a great hurry to put together a suitable bed for the new foster-mother in a shed in the orchard. Fortunately, the weather was very favourable, and the two puppies taken from Tara soon picked up their ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... cane, so to speak, with which primitive man wooed his bride, defended his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and brought down his food, was (like all canes which are in good taste) admirably chosen for the occasion. The spear, the stave, the pilgrim's staff, the sword, the sceptre—always has the cane-carrying animal borne something in his hand. And, down the long vista of the past, the cane, in its various manifestations, has ever been the mark of strength, and so of dignity. Thus as a man originally became a gentleman, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... faces grouped Within the four small wooden walls that made Their home and shut them from the unfathomable Depths of mysterious gloom without that rolled All around them; or Tom Moone would heartily troll A simple stave that struggled oft with thoughts Beyond its reach, yet reached ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... O'Connell's Irish party, which foreboded disaster to the government. For the first time in Parliamentary history the Irish members held the balance of power. In vain did Sir Robert Peel attempt to stave off his downfall by the introduction of welcome measures of reform. Once more it was on a question affecting Ireland that the government was defeated. This was Peel's high commutation bill. Lord Russell in reply moved that the surplus revenues of the Irish Church ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... he holds Belzebub at the stave's end as well as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I should have given 't you to-day morning; but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... to the gentlemen of Beauce," insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. "Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank." The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring harmony ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... stop in Dawson long?" The man was whittling a stave of birchwood into a rude axe-handle, and asked the question without raising ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... infernal creditors, who have begun to flock into the house. There's the bell. Hang me, if it isn't another one! To come to the point, then, I wish you would loan me, say two hundred dollars. It is a small amount, but will stave them off ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... account of my little child.' There he stopped with a break in his voice. Harold, with intent to set his mind at ease and to stave off further ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... be as I find him. He was ready to pay two hundred pounds for Bertie to stave off the worst of his creditors, if this marriage had gone on. Bertie must now have the money instead and go ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent—"Mr." "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... can recall their conversation even now. They were disappointed with the piece they had seen. It was one of the later Savoy operas, and they spoke wistfully of the days of "Pinafore" and "Patience." One of them hummed a stave, and there was an argument as to whether the air was out of "Patience" or the "Mikado." They all got out at Surbiton, and I was alone with my triumph for a few intoxicating minutes. To think that I had succeeded where Raffles ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... store-tent, and asked the captain, If he was to be kept there all night? On these provocations, the captain attempted to strike him again, but the centinel said, he should strike no prisoner of his. But Cozens endeavouring to stave a cask of brandy, was soon after released. This day got out of the ship several chests of wax candles of all sizes, bales of cloth, bales of stockings, shoes, with some clocks and mercantile wares, with which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... trio for the first half of their onward march; and as they could follow a plain trail for the remainder of the way, they had no further need of their guide's services. They promised to visit Eb at his bark hut on their return journey, to bid him a final farewell, and hear one more stave of:— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... we grow older, we decrease as individuals, and as if in an immense audience who hear stirring music, none essays to offer a new stave, but we only join emphatically in the chorus. We volunteer no opinion, we despair of guiding people, but are confirmed in our perception that Nature is all right, and that we have a good understanding with it. We must shine to a few brothers, as palms or ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... after the close of the war of 1812, and it remained intact until a year or two after the town of York became the city of Toronto, when it was partly demolished and converted into a more profitable investment. The new structure, which was a shingle or stave factory, was burned down in 1843 or 1844, and the site thenceforward remained unoccupied until comparatively recent times. When I visited the spot a few weeks since I encountered not a little difficulty in fixing upon the ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... removed The dead trunks and the fallen trees. He dressed and regulated The bushy clumps and the (tangled) rows. He opened up and cleared The tamarisk trees and the stave trees. He hewed and thinned The mountain mulberry trees. God having brought about the removal thither of this intelligent ruler, The Kwan hordes fled away[2]. Heaven had raised up a helpmeet for him, And the appointment he had ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... lad. I'm through. I'm an old hand, but when it comes to striking a swamp where I said there'd be a reef, it's time to shift. You're the boss now. I'll be cook and bring along the accordion. A bit of a stave may ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... dear, foolish man, can't you see that it's you I want?" And she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know she gladly will. As for me, of course I go down to Dera to-morrow, and do what I ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... fringe of gray hair. His long beard was also gray, and he leaned upon an ivory staff carved with many strange signs. The inquiry was addressed to Captain Hyde. He paid no attention whatever to it, but, gayly humming a stave of "Marlbrook," watched the crush of wagons and pedestrians, in order to find a suitable moment to cross ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... famous Man is Robin Hood, The English Ballad-singer's joy! And Scotland has a Thief as good, An Outlaw of as daring mood, She has her brave ROB ROY! Then clear the weeds from off his Grave, And let us chaunt a passing Stave In honour of that ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... where they beat time upon the drums of each other's ears and heads with oak drumsticks? That's an Irishman's music; and hard fortune to the garran* that wouldn't have friendship and kindness in him to join and play a stave along with them! 'Whoo; your sowl! Hurroo! Success to our side! Hi for the O'Callaghans! Where's the blackguard to—,' I beg pardon, decent reader; I forgot myself for a moment, or rather I got new life in me, for I am nothing at all at all for ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... he had guessed the hellish design of his enemies, hastily abandoned all attempts to stave in the door, and rushed to the rear-most room of the house with the intention of escaping into the garden ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... hat, the laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... said, would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first, notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would have been an avowal that ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... is called by the Malays and Dutch, seems to have been recently modified by upheaval and subsidence. In 1673, a mountain is said to stave been upheaved at Gamokonora on the northern peninsula. All the parts that I have seen have either been volcanic or coralline, and along the coast there are fringing coral reefs very dangerous to navigation. At the same time, the character of its natural history proves it to be a rather ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... at once that his past had come upon him somehow. She knew it at once from the tone of his voice, but she could make no guess as to the manner of it. She knew, too, that that heartquake was upon her—the one she had felt so glad to stave off that day upon the beach—and that self-command had to be found in an emergency she might not have the strength ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... she probably, in her great scrupulousness, would long hesitate to break the engagement on account of that, or the fraudulent means they doubtless used to draw her into the shameful affair. Nevertheless, I would persevere. Her right to stave off the fellow, with her known wish to get rid of him, may yet procure her an honorable release; or she may be brought to take a different view about the binding nature of a promise obtained under such circumstances; or, as a last resort, that paper ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... thought nothing of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... take their first step on the road that leads to the gaol. The place is often crowded at night—there is scarcely room to sit or stand, the atmosphere is thick with smoke, and a hoarse roar of jarring voices fills it, above which rises the stave of a song shouted in one unvarying key from some corner. Money pours in apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some specimens of his skill to an "artistic firm" in London; a verse of the "Maud," curiously emblazoned, and a Latin hymn with the notes priced on a red stave. The firm wrote civilly, telling him that his work, though good, was not what they wanted, and enclosing an illuminated text. "We have great demand for this sort of thing," they concluded, "and if you care to attempt something ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills his sleepy ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... I say w'at I duz. Dey better be home pickin' up chips. W'at a nigger gwineter larn outen books? I kin take a bar'l stave an' fling mo' sense inter a nigger in one minnit dan all de schoolhouses betwixt dis en de State er Midgigin. Don't talk, honey! Wid one bar'l stave I kin fa'rly ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... should he be lucky enough to find them vacant, and he expressed his willingness to take them on and from the 1st of February. And on the 3rd of February he found himself in the old quarters, Mrs. Bunce having contrived, with much conjugal adroitness, both to keep Miss Pouncefoot and to stave off the Equity draftsman's wife and baby. Bunce, however, received Phineas very coldly, and told his wife the same evening that as far as he could see their lodger would never turn up to be a trump in the matter ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... these three conditions would stave off recognition by foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to reduce the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Jim. "Come on, everybody! You, too, Filippo! Might as well show up our full force. It may help stave off trouble." ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... stay, bide, take time; dawdle &c. (be inactive) 683; linger, loiter; bide one's time, take one's time; gain time; hang fire; stand over, lie over. put off, defer, delay, lay over, suspend; table [parliamentary]; shift off, stave off; waive, retard, remand, postpone, adjourn; procrastinate; dally; prolong, protract; spin out, draw out, lengthen out, stretch out; prorogue; keep back; tide over; push to the last, drive to the last; let the matter stand over; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... case of impalement in a woman of forty-five who, while attempting to obtain water from a hogshead, fell with one limb inside the cistern, striking a projecting stave three inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. The external labia were divided, the left crus of the clitoris separated, the nymphae lacerated, and the vaginal wall penetrated to the extent of five inches; the patient recovered ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Height had drawn up and asked them to sign this paper, with the intention to publish it in the next morning's papers, for effect. While I was talking with Captain Folsom, Height came into the room to listen. I admitted that the effect of such a publication would surely be good, and would probably stave off immediate demand till their assets could be in part converted or realized; but I naturally inquired of Folsom, "Have you personally examined the accounts, as herein recited, and the assets, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the first fiddle. "We've let back our strings, that's true, but we can soon pull 'em up again. Sound A, neighbours, and give the man a stave." ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, advances, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... through the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks

