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More "Stiffness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the bodily presence of the guests. Dr. Dastick, for the first and only time in my remembrance, appeared with his trousers bound with straps to the bottoms of his boots. Colonel Prowley had thrust his neck into a stock of extraordinary stiffness, which seemed to proceed from some antique coat-of-mail worn beneath the waistcoat. The collar and cuffs of Miss Prowley were wonderful in their dimensions, and fairly creaked with the starch. The clergyman, indeed, wore his dress ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... man, with red hair and beard, very tall, very broad, a kind of calm and polite Hercules. He had nothing of the so-called British stiffness, and in a broad English accent he thanked me warmly for my attention. At the end of a month we had had five or ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... inside the church building the child's mind was held in a kind of holy fear. She spent most of her time there dwelling upon her sins and longing to be good. She did not know that the starched pinafore that scratched her neck, the tightness of her heavy braid of hair, and the stiffness of her Sunday boots contributed not a little to her inner discomfort. But she gave her undivided attention to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... who had no other end in his proposal than to appear wise and manly, soon acquiesced, since I was not to live by my learning; for indeed he had known very few students that had not some stiffness in their manner. They therefore agreed that a domestic tutor should be procured, and hired an honest gentleman of mean conversation and narrow sentiments, but who having passed the common forms of literary education, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... him, no matter where he might be, or with what occupied. Surely the Scriptures never had such a curious assortment of missionaries as Borrow employed? At Seville there was the gigantic Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia; the "aged professor of music, who, with much stiffness and ceremoniousness, united much that was excellent and admirable"; {298a} the Greek bricklayer, Johannes Chysostom, a native of Morea, who might at any time become "the Masaniello of Seville." With these assistants Borrow set to work to throw the light of the Gospel into ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the curate; "then by my faith he must take up his quarters in the yard, in spite of his marvellous birth and visionary adventures, for the stiffness and dryness of his style deserve nothing else; into the yard with him and the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wheeled and with a military stiffness marched back. Slowly she nodded her head. "I gives ye thet pledge too;" she said, "since ye wants hit—but I gives hit with a right ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... a brass instrument glistening in the distance, and she rejoiced to greet her first bandsman. He approached in an indifferent way, but she was becoming more used to the 'cold climate.' When other bandsmen appeared she felt that, in spite of the stiffness, she loved her corps already. She would have been quite happy had the lieutenant been there, but to walk in front of that band without the satisfaction of knowing there was one sister in the rear, ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... of the inhabitants of the Icelandic capital, our traveller says: "Nothing struck me so much as the great dignity of carriage at which the Icelandic ladies aim, and which is so apt to degenerate into stiffness when it is not perfectly natural, or has not become a second nature by habit. They incline their head very coolly when you meet them, with less civility than we should use towards an inferior or a stranger. The lady of the house never accompanies her guests beyond the door of the room, after a call; ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... It was just beginning to grow dusk, and she saw not far off Jacques Gaultier and her brother. The latter was singing in his native patois a gay song, much to the horror of Jacques, who thought it was dreadful to do such a thing. Dropping his usual air of hypocritical stiffness (adopted by so many to fall in with the custom of the times), he hastened forward to meet Marguerite, and with a show of politeness, wonderful for the rough Jacques, raised his hat and said, "Good evening, Marguerite; it is my fault that ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... fourteen—was of good height for his years, with a profusion of light, wavy hair, a thoughtful, blue eye, and a lurking humor about the lip which told of a great faculty for mischief. There was such an absence, moreover, in this city home, of that stiffness with which his Aunt Eliza had such a marvellous capacity for investing everything about her, that the lad found himself at once strangely at his ease. Was it, perhaps, (the thought flashed upon him,) because it was a godless home? The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... one of the arm-chairs that stood by the high chimney-piece tall with tiles and blue vases. The stiffness and glare of the red cloth in which the room was furnished, contrasted with the soft colour of the tapestry which covered one wall. The round table shone with silver, and an agreeable smell of coffee and sausages pervaded the room. Lizzie ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... like an under-feature of the Sussex Downs, into the stagnant morass which is Houwater's most prominent feature, the last Boers were disappearing into the labyrinth of Minie Kloof beyond. But there was just sufficient excitement to take the cold and stiffness, bred of a miserable march, out of the bones of the men. The pom-pom unlimbered above the drift, and spent, at an impossible range, a belt of its tiny bombs. A spare dozen of Rimingtons, who had pushed farther ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books, and a total ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... I drew a stiff white amice over my head, instead of the dear old limp and wrinkled one I was used to; and when I feebly tried to push my hands through the lace meshes of an alb, that would stand with stiffness and pride, if I placed it on the floor. I would gladly have called for my old garment; but I knew that I too had to undergo the process of the new reformation; and, with much agony, I desisted. But I drew the line at ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... women look at these things differently," she remarked, and from the stiffness of her tone I divined that the idea of moral qualities lurking in the nature of Lola Brandt occasioned ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the native officials, yet he is most affable and cheery, with a very taking, charming manner. That goes a much longer way in Persia than the other unfortunate manner by which many of our officials think to show dignity—sheer stiffness, rudeness, bluntness, clumsiness—which offends, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... has the compass and variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion, and an angular stiffness their repose." He then cited the most famous statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by her fine dramatic instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her person into postures similar to these, and of equal beauty; not that ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... compassion in her eyes, and that ill-fated man thought he had never seen any one look so altogether charming—excepting, of course, his own wife in her youthful days. She seemed to have smoothed away all the Boston stiffness as she smoothed ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... from her home in Northampton, invited him to come down for a week at some vague future date; one of the children was unwell, and until it recovered it was impossible to fix a day. Still, they would be delighted to see him again. Her letters always had a note of stiffness in them, which was purely unintentional, or rather, purely natural, reflecting the one salient point in ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... great difficulty they could lift their hands to their mouths. As for foreigners, if they happened to sit between Russians, they were little likely to have any appetite to eat. All this Peter encouraged, on the plea that ceremony would produce uneasiness and stiffness. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... an assistant butler in Madame du Barry's hotel at Versailles, was a sharp, sour-natured old fellow, truculent and avaricious. The spine of this man was a sort of social barometer; by its exact degree of curvature or stiffness in the presence of a guest the stable-boys and housemaids knew whether his rank was great or small, and whether, to please their cantankerous master, they were to fly or walk at his beck, or in the case of a mere bourgeois, to drink his wine on the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... might agree with his condition, 'twas concluded necessary to wear an air of discontent; that he should with a stately stiffness, like quality, often cough, and spit about the room; that his words might come the more faintly from him; that in the eye of the world he shou'd refuse to eat or drink; ever talking of riches, and sometimes, to confirm their ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... with open coat and waistcoat, like a man's, hair unpowdered and tied behind, and a large shady feathered hat. Estelle wore a miniature of the same, and rejoiced in her freedom from the whalebone stiffness of her Paris life, skipping about the deck with her brother, like fairies, Lanty said, or, as she preferred to make it, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Shelley's, "brown" and Trelawny's "grey" eyes, but the beauty of expression is wanting. The mouth, thin and hard, might have caught a passing look, but certainly not what an artist would have wished to portray; while a certain stiffness of pose is not what one would expect in the high-strung, sensitive Mary Shelley. The beauty of gold-brown hair was not in the painter's power to catch. Mary was of middle height, tending towards short; her hands were considered very beautiful, and by some she was supposed ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... hear the soft pattering of feet; the two Chinese were not far in the rear. Determined to waste no time in escaping, he dashed down the alley and came into a dark street; he ran faster and faster as the stiffness in his legs lessened, turning into one street after another, and he did not stop until he was breathing hard and had left the place of his captivity several hundred yards behind. He looked back then and listened. Apparently he had distanced ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... was a bride, standing there with old friends and old associations thick around her, on the threshold of a new life. The sun shone through the stained glass of the windows, and illuminated the brocade, whose old-fashioned stiffness so became her childish beauty, and flung a thousand new tints over her sunny hair, and drew so powerful a fragrance from the orange-blossom with which it was twined, that it was almost overpowering. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dressing is in its infancy, O' Man—in its blooming Infancy. All balance and stiffness like a blessed Egyptian picture. No Joy in it, no blooming Joy! Conventional. A shop window ought to get hold of people, 'grip 'em as they go along. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... of our souls, not ourselves; and the web is too intensely wove and drenched in too deep a dye for us to undo or greatly change. The eagle cannot be tamed down to the softness of a dove, and no art of the husbandman can send into the gnarled and knotted oak the juices that shall smooth and melt its stiffness into the yielding pliancy of the willow. I wage no war with the work of the gods. Besides, the demands of Rome have now grown to such a size that they swallow up our very existence as a free and sovereign state. They leave us but this single city and province out of an empire ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Madame Dumay, who were appointed to watch Modeste, had a certain assumed stiffness of demeanor and a quiver in their voices, which the suspected party did not notice, so absorbed was she in her embroidery. Modeste laid each thread of cotton with a precision that would have made an ordinary workwoman desperate. Her face expressed the pleasure she took in the smooth petals ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... all was that he insisted, as a matter of personal education, on coming to my room after breakfast to watch the expert manoeuvres of Britton in kneading the stiffness out of my muscles. He was looking for new ideas, he explained. I first consulted Britton and then resignedly consented to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... proportion to its success in improving the taste and judgment of its contemporaries. The poems of West, indeed, had the merit of chaste and manly diction; but they were cold, and, if I may so express it, only dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's there is a stiffness, which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek. Whatever relation, therefore, of cause or impulse Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the most popular poems of the present day; yet ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... flag-officer was pacing to and fro, with a self-conscious dignity to which a touch of the gout or rheumatism perhaps contributed a little additional stiffness. He seemed to be a gallant gentleman, but of the old, slow, and pompous school of naval worthies, who have grown up amid rules, forms, and etiquette which were adopted full-blown from the British navy into ours, and are somewhat too cumbrous for the quick spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I had at last happened, was a fruit of the reaction of artistic-minded and carelessly living people against the costly and uncomfortable social stiffness of the more formal seaside resorts of that time. It was, you must understand, the custom of the steam-railway companies to sell their carriages after they had been obsolete for a sufficient length of years, and some genius had hit upon the possibility of turning ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the night that followed, nor did they wake till sunrise of the next morning, when women of the household of the chief knocked upon the door-board to ask if they needed aught. Then they rose feeling well and strong again except for the stiffness of their limbs, and Suzanne clothed herself in the garments that the woman had washed, combing her dark hair with a Kaffir comb. Afterwards they ate heartily of the good food that was brought to them, and ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... mistake, and he stopped her short. "Look here," he said to her, "I don't ask you to come here to tell me anything about vehicles. When I order any sort of a trap I want it." When I heard Jone say trap my soul lifted itself and I knew there was hope for us. The stiffness melted right out of the landlady, and she began to look soft ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... arising from these exercises I shall notice only one or two. The firemen, when at their ordinary employments, as masons, house-carpenters, &c., being accustomed to a particular exercise of certain muscles only, there is very often a degree of stiffness in their general movements, which prevents them from performing their duty as firemen with that ease and celerity which are so necessary and desirable; but the gymnastic exercises, by bringing all ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... tail last of all, Peter. 'Give un a good tail!' says I. 'Ah! that I will,' says 'e. 'An' a good stiff un!' says I. 'Ye jest keep your eye on it, an' watch!' says 'e. Talk about tails, Peter! 'E put in that theer tail so quick as nigh made my eyes water, an'—as for stiffness—well, look at it! I tell 'ee that chap could paint a bull wi' 'is eyes shut, ah, that 'e could! an' 'im such a very small man wi' gray whiskers. No, ye don't see many bulls like that un theer, I'm ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... daily rain bath. The following physical defects (some of which have been remedied wholly or in part) come under my observation: general weakness, weak chest (respiratory organs), bent carriage of the body, stiffness of wrist, joints, and clumsy movements of fingers, spinal curvature, extreme (comparative) development of right arm. To overcome these defects systematic exercise was necessary, including free-hand exercises, club-swinging, dumb-bell exercise, etc., meted out according to the respective ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... unfaithfulness to Maggie, on Anthony's score. Poor Maggie stood apart as if betrayed. Maggie and Anthony were enemies by instinct. Ursula had to go back to her friend brimming with affection and a poignancy of pity. Which Maggie received with a little stiffness. Then poetry and books and learning took the place of Anthony, with his goats' movements and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless; behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other things about the same time, less important in themselves, struck in the Prussian's ear the same new note of warning and doubt. He sought to obtain a small advantage on the north-west coast of Africa; and England seemed to show a certain strange stiffness in insisting on its abandonment. In the councils over Morocco, England agreed with France with what did not seem altogether an accidental agreement. But we shall not be wrong if we put the crucial point of the German surprise and anger at ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... his address and the seeming stiffness of his manner were really due to an innate and incurable shyness, but they produced, even among people who ought to have known him better, a totally erroneous impression of his character ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... greeted her she saw the stiffness, the aloofness had gone from him. Kathleen had made him feel at home. He looked younger. There was color ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... his knock was heard at the door. Miss Stanbury was sitting in the small up-stairs parlour, dressed in her second best gown, and was prepared with considerable stiffness and state for the occasion. Dorothy was with her, but was desired in a quick voice to hurry away the moment the knock was heard, as though old Barty would have jumped from the hall door into the room at a bound. Dorothy collected herself with a little start, and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... you to come—though I thought you would," Miss Gibson said impulsively, as we shook hands. "You have been so sympathetic and human—both you and Dr. Thorndyke—so free from professional stiffness. My aunt went off to see Mr. Lawley directly we ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... possibly contain himself, Jerry maintained his stiffness. And then, his love bursting beyond the control of him, he gave a sniff—as prodigious a one as he had sniffed into the tunnel of Skipper's hand in the long ago on the deck of the Arangi. And, as Skipper had relaxed into the laughter of love, so did the lady-god ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... elbows from his body, and letting the lower parts of his arms fall down, so that he went as if he carried a keg under each; his coat, though not well made, was of the best glossy broadcloth—and his long clerical boots went up about his knees like a dragoon's; there was an awkward stiffness about him, in very good keeping with a dark melancholy cast of countenance, in which, however, a man might discover an air of simplicity not to be found in the visage of his superior ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... close, the crown excepted, where they left only a little tuft, that reached from the top of the forehead to the nape of the neck, and even on the top of the forehead. They here left a border of hair, which, whether it was owing to nature, or the stiffness contracted by the fat and colors with which they daubed themselves, bristled up, and came forward like the corner of a ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... and three teaspoons of baking-powder; stir this a little at a time in the bowl with the other ingredients, until the mixture is a light dough, just stiff enough to roll out. If there is not enough flour, sift more in to make the dough the desired stiffness; then dust the pastry board well with flour, put part of the dough on the board, toss it lightly with your hands from side to side till the dough is covered with flour. Then dust the rolling-pin well with flour and roll the dough very thin; cut it in shapes with a cookie cutter, ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... pent-house forward (the which had served its purpose admirably well) whiles I, perceiving the waves subsiding and the wind blowing steady and fair, laid our course due south-westerly again, and lashing the helm, went forward to shake out the reefs, finding it no easy task what with the stiffness of my cramped limbs and the pitching of the boat; howbeit, 'twas done at last but, coming back, I tripped across ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... about that, Toby," the other told him, as he commenced with his customary early morning exercises, modeled somewhat after the type of those in use in the army, and which were best calculated to take all the stiffness and numbness out of his system, brought about by curling ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... stiffness, gentlemen, I can assure you. I balanced one of the half bricks in my left hand—I'm a left-handed man in many things—and watched the head, while it was easy to see that the head watched the car. 'Now,' sez I to meself, 'that's ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... have allowed himself such familiarity, for he was very formal; but he had seen M. Daubigeon more than once at the chateau; and he knew the plans that had been discussed between M. Galpin and his master. Hence he was not a little amazed at the embarrassed stiffness of the two gentlemen, and at the tone of voice in which ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the Franks overcame him whenever he recalled what had happened in the Mission garden, and the recurring smart of his wounds prevented his forgetting it for more than a minute at a time. But in the morning, when pain had given place to a bruised stiffness, he recovered the resignation which had been his before the preacher Ward came with the tidings of his Emir's great danger. For the first time since his return from the search for Wady 'l Muluk he took out his paints and sketch-book, and went and sat beneath the ilex-tree, awaiting inspiration. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... a tall and very thin man, meanly dressed in a short, scanty jacket and well-darned hose. Unable, for some reason, to bend his neck, he carried his head with a strange stiffness. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... was bruised on the ankle about two years ago. This is now producing an enlargement of the bone and stiffness ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... transformed her. Ashe sat down beside her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip—relations, acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared. She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged through the good and evil fortunes—mostly the latter—of half his acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... destroyed the development of the theme and broke the thread of its thought. The different parts of the orchestra fell over one another, and the whole was uncertain and lacking in balance. I once severely criticised the neo-classic stiffness of Weingartner; but I should have appreciated his healthy equilibrium and his effort to be exact after hearing this neurasthenic rendering of Beethoven. No; we can no longer hear Beethoven and Mozart in Germany to-day, we can only hear Mahler and Strauss. Well, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... but when she wanted to tie it behind she found a difficulty from a stiffness of one shoulder, and said, "It is the rheumatics, miss; one catches it ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... it. We may remark that the strength of the iron, aside from that which is necessary to allow the pile to withstand a blow in a vertical direction, will not have to be calculated for all entire resistance to the horizontal pressure due to a vacuum caused by the excavation, for the stiffness of the piles may be easily maintained and increased by establishing string-pieces and braces in the interior in measure as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... honoured in placing myself at the disposal of so far-sighted a commander," said Gerrard, a little stiffly, as he saluted. Charteris laughed, and clapped him on the back with a friendly force no stiffness could survive. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... all the boys slept in one large room, on cots conveniently arranged. Tommy was a heavy sleeper. One morning he awoke with a strange feeling of stiffness about his face, and no sooner did he sit up in bed than a laugh rang around ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... him, and his muscles hardened. There was no trace of rheumatic stiffness in his movements. With a bound he struck the chain-traces from the singletree at Nancy's heels. He caught the hames, leaped on her back, and digging his heels into her sides, he stretched along her neck like an Indian and raced across ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... processions the representation is, of course, far from the perfection of Art. Both the faces and the figures have a certain stiffness, partly due to the very nature of mosaic-work. There is also a sort of child-like simplicity in the treatment, especially of the female figures, which an unsympathetic critic would call grotesque. But, I think, most beholders feel that there is something indescribably solemn in these ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the examination lasted, going through the ceremonial with all the regular solemnity of the Senate House. The candidates, we are told, expected a sort of jocose business, and were little prepared for the "stiffness" of the questions which were of the deep and searching kind they were accustomed to in the case of a Greek Play or a Latin Epic. Almost at once, three-fourths showed by their helpless bewilderment that the thing was beyond them; and the struggle lay between the two well-versed Pickwickians—Besant ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... He plucked nervously at his cap, and dared not raise his face to confront the calm countenance of his sovereign. Elizabeth, for her part, scanned him most critically from top to toe. She noted the cut of his clothes, the stiffness of his ruff, the size of the buckles on his shoon; from these to the colour of his hair and the healthy tan of his skin, nothing escaped her. She was rapidly measuring him, height and girth, with the proportions of her handsome ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... order that our little bird might try her wings, regain her seat and mastery of a horse, and rid herself of a first painful stiffness, I persuaded the Reverend Mother to grant the nuns a Play Day, in honour of my visit, promising to send them my white palfrey, suitably caparisoned, in safe charge of a good lay-brother, so that all nuns who pleased, might ride in the river meadow. You would ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... the road again, Rusher kicking up his heels livelier than before, for the run down to the lake had merely enabled him to get the stiffness out of his limbs. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... take place for another six months, by which time Terence had thrown away his crutches and had taken to an artificial leg—so well constructed that, were it not for a certain stiffness in his walk, his loss would not have been suspected by a casual observer. For three months previous to the event, a number of men had been employed in building a small but pretty house, some quarter of a mile from the ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... of the thicket to enjoy his first sun bath. The warmth seemed to relieve the stiffness in his joints, and after each nursing during the day he attempted several awkward capers in his fright at a shadow or the rustle of a leaf. Near the middle of the afternoon, his mother being feverish, ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... wounded in three places on the abdomen: in the middle and on either side. On the first day, the insect seems to have felt nothing; I see no sign of stiffness in its movements. No doubt it is suffering acutely; but these stoics keep their troubles to themselves. Next day, the Ephippiger drags her legs a little and walks somewhat slowly. Two days more; and, when laid on her back, she is unable to turn over. On the fifth day, she succumbs. This time, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... the quiet but deep feeling which rises in connection with a subject on which the mind has long brooded with affection, as in the tribute to Oxford at the beginning of the Essay on Emerson. Sometimes, on the other hand, a certain pedagogic stiffness appears, as if the writer feared that the dullness of comprehension of his readers would not allow them to grasp even the simplest conceptions without a patient insistence ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... worn; until this cast-off poetic apparel, stretched on the freer moral limbs of natural folk, faded and stained by weather and earth into new and richer tints, had lost all its original fashionable stiffness, and crudeness of colour, and niminy-piminy fit, and had acquired instead I know not what grace of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... white horse accompanied by the sound of bells, has some excellent "black and white" houses with pointed gables and enriched barge-boards pierced in every variety of patterns, their finials and pendants, and pargeted fronts, which give an air of picturesqueness contrasting strangely with the stiffness of the modern brick buildings. In one of these is established the old Banbury Cake Shop. In the High Street there is a very perfect example of these Elizabethan houses, erected about the year 1600. It has a fine oak staircase, the newels beautifully carved and ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Thelismer Thornton dragged up his huge figure into the stiffness of resentment. He ran searching eyes over the faces before him. All were grave now, for the sounding of the first note of revolt in a half century makes for gravity. The Duke of Fort Canibas could not distinguish adherents from foes at that moment, when ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... pressure are often witnessed. Thus, for instance, a track traversing the calf, will more or less tie the whole thickness of the structures perforated at one spot, and the apertures of entry and exit may be visibly retracted when the muscles are put in action with consequent pain and stiffness to the patient. Such pain and stiffness form some of the most troublesome after-consequences of many simple wounds. It is remarkable for how long a period after the healing of the wound and resumption of active duty the patients ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... Mowbray's boarding-house, the sailors who sat upon the narrow benches round the big room ceased their talk as the door opened and Tom Mowbray himself entered from the street. The men in the room, for all the dreary stiffness of their shore-clothes, carried upon their faces, in their hands shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitude of their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was the arena of their lives; they salted the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... usual lodging-house furniture, and on a faded red sofa near the fire old Mrs. Warlock was lying. Maggie could not see her very clearly in the half-light, but there was something about her immobility and the stiffness of her head (decorated as of old with its frilly white cap) that reminded one of a figure made out of wax. Maggie turned to find Amy ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... years, he did begin to develop some individuality, he could not, and never did shake himself free of those weary models; his thoughts, appearing in clothes which were not made for them, wore always a certain stiffness and unreality which did not by nature belong to them, blunting the impressions which his earnestness ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... its water, destroys the original nature of anything whatsoever. Indeed, all that is sprinkled with the breath of its vapour is changed into the hardness of stone. It remains a doubt whether it be more marvellous or more perilous, that soft and flowing water should be invested with such a stiffness, as by a sudden change to transmute into the nature of stone whatsoever is put to it and drenched with its reeking fume, nought but the shape surviving. Here also are said to be other springs, which now are fed with floods of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... is to him a day of retribution. It is the awful day when his ears are washed and touseled about; when his eyes are punched out by the towelled but unsparing hand of a Christian mother; when his shoes are put back on him for a day, and when, with a neck encircled by a collar starched to maddening stiffness, and with a pocket handkerchief the consistency of pasteboard, he is sent to the place of punishment. I have read many beautiful poems about the sweet quiet of the Sabbath, but few of the poets have given the right solution of it. It is because all over the civilized world on that day, ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... and left me to my mysterious fate," said the Count, with a slight degree of stiffness. "I conclude that you did not receive my letter requesting you to meet me at Amsterdam, and stating the reasons for my not rejoining you sooner; however, I am very glad to ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... be well to speak further of the subject of "white strength," by which is meant the stiffness or viscosity of the egg white. The white of an egg is a limpid, clear liquid, but in the egg of good quality that portion immediately surrounding the yolk appears to be in a semi-solid mass. The cause of ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... A certain stiffness of demeanour, which we had noticed, but ascribed to pride, worked an unspeakable change in the mage. As we looked at him he hardened into our ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... are used, such as starch, flour, mineral matters, to give the goods stiffness and feel on one hand, and on the other to conceal defects in the cloth, and to give a solid appearance to goods of open texture. The mineral substances used serve chiefly for filling and weighting, and necessitate the ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... themselves by action. In this respect the most successful of his stories is yet Treasure Island, and the least successful perhaps Catriona, when just as the ambitious aim compels him to pause in incident, the first-person form creates a cold stiffness and artificiality alien to the full impression he would produce upon the reader. The two stories he left unfinished promised far greater things in this respect than he ever accomplished. For it is an indisputable fact, and indeed very ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... music of Leo Ornstein and the age of steel. And Ravel has some of the squareness, the sheerness and rigidity for which the ultra-modern are striving. The liquescence of Debussy has given away again to something more metallic, more solid and unflowing. There is a sort of new stiffness in this music. And in the field of harmony Ravel is steadily building upon Debussy. His chords grow sharper and more biting; in "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and the minuet on the name of Haydn there is a harmonic daring and subtlety and even bitterness that is beyond anything attained ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of an arm chair and a stool, together with that of the tripod table which ornaments the initial letter of this chapter, are favourable examples of the richly-mounted and more decorative furniture of this style. While they are not free from the stiffness and constraint which are inseparable from classic designs as applied to furniture, the rich colour of the mahogany, the high finish and good gilding of the bronze mounts, and the costly silk with which they are covered, render them attractive ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... with a hat something similar to those seen in some portions of the Tyrol. It had a brim of moderate width, and the crown gradually tapered until it attained a height of six inches, where it ended in it point. The thrifty mother possessed a secret of imparting a stiffness to the head gear which caused it to keep its shape, except ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... No,—the latter feature of hers had never become acquainted with the former; and there was as little stiffness as nasal redness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... style of Madame de Sevigne,' wrote Mackintosh (Life, ii. 221), 'is evidently copied, not only by her worshipper Walpole, but even by Gray; notwithstanding the extraordinary merits of his matter, he has the double stiffness of an imitator and of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... first day in East Wellmouth was spent for the most part indoors. He was willing that it should he; the stiffness and lameness in various parts of his body, together with the shakiness at the knees which he experienced when he tried to walk, warned him that a trip abroad would not be a judicious undertaking. The doctor having granted him ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... because there is scarcely any shadow in it; it's more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... speechless. He died in the course of the night. Samandre sat up the greater part of the day, and even assisted in pounding some bones; but on witnessing the melancholy state of Peltier, he became very low, and began to complain of cold and stiffness of the joints. Being unable to keep up a sufficient fire to warm him, we laid him down and covered him with several blankets. He did not, however, appear to get better, and I deeply lament to add he also died before daylight. We removed the bodies of the deceased into ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... be able to fix up a sail when favourable, we proceeded on our way to cross the Barrier. We have now 360 miles to travel geographically to get to Hut Point. Mr. Evans complained to me while outside the tent that he had a stiffness at the back of his legs behind the knees. I asked him what he thought it was, and he said could not account for it, so if he dont soon get rid of it I am to have a look and see if anything is the matter with him, as I know from what ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... should I be kind but to you, my own blood, that has never crossed me, and of whom I have reason to be proud? Yes, Harry, it gratifies me to hear you admired and to learn your success. All I want now is to see you in Parliament. A man should be in Parliament early. There is a sort of stiffness about every man, no matter what may be his talents, who enters Parliament late in life; and now, fortunately, the occasion offers. You will go down on Friday; feed the notabilities well; speak out; praise Peel; abuse O'Connell and ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... mind Ray's travel-lecture expressions. She dodged them, unconsciously, as she did her father's professional palaver. The light in Ray's pale-blue eyes and the feeling in his voice more than made up for the stiffness of his language. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... can't imagine the stiffness of my neck and legs. Let me see, how long is it since we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... his departure he felt something of a restraint in the household. He attributed it to the social stiffness of the German. This increases when intercourse comes to a point. Affecting moments jolt hard in him—moments when embarrassment is natural ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... be cleaned in gasoline or soap and water, using a brush. Do not rub or wring. Hang up to drip dry, or wind tightly around a bottle and leave to dry. Do not press until after twenty-four hours, if cleaned in gasoline. To produce extra stiffness, rinse in a weak solution of sugar and water. It is also very easy to change the color of ribbons by using any of ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... prisoners. Chief Thompson knew me and told me all. And so you've done it—and you're master in your old house again. Clarence, old boy! Jim said you wouldn't do it—said you'd weaken on account of her! But I said 'No.' I knew you better, old Clarence, and I saw it in your face, for all your stiffness! ha! But for all that I was mighty nervous and uneasy, and I just made Jim send an excuse to the theatre and we rushed it down here! Lordy! but it looks natural to see the old house again! And she—you packed her off with the others—didn't you? ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... he says—and I should have added, Roman buildings also, in proportion to their age, i.e., to the amount of the Roman elements in them—"stand for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part; and also a studious expression of this throughout every part of the building." ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... down and a great portion of what remains seem to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly, has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by, having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours' standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence of the devastations ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... purport of what she said could not be understood by anybody except him.... Then also, the sensation of dining with a countess produced a slight feeling of strain, which, in addition to the correct behaviour which Mr. Wyse's presence always induced, almost congealed correctness into stiffness. But as dinner went on her evident enjoyment of herself made itself felt, and her eccentricities, though carefully observed and noted by Miss Mapp, were not succeeded by silences ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... masses, with ever so many beautiful sorts of firmer-stemmed growths, herbaceous next the sod, woody behind, assembled according to stature, from one to twelve feet high, swinging in and out around the lawn until all stiffness of boundaries is ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... thine eyes," or "Still to be neat, still to be dressed"? Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in expression, with not a word too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... cause eclipses. The bonhta or bankra, the rigid circular bangle on the upper arm, is supposed to make a woman's arm stronger by the pressure exercised on the veins and muscles. Circular ornaments worn on the legs similarly strengthen them and prevent a woman from getting stiffness or pins and needles in her legs after long squatting on the ground. The chutka, a large silver ring worn by men on the big toe, is believed to attract to itself the ends of all the veins and ligaments from the navel downwards, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... conversation may be seriously impaired, and perhaps destroyed, by a slovenly or indistinct articulation. Every word and syllable should receive its due quantity of sound, yet without drawling or stiffness; while the voice should be so modulated as to be heard without effort, and yet the opposite fault of speaking too ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... man doesn't want to force the dilemma on her." Possibly he did not succeed in saying it entirely without stiffness. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... sweat of a first ride, like mine on the mighty cob! My whole frame was shaken, it is true; and during one long week I could hardly move foot or hand; but what of that? By that one trial I had become free, as I may say, of the whole equine species. No more fatigue, no more stiffness of joints, after that first ride round the Devil's Hill ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... moisture, even the name [Greek omitted], in my opinion, intimates; for that name was given them not as stooping to the earth [Greek omitted] but as being in the habit of their body [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], earthlike and earthy. Besides, the stiffness and roughness prove the dryness of their nature. Therefore it is probable that, when they drink, their body, being grown spongy by the dryness of its nature, soaks up the wine, and that lying in the vessels it affects the senses and prevents the natural motions. For as floods of water glide ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and confidence was generally high among the young gentlemen, and, consequently, having promised to be friendly to Ferrers, each individual, in duty bound, did his utmost to fulfil that promise, and in a little while the stiffness attendant on the effort wore off, and Ferrers was, in appearance, in precisely the same position as before, to the great satisfaction of the doctor, who was much pleased with his pupils' conduct ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... natural visualisation, and the impressionistic breadth of his brushwork. In that respect, indeed, it is impossible to go farther. Later painters have erred as much in exaggerating violent action and over-developing muscles, as the earlier master fell short in dry and laborious stiffness. Signorelli, while retaining the earnest sincerity and thoughtfulness of the earlier workers, has been able at the same time to render with modern facility every movement of the human frame, and the result is an achievement which no later ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... (opposite the Resurrection, and not worth looking at, except for the sake of making more sure our conclusions from the first fresco). The Madonna is fixed in Byzantine stiffness, without Byzantine dignity. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... took me down to the ships, and he sent Thrand for sword Foe's Bane when the night had fallen. Most kindly did the Dane treat me, but I cared for little. I could not move for stiffness and bruising after I had slept for twelve hours on end, but that was nought compared with the sorrow for what had ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... lie upon. But she did manage to get in, though not without shedding some tears at the thought that she was going farther away from her parents. And somehow the cart did not seem to bump so badly to-day, and the stiffness wore off instead of growing worse as she had expected. She ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... first look, he was avoiding her eye, as though he were afraid that he had betrayed himself. Audrey's maidenly consciousness was up in arms in a moment. The gleam in Cyril's eyes had opened hers. Some instinct of self-defence made her suddenly entrench herself in stiffness; the soft graciousness that was Audrey's chief charm seemed to desert her, and for once in her life she was ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... good," Tish said. "Take some of the stiffness out of her liver, for one thing. But you might keep an eye on her. It's ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tendon cells, and the fibres which they form constitute the new tendon fibres. Under aseptic conditions repair is complete in from two to three weeks. In the course of the reparative process the tendon and its sheath may become adherent, which leads to impaired movement and stiffness. If the ends of an accidentally divided tendon are at once brought into accurate apposition and secured by sutures, they unite directly with a minimum amount of scar tissue, and function ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... though not regular. She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure was perfect for her height; and there was a simplicity, a retired modesty, about her, which was very characteristic, and formed a happy contrast to the cold, artificial formality and studied stiffness ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... all his late perils, enjoyed a good night's rest, and on awakening about daylight on the following morning, he found that, barring a little pain and a great deal of stiffness about his sprained wrist and bruised leg, combined with slight soreness all over, he was not much the worse for his accident, and so he told Frank, who just at that very moment had popped his head into the room to see how he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... de cour." One can quite imagine "la grande vie d'autrefois" in the hotel of the Florians. Their garden is enchanting—quantities of flowers, roses particularly. They have made two great borders of tall pink rose-bushes, with dwarf palms from Bordighera planted between, just giving the note of stiffness which one would expect to find in an old-fashioned garden. On one side is a large terrace with marble steps and balustrade, and beyond that, half hidden by a row of fruit-trees, a very good tennis court. We just see the church-tower at one end of the garden; and it is so quiet one would never dream ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... specific gravity is increased by using the metal. There has been, however, hitherto a great practical difficulty in the way of using iron for such a purpose, namely that of giving to these metal plates a sufficient stiffness. A sheet of tin, for example, though stronger than a board, that is, requiring a greater force to break or rapture it, is still very flexible, while the board is stiff. In other words, in the case of a thin plate of metal, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... dimly burning. There was the usual lodging-house furniture, and on a faded red sofa near the fire old Mrs. Warlock was lying. Maggie could not see her very clearly in the half-light, but there was something about her immobility and the stiffness of her head (decorated as of old with its frilly white cap) that reminded one of a figure made out of wax. Maggie turned to find Amy ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... was his first visit to the regiment he had saved, since the days of the Rache assault two months earlier. Thanks to supremely clever surgery and to tender care, the dog was little the worse for his wounds. His hearing gradually had come back. In one shoulder he had a very slight stiffness which was not a limp, and a new-healed furrow scarred the left side of his tawny coat. Otherwise he was as good ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... never permitted her to take anything resembling continuous rest; she had therefore another prescription for an hour's doze after dinner. Mrs. Pilcher was also troubled with a stiffness of the knee-joints, which never allowed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of metaphor and epithet. In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be sustained against the best prose of the later period. In the translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes sometimes involved, in the too conscientious effort of the translator to follow the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath. She saw that Miss Lavendar and Paul had "taken" to each other, and that there would be no constraint or stiffness. Miss Lavendar was a very sensible person, in spite of her dreams and romance, and after that first little betrayal she tucked her feelings out of sight and entertained Paul as brightly and naturally as if he were anybody's son who had come to see her. ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mirror of Parliament, reporting Baldwin's speech of 18th June. I have chosen to give Baldwin's own language in all its awkwardness and stiffness. ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... shining of Lough Greine in the distance that he was upon one of the hills of Slieve Echtge, but he was not sure how he came there; for all that had happened in the barn had gone from him, and all of his journey but the soreness of his feet and the stiffness in ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... a despairing way, he said: "I was not able to make the slightest impression upon those men. They feel so strongly the justice of their cause that they are blind to all the consequences of their action in declaring and prosecuting a strike. I was shocked to find a peculiar stiffness and hardness about these men. When I pictured to them the distress of our people in case this strike became a reality, they sat unmoved and apparently indifferent to the seriousness of the whole bad business. I am at the end of my tether, and I ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... day were closed, and he encountered her as she was leaving the academy, she looked distinctly homely to him, and yet such was the honor of the man that he did not in the least realize that the homeliness was an exterior thing. It seemed to him that he saw her encompassed with the stiffness of her New England antecedents, as with an armor, and that he got a new and unlovely view of her character. On the contrary, Evelyn's charming, half-smiling, half-piteous face turned towards him seemed ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... condescending to be gay and happy in a village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest objection to American country life, it would be its ambitious desire to ape the towns, converting the ease and abandon of a village, into the formality and stiffness that render children in the clothes of grown people ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... a certain pretension to knowing something about the world. In the man who was talking to you I recognized a Parisian, because he had an English air; and while he affected stiffness, he showed ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... remembrance that hers had not only rested in it, but that in fancy she had more than once pillowed her cheek upon it, and, knowing that he had seen the look, she continued in desperation, with still increasing stiffness and formality: "I have always known, of course, that it was you. You must pardon me for not thanking ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... till half-past eight, sir," Reuben said. "I walked about for a bit, after I came out from school, to try and get the stiffness out of my leg, so as to be able to come to work ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... believe, on which this prodigious power was employed in bridge pile-driving. A temporary staging was erected for the steam-engine and hammer apparatus, which rested on two keels, and, notwithstanding the newness and stiffness of the machinery, the first pile was driven on the 6th October, 1846, to a depth of 32 feet, in four minutes. Two hammers of 30 cwt. each were kept in regular use, making from 60 to 70 strokes a minute; and the results were astounding to those who had been accustomed to the old ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... by discretion, which sufficed none the less to make Mr. Longdon—beholding him for the first time—receive it with a little of the stiffness of a person greeted with a guffaw. Mr. Cashmore visibly liked this silence of Nanda's about ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... would," Geordie agreed, cordially. "It's worth four shullings to have your mind at ease, man. I'll just go up to the lodge and get a warm bath ready, to tak' the stiffness out of his muscles, and brew a tea from an herb that wee wild creatures know all about and aye ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... moment something impressed upon Miki that he must do his own hunting. With the thought came a new thrill. His eyes were fairly open now, and much of the stiffness had gone from his legs. The blood of his Mackenzie father and of his half Spitz and half Airedale mother rose up in him in swift and immediate demand, and he began to quest about for himself. He found a warm scent, and ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... success; there was a certain stiffness about it which even Mrs. Easterfield could not get rid of; and when the gentlemen went out to smoke on the piazza Olive disappeared, sending a message to Mrs. Easterfield that she had a bad headache and would ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... guns to her when she was captured; and we should thus be saved a great deal of labour. Her masts were very long and tapering, with a big rake aft, and from a distance the vessel looked overmasted; but when one got on board her one saw that her great width of beam gave her the stiffness necessary to carry such lofty masts with their corresponding spread of sail. In short, she was just what we wanted, and, indeed, we could not have had a ship better suited to our purpose even though we had built her ourselves. Needless ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... living creature falls sick, or a misfortune of any kind happens, without any natural cause being discoverable or rather lying on the surface, there in all probability witchcraft is at work. The sudden stiffness in the small of the back, which few people can account for at the time, is therefore called a 'witch-shot' and is really ascribed to witchcraft" (L. Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg, Oldenburg, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... morning there lay the poor little one, with pale cheeks and smiling mouth, leaning against the wall; she had been frozen to death on the last evening of the year; and the New-year's sun rose and shone upon a little corpse! The child still sat, in the stiffness of death, holding the matches in her hand, one bundle of which was burnt. "She tried to warm herself," said some. No one imagined what beautiful things she had seen, nor into what glory she had entered with ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... hear coming out of him. All this time we in the dory were coming on behind, Clancy and I having to beat their dory just as our boat had to beat their boat. And we were driving, too, you may be sure. Clancy was making his oars bend like whips. "Blast 'em! There's no stiffness to 'em," he was complaining. And then, "Sock it to her," he would call out to our fellows in the seine-boat. "We've got the porgy crew licked—that's the stuff," came from the skipper. From on top of the seine he was watching the fish, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... had providentially strayed into that far port of the Labrador. Who could dispute the works of "the invaluable discovery"? Was it not a positive cure for bruises, sprains, chilblains, cracked hands, stiffness of the joints, contraction of the muscles, numbness of the limbs, neuralgia, rheumatism, pains in the chest, warts, frost bites, sore throat, quinsy, croup, and various other ills? Was it not an excellent ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... upon you, do or say something at once. The commonest matter gently stated is better than an embarrassing silence. Sometimes changing your position, or looking into a book for a moment may relieve your embarrassment, and dispel any settling stiffness. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... "Indeed, sire, I do not know," she replied; "but they are good enough to wear here." In consequence, therefore, of this new and now well-intentioned element the court swelled in numbers and gained in grace, but not in joyousness. The Empress was already foreboding her fate; there was the stiffness of inaptitude about everything, even the amusement, and the languid weariness of the ladies was an unforgiven imperial sin. The quick wit of the Emperor remarked this annoying fact, and demanded ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... sentiment, she sheltered (like Voltaire and Mme. de Stael) on the republican territory of Geneva. Driving through the streets in her big landau she exhibited to the indifference of the natives and the stares of the tourists a long-waisted, youthful figure of hieratic stiffness, with a pair of big gleaming eyes, rolling restlessly behind a short veil of black lace, which, coming down no further than her vividly red lips, resembled a mask. Usually the "heroic fugitive" (this name was bestowed upon him in a review of the English edition ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... distinguished himself in particular, by advancing to within about fifty yards, and standing on a rock, he deliberately shot five or six arrows, all of which missed their mark; the men dodged them as they arrived in their uncertain flight: the speed of the arrows was so inferior, owing to the stiffness of the bows, that nothing was easier than to evade them. Any halt was unnecessary. We continued our march through the gorge, the men keeping up an unremitting fire until we entered upon a tract of high grass and forest; this ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, "I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... mastered it. "Mme. Necker has talent, but it is in a sphere too elevated for one to communicate with her," said Mme. du Deffand, though she was glad to go once a week to her suppers at Saint-Ouen, and admitted that in spite of a certain stiffness and coldness she was better fitted for society than most of the grandes dames. The salon of Mme. Necker marks a transition point between two periods, and had two quite distinct phases. One likes ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... ditches wear a familiar livery, and the land which is fully cultivated repays the toil of the husbandman with some of the most luxuriant crops of wheat I ever saw. Barley and oats are not equally good, perhaps from the stiffness of the soil, which is principally of chalk; but flax is abundant and luxuriant. The surface of the ground is undulated, and sufficiently so to make a pleasing alternation of hill and dale; hence it is agreeably varied, though the hills never rise to such a height ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Reuben at this date—he may have been thirteen or fourteen—was of good height for his years, with a profusion of light, wavy hair, a thoughtful, blue eye, and a lurking humor about the lip which told of a great faculty for mischief. There was such an absence, moreover, in this city home, of that stiffness with which his Aunt Eliza had such a marvellous capacity for investing everything about her, that the lad found himself at once strangely at his ease. Was it, perhaps, (the thought flashed upon him,) because it was a godless home? The spinster aunt had sometimes expressed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... cramped he had become from long inaction, began to move his legs and uninjured arm and body, and at length overcame a paralyzing stiffness. Then, digging his hand in the sand and holding the plank with his knees, he edged it out into the river. Inch by inch he advanced until clear of the willows. Looking upward, he saw the shadowy figures of the men on the bluff. He realized they ought ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... the Lord will bless His people with Peace," concluded the old man in unfaltering accents. He rose from the table and strode to the door, stern and erect "Thou wilt remain here, Hannah, and thou, Simcha," he said. In the passage his shoulders relaxed their stiffness, so that the long snow-white beard drooped upon his breast. The three women looked at ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... such an invalid as these people are trying to make out. I don't need to lie down." He laughed slightly as Jim drew him forward. "It's just a little stiffness. See here—" he broke away from his helpers and walked somewhat uncertainly to the settee, sitting on the edge. "What's the matter ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... wisdom offends it on the lips of Socrates, and virtue in the life of Phocion. It is well known that the Romans had to exhaust their energies in civil wars, and, corrupted by Oriental luxury, to bow their heads under the yoke of a fortunate despot, before Grecian art triumphed over the stiffness of their character. The same was the case with the Arabs: civilization only dawned upon them when the vigor of their military spirit became softened under the sceptre of the Abbassides. Art did not appear ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked, with a stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary from feeling certain she was right, and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... intoxicating drinks even for her sake. He dared not pray that he might be able to abstain, for he felt that he should not really wish for the accomplishment of such a prayer. Habitual indulgence had taken all the stiffness out of his will. And yet the thought of losing Mary was utter misery. He leaned his head on his hands, and gazed for a long time on her letter. At last there came a thought into his mind. All might not yet be lost. There was still one way of escape. He rose up comforted, and thrusting ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... discomfiture in his efforts to divert the hostler's blasphemy. There was also a mellow inebriate there who recommended kerosene for Clemens's lameness, and offered as testimony the fact that he himself had frequently