"Cramped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cramped, and I'm feeling a little cold. Good gracious! the cloak is all white, and so is your moustache! I never knew ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... deep and narrow place. At first the sun by day was scorching and suffocating, for they had no roof over their heads, while the autumn nights were cold, and the extremes of temperature engendered violent disorders. Being cramped for room, they had to do everything on the same spot. The corpses of those who had died from their wounds, exposure to the weather, and the like lay heaped one upon another. The smells were intolerable; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... creditor To dun me for a debt But I was "cramped" or "bu'sted"; or I never knew one yet, When I had plenty in my purse, To make the least invasion,— As I, accordingly perverse, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... theme can hardly be squeezed into a footnote, but one protest must be made all the same. Lord Fisher gives fresh currency to the fable that K. was a great organizer. K. hated organization with all his primitive heart and soul, because it cramped ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Christian Service, a pledge somewhat similar to the Christian Endeavor pledge, though there is no organization. Over one hundred have signed this covenant within the past year. The school is growing rapidly; its outlook is most hopeful. It is already cramped for room. Every recitation room has been full, and many crowded, this term. One class had to overflow into the chapel. Between thirty and forty girls who wished to come were obliged to stay at home because the Ladies' Boarding Hall has been crowded to its utmost capacity. A new ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... the room to relieve his cramped limbs, and now, peeping through a crevice in the window curtains, he said suddenly, 'Who's for a transformation scene? ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... his eyes fitful rest by holding them closed for a few moments, but the tantalizing visions did not leave him even then. His arm became so painfully cramped under his head that he was compelled to shift his position; and he seized the occasion to readjust his limbs, which were also becoming wearied because of the long time he had held them motionless. He was prudent enough, however, to give the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... doors locked. Some of the officers declared subsequently, that when left alone, and the eyes of the keepers were taken off of them, they came near swooning. It was not the apprehension of hardship or harsh treatment that was so horrible; it was the stifling sense of close cramped confinement. The dead weight of the huge stone prison seemed resting on our breasts. On the next day we were taken out to undergo some of the "usual prison discipline," and were subjected to a sort of dress-parade. We were first placed man by ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... work by the hour, you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort or not. Working by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. How sweet the flight of time seems ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the odour of the camp; and when in the summer the Japanese began military manoeuvres in the district with various scattered detachments, on the excuse that the South Manchuria railway zone where they alone had the right under the Portsmouth Peace Treaty to be, was too cramped for field exercises, it became apparent that dangerous developments might be expected—particularly as a body of Japanese infantry was billeted right in the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... department of what is called the Belles Lettres, is much more likely to be cramped than fostered by public support: better wait to reward those who have done their work, tho' even here national rewards are not necessary, unless the labourers be, if not in poverty, at least in narrow circumstances. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in it? The sweat streamed upon his face as he strove vainly to hang by one of his arms and search the cope of the crumbling wall for a surer hold with the other; he stretched his toes till his muscles cramped, his eyes in the darkness filled with a red cloud, his breath choked him, a vision of his body thrashing through space overcame him, and his slipping fingers would be loose from ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... not understand what it was that they meant, and pored over the cramped German writing, reading the long sentences over and over again, till something suddenly seemed to clutch at her heart. Was this possible? Was this actual truth? Was Uncle Joachim, who had so much objected to her longing for independence, giving it to her with both hands, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... a sturdy ragged Mexican, moved up the canon, pausing now and again to scratch his head. He was whistling La Paloma. The Indians' black eyes did not leave him and after his flute-like notes had melted into the distance they still crouched in cramped ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... day he took passage on the ship that was leaving for Port Said. What was there for him to do in Gibraltar?... It had been for three months a paradise, at the side of the woman who beautified his existence; now it was an intolerable city, cramped and monotonous; a deserted castle; a damp, dark prison. He telegraphed to his uncle, informing him of his departure. The vessel would weigh anchor at night, after the sunset gun, when it had taken on ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... have been made by men of great stature. They were twice as long as the footprints we made, and none of us were noted for small feet. On going a short distance into the woods we saw a vast number of huts made of dried grass, so cramped that a man of ordinary size could not creep into them on all fours, yet many of them contained families of pygmies. We afterwards tried to penetrate somewhat farther into the wood, in order to ascertain the nature and situation of the country, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... 140 pages of the score of my "Elizabeth" are written out complete (in my own little cramped scrawl). But the final chorus—about 40 pages—and the piano-arrangement have still to be done. By the middle of August I shall send ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... was greatness on the map—barbarian mass only; but had we gone down, like that other Atlantis, in some vast cataclysm, we should have covered but a pin's point on the chart of memory, compared with those ideal spaces occupied by tiny Attica and cramped England. At the same time, our critics somewhat too easily forgot that material must make ready the foundation for ideal triumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor countries. But it must be allowed that democracy stood for a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the first of those in the lifeboat to awaken the morning after the wreck of the LADY ALICE. The other members of the party were asleep upon the thwarts or huddled in cramped positions in ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nephew at the Toronto railway station upon his arrival, and stated that no telegram need be sent. This, as nearly as I can remember, was about all there was in the letter. Mr. Furlong professed to recognise the handwriting as his uncle's. It was a cramped hand, not easy to read, and the signature was so peculiarly formed that I was hardly able to decipher it. The peculiarity consisted of the extreme irregularity in the formation of the letters, no two of which were of equal size; and capitals were interspersed promiscuously, ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... always a secondary one. Language does not appear to have justice done it, but is obviously cramped and narrowed in its significance, when any meanness is described. The truest construction is not put upon it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom, is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes the front of his offence. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... waiting for Rhoda when she arrived—a letter addressed in a cramped and unfamiliar hand. But when she opened it she called her friends ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... and old is the story; Over and over I listen to murmurs That are always the same in these towns that sleep; Where grey and unwed a woman passes, Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world She holds with grief and silence; And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered Mumbles the tale by her affable gate; How the lad must go, and the girl must stay, Singing alone to the years and a dream; Then a letter, a rumour, a word From the land ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... to live in our boats. Rather hard lines, sleeping on the boat's thwarts, &c. Still we had that 'balm of Gilead,' hope, to keep us alive, and our good spirits. Many a longing eye did I cast to the shore, where, in spite of the bloodhounds, I should like to have stretched my cramped limbs. Ten or twelve days passed in dodging about, doing nothing but keeping a good look-out, and we almost began to despair, when one fine morning we saw a large brig, evidently a slaver, running in towards the shore with a fresh breeze. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... steps, and there stopped. The executioner got down, removed the board at the back, held out his arms to the marquise, and set her down on the pavement. The doctor then got down, his legs quite numb from the cramped position he had been in since they left the Conciergerie. He mounted the church steps and stood behind the marquise, who herself stood on the square, with the registrar on her right, the executioner on her left, and a great crowd of people behind her, inside the church, all the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ran east and west. Sir Redvers Buller determined to cross the former reach beyond Colenso village. To do this he had to let go his hold on the Monte Cristo ridge and resign all the advantages which its possession had given him, and had besides to descend into the low ground, where his army must be cramped between the high hills on its left and the river on ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... out from the shelter of the rushes had sprung a large, curly-coated, brown retriever. With a yelp of excitement he had dashed into the water and dragged ashore the body of the dead bird. Now the hunter, standing up and stretching his legs as if cramped from a long lying-in-wait, started on a sharp run down the wet shore of the pond, whistling the retriever after him. He had noted the splendid stature of the wounded bird, and wanted ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be dissatisfied with this praise, and then moved onwards in order to liberate Papillette, who was very inconveniently cramped, and almost suffocated with anger. Disagreeable truths seldom reach the ear of princesses; her resentment, therefore, was to be expected. Meanwhile, her heart being equally capricious as her understanding, she felt ready ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... the after-effects of inoculation against enteric, which had been unfortunately augmented by a premature indulgence in fruit, and by the inability to rest during the rush of mobilisation, did not spend a very happy night. The men fared even worse, for the smell of hot, cramped horses, steaming up from the lower deck, was almost unbearable. But their troubles were soon over, for by seven o'clock the boat was gliding through the crowded ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... to a spot from where, concealed, I could spy upon my own house. She—my wife—stood by the flimsy bridge. A short hatchet, such as butchers use, was in her hand. She leant against a pine trunk, with her arm behind her, as one stands whose back aches with long stooping in some cramped position; and even at that distance I could see the cruel smile about ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I am going to run up to the house," explained Tattine, getting stiffly up from a rather cramped position, "for three or four plates, and Rudolph, you break off some pieces of ice the right size for them, and we will make a little plateful from what is left for each one up at the house, else I should say we were three little greedies. ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden
... Madame Doche, but I fear this mode of tying the four legs of a quadruped together, though strictly a la mode, is not quite right. You observe, Madame Doche, that the cord leaves deep indentations in the skin, and that the animal is so cramped at first as not to know, or even remotely suspect that HE is unbound, until you are so obliging as to kick him, in your delicate little way, and pull his tail like a bell- rope. Then, he staggers to his knees, not being able to stand, and stumbles ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... privacy. This is the sort of home in which the minds of thousands of young Englishmen and Englishwomen receive their first indelible impressions. Can one expect them to escape the contagion of its cramped pretentiousness, its dingy narrowness, its shy privacy of social degradation, its ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... myself, as to the peculiar feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the great mass of men who had undergone amputations, for many months felt the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then, by degrees, the sense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... doctor. "'Crowded everywhere.' I had not heard of cramped living quarters before. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... diminishing glass, ought to be reduced into the current hand; and the current hand, magnified, ought to swell into a large hand.' Whereas, on the contrary, 'the large hands reduced appear very stiff and cramped; and the magnified running hand'—'appears little better than a scrawl.' Now to us the result appears in a different light. It is true that the large hands reduced do not appear good running hands according to the standard derived ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... to go supperless to our cramped-up bed, when a woman, with a more pleasing expression of countenance than most of those we had seen, came to our room with a basket containing some plantains and yams, with a few cooked fish. She signed to us to take ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... unroll the material to get a better look at it, then he saw that it was covered with cramped, closely spaced handwriting in a purplish ink—handwriting that ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... English habit of sitting on a chair; for what with tight pantaloons and a stiff uniform, I got so numbed by sitting cross-legged like a tailor, that when the interview was over I could not rise from my cramped position without assistance, much to the amusement