... short spring day slipped away. In vain the minister, apprised of the block, lengthened out the formulae for the other pairs, and blessed them with more reposeful unction. It was impossible to stave off the Leibel-Green item indefinitely, and at last Rose remained the only orange-wreathed spinster in the synagogue. And then there was a hush of solemn suspense, that swelled gradually into a steady rumble of babbling tongues, as minute succeeded minute ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... friendly but niggardly Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm bolts into the three-mast schooners. He probably saw stave mills arise in which hundreds of youths got employment while their fathers at home fought stumps, wire worms, drought and the devil to get puny crops at small prices. He saw the wagon-works and the fanning ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... of the iceberg. She listed to starboard with her stern raised and her bow lowered. We could not help thinking that the slightest shake would cause her to slide along the slope of the iceberg into the sea. The collision had been so violent as to stave in some of the planks of her hull. After the first collision, the galley situated before the fore-mast had broken its fastenings. The door between Captain Len Guy's and the mate's cabins was torn away from the hinges. The topmast and the topgallant-mast had come ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... whatever inventive skill and knowledge the original patentee may have disclosed, and trusting to the power of money, rapid movement, and mendacious advertising to build up a business which shall presently assume such formidable proportions as to force a compromise, or stave off an injunction until the patent has expired. In nine cases out of ten such a course can be followed with relative impunity; and guided by skilful experts who may suggest really trivial changes here and there over the patented structure, and with the aid of keen and able counsel, hardly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... certainly performed wonders. Their plows, harrows with their wooden teeth, and sleds, were in many instances well made. Their cooper-ware, which comprehended every thing for holding milk and water, was generally pretty well executed. The cedar-ware, by having alternately a white and red stave, was then thought beautiful; many of their puncheon floors were very neat, their joints close, and the top even and smooth. Their looms, although heavy, did very well. Those who could not exercise these mechanic arts, were under the necessity of giving ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... air be gittin' the right scent on it," said Solomon, as he was ripping the hide off the other steer. "I reckon it'll start the sap in their mouths. You roll out the rum bar'l an' stave it in. Mis' Bones knows how to shoot. Put her in the shed with yer mother an' the guns, an' take her young 'uns to the sugar shanty 'cept Isr'el who's ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... unglazed earthen jar, with a narrow mouth, that, like the sepulchral urns of our ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand, without the assistance of the potter's wheel; and to one of the fragments there stuck a minute pellet of gray hair. From under another heap he disinterred the handle-stave of a child's wooden porringer (bicker), perforated by a hole still bearing the mark of the cord that had hung it to the wall; and beside the stave lay a few of the larger, less destructible bones of the child, with what for a time puzzled us both not a little,—one of the grinders ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... style, William Dent!" cried Michael. "There's fire for your money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies—a sort of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity. Our mistake has been to distinguish the Mitylenians as we have done: had they been long ago treated like the rest, they never would have so far forgotten themselves, human nature being ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... opened his lips to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave off the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of his black fellow improvised this stave:— ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... itself, is bound to con- tinue advancing until it is drawn completely into the net and finds itself encumbered with a lot of unsaleable and useless property. To stave off the evil day when all things must be disclosed to the trusting member, "financing" is restored to, money raised on direct deposit, and advances obtained from banks. The money thus raised tides the society over their difficulties for a time, but it ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.

... a dreadful truth," continued Gogyrvan, "you may take it as one of the many reasons why I jeer out of season in order to stave off far more untimely tears. For this thing happens: in my city it happens, and in my castle it happens. King or no, I am powerless to prevent its happening. So I can but shrug and hearten my old blood with a ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery, come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks pa—well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very much these days. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... cade, butt, puncheon, tierce, hogshead, keg, rundlet; (of wine) 31-1/2 gallons; (of flour) 196 pounds. Associated words: gauntree, cooper, bilge, stave, hoop, chine. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... negotiation between the father and the son, the time was fixed for Lord Kilcullen's arrival at Grey Abbey. The earl tried much to accelerate it, and the viscount was equally anxious to stave off the evil day; but at last it was arranged that, on the 3rd of April, he was to make his appearance, and that he should commence his wooing as soon ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... Paulette retorted, as if I were unbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed without looking at me, "don't ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... she rose wearily and began to get tea ready. Nina was coming to tea that afternoon. It was something to look forward to, something that would stave off the pressure ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in order to insert a wooden disc, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... question our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... to the congregation within. Curious to see this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, Mrs Winifred Jenkins, my sister Liddy, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... variety. 'The Night before Larry was stretched' was done by a bishop, they say; and 'Lord Altamont's Bull' by the Lord Chief Justice; and the Solicitor-General is as up to fun as any bishop of them all. Come, Jim, tip us the stave!" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Apes—grim, terrible, empty, and envious. Hunting had proved poor that day, for there are lean days as well as fat ones for even the greatest of the jungle hunters. Oftentimes Tarzan went empty for more than a full sun, and he had passed through entire moons during which he had been but barely able to stave off starvation; but such times ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... ran over her face and down to her neck. Hermione turned away her eyes. But they had read Vere's secret. She knew what her child was doing in those hours of seclusion. And she remembered her own passionate attempts to stave off despair by work. She ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... must do something. We must both have money—that's quite evident," he said. "That last five hundred you gave me will stave off ruin for a week or so. But after that we must certainly be well supplied, or else there may be revelations well—which will be as ugly for yourself ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... at night when the moon is down, Pleasures assail him. He to his nobler fate Fares; and but waves a hand as he passes on, Cries but a wayside word to her at the garden gate, Sings but a boyish stave ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... head upheld he walked, And ever the rain drove down; And now and again to himself he talked In the streets of Danbury town. And now and again he'd stop and troll A stave of music that seemed to roll From the inmost depths of his ardent soul; But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them And the few who chanced to ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... which is a fact not unthought of by the house of Auersperg. By constant machination and intrigue the king's revenues have been so depleted that ordinary debts are troublesome. The archbishop, to stave off the probable end, brought about the alliance between the houses of Carnavia and Osia. My business here is to arrange for a ten years' renewal of the loan, and that is what the duchess wishes to prevent, mon ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... and listened, oh the river's sleepy tune Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo's stave in June, And the cannon's distant thunder and the engines' warlike drone Seemed to mingle with its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various

... managed to stave off the evil day until lunch was half over; but procrastination was not nearly as wholesale a thief of time as they wished ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... sense at once. Dr Pendle was the priest who was to drop the money on Southberry Heath, and Jentham the knave who was to pick it up. As certainly as though the man had given chapter and verse, Cargrim understood his enigmatic stave. His mind flashed back to the memory that Dr Pendle intended to ride over to Southberry in the morning, across the heath. Without doubt he had agreed to meet there this man who boasted that he could get blood out of a stone, and the object of the meeting was to bribe him ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its operations—that of washing and drying the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... numbed and fainting. At length they got alongside the boat; and now the greatest caution was necessary, lest, in taking him in, the canoe should be capsized. The boat likewise, on being touched, might roll up, and with her mast stave in the fragile side of the canoe. It seemed almost impossible to accomplish their object without upsetting themselves. Those who know what a birch-bark canoe is like will best ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston

... another and a proper young man into the bargain. Here's his health likewise. What! mum still. You're the first widow I ever heard of who could withstand that lure. I'll try the effect of a jolly stave." And he struck ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's end for singing psalms in the larboard watch. Would I had hired ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... lawless stave, the spirit with which it was sung atoned to the young stranger for its obscurity and quaintness; as for his host, that curious personage took a lusty and prominent part in the chorus; nor did the old woods refuse their share of the burden, but sent back a merry echo to the chief's ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... valiant might he hurled a huge-wrought spear Against the belly of the beast swelled out with rib and stave; It stood a-trembling therewithal; its hollow caverns gave From womb all shaken with the stroke a mighty sounding groan. And but for God's heart turned from us, for God's fate fixed and known, He would have led us on with steel to foul the Argive ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... of Beauce," insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. "Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank." The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... account of the heat, and their terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time, which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the forerunner of ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their neighbourhood. But there is no possibility of ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... people of all these Provinces, and which are rather of a social, or, strictly speaking, political than of a financial kind. In the first place, I echo what was stated in the speech last night of my hon. friend, the President of the Council—that we cannot stand still; we cannot stave off some great change; we cannot stand alone—Province apart from Province—if we would; and that we are in a state of political transition. All, even honorable gentlemen who are opposed to this ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... the streets were very still, and the cold wind that comes before the dawn whistled down them. In the centre of the Square of the Mosque a man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in by gun-butt or bamboo-stave. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... bein' rubbed off th' map be th' coat-tails iv wan iv th' principal char- ackters. An' I always had me watch out to time th' moon whin' twas shoved acrost th' sky an' th' record breakin' iv day in th' robbers' cave where th' robbers don't dare f'r to shtep on the rock f'r fear they'll stave it in. If day iver broke on th' level th' way it does on th' stage 'twud tear th' bastin' threads out iv what Hogan calls th' firmymint. Hogan says I haven't got th' dhramatic delusion an' he must be r-right f'r ye can't ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... by the clinging vines. From below there was a sound of music. Up at the Fort the band was playing. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and glittering in strange tints. Now and then a party rather merry with wine and whisky trolled out a noisy stave that had been imported from the mother country years ago about Jacques and his ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... rid her mind of the haunting images. She knew the reason, too; darkness brought the knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, that the failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas the whole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to bolster up the impossible, to stave off the inevitable, to postpone the end. And it had all been in vain. The end! It would come, as surely as day followed night—had perhaps indeed already come; for how else could the nervous aversion be explained, which had seized her that ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... cartridges for cannon were made up of gunpowder packed in a paper bag or case. For many years after the introduction of cannon the powder was introduced into the bore by means of a scoop-shaped ladle fixed to the end of a long stave. The ladle was made of the same diameter as the shot, and it had a definite length so that it was filled once for the charging of small guns but for larger guns the ladle had to be filled twice or even thrice. The rule was to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... consternation, the half-contemptuous pity of her former companions, and the fashion in which one or two of them had avoided her, were almost worse to bear, and sitting alone in the gathering darkness the girl flushed crimson at the memory. There was also the grim question by what means she could stave off actual want to grapple with, and to that she could as yet find no answer, while her eyes grew dim as she glanced about the little room. Townshead had changed his quarters, and many of the trifles that caught his daughter's glance had cost her a meal or hours of labour with the needle after ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... of hindering the others. For some time it was doubtful how it would go. The boat stood nearly up and down in the water, and the sea, rolling from under her, let her fall upon the water with a force which seemed almost to stave her bottom in. By quietly sliding two oars forward, along the thwarts, without impeding the rowers, we shipped two bow oars, and thus, by the help of four oars and the captain's strong arm, we got safely off, though we shipped several seas, which left us half full of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... here in your land, in your home, may be maltreated, or even worse by that unconscionable ruffian. Knowing your father's affliction, you fear that I have no protection from Jake's murderous savagery, and you are endeavoring bravely to thrust your frail self between us, and so stave off a catastrophe. Have no fear. I do not anticipate a collision. He is only an ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... could have found in my heart to sing as I went on my way. It seemed as if my gaiety had accumulated while suppressed, and that I was, in my present joyous mood, entitled to expend the savings of the previous week. But just as I was about to uplift a merry stave, I heard, to my joyful surprise, the voices of three or more choristers, singing, with considerable success, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... was broken by the news of the ship-money, and of a writ addressed to the High Sheriff, Sir Peter Temple of Stave, ordering him to raise L4500 on the county of Buckingham. Hampden's resolve was soon known. In the January of 1636 a return was made of the payments for ship-money from the village of Great Kimble at the foot of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... that time Sally was living upon money borrowed from Mrs. Perce, her one friend and protector. Mrs. Minto could not work. She wrote to Aunt Emmy, and Aunt Emmy helped her from her prizewinnings, and for several weeks they were thus enabled to stave off want. Once Mrs. Minto was back at home the old order of parsimony was revived, and it cost them very little to keep life going on from day to day. Sally's seven shillings a week helped. And at last Mrs. Minto was allowed ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... imagined that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible—and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his financial affairs. I have been worried to death about him for weeks. He says things are going so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash any longer, and now—this—this—" She broke down utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella noticed, had been manicured since the morning. "George has gone—we think ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... you kindly; it ain't many suvrings as comes my way—though I hate the sight on it, I do. I'd like to stave a hole in the bottom of that there cranky concern; it ain't safe, and that's the fact. There'll be another accent out of it one of these fine days and no coming to next time. But, Lord bless you, it's her way of pleasuring herself. She's a queer un is Miss Beatrice, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... being quite as important as expression. With him the voice rises or falls as a man's voice does when he experiences keen sensation; but the wavy line of the melody as it goes along and up and down the stave is treated conventionally and changed into a lovely pattern for the ear's delight; and as there can be no regular pattern without regular rhythm, rhythm is a vital element in Bach's music. So with Purcell, with a difference. The early "imitative" ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... Dublin Troper of the thirteenth century has a number of farced Kyries and Glorias, also a collection of Sequences. A Dublin Processionale of the fourteenth century contains the most elaborate form of the Officium Sepulchri, with musical notation on a four-line stave—the foundation of the Miracle Play of the Resurrection. Another Dublin Troper dates from 1360 and was used in St. Patrick's Cathedral. It contains the hymn, "Angelus ad Virginem", alluded to by Chaucer. The ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... Belzebub at the stave's end as well as a man in his case may do: he has here writ a letter to you; I should have given it you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... nation, with safety and honour, without inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What cruelty! what profligacy! what madness! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the darkness, seeking to locate the stalls. At that instant a horse neighed outside; then I heard the sound of hoofs pounding on soft soil. Whoever the fellow was, he was almost there—coming up at a trot, just back of the stables. My brain worked in a flash—there was but once chance to stave off discovery. With a bound I was beside the boy, and had jerked off his hat, jamming it down on my own head, as I muttered in his ear, "One word from you now, and you'll never ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... and removed The dead trunks and the fallen trees. He dressed and regulated The bushy clumps and the (tangled) rows. He opened up and cleared The tamarisk trees and the stave trees. He hewed and thinned The mountain mulberry trees. God having brought about the removal thither of this intelligent ruler, The Kwan hordes fled away[2]. Heaven had raised up a helpmeet for him, And the appointment he had received ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... it, however, before he heard, from the passage below, a low whistle, followed by the peculiar stave by which a modern low-life Blondel endeavours to attract attention. The hairdresser paid no attention, being used, as a Londoner, to hearing such signals, and not imagining they could ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... the other side. At the same time the top of Brice's head buried itself under the beachcomber's chin, forcing the giant's jaw upward and backward. Then, safe inside his opponent's guard, he abandoned his effort to stave off the giant's hold, and passed his own arms about the other's waist, his hands meeting under the small of the larger ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... turned away; but of those others who heard the tale there were more than one or two who praised it much, and deemed it marvellous as might well be that a child should have faced and slain those three monsters who had put two stout men to flight. And one man made up this stave, which was presently sung all about the Eastern Mote, and went over the water with the tale ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... of a little judgement. The penalty for non-appearance at a half-holiday game was a fine of sixpence. Constant absence was likely in time to lead to a more or less thrilling interview with the captain of cricket, but a very occasional attendance was enough to stave off this disaster; and as for the sixpence, to a man of means like Farnie it was a mere nothing. It was a bad system, and it was a wonder, under the circumstances, how Beckford produced the elevens it did. But it ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... no time, but down through the valley, and by Stockbridge and Silvermills as hard as I could stave. It was Alan's tryst to lie every