used it for stiffness in his joints after lying out all night in cold weather, drunk: altogether it was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... away, King Media issued a sociable decree. He declared it his royal pleasure, that throughout the voyage, all stiffness and state etiquette should be suspended: nothing must occur to mar the freedom of the party. To further this charming plan, he doffed his symbols of royalty, put off his crown, laid aside his scepter, and assured us that he would not wear them again, except when we landed; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... when there broke through a more active aggression and she would strike. Above all, the opposition showed itself towards the nurses' attention; in this she also showed either a passive, aimless opposition and stiffness, or a more active one; but even in the latter an open show of angry affect, or plain irritation, though present at times, was by no means constant. When it was present, she would strike quite aimfully; once she struck the nurse and said, "You are the cause of it all," ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... they had been friends for many years, there had long been a certain stiffness in their friendship. Their characters were in fact profoundly antipathetic. Rousseau we know,—sensuous, impulsive, extravagant, with little sense of the difference between reality and dreams. Grimm was exactly the opposite; judicious, collected, self-seeking, coldly upright. He was ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... such matters sometimes proceed, when removed from the stiffness and ceremony of city life! A week only had passed, and I began to find that all my walks led in that one direction. Jessie was always at her place, with the uncompleted book in her hands; and I, going ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... artistic taste characteristic of the master and mistress of the house. A few old pictures against the light background of the draperies. A monumental chimney-piece, decorated with a fine marble group, "The Seasons" by Sebastien Ruys, about which long green stalks, with lacelike edges, or of the stiffness of carved bronze, bent toward the mirror as toward a stream of limpid water. On the low chairs groups of women crowded together, blending the vaporous hues of their dresses, forming an immense nosegay of living flowers, above ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was an old man and excessively thin, he held himself with English stiffness; a muscular contraction affected his upper lip. He stood well at Court. He had, it was said, made large loans at the time of the coup d'etat in '51, and Bonaparte's accomplices called ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... well; the majority of composers, nowadays, taking the precaution to write them at the beginning, and in the course, of their pieces. I do not mean to say by this that it is necessary to imitate the mathematical regularity of the metronome, all music so performed would become of freezing stiffness, and I even doubt whether it would be possible to observe so flat a uniformity during a certain number of bars. But the metronome is none the less excellent to consult in order to know the original time, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... her wits, read him more truly. She knew—having already met a score of such—how addicted young Englishmen are to mauvaise honte, and how they will hide acute sensibilities under blunt and stolid exteriors; and there was a certain softness in Mr. Drummond's eye that belied his stiffness. Most likely he was very sorry for them, and did not know how to show it; and in this ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... the foot of Red Man's Ridge, and was winding along the river's verge, when she thought she heard her name sound faintly through the storm. She stopped Nelly and sat in sudden stiffness, straining her ears. Again the voice sounded, this time nearer, and there was ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... and rarely is called upon to lend its ears for one-third of the time which he was expected to do. Dr Thorpe was not far wrong in the conclusion at which he arrived:—that "my Lord Mayor's heart passed his legs for stiffness." ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... necessity drawn upon to fill the void spaces, but other countries have furnished their quota. The dark eucalypt of Tasmania, with its heavy-hanging, languid leaves, is the commonest of exotic trees. The artificial stiffness and regularity of the Norfolk Island pine, and the sweet-smelling golden blooms of the Australian wattle, are sights almost as familiar in New Zealand as in their native lands. The sombre pines of California and the macro carpa ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... somber and Puritanical cut of his garments so completely altered him that it would have been a keen eye indeed which had recognized him when merely passing in the street. A portion of each day he spent out in the garden strolling with Lucy, or sitting quietly while she read to him. The stiffness in his arm was now abating, and as the search for him had to a great extent ceased, he intended in a short time to make ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... infinitesimal amount, just enough to make the adjacent points to be equally near the centre. Or, to take another example, every point of the elastic curve, that is, of the curve in which a spring of uniform stiffness can be bent by a force applied at the ends of the spring, is subject to this very simple law, that the curve bends in exact proportion to its distance from a certain straight line. Now a straight line, or a plane, is by this definition a curve, since ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... eyelid and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the lips became doubly shriveled and pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... bread and dug fosses of salt. When an ant got through it was exposed to a fire of bread-crumbs, until Susan pronounced that that was cruel, and rewarded those brave spirits with spoil in the shape of tongue. Playing this game they lost their stiffness, and even became unusually daring, for Mr. Perrott, who was very shy, said, "Permit me," and removed an ant from ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... in November of the same year, Newman complains of temporary paralysis in his left-hand fingers and stiffness in that arm "as though ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... moment Stubbs gazed at him angrily, the while he worked his fingers back and fro to chase away the stiffness. Then he smiled. ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... remain on the high-pressure end; but the largest piston, Z, is placed upon the low-pressure end of the rotor immediately behind the last ring of blades, and working inside of the supplementary cylinder W. Being backed up by the body of the spindle, there is ample stiffness to prevent warping. This balance piston, which may also be plainly seen in Fig. 25, receives its steam pressure from the same point as the piston M, but the steam pressure, equalized with that on the third stage of the blading, X, is through holes ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no logician ever excelled,—an argument complete and full, without the affectation of learning, and without the stiffness which usually accompanies dates and details. A single easy, simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify, and must have cost the author months of investigation to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a plantation of willows, already in bud with soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell butterfly, evoked by the sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the twigs, opening and shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to the warmth to thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter. Blackbirds fluted in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and singing till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended carol in the blue, and bold male chaffinches, seeking their mates with twittered songs, fluttered with burr ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... foot was a long time in healing; indeed, it never got quite well. The wound healed and the soreness wore off, but it left a stiffness that gave him a slight limp, and the sole-balls grew together quite unlike those of the other foot. It particularly annoyed him when he had to climb a tree or run fast from his enemies; and of them he found no end, though never once did a friend cross his path. When he lost his ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... sister-in-law. Her nephew was already sitting at the piano, improvising in a very wild manner. He pretended not to have noticed her enter, and proceeded to practise his finger exercises, which he played in an attitude of stiffness, assumed for ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... and tighter on the cigar, which had gone out like the first. He did not look at Claude, but while he watched the wind plough soft, flowery roads in the field, the boy's face was clearly before him, with its expression of reticent pride melting into the desire to please, and the slight stiffness of his shoulders, set in a kind of stubborn loyalty. Claude lay on the sod beside him, rather tired after his walk in the sun, a little melancholy, though he did ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... my unlearned eyes the manuscript of Petrarch, containing portraits of himself and Laura, was more interesting. Petrarch is hideous—but I was pleased with the head of Laura, which in spite of the antique dryness and stiffness of the painting, has a soft and delicate expression not unlike one of Carlo Dolce's Madonnas. Here we saw Galileo's forefinger, pointing up to the skies from a white marble pedestal; and exciting ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "la grande vie d'autrefois" in the hotel of the Florians. Their garden is enchanting—quantities of flowers, roses particularly. They have made two great borders of tall pink rose-bushes, with dwarf palms from Bordighera planted between, just giving the note of stiffness which one would expect to find in an old-fashioned garden. On one side is a large terrace with marble steps and balustrade, and beyond that, half hidden by a row of fruit-trees, a very good tennis court. We just see the church-tower at one end of the garden; and it is ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... Bangs' first day in East Wellmouth was spent for the most part indoors. He was willing that it should he; the stiffness and lameness in various parts of his body, together with the shakiness at the knees which he experienced when he tried to walk, warned him that a trip abroad would not be a judicious undertaking. The doctor having granted him permission, however, he did go out into ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it all was that he insisted, as a matter of personal education, on coming to my room after breakfast to watch the expert manoeuvres of Britton in kneading the stiffness out of my muscles. He was looking for new ideas, he explained. I first consulted Britton and then resignedly ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... as one of ourselves, of course, Sholto. But I believe you delight in stiffness and ceremony. Will you not ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... he was startled by a loud and bitter cry from Sirona; no doubt, the poor woman's affectionate little companion was dead, and in the dim twilight of the cave she had seen its dulled eye, and felt the stiffness of death overspreading and paralyzing its slender limbs. He dared not go into the cavern, but he felt his eyes fill with tears, and he would willingly have spoken some word ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Kettle, all in one, As standing to a missing gun! It's whirr! and bang! and off you bound, To catch your bird before the ground: But no—a pump and ginger pop As soon would get a bird to drop! So there you stand, quite struck a-heap, Till all your tail is gone to sleep; A sort of stiffness in your nape, Holding your head well up to gape; While off go birds across the ridges, First small as flies, and then as midges, Cocksure, as they are living chicks, Death's Door is not at ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... themselves scarce, which they have obligingly done. Yesterday every tooth on the right side of my head was absolutely waltzing. I would have drawn by the half dozen, but country dentists are not to be lippened to.[238] To-day all is quiet, but a little swelling and stiffness in the jaw. Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling—much like drawing a tooth; they are wanted and will never be better, but I am avaricious of grown trees, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... given to a cluster of dull houses, once known by some melodious but forgotten Spanish appellation. The ranch wagon awaited us; a huge springless affair, or if it had springs they were of that aggravating stiffness that adds insult to injury. Excellent beasts dragged us along a winding, dusty road, over hill, down dale, into a land that grew more and more lonely; not exactly "a land where it was always afternoon," but apparently always a little later in the day, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Hereditary Prince, who sat with his wife and her brothers in their box, got up, turned his back to the King and Queen, pretending to offer his place to Lady Tankerville(445) and then to Lady Susan. You know enough of Germans and their stiffness to etiquette, to be sure that this could not be done inadvertently: especially as he repeated this, only without standing up, with one of his own gentlemen, in the third act. I saw him, without any ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... long, black, shining, like the one at home, swung suddenly around the bed just ahead, he stopped short. The weariness left his eyes, the stiffness went out of his muscles, his heart gave a great bound. Four sportsmen, such as he and his master associated with, bobbed comfortably up and down in the capacious seats of that approaching car. Their fishing rods were strapped to the side. He saw ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had personally given him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women seemed to Rowland's fancy to follow ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the next entry in his diary, which was written at Lothrop Motley's house, Hertford Street, London, May 16, he makes this ominous confession: "I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people, but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England." It is only too evident that from this time literary composition, which had been the chief recreation of his youth, and in which he had always found satisfaction until now, was no longer a pleasure to him. It is the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... than was his wont. Ida, writing from her home in Northampton, invited him to come down for a week at some vague future date; one of the children was unwell, and until it recovered it was impossible to fix a day. Still, they would be delighted to see him again. Her letters always had a note of stiffness in them, which was purely unintentional, or rather, purely natural, reflecting the one salient ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... scarf enveloping her like a mist. She looked a graceful creature, and she felt very good and very elegant indeed. Miss Ophelia stood at her side, a perfect contrast. It was not that she had not as handsome a silk dress and shawl, and as fine a pocket-handkerchief; but stiffness and squareness, and bolt-uprightness, enveloped her with as indefinite yet appreciable a presence as did grace her elegant neighbor; not the grace of God, however,—that ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... demons which cause eclipses. The bonhta or bankra, the rigid circular bangle on the upper arm, is supposed to make a woman's arm stronger by the pressure exercised on the veins and muscles. Circular ornaments worn on the legs similarly strengthen them and prevent a woman from getting stiffness or pins and needles in her legs after long squatting on the ground. The chutka, a large silver ring worn by men on the big toe, is believed to attract to itself the ends of all the veins and ligaments from the navel downwards, and hold them all braced in their proper position, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... taste and judgment of its contemporaries. The poems of West, indeed, had the merit of chaste and manly diction; but they were cold, and, if I may so express it, only dead-coloured; while in the best of Warton's there is a stiffness, which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek. Whatever relation, therefore, of cause or impulse Percy's collection of Ballads may bear to the most popular poems of the present day; yet in a more sustained and elevated style, of the then living ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wire supplying the current, and by which an incandescent lamp is suspended. It often is merely a little block of wood perforated with two holes through which the wires pass, and in which they are retained in any desired position by friction and their own stiffness. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... proper finishing materials and processes which will fill up the openings or interstices as produced in the fabric by the interlacing of warp and filling, and at the same time give to the fabric a certain amount of stiffness. Of course this finish will disappear during wear or washing, it having been imparted to the fabric to bring the latter into a ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... of their journey.' 'The style of Madame de Sevigne,' wrote Mackintosh (Life, ii. 221), 'is evidently copied, not only by her worshipper Walpole, but even by Gray; notwithstanding the extraordinary merits of his matter, he has the double stiffness of an imitator and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... scales and trills one has the feeling of great firmness of the throat muscles, as well as of a certain stiffness of the larynx. (See "Trills.") An unsteady movement of the latter, this way and that, would be disadvantageous to the trill, to rapid scales, as well as to the cantilena. For this reason, because the changing movements of the organs must go on quite imperceptibly and inaudibly, it ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... the warm comfort of sleep giving place slowly to the stiffness of his uncomfortable position with the hobnails of a boot from the back of a pack sticking into his shoulder. Andrews was sitting in the same position, lost in thought. The rest of the men sat at the open doors or ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... melted her. She could almost have succumbed to him. If it had not been that with him there was no question of succumbing. She would have had to take him between her hands and caress and cajole him like a cherub, into a fall. And though she would have like to do so, yet that inflexible stiffness of her backbone prevented her. She could not do as she liked. There was an inflexible fate within her, which ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... for this purpose might prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably simple that for any ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... noon before the old sailor awoke to find a hot dinner ready and the boys patiently waiting. He was surprised to find that his stiffness had nearly all disappeared, and, except for the cuts on hands and face, he was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Conwell arrives ten or fifteen minutes before the time for the service to begin. As he walks to the platform, he stops and chats with this one, shakes hands with another, nods to many in the audience. At once all stiffness and formalism vanish. It is a home, a gathering of brothers and sisters. It is the meeting together of two or three in His name, as in the old apostolic days, though these two or three are now ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... monarchy and the Catholics of England. Philip was solicitous to gain over the different parties and classes of England: for he had been told that England was a popular monarchy. He belied his Spanish gravity and showed himself, despite the stiffness that was his natural characteristic, affable to every man: he tried to make the impression, and successfully, that he desired the prosperity of England. One of the chief resources of the time, that of securing the most considerable persons ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... passed on into the house. He had the straight backbone and well poised head of the West Pointer, but without the unnatural stiffness of the soldier's carriage; the shoulders of the "halfback," and the lean hips of a runner were his, and he had earned them in four years on his varsity football and track teams. The girl beside him, half a head shorter, tripped along with the easy action of a thoroughbred. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... astir. The millionaire's clothes were now dry, and he dressed with the others. Save for a slight stiffness and a few bruises, he was ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... flight and out into a dark alleyway. Behind him he could hear the soft pattering of feet; the two Chinese were not far in the rear. Determined to waste no time in escaping, he dashed down the alley and came into a dark street; he ran faster and faster as the stiffness in his legs lessened, turning into one street after another, and he did not stop until he was breathing hard and had left the place of his captivity several hundred yards behind. He looked back then and listened. Apparently ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... the cinch. Then his pride in Shiloh banished some of his stiffness. "He is of the line of Eclipse." Maybe that would not mean much to a Mexican, though. The breeding of eastern American horses probably did not ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... their hiding-places in his garments as he removed them. Almost stripped, Seaton stretched vigorously, the muscles writhing and rippling in great ridges under the satin skin of his broad back and mighty arms and shoulders as he filled his capacious lungs and twisted about, working off the stiffness caused by the days of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... mark that burial; so that if this is what our arrangement means I must decline to have anything to do with it." The words none the less hadn't come, and when she had herself, a couple of minutes later, spoken those others, the blood rose to his face as if, given his stiffness and her extravagance, he had just ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... evening shadows were lengthening when at length he laid down his oars, and felt the boat's nose rub against the sand of the little home-cove. But rowing was no more effort than breathing to Captain January, and it was no fatigue, but only a trifle of stiffness from sitting so long, that troubled him a little in getting out of the boat. As he stepped slowly out upon the firm-grained silver of the little beach, he looked up and around with an expectant air, and seeing no one, a look of disappointment crossed his face. He opened ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... generally in the course of the second day that the child complains of considerable stiffness in the muscles of the neck, extending to the lower jaw, and under the ears;—of a roughness of the throat, and difficulty in swallowing;—and some degree of hoarseness will be noticed: all so many indications that the throat is affected. Very ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed; it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... kid gloves. The plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the hay-fork grew familiar to our grasp. The oxen responded to our voices. We could do almost as fair a day's work as Silas Foster himself, sleep dreamlessly after it, and awake at daybreak with only a little stiffness of the joints, which was usually quite gone ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with which she had propelled herself into his presence. Suddenly words failed her, she was conscious that an arm stretched toward her as she swayed. Next she lay upon a couch in an inner chamber, the commander, in his blue-and-gold-braid stiffness ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... been properly made up sometime in the past and which it is necessary to mount. Taking the bird skin first, the usual way is to first wrap the unfeathered parts of legs in some strips of cotton cloth saturated with water containing a few drops of carbolic acid until they begin to relax or lose their stiffness somewhat. ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... fall, but with a slower motion, precisely like a leaf withered up till it has become almost light as a feather. It is not difficult to imagine how this comes about: either a thicker line, or a greater stiffness or tenacity of the viscid fluid composing the web and attached to the point the spider drops from, causes one to fall slower than the other. But how many tentative variations in the stiffness of the web material must there have been before the precise degree ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... her sideways. Somehow he liked the fresh clean stiffness of her starched, skirts, and the biscuit brown of her complexion. He desired all at once that ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... waking. What was his worst fear? How did he explain to himself the change in his gun and the disappearance of Wolf? How did he account for the stiffness of his joints? What was still his chief fear? Describe the changes which had taken place in the mountains. With what feeling did he turn homeward? Why? How did he discover the alteration in his own appearance? How did the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... much honoured in placing myself at the disposal of so far-sighted a commander," said Gerrard, a little stiffly, as he saluted. Charteris laughed, and clapped him on the back with a friendly force no stiffness could survive. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... to the most rigid limit of literal representation, phrase by phrase and often line by line. The really startling force and felicity of occasional verses are worthier of remark than the inevitable stiffness and heaviness of others, when the technical difficulty of such a task ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the bed, just see the dark hair creeping between her bum-cheeks, her flesh had the slightly brown tint common to French women; on the bed lay rounds of spunk mixed with blood, a smear of it was on her thigh on the bum-side. My prick rose again to stiffness at the sight, I wanted to piss violently, but could scarcely accomplish it. I looked at my shirt tail. Spunk and blood were thick on it, I found under the bed her chemise; on it profusely were the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... respect, indeed, it is impossible to go farther. Later painters have erred as much in exaggerating violent action and over-developing muscles, as the earlier master fell short in dry and laborious stiffness. Signorelli, while retaining the earnest sincerity and thoughtfulness of the earlier workers, has been able at the same time to render with modern facility every movement of the human frame, and the result ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... he ought to have had—old, weary, infirm, decently hiding its disabilities under a blanket, and, when this was stripped away, confessing them in a start so reluctant that they had to be explained as the stiffness natural to any young, strong, and fresh horse from resting too long. It did, in fact, become more animated as time went on, and perhaps it began to take an interest in the landscape left so charmingly wild wherever it could be. It apparently liked being alive there ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... to come—though I thought you would," Miss Gibson said impulsively, as we shook hands. "You have been so sympathetic and human—both you and Dr. Thorndyke—so free from professional stiffness. My aunt went off to see Mr. Lawley directly we ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... and Mrs. Kettering, perceiving that he didn't do justice to the fare, enumerated to him other things that were in the larder, with the suggestion that he might perhaps prefer a choice of them. Some of the stiffness that had characterised the former meal had vanished—Morgan could see now that had been due to shyness at his presence—and, though Mark still showed little willingness to converse, the girls were evidently ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... conscious of, but which people agreed not to expose, because they would be compromised all round. The convenience of life over here, the quick and simple arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine, are a blessed change from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two long years. There were people with swords and cockades, who used to order me about; for the simplest operation of life I had to kootoo to some bloated official. When it was a question of my doing a little differently from others, the bloated official ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... refreshment. No, no answer." And I walked into the garden, Up and down the patterned paths, In my stiff, correct brocade. The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun, Each one. I stood upright too, Held rigid to the pattern By the stiffness of my gown. Up and down I walked, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... morning with a joyous band of comrades, retired to hammocks, and awaited the worst with firmness. It was nothing more than a splitting headache and shivering for about an hour, during which time I wished Kruger, Roberts, and the war at the bottom of the sea. A painful stiffness then ensued, and that was all. My only grievance was that two dying horses were brought up and tied just below me, and dosed—lucky beasts—with champagne by their officer-owners! Also we had the hose turned on us ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... to the rigging. It was hard work making head against them. One after another we got out upon the yards. And here we had work to do; for our new sails had hardly been bent long enough to get the stiffness out of them, and the new earings and reef-points, stiffened with the sleet, knotted like pieces of iron wire. Having only our round jackets and straw hats on, we were soon wet through, and it was every moment growing colder. Our hands were ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Leonardo's long speech (after the first line, which is 'irregular') the verse pattern becomes more and more prominent, until in the last three lines it predominates over the natural utterance of the words and produces a certain stiffness. Here the two different manners stand side by side: a natural simplicity so great that the metrical quality is almost obscured, beside a formality so obvious that the feeling of natural expression is partly lost. Now Milton, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... had grown almost to associate with the place. He missed it directly he entered the room. What it was that had worked the change it was hard to tell. Adrea had been far too charmed with its quaintness to seriously alter anything. A little stiffness in the arrangement of the furniture had been corrected, and the few antimacassars carefully removed; otherwise nothing had been changed. The great bowls of yellow roses and chrysanthemums, and the piles of modern books and music lying about, might have been partly responsible for it; and the ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I hope so," Mr. Tufton said encouragingly, and as if stiffness were one of the most desirable things in life. "I like to see young men with ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... discussed the strength of stays and trusses; the former mainly concerned about the monetary loss involved, and the other demonstrating with a chair that the statue might have been kept up. As for Mahoudeau, still very shaky and growing dazed; he complained of a stiffness which he had not felt before; his limbs began to hurt him, he had strained his muscles and bruised his skin as if he had been caught in the embrace of a stone siren. Christine washed the scratch on his cheek, which had begun to bleed again, and it seemed to her as if the mutilated ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... was as follows: The reinforcing rings were erected to a height of 7 ft. The bars were bent by being pulled through a tire binder and around a curved templet by a steam engine. The bending gave some trouble, due, it was thought, to the stiffness of the high carbon steel. Vertical channels 4 ins. deep were set with webs in radial planes or across wall at four points in the circumference. The flanges of these channels were punched exactly to the vertical spacing of the reinforcing rings. Through the punched holes were passed short bars ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... Sea Islanders how to build and manage a catamaran. This consists of two canoes or long thin boats, placed parallel and joined together by wooden strips, which also answer for a deck. This craft can be rowed or driven by a sail, placed well forward. Its great advantage is its stiffness, for it cannot be ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the better classes of the inhabitants of the Icelandic capital, our traveller says: "Nothing struck me so much as the great dignity of carriage at which the Icelandic ladies aim, and which is so apt to degenerate into stiffness when it is not perfectly natural, or has not become a second nature by habit. They incline their head very coolly when you meet them, with less civility than we should use towards an inferior or a stranger. The lady of the house never accompanies her guests beyond the door of the room, after ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... treated like one of themselves. The courtly father pressed his hand; the amiable and refined mother smiled upon him; the daughters, pretty, and natural as the air, treated him as if they were sisters, and even the eldest son, who generally hates you, after a little stiffness, announced in a tone never questioned under the family roof, that ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... that can keep out against the weapons of the gospel, such as Paul mentions, Rom. x. 3. Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, they went about to establish their own, and could not submit to the righteousness of God. There is a natural pride and stiffness of heart, that we cannot endure but to have something in ourselves to rest on, and take pleasure into: and when a soul sees nothing, it rather vexes and torments itself as grieving because it hath ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... damask, the rest of the heavy old-fashioned furniture being to match. All over the house there was a delicious odour of fresh air and lavender, everything shone resplendent, and all was orderly to the point of stiffness; nothing looked as if ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... friend, I found a quiet pleasure in following up, in my solitary walks, the views which his conversations had suggested; and in a copy of verses, the production of this time, which, with all their poverty and stiffness, please me as true, and as representative of the convalescent feeling, I find direct reference to the beliefs which he had laboured to instil. My verses are written in a sort of metre which, in the hands of Collins, became flexible and exquisitely poetic, and which in those of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... golden color and free from gray specks is considered the best. It holds the glue better than any other wood. The weight of a cubic foot of mahogany varies from thirty-five to fifty-three pounds. Its strength is between sixty-seven and ninety-six, stiffness seventy-three to ninety-three, and toughness sixty-one to ninety-nine—oak being considered as one hundred in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... notions of the period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges. The shades of her beautiful maids of honour, "sweet Molly Lepell," Mary Bellenden, and Sophy Howe, still haunt the Broad Walk. Molly Lepell's husband, Lord Hervey (the "Lord ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... an hour," he answered as he lifted himself up in the water and hung with both hands to the sides of the boat. "But it was well that I was wounded on the shoulder and not on the leg. The stiffness made me slow, like a bear that has been hurt in a trap. But I bound mud on the wound with my leggings and I have followed close behind thee along the shore all ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... is Dieppe, madame—Captain Dieppe, at your service." It was small wonder that a little stiffness had crept into the Captain's tones. This was not, so far, just the sort of interview which had filled his dreams. For the first time the glimmer of a smile appeared on the lady's lips, the ghost of a sparkle ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... delightful, for I had been fearing that the little touch of stiffness, which I had experienced the last time I saw her, and which I now quite understood, might have grown ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... went back. All this time, however, the Bishop was perfectly unconscious; the horse carried him as he chose, over a ditch, up a steep bank, under low-hanging trees, and quite safely until he stopped at our own door. A headache and some stiffness were the only results of what might have been a fatal accident. We were very thankful to God for having sent His angel to guard steps as unconscious and heedless as any little child's could have been. No memory of what had happened ever came back to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... were about his neck—I felt no stiffness nor soreness now. He folded me to his breast, and cried, as I did. After a ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... sacristy the consideration of the censers, candle-sticks, chalices, and albs took some time, and John was a little aggressive in his explanation of Catholic ceremonial, and its grace and comeliness compared with the stiffness and materialism of the Protestant service. Handsome lads of sixteen were chosen for acolytes; the torch-bearers were selected from the smallest boys, the office of censer was filled by himself, and he ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... to have her talk to me, and to feel that because she trusted my skill, she was not really afraid, but only excited enough to forget her stiffness. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... awfully earnest in all he did, and strict, I can tell you, about everything. There was no humbugging him. The fellows liked him because he was really so earnest about everything, and always just and fair. But he didn't look a bit like a soldier except as to his stiffness, and when the fellows who had been at Lexington heard that he was in command here they did not think he would have made much hand at it; but I tell you, he did. You never saw such a fellow ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
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