of Jubber Kh[a]n, whose oriental gravity was ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... saw the young Marquis laying about him with a science that I had to own afterwards did credit to his education. Our assailants evidently did not expect to meet with this resistance, for they gave way and began to back towards the door. One or two of them drew knives, but the space was too cramped for them to do ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... on walking with Mr. White and Sir Robert, and they fairly frisked in the delicious air of sea and mountain after being so long cramped on board ship, stopping continually with screams of delight over violets or anemones, or the views that unfolded themselves as they went higher and higher. The path Mr. White chose was a good deal steeper than ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with her wings. Showers of spray came flying over my head, which prevented me from seeing how near I was to it. At last I began to fear that I should be unable to hold on long enough. My arms ached, and my hands felt cramped, still the love of life induced me not ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... and the more uniform it is to the left margin, the better the effect. The margins should be about one and a half inches in width. The margin at the bottom should not be less than the side margins. Should it be smaller, the page will appear cramped for space as the reading matter will be really running over into the margin—a typographical defect that is as noticeable on typewritten ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... for a long time. The rent of the two was to be six-and-sixpence; and how, if Amy had consented to come, could he have met the expenses of their living out of his weekly twenty-five shillings? How could he have pretended to do literary work in such cramped quarters, he who had never been able to write a line save in strict seclusion? In his despair he had faced the impossible. Amy had shown more wisdom, though in a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... you can't want anything bigger!" said Washington, his eyes blazing. "Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations—I only wish I had money—I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away those things —they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don't throw them away for something still better ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import—it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise—Hungary, Italy, Poland—it is a duty for humanity's ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... carries nothing, except perhaps his gun, or his rod, or his photographic camera; and so for him the portage is only a pleasant opportunity to stretch his legs, cramped by sitting in the canoe, and to renew his acquaintance with the pretty things that are ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... his cramped muscles. His heart was thumping in heavy, uneven strokes, obstructing his breathing. He fought for a few seconds to fill his lungs. The atmosphere was dense with sand. It came swirling in upon him, suffocating him. He stood up, and was ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... now hungry, and indeed thirsty, but was unable to drink because he had no water-barrel. No vessel sailing on the Lake ever carried a water-barrel, since such pure water was always under their bows. He was cramped, too, with long sitting in the canoe, and the sun was perceptibly sloping in the west. He determined to land and rest, and with this purpose steered to the right under the lee of a large island, so large, indeed, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Please not to mutter," commanded Mr. Weevil, turning to Parfitt. "Do you deny that this letter"—he held up the anonymous letter, with its cramped, disguised handwriting—"is the work of ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... pulled away from the shipping platforms of the Cheyenne Outfitting & Supply Company loaded to the guards with pump, pump jack, pipe, lag-screws, wrenches, hand drills, dynamite, fuses and caps, and a hundredweight of groceries. Cramped under the wheel, driving as carefully as his cargo would warrant, sat Sam Welborn, the second happiest man west of the Missouri. The happiest man west of the big river was flouncing around in his berth on the third section of the Great International Circus ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... run the boat up in a little creek; and a beautiful creek it was, with a lovely white sthrand—an illegant place for ladies to bathe in the summer; and out I got; and it's stiff enough in the limbs I was, afther bein' cramped up in the boat, and perished with the cowld and hunger; but I conthrived to scramble on, one way or t' other, tow'rd a little bit iv a wood that was close to the shore, and the smoke curlin' out iv it, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... the noise and pollution of the mills. So his own life seemed to have passed once more from the tranced flow of the last weeks into its old channel of unillumined labour. But other thoughts came to him too: the vision of converting that melancholy pleasure-ground into an outlet for the cramped lives of the mill-workers; and he pictured the weed-grown lawns and paths thronged with holiday-makers, and the slopes nearer the factories dotted with ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... hours may have passed when he awakened, feeling rather cramped from lying on one side so long. Before turning over, he remembered his intention to take occasional peeps up at the meat that had been swung aloft; and raising the flap of the loose curtain he cast his eyes ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... directly over the keel, his nose between his paws, and tried not to dodge when the cold water dashed in on him. Deuce was a true woodsman in that respect. Discomfort he always bore with equanimity, and he must often have been very cold and very cramped. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Cramped from the long period of taut waiting, she was so dry of throat that in spite of constantly sipped water she could only gulp her reply to Miss Neugass's ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... destitute of the commonest comforts; the blackened stumps and dead, girdled trees stood thick in his small and badly tilled field. He was adventurous, restless, shiftless, and he felt ill at ease and cramped by the presence of more industrious neighbors. As they pressed in round about him he would sell his claim, gather his cattle and his scanty store of tools and household goods, and again wander forth to seek uncleared land. The Lincolns, the forbears of the great President, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in somewhat austere comfort, Miss Jenkins' eyes wandered over the room, from the strips of bunting at the windows—black alternating with red, white and blue, which a card in pale, cramped writing explained: "In Memory of Garfield, 1881"—to two elaborate fly-catchers which did duty as chandeliers from vantage points of the ceiling. The simpler, made of straw tied with bows of red worsted, paled before the glories of the other—a structure of silver ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... came he was cramped with cold, and tried to draw out his tail. Finding this impossible, since the water had frozen fast around it, he congratulated himself on having caught so many fish that their weight prevented him from lifting his tail. He was still pondering how to transfer them to the surface