night between twelve and two "in a bit scrog of wood by east of Silvermills, and by south the south mill-lade." This I found easy enough, where it grew on a steep brae, with the mill-lade flowing swift and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the voluptuous music is no more striking than the tragic. Strauss strikes off the head of Jochanaan with more thunderous noise upon the kettle-drums than Wagner uses when Fafner pounds the life out of Fasolt with his gigantic stave; but there is nothing in all of Wagner's tragic pages to compare in tenseness of feeling with the moment of suspense while Salome is peering into the cistern and marveling that she hears no sound of a death struggle. At this moment there comes an uncanny sound from the orchestra that is positively ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... meats and pickled fish, fruit and junket and a kind of harsh cheese, as if in contest for a wager. And copious was the thin spicy wine with which we swam it home. Ever and again my host would desist, to whistle, or croon (with a packed mouth) in the dismallest of tenors, a stave or two of the tune we had danced to, bobbing head and foot in sternest time. Then a great vacancy would overspread his face turned to the window, as suddenly to gather to a cheerful smile, and light, irradiated, once more on me. Then down would drop his chin over ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... so, but with vessels like we got and the seamen sailing out of Gloucester we'll stave 'em off a long time yet, and even as it is, give me a breeze and a vessel like this one under us and we'll beat out all the steam fishermen that ever ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... young fellow so ravenous that he fried the deer-thong he had bought for a tump-line back at one of the company's forts. Fortunately, somewhere west of Moose Lake, the travellers came on a band of Shuswap Indians who traded for matches and powder enough salmon and cranberry cakes to stave off actual famine. ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more—"Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam"—The singer was in the middle of the stave when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of greensward, sloping up from a slipway on the riverside; a low, cozy-looking inn of red brick covered with a crimson creeper; in front of it a long deal table, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... being served on a tray outside the servants' quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome to a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... sudden thought. With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... striving to keep up its self-respect by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action. As in such slipshod housekeeping men are their own largest creditors, they find it easy to stave off utter bankruptcy of conscience by taking up one unpaid promise with another larger, and at heavier interest, till such self-swindling becomes habitual and by degrees almost painless. How did Coleridge discount his own notes of this kind ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... season, they were again in gayest livery to welcome the long second spring of autumn, lasting from February to May. At the farther end of this wilderness of flowers and fruit trees was an aloe hedge, covering a width of twenty to thirty yards with its enormous, disorderly, stave-like leaves. This hedge was like a strip of wild nature placed alongside of a plot of man's improved nature; and here, like snakes hunted from the open, the weeds and wildings which were not permitted to mix with the flowers had taken refuge. Protected by that ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... plans and labors and purposes as these, the days passed quickly for two weeks. By that time the fierce rays of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... Marse Chan, an' den he teched me up. He nuver hu't me, but in co'se I wuz a-hollerin' ez hard ez I could stave it, 'cause I knowed dat wuz gwine mek him stop. Marse Chan he hed'n open he mouf long ez ole marster wuz tunin' 'im; but soon ez he commence warmin' me an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin', an' stept right in befo' ole marster an' ketchin' ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... he uttered a mocking laugh as he stepped to a rough shelf and took a little pail-like vessel with one stave prolonged into a handle from the place where it had been left clean by the last occupant of the hut, and as he stepped with it to the open door ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... stave, reverend sir," cried they all, "and never did the woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... crouch behind him, the young fellow stood at bay, hooting, shouting, and waving his stave in a semicircle, within whose sweep the creatures were not anxious to intrude. Weary at length of trying to surprise the fortress by a flank movement, yet reluctant to abandon the hope of seizing Pike, the wolves finally seated themselves upon their haunches at a little ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... face of angelic serenity. Having greeted each of us affectionately, he entered into conversation with us, until we were called, as we soon were, to table. I, who watched his actions most closely and ever found them regular and harmonious as a stave of music, was amazed at the brevity of this preparation and thanksgiving. In the evening, therefore, when we were alone together, I said, using the filial privilege which I knew was mine, "Father, it seemed to me this morning that your preparation for ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... advice to all ship-masters, let me say, that if your Otard magazine be exposed to view—then, in the evil hour of wreck, stave in your spirit-casks, ere ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... having to give an account of himself?" Sherm parried, still trying to stave off the mirth ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... and 'inch'; 'errant' and 'arrant'; 'slack' and 'slake'; 'slow' and 'slough'{115}; 'bow' and 'bough'; 'hew' and 'hough'{115}; 'dies' and 'dice' (both plurals of 'die'); 'plunge' and 'flounce'{115}; 'staff' and 'stave'; 'scull' and 'shoal'; 'benefit' and 'benefice'{116}. Or, it may be, the difference which constitutes the two forms of the word into two words is in the spelling only, and of a character to be appreciable only by the eye, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... spelt, spelt, spelled, spelled. Spend, spent, spent. Spill, spilt, spilt, spilled, spilled. Spin, spun, spun. span, Spit, spit, spit, spat, spitten. Split, split, split. Spoil, spoilt, spoilt, spoiled, spoiled. Spread, spread, spread. Spring, sprang, sprung. sprung, Stand, stood, stood. Stave, stove, stove, staved, staved. Stay, staid, staid, stayed, stayed. Steal, stole, stolen. Stick, stuck, stuck. Sting, stung, stung. Stink, stunk, stunk. stank, Strew, strewed, strewn, strewed. Stride, strode, stridden. Strike, struck, struck, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... "write," which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards supplied the place of these materials. Real paper, manufactured from the ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... he had not much of a voice, contrived to make his songs popular by the humour he threw into his tone, had sung about a stave or so, and Norris and the rest of the party, with laughing countenances, while listening to his song, forgot ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... well as Tom Shaw, the cock-master—enter a hound better than Charlie Crouch, the old huntsman—shoot with the long-bow further than any one except himself, and was willing to toss off a pot with him, or sing a merry stave whenever he felt inclined. Such a companion was invaluable, and Nicholas congratulated himself upon the discovery, especially when he found Lawrence Fogg not unwilling to undertake some delicate commissions for him, which he could not well execute ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... cold the March winds be; High up in a leafless tree The little bird sits and wearily twits, The woods with perjury: But the cuckoo-knave sings hold his stave, (Ever the spring comes merrily) And "O poor fool!" sings he— For this is the way in the world to live, To mock when a friend hath no more to give, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... short turn in the road, they came full butt upon a large body of horsemen. Supposing them to be tories, Snipes instantly gave the word to charge; himself leading the way with his usual impetuosity. The supposed tories, wheeling about, took to the sands, and went off, as hard as their horses could stave; and thus, crack and crack, they had it for ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... in manly wise, for there were the bravest of men come together in the best ship of the Northlands. But Frithiof sang a stave: ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... Mr. Drury, as well as for others contributed to the 'London Magazine,' When these sources failed, and the succeeding schemes to acquire 'Bachelors' Hall' broke down one after another, there was bitter want staring him in the face, to stave off which he resolved to make an application to one of his first and best friends, Mr. Gilchrist. It seemed impossible that help, and, what was almost as precious under the circumstances, good advice, should ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... several times with considerable cordiality and lemon-tea. On such occasions, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in his musical capacity, has sung so closely in Judge SWEENEY'S ear as to tickle him, a wild and slightly incoherent Ritualistic stave, to the effect that Saint PETER'S of Rome, with pontifical dome, would by ballot Infallible be; but for making Call sure, and Election secure, Saint Repeater's of Rum beats the See. With finger in ear to allay the tickling sensation, JUDGE SWEENEY declares that this young man smelling ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... I did?" demanded Tom, working himself into a very respectable fit of anger. "I didn't want to go. But that's no reason why you should leave me alone for the rest of the day to—to stave off robbers and thieves and confidence-men ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... their lives were slipping to a lower plane; day by day they were discovering new weaknesses and developing new vices in themselves. Corydon was now a good part of the time in pain of some sort; and the doctors had accustomed her to stave off these crises with various kinds of drugs, so that she had a set of shelves crowded with pills and powders and bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in emergencies, to plead for them when she was helpless; and so Thyrsis saw her declining into an inferno. He would argue with her and plead ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... no more with sighs! Heart-healing comes by distance, and with time: Then let me wander, and enrich mine eyes With the green forests of a softer clime, Or list by night at sea the wind's low stave And long monotonous rockings of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... magnificence over all that land and brooded on it until dawn. The horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust from foundry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... which, although a sheet of flame, was still a door fast locked and barred, and kept them out. Great pieces of blazing wood were passed, besides, above the people's heads to such as stood about the ladders, and some of these, climbing up to the topmost stave, and holding on with one hand by the prison wall, exerted all their skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the roof, or down into the yards within. In many instances their efforts were successful, which occasioned ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled down secession, and sent ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words, "beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long, endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the city. She dreamed that a whole regiment of beams, 36 ft. x 5 in., were advancing in an upright position to do ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... the Entente nations an agreement on the arming of merchantmen, how this government was informed by Germany of her intention to destroy armed merchantmen without giving the passengers a moment of warning, and how, in order to stave off such a contingency, we tried as the friend and in the interest of humanity to get an agreement between both sides that would bring submarine warfare within the ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... crime, he will insist upon taking himself out of our keeping,—commit suicide, get himself sent to the madhouse, or anyhow lose our care and our soothing influence? We cannot relieve him until we restore his strength and composure. All we can do now is to watch him, soothe him, and by all means stave off this confession until he is stronger. It would kill him to face a charge now. I am inquiring quietly, and, if anything serious has happened, shall be sure to find out ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... frolic breeze o'er field and dell, Now pealing a bold stave with lusty swell, Now falling to low ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go soberly down to his counting-house—humming a stave or two of "Spanish Ladies," perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to some Rupert of the markets how a coup worth ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... all that!" said the Queen lightly;—"But, surely, Sir Walter, if you see ruin and disaster threatening so great an Empire in the far distance, you and other wise men of your land are able to stave it off?" ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... of literature and art is as necessary for the continued development of either one or the other as death is for that of organic life. We fight against it as long as we can, and often stave it off successfully both for ourselves and others, but there is nothing so great—not Homer, Shakespeare, Handel, Rembrandt, Giovanni Bellini, De Hooghe, Velasquez and the goodly company of other great men for whose lives we would gladly give our own—but ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... first of all to get the shrouds on one side cut through, so that the mast might come to the surface alongside instead of disturbing the balance of the boat below; and then they must climb up on the swaying bottom of the boat and stave in the key-holes, to let out the air which kept the boat too high in the water, and so ease her. After great exertions they succeeded, and Elias, who had got up on the top first, now helped the other two up ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... now skimming over Tagish Lake. With grey head bared to the breeze and a hymn stave on his lips, Salvation Jim steered in the strong sunlight. His face was full of cheer, his eyes alight with kindly hope. Leaning over the side, the Prodigal was dragging a spoon-bait to catch the monster trout ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... sufficient quantity of meat to stave off their anxiety regarding the question of food, the men spent two days enjoying a badly needed rest; and then they pushed on, making forced marches which severely taxed their strength. Part of their way, however, lay ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. Backache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... s'pose so, but with vessels like we got and the seamen sailing out of Gloucester we'll stave 'em off a long time yet, and even as it is, give me a breeze and a vessel like this one under us and we'll beat out all the steam fishermen ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... confounded upon another point—the prodigious interest manifested by the public. Thus it seems—that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and consummate the ruin ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... beginning, but when you are warmed to the job you are disposed to silence, drop perhaps one behind the other, and reserve your talk for the inn table and the after-supper pipe. An occasional joke, an occasional stave of song, a necessary consultation over the map—that is enough for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... intimacy. So he saw that day by day their lives were slipping to a lower plane; day by day they were discovering new weaknesses and developing new vices in themselves. Corydon was now a good part of the time in pain of some sort; and the doctors had accustomed her to stave off these crises with various kinds of drugs, so that she had a set of shelves crowded with pills and powders and bottles. She had learned to rely upon them in emergencies, to plead for them when she was helpless; and so Thyrsis saw her declining into an inferno. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... three or four steps across the room, muttered an execration in Gaelic, and then with an air of careless defiance set himself down on a table and proceeded to whistle a stave with all ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... old Sol, 'quite right! Then, there were five hundred casks of such wine aboard; and all hands (except the first mate, first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing "Rule Britannia", when she settled and went down, and ending with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Beauce," insinuated Bigot, leaning over to his angry guest, at the same time winking good-humoredly to Varin. "Come, now, De Beauce, friends all, amantium irae, you know—which is Latin for love—and I will sing you a stave in praise of this good wine, which is better than Bacchus ever drank." The Intendant rose up, and holding a brimming glass in his hand, chanted in full, musical voice a favorite ditty of the day, as a ready mode of restoring harmony among ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... effectually put a stop to any talk of such matters and even if Lady Ragnall should succeed in getting rid of them by that morning train, as to which I was doubtful, there remained but a single day of my visit during which it ought not to be hard to stave off the subject. Thus I reflected, standing face to face with those mummies, till presently I observed that the Singer of Amen who wore a staring, gold mask, seemed to be watching me with her oblong painted eyes. To my ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... Frenchwoman; moreover, the idea of girls working for themselves was still viewed as decidedly infra dig by the old- fashioned inhabitants of Bally William. She gasped at the thought of her father's wrath at such a suggestion, then laughed at the idea of Esmeralda's earnings being large enough to stave off ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... cornice fastened to the end. It must be from the wall of a cabin. Did the captain's daughter and the young mate sit under it and whisper stories to each other in the calm evenings of the voyage? There is a piece of barrel-stave. Perhaps it once held rum for the sailors' grog; it burns as if it did. There again is a float from a fisherman's net. Was the net torn when it broke away, and did the fisherman lose some fish? And because of that did his sweetheart ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... morning hills communicated to his spirit a growing elation. He began singing in German a ballad that recited the sorrows of a pale maiden prisoner in a dark tower on the Rhine, whence her true knight rescued her, after many and fearsome adventures. On the last stave he ceased abruptly, and an exclamation of ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... Prohibition. It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their neighbourhood. But there is no possibility ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to escape ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... seizes him, his face crumples, his little fists clench in fury, he tightens them like knots in string and waves them about. "Alors quoi? Ah, if I had hold of the mongrel that did it! Talk about breaking his jaw—I'd stave in his bread-pan, I'd—there was a whole Camembert in there, I'll go and look for it." He massages his stomach with the little sharp taps of a guitar player, and plunges into the gray of the morning, grinning yet dignified, with his awkward outlines of an ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... sits upon the headlands, And sings a mournful stave Of all he saw and felt on earth Far from the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards supplied the place of these materials. Real paper, manufactured from the pellicle of the Egyptian reed or ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... if I don't his legs will be all puffed by the morning. It will be lucky if it is nothing worse. He looks to me as if he was in for a touch of distemper, but I'll give him a powder and perhaps we can stave it off." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... of religious turn, although attached to no particular denomination, the meeting-houses on every side, hardly excepting the Quakers themselves, delighted to see him drive up on Sundays and tell an anecdote to the children and sing a little air, half-hymn sort, half stave, but always given with a good countenance, which apologized for the worldly notes of it. If any severe interpreter of Christian amusements took the people to task for tolerating such a universal and desultory character, there were others to rise up and ask what evil or passionate word ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... inflicting grievous disappointment and sufferings, and incurring thereby a degree of obloquy fatal to any Ministry. They seemed, in fact, to imagine, as they went on, that the day of reckoning could never arrive, because they had resolved to stave it off from time to time, however near it approached, by a series of desperate expedients, really destructive of the national prosperity, but provocative of what served their purposes, viz. temporary popular enthusiasm. What ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... that x quantity otherwise known as Europe. Now Europe was heckling him; the settling of accounts was near. Commissioners had been sent to find where were the ninety millions he had borrowed. Only Ismail and Sadik the Mouffetish, once slave and foster-brother, could reply. The Khedive could not long stave off the evil day when he must "pay the debt of the lobster," and Sadik give account of his stewardship. Meanwhile, his mind turned to the resourceful little Englishman with the face of a girl and the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... here to your Missus!" commanded Miss Lady, as she and Donald dropped down in the old barrel-stave hammock, that had swung beneath the lilacs since the Colonel was ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent—"Mr." "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join "A Society for Burying Its Members," to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Lull sequestered afrites to sleep, A witch smites her high biforous— A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,— Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the burnished light on high; Magicians stave their heads in dust, The vermin feed on reeking bones, Each gnome sobs to a green-horn'd toad. And monarchs of this dungeoned sky Untomb each son in sacred trust As vypers sound their rasping tones, Farewell the ancient ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... think are sweet, But don't appeal ter me no more'n a fish-horn on the street. I'd like once more ter go ter church and watch old Nathan wave His tunin'-fork above the crowd and lead the glorious stave; I'd like ter hear old Parson Day jest knock the sinners higher, And then set back and hear a hymn with ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... manner of vices and debauchery, particularly to drunkenness, which they practise mostly with brandy: this they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they stave at one end, and never cease drinking till it is out. Thus sottishly they live till they have no money left. The said bucaniers are very cruel and tyrannical to their servants, so that commonly they had rather be galley-slaves, or ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... fell a fringe of gray hair. His long beard was also gray, and he leaned upon an ivory staff carved with many strange signs. The inquiry was addressed to Captain Hyde. He paid no attention whatever to it, but, gayly humming a stave of "Marlbrook," watched the crush of wagons and pedestrians, in order to find a suitable moment to cross ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... empty, and envious. Hunting had proved poor that day, for there are lean days as well as fat ones for even the greatest of the jungle hunters. Oftentimes Tarzan went empty for more than a full sun, and he had passed through entire moons during which he had been but barely able to stave off starvation; but such ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... platform may give you time to grip yourself, compose your thoughts, and stave off disaster. Perhaps the surest and most practical method is to begin a new sentence with your last important word. This is not advocated as a method of composing a speech—it is merely an extreme measure which may save you in tight circumstances. It is like the fire department—the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... concealing all landmarks from view. Through the darkness the corvette sped on at a pace of eleven miles an hour, until, just as day was breaking, the cry of "Breakers ahead!" was followed by a heavy blow, indicating that the ship had struck. The force of the blow had not been sufficient to stave in the bottom,—a fortunate fact, for the hold was full of prisoners. Nevertheless, she was hard and fast aground, on a ledge of rock that lifted her bow six feet above her stern. Morris, who had rushed upon deck at the first alarm, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... Copenhagen may or may not have been a dreadful thing: it was at any rate better than the abandonment of Khartoum. Nor can Sydney any more than his friends be acquitted of having held the extraordinary notion that you can "rest and be thankful" in politics, that you can set Demos at bishops, but stave and tail him off when he comes to canons; that you can level beautifully down to a certain point, and then stop levelling for ever afterwards; that because you can laugh Brother Ringletub out of court, laughter will be equally effective ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the lane. For this flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow, set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles through ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... from fear of hindering the others. For some time it was doubtful how it would go. The boat stood nearly up and down in the water, and the sea, rolling from under her, let her fall upon the water with a force which seemed almost to stave her bottom in. By quietly sliding two oars forward, along the thwarts, without impeding the rowers, we shipped two bow oars, and thus, by the help of four oars and the captain's strong arm, we got safely off, though we shipped several seas, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavoured to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the one hand and Normans on the other, while the crusaders who passed through his territory proved more troublesome than either. He managed to hold the empire together in spite of these troubles, and to stave off the doom that impended all through his reign ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... now, why some of 'um isn't so good as I, to be sure. There's Tom Forge, the blacksmith, and little Daniel Snip, the tailor, and Roger Peg, the cobbler, and Tim Frize, the barber, and Landlord Tipple, that keeps the ale-house at the sign of the Turk's Head, and Jeremy Stave, the clerk of the meeting-house, why, there an't one of 'um that's a single copper before a beggar, as the old saying is; but what o' that? We isn't all born alike, as father says; for my part, I likes to be friendly, so give us your hand. You mus'n't ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... doing our work up to our highest and best. The striker, with a lust for more money and shorter hours, the party who wears the face off the clock, and the man with a continual eye on the pay-envelope, all have their reward—and it is mighty small. Nemesis with her barrel-stave lies in wait for them around the corner. They get ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... Finishing his stave, he continued to beat time with his heel on the floor and to gaze upon the ceiling. But I think we could not have twitched a finger without his noting it. M. Etienne rose and leaned across ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... were unbearably stupid. "Nobody could get back! I told you the tunnel caved in, till it was solid between us and the others. Collins saw I had to follow you. In two more minutes Dick would have come to hunt Thompson's stope for me, and we had no guns to stave him off. You and Collins left them in the tunnel!" It was just what we had done, and I wasted good time in remembering it, guiltily. Paulette stood up and twisted back her streaming cloud of hair. "So, as I had to come with you," she resumed without looking at me, "don't ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... go 'way and jump in the river, but pa said: "Hennery, come here, my angel," and he spit on his hands and picked up a barrel stave. I went right up to pa, as innocent as could be, just as any dutiful son should, and right there before the animals and freaks pa—well, that's the reason I am not sitting down very much these ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... are of various forms. Those in Peterborough are formed of two hoops fastened together to form a globe and a stick or stave through the centre. The hoops are decorated with flowers and ribbons, and when the children possess one, the best doll is fixed on the stick inside the garland. Two girls carry the garland which is carefully covered ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack

... not much of a voice, contrived to make his songs popular by the humour he threw into his tone, had sung about a stave or so, and Norris and the rest of the party, with laughing countenances, while listening to his song, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... Chan, an' den he teched me up. He nuver hu't me, but in co'se I wuz a-hollerin' ez hard ez I could stave it, 'cause I knowed dat wuz gwine mek him stop. Marse Chan he hed'n open he mouf long ez ole marster wuz tunin' 'im; but soon ez he commence warmin' me an' I begin to holler, Marse Chan he bu'st out cryin', an' stept right in befo' ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... the hands of the Air Traffic Bureau. We are prepared to defy the ultimatum of the enemy, whoever he may be. But we want your help, Mr. Jones. Every ship of the Air Navy will be in the upper levels within the prescribed twenty-four hours, and we will endeavor to stave off their attacks until such time as you can fit the Pioneer for a journey ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... said Mrs. Herne; 'the child has tipped you a stave of the song of poison: that is, she has sung it Christianly, though perhaps you would like to hear it Romanly; you were always fond of what was Roman. Tip it ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... afternoon "siesta" make a "rough-and-ready" hammock, by taking apart a flour barrel or sugar barrel, and in the end of each stave bore a three-quarter inch hole with a heated poker, or bit and auger. Then lace thin rope (clothes line is good) through the holes. This can be accomplished easily by noting method of lacing in figure "A." The stay-blocks "B" should be 12 inches ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... it in its present reception! It is originally just a volumen, that is, a 'roll' of parchment, papyrus, or whatever else the 'book' (i. e., the bark—the 'liber') might be composed of. Nor can we regard as aught other such terms as 'leaf' or 'folio,' which is also 'leaf.' 'Stave,' too, is suggestive of the staff on which the runes were wont to be cut. Indeed, old almanacs are sometimes to be met with consisting of these long sticks or 'staves,' on which the days and months are represented ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... powder into a pile, tore the blankets into strips, made a train of powder a considerable distance from the pile, and then Major James White fired a pistol into the train, which produced a tremendous explosion. A stave from the pile struck White on the forehead, and cut him severely. As soon as this bold exploit became known to Colonel Moses Alexander, he put his whole ingenuity to work to find out the perpetrators of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last activity in its operations—that of washing and drying the emptied ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Fling a bold stave to the old bald Time, Telling him that he is too insolent Who thinks to rase thee from my heart or rhyme, Whereof to one because thou life hast given, The other yet shall give a life to thee, Such as to gain, the prowest swords have striven, And ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... the dangers of the northern shore, which was to leeward; towards this broken land, however, and lee-shore, the ship settled very fast, notwithstanding our utmost efforts: In this pressing emergency we were obliged to stave all the water-casks upon the deck, and between decks, to clear the vessel, and to make her carry better sail, and at length, happily escaped the danger which threatened us. After we got clear of those islands, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... foliage. The thicket was less dense to the left, I thought, and in a moment I came out upon an open space, and saw a young man in the garb of a shepherd, a looped blue tunic, with a hat tossed back upon the shoulders and held there by a cord. He had leaned a metal stave against a tree, the top of it adorned by a device of crossed wings. He was stooping down and disengaging something from the earth, so that when I drew near, he had taken it up and was gazing curiously at it. It was the herb itself! I saw the prickly flat leaves, the black root, and the little ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... against us. It was thinning rapidly and I could hear the scuffle as men made off down the side streets. My first notion was that these were the Turkish police. But I changed my mind when the leader came out into a patch of light. He carried no torch, but a long stave with which he belaboured the heads of those who were too tightly ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... maid," he thought, "would ride on until she dropped? Would meet discomfort at every turn with a jest or a merry stave?" ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... in history. A temporary nationalisation of land transit has been improvised, and only the vast, deep-rooted, political influence of the shipowners and coalowners have staved off the manifestly necessary step of nationalising shipping and coal. I doubt if they will be able to stave it off to the end of the long struggle which is still before us if the militarism of Germany is really to be arrested and discredited. Expropriation and not conscription will be the supreme test of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... following day. The brief English summer, dying under the intolerable doom of evanescence for all things beautiful, presented the spectacle of creeping decay in a hectic flare of russet and crimson, like a withered woman striving to stave off the inevitable with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... was nothing to be seen on the day when I had my first visitor, and the shock of surprise when the cell door was opened to admit Cyrus Whitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little to stave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of further disaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shaking hands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... but from the Dusky Men rose up hideous confused yelling, and those that could free themselves from the tangle of the throng rushed desperately against the on-rolling hedge of steel, and the whole throng shoved on behind them. Then met steel and men; here and there an ash-stave broke; here and there a Dusky Felon rolled himself unhurt under the ash-staves, and hewed the knees of the Dalesmen, and a tall man came tottering down; but what men or wood-wights could endure the push of spears of ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... lay her safety, and kept her fully employed, so much so, indeed, that from sheer lack of time she was able to stave off the faintness which had threatened to overpower her. After a time her father came to himself, and Erica's face, which had been the last in his mind in full consciousness, was the first which now presented itself to his awakening ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those stave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... a tray outside the servants' quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome to a ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... her military preparations, Germany would mobilize. A German mobilization, he said, would mean war. The results of the second interview, which took place at two o'clock in the morning, were as negative as those of the first, notwithstanding a last effort, a final suggestion by M. Sazonoff to stave off the crisis. His giving in to Germany's brutal dictation would have been an avowal that ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... passes some time, therefore, at his toilette, and takes the field at a late hour every morning, with his hair dressed out and powdered, and a rose in his button-hole. After he has breakfasted, he walks up and down the terrace in the sunshine, humming an air, and hemming between every stave, carrying one hand behind his back, and with the other touching his cane to the ground, and then raising it up to his shoulder. Should he, in these morning promenades, meet any of the elder ladies of the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... brought up in a home of severe simplicity, where gentleness and kindness were taught and practiced, pitied the woman and her children in their sad plight and loaned her the needed interest payment to stave off ejection from her home. Thereafter, he looked after her family until the oldest son was able to manage ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... lasted to get payment for the poems delivered to Mr. Drury, as well as for others contributed to the 'London Magazine,' When these sources failed, and the succeeding schemes to acquire 'Bachelors' Hall' broke down one after another, there was bitter want staring him in the face, to stave off which he resolved to make an application to one of his first and best friends, Mr. Gilchrist. It seemed impossible that help, and, what was almost as precious under the circumstances, good advice, should be wanting from ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... the bomb directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom I have hitherto said nothing, except ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... images. She knew the reason, too; darkness brought the knowledge. She had believed, had wished to believe, that the failure was her fault, a result of her unstable nature; whereas the whole undertaking had been merely a futile attempt to bolster up the impossible, to stave off the inevitable, to postpone the end. And it had all been in vain. The end! It would come, as surely as day followed night—had perhaps indeed already come; for how else could the nervous aversion be explained, which had seized her that day? What, during the foregoing weeks, she had tried ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... the old dame were to discover I had been on the stage, she would think I was leading Dawn to the devil, and would not credit that no one is more anxious than I am to save her from the footlights, or that the best way to stave her off is this training. My secret ambition regarding her," I said, critically observing the strong knobby profile, "is that within the next five years she should marry some nice youngster with means to place her in a setting befitting ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the time we speak of, when many deaths among their kith and kin had afforded full proof that the goddess was enraged, they met in solemn conclave and decided to perform every Sunday and Tuesday night for a month such a ceremony as would delight the heart of that powerful deity and stave off further mortality. The limitation of the period of propitiation to one month was based not so much upon religious grounds as upon the fact that a Municipality, with purely Western ideas of sanitation and of combating epidemics, refused to allow ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... the men on watch began to sing, and his song was an old sea stave that had a swing and roll in its rough tune that was like the broken surge of sea water, even while it was timed to the fall of oar blades into the surf. One may not say how old those songs ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... pro-Austrian Obrenovitches and being in close touch with Montenegro and Bulgaria was planning another coup in the Balkans. Albania was resisting it. The Turks under pressure from the Powers were striving to smooth matters down sufficiently to stave off the final crash that drew ever nearer. They arrested a number of headmen and exacted some punishment for Shtcherbina's death. Though if a consul chooses to take part in a local fight he alone ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... patience was broken by the news of the ship-money, and of a writ addressed to the High Sheriff, Sir Peter Temple of Stave, ordering him to raise L4500 on the county of Buckingham. Hampden's resolve was soon known. In the January of 1636 a return was made of the payments for ship-money from the village of Great Kimble at the foot of the Chilterns round which his chief property ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... that, in 775, a decree was issued ordering that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans were reduced and the price they ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... dare ter do it!" he virulently admonished his parent, a resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full rich voice, "Bye-oh, Baby!" Bob vociferated anew, "Don't you begin ter dare do it!" every inch a ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of the currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" the currency regime in 2000. The move stabilized the currency, but did not stave off the ouster of the government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed the presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. Ecuador completed its first standby agreement since 1986 when ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the other: "Friend, when I am dead, bury me in my native France, with my cross of honor on my breast, and my musket in my hand, and lay my good sword by my side." Until this time the melody has been a slow and dirge-like stave in the minor key. The old soldier declares his belief that he will rise again from the clods when he hears the victorious tramp of his Emperor's squadrons passing over his grave, and the minor breaks into a weird setting of the "Marseillaise" in the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concluded that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave off poverty no real harm could ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... from heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... lurked in every cut, a friend whom it might well be a painful pleasure to meet again. There were the oval face and the short upper lip of one imperishable type; on the next page one of Punch's Fancy Portraits, with lines underneath which set Stingaree incongruously humming a stave from H.M.S. Pinafore. Mr. Kentish smiled without surprise. The common folk in the omnibus opposite were the common folk of an inveterate master; there was matter for a homesick sigh in his hint of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... used to pay your debts and his debts, as well as mine; to stave off ruin from you and from him as well as from myself, and to keep Netty's husband for her. Do you think that Harry Bent could possibly marry Netty, if her mother ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... school or a school in France?" said Mr. Short, taking the indulgent cue, to avoid offence and stave off resistance. But his affectation of meekness was more provoking than his sarcasm. Bessie fired up indignantly at such ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... 30 yards, and men as well as animals were lifted off their feet and carried several yards. The sea rose so high that it destroyed the fort and drove a vessel against the hospital with such force as to stave in the walls of that building. Of the 600 houses at Kingston, on the island of St. Vincent, 14 alone remained intact, and the French frigate Junon was lost. Alarming consequences were feared from the number of dead bodies which lay uninterred, and the quantity of fish the sea threw up, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... all hungry and tired. We will go to St. Bertin at once, and you shall be feasted royally. Hearken, villains!" shouted he to the peasants. "This ship belongs to the fair sir here,—my guest and friend; and if any man dares to steal from her a stave or a nail, I will have his thief's hand ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... boats away, and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks. Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard—we need nowt but the boards we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... with the fen behind and the fog before, When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song - O, you envy the blessed death that ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... active, with no original laziness in his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... men upon the wharf slyly thrust it out with the end of his foot. It hung for a moment and then fell into the boat below with a crash. "What d'ye mean by that?" roared the man in charge of the boat. "What d'ye mean, ye villains? D'ye mean to stave a hole ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... my trade. That's a bit o' 'Wanderin' Willie.' I've had it before me in precognitions; that same stave has been used for a signal by some o' the very ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... shade! Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eyes? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave— Unmeet for this desirous morn— That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush from the bronze, and his dead ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... though, for that matter, they seldom hesitated to do anything they wished on account of the weather, as it was not so cold to the natives as to us. They played with balls, both large and small, and sleds of all descriptions; and if the latter were not to be had, or all in use, a barrel stave or board would be made to answer the same purpose. It was a rush past the window down the hill, first by a pair of muckluked feet, then a barrel stave and a boy, sometimes little Pete, and sometimes John. One barrel stave would hold only one coaster, and there were usually enough for the boys, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... men wish not only to live, but to live commodiously and well. They want not merely a roof over their heads, but a pleasant and comfortable house in which to live. They want not merely something to stave off starvation, but palatable foods. In the satisfaction of these increasingly complicated demands a great diversity of industries arises. With every new want to be fulfilled, there is a new occupation, pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake of the good which it produces. There ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... a fertile source of conjecture which might stave off dangerous subjects in the Sunday call, but there was no opportunity for any discussion, for Maria was popping about, settling and unsettling everything and everybody, in a state of greater confusion than ever, inextricably entangling her inquiries for Sophy with her explanations ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the frieze coat, who bore him an old grudge, grinned in mockery. "For better custody, Captain!" he said. "For better custody! Under my roof, bien! And when you will to go again there will be the dues to be paid, the little dues over which we quarrelled last time! And all will be rendered to a stave!" ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... bold and true, With bracer guard and stave of yew; His purse was light, his jerkin frayed - Haro, ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle

... which, in its mere animal estate, we may name courage. Booth found that a tragedy in real life could no more be enacted without greasy-faced and knock-kneed supernumeraries than upon the mimic stage. Your "First Citizen," who swings a stave for Marc Antony, and drinks hard porter behind the flies is very like the bravo of real life, who murders between his cocktails at the nearest bar. Wilkes Booth had passed the ordeal of a garlicky green-room, and did not shrink from the broader and ranker green-room of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... raised up and removed The dead trunks and the fallen trees. He dressed and regulated The bushy clumps and the (tangled) rows. He opened up and cleared The tamarisk trees and the stave trees. He hewed and thinned The mountain mulberry trees. God having brought about the removal thither of this intelligent ruler, The Kwan hordes fled away[2]. Heaven had raised up a helpmeet for him, And the appointment he had ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... shriven sing sang or sung sung sink sank or sunk sunk [adj. sunken] sit sat [sate] sat slay slew slain slide slid slidden, slid sling slung slung slink slunk slunk smite smote smitten speak spoke spoken spin spun spun spring sprang, sprung sprung stand stood stood stave stove (staved) (staved) steal stole stolen stick stuck stuck sting stung stung stink stunk, stank stunk stride strode stridden strike struck struck, stricken string strung strung strive strove striven swear swore sworn swim swam or swum swum ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... measured swing, they pass, The wide-ranked mowers evading to the knee, Their sharp scythes panting through the thick-set grass Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in a ring, Their nooning take, while one begins to sing A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... now first of all to get the shrouds on one side cut through, so that the mast might come to the surface alongside instead of disturbing the balance of the boat below; and then they must climb up on the swaying bottom of the boat and stave in the key-holes, to let out the air which kept the boat too high in the water, and so ease her. After great exertions they succeeded, and Elias, who had got up on the top first, now helped the ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... through. I'm an old hand, but when it comes to striking a swamp where I said there'd be a reef, it's time to shift. You're the boss now. I'll be cook and bring along the accordion. A bit of a stave may change the luck." ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... off-shore; so that even to lie to at the mouth made rather a ticklish job of it. The men looked at one another, and did not like it, for a badly handled oar would have cast them on the rocks, which are villainously hard and jagged, and would stave in the toughest boat, like biscuit china. However, they durst not say that they feared it; and by skill and steadiness they examined all three caves quite enough to be certain that no boat was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... ill-disguised ways an itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... appeared infinitely distant, and fallen in the cold perspective and dry light of history. The bearing of the priest, perhaps, affected me. He smiled; he jested with the boy, the heir both of these feasters and their meat; he clapped his hands, and gave me a stave of one of the old, ill-omened choruses. Centuries might have come and gone since this slimy theatre was last in operation; and I beheld the place with no more emotion than I might have felt in visiting Stonehenge. In Hiva-oa, as I began to appreciate that the thing was still living and latent about ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our devotion to this cause is to us amazing. The treatment of us by Abolitionists also is enough to try the souls of better saints than we. The secret of all this furor is Republican spite. They want to stave off our question until after the presidential campaign. They can keep all the women still but Susan and me. They can't control us, therefore the united effort of Republicans, Abolitionists and certain women to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... running with twice the speed of the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane. The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead. Marianne cried out in delight. She had forgotten her hope that the mares might not win. All ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... to specify what further measures the South demanded, in sharp, incisive terms, but this extract suffices to show that our leaders used every power of tongue and moral suasion to stave off bloodshed. ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... doctor, "every one of you take what I'll mix up for you directly, and have a good bathe and rub down. I am not going to have you all down with fever if I can stave it off." ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... gigas, Bodd, the Great Brown Kingfisher of Australia; see Dacelo. To an Australian who has heard the ludicrous note of the bird and seen its comical, half-stupid appearance, the origin of the name seems obvious. It utters a prolonged rollicking laugh, often preceded by an introductory stave resembling the opening ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... of these things, but looked up to where it seemed that I must be judged. I could make out one or two banners pitched and floating idly in the sunshine, and one seemed to have a golden cross at its stave head; but I could make out none of the devices on them, and so I looked idly back on the crowd again. And then men brought us food and ale, and at last, after some gruff talk among themselves, the guards untied my hands, though they ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... medical matters, perceiving nothing gruesome in the details at the moment; but afterward developing nerves on the subject, and probably giving the young practitioner good reason to regret unwary confidences. I tried to stave off the topic, but the will-power of the majority was against me, and finally I found myself submitting, and following my ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... about those friendly but niggardly Yankee dollars that saved many a bush farmer from being sold for taxes. He may have seen bolt mills go up and young men betwixt haying and harvest swagger down to the docks to get 25 cents an hour loading elm bolts into the three-mast schooners. He probably saw stave mills arise in which hundreds of youths got employment while their fathers at home fought stumps, wire worms, drought and the devil to get puny crops at small prices. He saw the wagon-works and the fanning mill factory and the reaper industry come up out of these timber products. While he was a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... his residence from Kandahar to Kabul, and continued during a reign of twenty years to stave off the anarchy which followed close on his death. He left twenty-three sons, of whom the fifth, Zaman Mirza, by help of Payindah Khan, head of the Barakzai family of the Abdalis, succeeded in grasping the royal power. For many years barbarous wars raged between ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... representations of Mendelssohn's "Elijah." I have witnessed as well as heard a performance of "Acis and Galatea" and been entertained with the spectacle of Polyphemus crushing the head of presumptuous Acis with a stave like another Fafner while singing "Fly, thou massy ruin, fly" to the bludgeon which was playing ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... supposing them to be serious, defends himself against them. Lastly Secknall sings a hymn written in praise of a Saint. Saint Patrick commends it, affirming that for once Fame has dispensed her honours honestly. Upon this, Secknall recites the first stave, till then craftily reserved, which offers the whole homage of that hymn to Patrick, who, though the humblest of men, has thus arrogated to himself the saintly Crown. There is laughter ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... six of 'em!" he uttered, as the cathedral clock rang out the hour, and his boots threatened to stave in the floor. "If I stand this life much longer, I'll be shot! It's enough to take the spirit out of a fellow; to wear the flesh off his bones; to afflict him with nervous fever. What an idiot I was to let my lady mother put me ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... continued Gogyrvan, "you may take it as one of the many reasons why I jeer out of season in order to stave off far more untimely tears. For this thing happens: in my city it happens, and in my castle it happens. King or no, I am powerless to prevent its happening. So I can but shrug and hearten my old blood with a fresh bottle. No less, I regard the young ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... by her unexpected good-fortune, Toni showed herself more than usually bewitching; and although she managed to stave off the declaration which still trembled on the young man's lips, she played games with him in the most friendly fashion, and bade him good-night at last with so sweet a smile that he almost fell upon his knees then and there ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... that I venture near this gate, for it looks out upon the street, and I care not to be seen by any Indian or half-breed Spaniard who might go loitering by; but as I stood in the vine-covered arbour in the centre of the garden I heard a man's voice from the direction of the gate, humming a stave of a maritime air that I had heard sung oft and again by the sailors on the sloop, in which some unknown fair one is ardently ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... delay was conveniently indefinite. When was Lysias coming? His letter said nothing about such an intention, and took for granted that all the materials for a decision would be before Felix. Lysias could tell no more. The excuse was transparent, but it served to stave off a decision, and to-morrow would bring some other excuse. Prompt carrying out of all plain duty is the only safety. The indulgence given to Paul, in his light confinement, only showed how clearly Felix knew himself to be doing wrong, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... walked up the strete like she was tredin on air. And Mr. Gilley acts like he'd unloded a hull team full of pig led oflfen his mind, cos he knoes Samanthy'll have the noose of the fortune all over town 'fore nite, and then he'll be abel to stave off his bills, and run his cheek for wotever he warnts, for a hull yare to cum. He told me, wen I was cummin home, that I was a born diplermatist, & ort to hire myself out to King Alfonso, of Spain, in ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... dey call de day-work. When dey put 'em in de stocks dey tie 'em hand and foot to a stick. Dey could lie down wid dat. I hear of colored folks doin' dat now to dare chillun when dey don't do. Now de bill-bo wuz a stabe (stave) drove in de ground, an' dey tied dere hands and den dere feet to dat, standin' up. Dey'd work on Saturday but dey wuz give Sundays. Rations wuz give out on Mondays. Edmund Lawton went over to Louisiana to work on de Catherine Goride place, but he come back, 'cause he say dey blow dey horn ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various









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