when some women came ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... with a sad feeling that one contemplates noble minds and bodies, nobly and grandly formed human beings, that have come to us cramped, scarred, maimed, out of the prison-house of bondage. One longs to know what such beings might have become, if suffered to unfold and expand under the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... grand the word. Who would expect a modern woman to practise the obsolete virtue of Fidelity? Fool, do you expect your miniature French bulldog or your toy-terrier to dive in and swim out to you, and hold your drowning carcase up, should you happen to become cramped while bathing in the sea? The little, feeble, pretty, feather-brained thing, what can it do but whimper on the shore while you are sinking, perhaps be consoled upon a friendly stranger's lap while your last bubbles are taking upward ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... our religion and liberty will come all the demoralizing and pauperizing effects which have followed the Papacy in Italy. Mind will be systematically cramped and crushed; and everything that could stimulate thought, or inspire a love for independence, or recall the memory of a former liberty, will be proscribed. We cannot have the Papacy and open tribunals. We cannot have the Papacy and free trade: our factories will be closed, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... been holding the rifle above him, as he struggled from his cramped quarters. The savage had grabbed him about the shoulders, but his hands were still free; they held the gun on high. And in the second when he found his feet under him, as Phee-e-al dragged him clear of the chest, Rawson brought the breech ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... hurry. And we are really a little cramped in this house. The nursery is much too small for the children and there is not a decent fruit tree ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... not of Aunt Sarah's stamp. They were men, wearied with nine months' steady work, eager for country sports, for the freedom of God's own workhouse, where labor and bad air and cramped positions need not be synonymous; or women, glad to escape the routine of housekeeping, the daily contest with Bridget or Katrine, with Jean, Williams, or Priscilla. There were young girls, with round hats and thick boots, anxious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... up Nelson, as well as his cramped tongue would permit, being now freed of the gag. "They gagged us first, so's we couldn't sing out; then they filled up the stove ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... The Indians reached the pond, and saw his tracks leading in. He faintly heard them splashing about. All that day they searched and waited; they were there until late into the night; soaked and cold and cramped, he felt as though he could not stand it much longer; but he gritted his teeth and determined that he would die, of himself, rather than ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... growled the man, with a careless kick. Then, seeing that Finn could not move, he bent down, unbuckled the green enamelled strap, dragged it roughly away, and kicked the dog again. Cramped and sore beyond belief, Finn staggered on to his feet. A door was opened, and Finn was jerked and dragged into a perfectly dark, evil-smelling hole, about four feet square, with an earthen floor, from which horrible odours ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... report that the wounds, though numerous and severe, were not such as would be likely to prove fatal. There were several cuts and bruises about the head; a shot had struck the arm, which had caused the loss of blood; and the weakened tendons of the cramped and unused legs had been torn asunder. These were all the injuries Le Moyne could find. Nimbus dropped upon his knees, and threw his arms about the neck of his friend at this ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a shop on board. We had the carpet taken up and our clothes hung up to dry, but they won't, for the air is so hot and damp—with the least exertion you steam! Imagine the joy of having to dress for dinner in such cramped space and heat—you drop a stud and a year of your life in finding it! I think most people realise that their feelings under these circumstances cannot be exactly described in decorous language, so they set their teeth in grim silence; ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... found that something short is handy for this kind of work. In such cramped quarters—a ditch six feet deep and from two to three feet broad—the rifle is an awkward length to permit of prompt and skilful use ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... too cramped to stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... sufficiently numb to permit them to drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused blinking and blear-eyed, arose and stretched cramped, cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the sleepless misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard awake and marched him off for coffee and ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... weeks Marta's role resolved itself into a kind of routine. Their cramped quarters became spacious to the three women in the intimacy of the common secret shared by them under the very nose of the staff. With little Clarissa Eileen, they formed the only feminine society in the neighborhood. On sunshiny days Mrs. Galland was usually to be found in her favorite ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Quincey appeared at only one of these dinners. The expression of his face was intelligent, but cramped and somewhat peevish. He was self- involved, and did not add to the cheerfulness of the meeting. I have consulted this gentleman's three essays, of which Charles Lamb is professedly the subject; but I cannot derive from them anything illustrative of my friend Lamb's ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... as Mr. Paasma's dwelling is a little green house close to the miniature quay. We saw his name over the door, for evidently he doesn't entirely depend upon his guardianship of boats for a livelihood. He owns a shop, with indescribable things in the one cramped but shining window—things which only those who go down to the sea in ships ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... it with a wrench; and before the stores were closed, I bought myself enough canned goods to feed me for a week should through any untoward accident the need arise. I always carried a little alcohol stove, and with my tarpaulin I could convert my cutter within three minutes into a windproof tent. Cramped quarters, to be sure, but better than being given over to the wind ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... swung myself out over the channels and settled myself into my somewhat cramped quarters I heard Captain Pigot's strident voice speaking in a tone of surprised inquiry; but I was too busy just then to catch what he said. By the time he had finished, however, I was all ready to listen; and I ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... was sufficiently cramped and stuffy; but for a moment Agias tried to persuade himself that he had only to wait with patience until Pratinas should be gone, and no one would be the worse. An exclamation from the room without ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of satire which sacrifices too much of the atmosphere of trust and belief in human beings which ought to be an essential of child life. By indulging in satire, the sense of kindness in children would become perverted, their sympathy cramped, and they themselves would be old before their time. We have an excellent example of this in Hans Christian Andersen's ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Chester did not hear them. A rope was lowered. "Slip the loop around the lady," was the order from above. The man on the anchor tried to obey. He moved as if cautiously and slowly. "Hurry, my man!" But there was no haste. Limbs and fingers made stiff by long exposure and cramped position, clinging desperately to prevent himself and his burden from falling into the sea, were not now likely to be nimble; but in a few minutes, which, however, seemed a long time, some words were spoken by the man on the anchor, the command to haul in was given, and ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... and the island rose like a mountain of night against the darkening sky. Dalgetty stretched cramped muscles and peered ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... ziz! and electricity began to pull my hair and hum around my ears. The electricity passed off shortly, but in a little while it caught me again by the hair for a brief time, and this time my right arm momentarily cramped and my heart seemed to give several lurches. I arose and tramped on and downward, but every little while I was in for shocking treatment. The electrical waves came from the southwest and moved northeast. They were separated by periods of from one to several ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... timbering; you reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery" to "gallery," up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a cramped "incline" like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged up to daylight feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it. Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was too much exhausted and too prostrate to move from the camp to search for him to-day, but determined to start to-morrow. Mr. Tietkens got everything ready, while I remained in a state of semi-stupor. I was cramped with pains in all my joints, pains in the stomach, and violent headaches, the natural result of having a long-empty stomach suddenly filled. Gibson's loss and my struggles formed the topic of conversation for most ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... under the ice by the current, and that would have been the last any one would have seen of him until the spring thaw. But as fast as Ongyatasse tried to drag their double weight onto the ice, it broke, and before the rest of us had thought of anything to do the cold would have cramped him. I saw Ongyatasse stuffing Tiakens's hair into his mouth so as to leave both his hands free, and then there was a running gasp of astonishment from the rest of the band, as a slim figure shot out of Dark Woods, skimming and circling like ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... work with the rest when Robert addressed them. Then she recommenced her stitching without a word. Her thoughts were in confusion. She had so long held one attitude towards him that she could not readily adjust herself to another. She was cramped with the extreme narrowness of the enthusiasm of youth. At noontime she heard all the talk which went on about him. She heard some praise him, and some speak of him as simply doing his manifest duty, ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... small &c. (in quantity) 32; minute, diminutive, microscopic; microzoal; inconsiderable &c. (unimportant) 643; exiguous, puny, tiny, wee, petty, minikin[obs3], miniature, pygmy, pigmy[obs3], elfin; undersized; dwarf, dwarfed, dwarfish; spare, stunted, limited; cramp, cramped; pollard, Liliputian, dapper, pocket; portative[obs3], portable; duodecimo[obs3]; dumpy, squat; short &c. 201. impalpable, intangible, evanescent, imperceptible, invisible, inappreciable, insignificant, inconsiderable, trivial; infinitesimal, homoeopathic[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... both the woman and her husband fell asleep. But Jack did not dare to sleep. He sat all cramped and tired in the oven, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... beauty, woman's glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves. As for Rousseau's remarks, which have since been echoed by several ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... had literally transfigured me. The poor little country lad struggling vainly to emerge from his shell, had been developed into a young man of ready and quick intelligence. There was, I know, one thing wanting in my education, and until that void was filled up I was very cramped in my powers. The one thing lacking was positive science, the idea of a critical search after truth. This superficial humanism kept my reasoning powers fallow for three years, while at the same time it wore away the early candour ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... blackberries, we knew that the finest garden in Winnipeg had been rifled to do us pleasure. Now, I dearly love flowers and fruit, as I did the giver, but ten pounds of great, fat blackberries and an armful of sweet peas in a cramped stuffy Pullman caused my heart to resound in the minor chords. We rallied again and again to demolish the fruit as we voyaged, and sat with one foot on top of the other to avoid crushing the lovely pea blossoms as we fidgeted about, but the results of our efforts, messy fruit in hopeless ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Jack; "but, you see, to get it I must read and write, and that's what I never could tackle. I have tried pothooks and hangers, but my fingers get all cramped up, and the pen splits open, and I have to let it drop, and make a great big splash of ink on the paper; and as for reading, I've tried that too. I know all the letters when I see them, but I can't manage to put them together in the right fashion, and never could get ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... that Strabo's China is cramped and cut short; that his Ceylon (Taprobane) is even larger than Ptolemy's; that Ireland (Ierne) appears to the north of Britain; and that the Caspian joins the North Sea by a long and narrow channel; but the true shape of India, of the Persian ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... office tea-glasses; then, while all crowded round to watch the process of luring back the strayed soul of the peddler, he had leisure to assure himself again of the quality of his find. The tea-glass clinked against clenched teeth. "A spoon, somebody!" snapped the doctor. The cramped throat gurgled painfully; but Mr. Baruch, slave to the delight of the eye, was unheeding. A joy akin to love, pervading and rejoicing his every faculty, had possession of him. The carpet was all he had deemed it and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... narrow slits of eyes were heavily bloodshot; his face was grimy and pale, his hands grimy and red; his clothing was a wreck. He looked very unpleasant, but he was undoubtedly very broad awake. He resigned the tiller and rope, and began gingerly to stretch his cramped limbs, talking the while. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... dressing tops. Here it was comparatively dry; the wind did not send its thin mist into this canvas cranny. Not so dark as he may have desired, if one were to judge by the expression in his feverish eyes as he peered back at the darkness out of which he had slunk, but so cramped in shadow that only the eye of a ferret could have distinguished the figure huddled there. Chilled to the bone, wet through and through, this white-faced lad, with drooping lip and quickened breath, crouched there and waited for the heavy footstep and the brutal command of the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the bow was peculiar. It was drawn neither to the ear, nor to the breast, but to the shoulder. In the older sculptures the hand that draws it is represented in a curiously cramped and unnatural position, which can scarcely be supposed to be true to nature. But in the later bas-reliefs greater accuracy seems to have been attained, and there we probably see the exact mode in which the shooting was actually managed. The arrow was taken ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... he was not very sleepy and after finishing his supper he went somewhat farther than usual into the woods, not looking for anything in particular, but partly to exercise his legs which had become somewhat cramped by his long day in the canoe. But he became very much alive when he heard a crash which he knew to be that of a falling tree. He leaped instantly to the shelter of a great trunk and his hand sprang to his gunlock, but no other sound ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them. The first and second were successfully darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... no hesitation in opening the folded paper and spreading it out on the table. Judging from the glance I gave it, it seemed to be a confused and abstruse mixture of irregular geometrical figures and cramped German chirography. But Paton set to work upon it with as much concentration as if it had been a recipe for the Philosopher's Stone; he reproduced the lines and angles on fresh paper, and labored over the writing with a magnifying-glass ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... of the westerners. The big hall-like saloon was vacant except for the two bartenders behind the bar, and a Mexican sweeping out the sawdust. Pan had heard subdued voices, the shuffle of feet, the closing of doors. Every muscle in his body was cramped with tension, ready to leap like lightning into action. Advancing to the bar he ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... in a big armchair which was soft and warm, and there she soon fell asleep. But later, she awoke, so stiff from her cramped position, that she could scarcely move. So then she lay down on the floor and slept there the ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... Worship of God and the fifth Book of Hooker's immortal work, and above all of the Book of Common Prayer itself, must have reached another and a loftier ideal of worship than any they had known before. Men who had passed from the narrow, cramped, and often conventional theories of Christian living to which they were accustomed, to the reading of Scott's Christian Life [Footnote: I have often been told, by the late Dr. Jarvis, that Scott's Christian ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... complete, and so wonderfully, gorgeously Egbertian. A little matter of arithmetic, that was all. Merely the substitution of twenty or thirty thousand dollars and a landed estate for five—no, three—thousand dollars and a somewhat cramped future at the Fair Harbor. The ladies in the case were incidental. When the choice was offered him the businesslike Phillips hesitated not a moment. He was on with the new love even before he was off with the old. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... journey of sixty miles on the trail. Pleasant indeed are the memories of happy restful hours so spent, when the good honest day's work was done, and the time of rest well earned. After the hearty evening meal and prayers, it was each a luxury to be able to stretch our cramped limbs before a glorious camp-fire on the rocky shore of some great river or picturesque lake. Then the attempt to read even some favourite author was not always a great success. It seemed more congenial just to lie there, and muse and watch the dying of ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... personal service, and the need of a thorough organization of the forces. While the speech shows rather too strongly the marks of careful preparation, and seldom rises to eloquence—the style, indeed, is often rather cramped and stiff, and the sentiments, especially at the beginning, artificially phrased—it is moderate and practical in tone, and shows a characteristic ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... could be making at such an hour. Trying to be deaf, she thought of Joy—timely thought! At any moment the old dear might steal in. She dropped from her berth, and when the actual invasion came, when Joy appeared, Ramsey was at the wash-stand, splashing like a canary, while strewn about the cramped place lay a lot of fresh attire, her Sunday best, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... up to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. The night was warm and the room felt stiflingly hot. She looked longingly through the window to where the garden lay drenched in moonlight, with cool-looking alleyways of moon-washed paths threading the black gloom of overhanging trees, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... lying across the silken bedspread, her little embroidered slippers before the fire, a vase of carnations filling the air with perfume, and the last novels and magazines lying uncut on a table beside the reading-lamp, she had a vision of Miss Farish's cramped flat, with its cheap conveniences and hideous wall-papers. No; she was not made for mean and shabby surroundings, for the squalid compromises of poverty. Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury; it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... girl? I come to you to learn, to satisfy the insatiable thirst for knowledge which you have awakened,—and you reproach me with my ignorance! I have just discovered that the one thing I have secretly needed always was to learn to exercise my mind cramped with inaction, to share ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... step-father was justified. She had been the means of saving Paula. But for her Paula would not have returned, like the Prodigal son, to the father's house. Betty pictured her there, subdued, saddened, but inexpressibly happy, warming her cramped heart in the sun of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... to buy small wooded tracts in the high mountains for cutting, and having cut them down would either bring the wood down to the valley, or have it turned to charcoal. In the fact that he never owned a decent tool, nor had one for his men, was established his whole narrow point of view, his cramped miserliness, his disgusting prudence, his constricted kindliness, qualities which permitted his men to plague themselves uselessly with bad tools and which justified altogether his lack of skill in the purchase of tools. So I thought how the few words of the old, much-experienced ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Don Quixote was present at the entrance of the Judge with the young lady, and as soon as he saw him he said, "Your worship may with confidence enter and take your ease in this castle; for though the accommodation be scanty and poor, there are no quarters so cramped or inconvenient that they cannot make room for arms and letters; above all if arms and letters have beauty for a guide and leader, as letters represented by your worship have in this fair maiden, to whom not only ought castles to throw themselves open and yield themselves ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... contrary, one's handwriting is often the antipodes of his character. An unreasonable schoolmaster has often, by false instruction, cramped or ruined the pupil's chirography for ever. If people only knew how a brutal pedagogue in the academy used to pull my ears while learning to write, I should not be so often censured for my own miserable scribble. I defy any boy to learn successfully to make "hooks and trammels" in his copy-book, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... by-and-by he was awakened by a sharp pain in his head, and a feeling of cramp in his whole body. The rain was still falling, the darkness was intense. The bodily discomfort was, of course, due to the man's cramped position; the pain in his head was caused by a continual drip of water from above on to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... lifted the gun and for an instant I believed he meant to send a shot into the hole. Then he seemed to think better of wasting his ammunition and led the way down-stream. They stopped on a level bank over the cataract, and in a little while I caught the odor of smoke and later of cooking trout. My cramped position grew intolerable, and finally I crept out into the pool to reconnoitre. The light of their fire showed both figures stretched on the ground. They ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... child lasts somewhat longer than with subsequent ones, and in consequence there is greater opportunity for the patient's family or friends to interfere with the management of the case, which never benefits a patient, and is sometimes a serious handicap. Then again, the cramped apartments, so common in these days, are poorly adapted to the treatment of sickness of any sort and should induce many obstetrical patients to choose the hospital. There are, besides, other features ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... and in expression, of the union of pure intellect and pure imagination. Compare with them the heads of the wits and statesmen of Charles II.'s time. See the difference;—the high, wide arch of the skull is lowered or narrowed; the broad brow cramped; the features finer cut, but losing in force what they gain in fineness. Look, for instance, at this Vandyck of Sir John Suckling,—only the next generation after the great men; but his portrait is that of an idler, his head that of a man without great thoughts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats. And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... tire me immensely. Sometimes the cramped positions and unwinking eyes of that 'Holy Family' there over the chimneypiece ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in thought with those Parisians of the fifteenth century, and to enter with them, jostled, elbowed, pulled about, into that immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of either interest or charm, and we should have about us only things that were so old that ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... only lately, since he had joined the firm, that he had been conscious of any great strain. College had given him a glimpse of a larger life, and the office cramped him. He felt vaguely that there were bigger things in the world which he might be doing. His best friends, of whom he now saw little, were all men of adventure and enterprise, who had tried their hand at many things; men like Jimmy Pitt, who had done nearly everything that could be done before ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the garden of the Reist house. His eyes were fixed always upon a certain window where a light was burning. He muttered often to himself, and the things which he said were not pleasant to hear. He was tired and cramped with his long waiting—yet so long as that light burned he dared not approach ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... first halting-place, which meant travel in that crawling train from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and stopping at twenty-eight stations on the way. There was no first-class compartment and the seats of the second-class were hard and narrow, and the cramped space after the first few hours became almost unbearable. Things looked brighter, the guard flattered the hopes of passengers by asking who would buy tickets for lunch at some halting-place further on, so that he could telegraph ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... asked, dubiously scanning the somewhat cramped quarters. "I'm afraid there won't ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... communicating, and a newspaper paragraph informed him of his father's death. Appearing in rough tweeds, with a felt hat, he inspired more curiosity than respect. Both brothers greeted Piers cordially; both were curt and formal with the widow, but, for appearances' sake, accepted a cramped lodging in the cottage. Piers kept very much to himself until the funeral was over; he was then invited by Daniel to join a conference in what had been his father's room. Here the man of law (Jerome's name for him) ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... hard school Cook learnt his sailor duties. No better training could have been found for his future responsibilities. Here he learnt to endure the utmost rigours of the sea. Constant fighting with North Sea gales, bad food, and cramped accommodation, taught him to regard with the indifference that afterwards distinguished him, all the hardships that he had to encounter, and led him to endure and persevere where others, less determined or more easily daunted by difficulties, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... Her father was listening. The assailant was a lady; and she had a hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial for an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped by brutish laws: the individual with the ideas of our time, righteously claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow old-world disciplinarian-that giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at externally venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... letter bloated beyond the capacities of the two bewigged Washingtons that kept guard in its corner, and addressed in a cramped hand unknown to her; but while she hesitated, her eye fell on another American letter directed to Miss Mary May, in Averil Ward's well-known writing, and turning both round, she found they had the same post-mark, and thereupon paid the extra ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lieutenant Beverly also hastened to leave their seats. They too found that their legs were cramped and almost useless, through having maintained a sitting position during so many ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... with a sense of being cramped within a small space. He opened his eyes. It took him a few moments to collect his wits and remember where he was. Ah, yes! Here was the little low tent over his head, and just outside blinked the embers of the fire where he and ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... are large without being commodious; its very tall, very narrow windows, with their attenuated, rusty inside shutters, boasting to the passerby of high ceilings but betraying the miserly floor spaces. At each side of the front door was a high and cramped bay-window, one of them insanely culminating in a little six-sided tower of slate, and both of them girdled above the basement windows by a narrow porch, which ran across the front of the house and gave access to the ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... beside the great brown jar, that for him she filled the morning with her presence—that he saw her in the blue sky, in the sunny fields, and in the long red road with the delicate shadowing of the locusts. In her cramped life there had been so little room in which her dreams might wander that gradually the romantic devotion of her old playmate had grown to represent the measure of her emotional ideal. In spite of her poetic face she was in thought soundly practical, and though the plain Cynthia ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... orders implicitly, and, as Stone had warned me, we had a bit of a wait. I grew cramped and tired, and at last I gave up all hope of ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... one there. But a wide white hat with a yellow rose pinned on it hung above the new oak desk in the corner, and his heart rose at the sight. His own desk had an improvised drop light hung over it; he lowered the typewriter from his cramped arm upon a mass of clippings and notes. Beyond this room was the great bare loft, where two or three oily men were still toiling in the fading light over the establishing of the old STAR press. Sashes had been taken from one of the big windows to admit ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... begun in cramped temporary quarters in a hot little "shack," for it deserved no better name, back of the Civil Hospital. Here under almost impossible conditions there were performed a large volume of routine biological and chemical work, and a considerable amount of research, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... their hands. No one would have recognized the two captives as the midshipmen of the Perseus; their clothes were in rags—torn to pieces by the thrusts of the sharp pointed bamboos, to which they had daily been subjected—the bad food, the cramped position, and the misery which they suffered had worn both lads to skeletons; their hair was matted with filth, their faces begrimed with dirt. Percy was so weak that he felt he could not stand. Fothergill, being ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... tedium that beggar language. In the life of the artist there need be no hour without its pleasure. I take the author, with whose career I am best acquainted; and it is true he works in a rebellious material, and that the act of writing is cramped and trying both to the eyes and the temper; but remark him in his study when matter crowds upon him and words are not wanting—in what a continual series of small successes time flows by; with what a sense of power, as of one moving mountains, he marshals his petty characters; with what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many brats that were living here. She'd got that apology for 'em out of her great-great-grandma's garden book! Can you beat it? She talks about everybody as if they belonged in a garden. She called me—" the girl's lips quivered,—"a rosebush that had been pruned too much—roots cramped—she said— anyway she picked me up to transplant me! Marched me into the 'orrible, messy, noisy, smelly hutch that this house used to be, up all those eighty 'leven stairs, and she kept her chin in the air ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... a rapture with the matchless music, and then uttered all his adoration and despair in one word. "Damn!" he said, and no more. I believe he instantly proposed a walk that day, as if his study walls with all their vistas into the great literatures cramped his soul liberated to a sense of ineffable beauty of the verse of the 'somma poeta'. But commonly be preferred to have me sit down with him there among the mute witnesses of the larger part of his life. As I have suggested in my own case, it did not matter much whether you brought anything to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... by. Cramped and cold, Roger tossed an occasional branch in the fire with his free hand and speculated with uneasiness for Ernest, as to the nature of the faint sounds that came from the eastward. He decided that coyotes must be in the vicinity and he drew the blanket close over Felicia's shoulders. He was ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... teeth on the half boiled pork, that did credit to his philosophy. To do this man justice, he seemed to think a run of four hundred miles in a jolly-boat no great matter, but took everything as regularly as if still on the deck of the John. Each of us got as good a nap as our cramped situations would allow. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... supper that night. With heads close together they hung for hours over the ink-smeared sheaf of papers which the tin box yielded up. Most of them were covered with a cramped and misspelled handwriting which they knew must be that of the one whom Steve had called "Old Tom." Some of them were hard to decipher, but their import was very, ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... was safely out of the room, my first thought was to escape from behind the lounge, and get upstairs to my own quarters. But just as I had sat up, very cramped and wretched, with one foot and one arm asleep, Lord Mountstuart came in again, and ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... four sons and five daughters. My eldest brother was studying for the bar in Dublin; and, as the family fortune was limited, we were somewhat cramped to afford him the requisite means for his education. I was consequently kept at home, picking up, when I felt disposed, any crumbs of knowledge which came in my way, but seldom going out of ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... to him, his eye caught the address on one of them, and a little cold tingle suddenly ran down his spine. Lily had never written to him, but some instinct warned him that that cramped handwriting on the narrow lavender envelope, forwarded from the office, could only be hers. A whiff of perfumery made him sure. He had a pang of fright. At what? He could not have said; but even before he opened the purple envelope he knew ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... would open, the drooping heads would be raised, the vacant faces would brighten, and the little cramped legs would be stretched out with a sigh of relief. And then the Dominie would read them something that was not only instructive, but very entertaining. Sometimes, instead of reading to them, he would set them to declaiming or reciting poetry, or ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... was hugely pleased with this theory of John de la Casse, archbishop of Benevento; and (had it not cramped him a little in his creed) I believe would have given ten of the best acres in the Shandy estate, to have been the broacher of it.—How far my father actually believed in the devil, will be seen, when I come to speak of my father's religious notions, in the progress of this work: 'tis ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... He beat the French at Sidi Brahim, raided the tribes of the Tell Oranais which had abandoned him, penetrated as far as the borders of the Metija, and reached the Jurjura, where he endeavoured to rouse the Kabyles. But his eloquence offended the narrow and cramped particularism of those little democratic cities, deaf to the sentiment of the common interest. From that time he played a losing game. He returned toward the west, penetrating farther and farther to the south. Badly received by the great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "Yet far too cramped the narrow space Your country's rule can own?" Ah! travel all its bounds and trace Each Alp unto its fertile base, Our realm of forests lone, Our world of prairie, like the face Of ocean, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell |
