"Straining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could yet obtain Bakuma, she might have a son by the white which would obviously bring the marvellous power of white magic to his successor, the next King-God; and possibly, had mused Zalu Zako, dimly straining at such a radical thought against the influence of the priesthood, make the king more powerful a magician than ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... his stakes where he would, there were frantic rushes of thousands of eager pioneers across the line of newly opened Indian reservations. Even in 1889, when Oklahoma was opened to settlement, twenty thousand settlers crowded at the boundaries, like straining athletes, waiting the bugle note that should start the race across the line. To-day great crowds gather at the land lotteries of the government as the remaining fragments of the public domain are flung to ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the same time he noticed that Clementine, in her agitation, had forgotten the presents he had brought her. He made a bundle of them, looked at his watch, and concluded that there would be no indiscretion in straining a point to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... of the road where the grass had not been worn away by the wheels of wagons and where the animal's footfalls were muffled, hardly to be heard a score of paces away. Twice he stopped, frowning into the gloom about him, seeking to force his eyes to penetrate the impenetrable wall of the dark, straining his ears to catch some little sound through the silence. But there was nothing to see save the black forms of houses and the pear trees in Pollard's yard, shapeless, sinister shadows something darker than the emptiness against which they stood; no sound save ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... were exchanged, and one of the hurriedly-awakened servants killed. So she leaned forward to hearken further, wondering what she should do to best alarm the house, and, as she bent so, she heard the sound again and a smothered oath, and with her straining eyes saw that surely upon the path there stood a dark-draped figure. She rose with great care to her feet, and stood a moment shaking and clinging to the window-ledge, while she bethought her of what servants she could wake first, and how she could reach her father's room. Her poor heart beat ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had seen that same thing at Redding. The rolling eye, the working of the belly muscles, the straining and moaning. "It's ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... slowly, in a curious manner, as though he were straining to hear something which was only just audible. There seemed to be a mysterious force in him which he himself did not understand, but which was struggling obscurely to find an outlet. His strength ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... flashed around that dingy, saloon-infested corner, bounded forward, breathless and exultant, because surely she could come up to him here. Then she paused for just one breath, dashed her hand across her straining eyes, and peered ahead. ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... one who sees the steady approach of speedy death. He says that during those hours when he sat awaiting his doom, the thought of death itself did not make a deep impression. "The struggle, the gasp, as the wearied arm should attempt to resist the impetuous waves; the straining vision, that should linger on the last ray of retiring light, as the deepening veil of water would gradually conceal it for ever; and the rolling billows heaving over the sinking and dying body, which, perhaps ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... orchards or the fields; perchance a red-robed cardinal on a white mule with glittering housings, behind him a sumpter train rich with baggage, furniture, gold and silver plate; maybe the duke's hunting party going out or coming homeward with caracoling steeds, beautiful hounds straining at their leash, hunting horns sounding merrily over the green country; maybe a band of free lances, with plumes tossing, steel glancing, bannerets fluttering against the sky; or maybe a quiet gray-robed string of monks or pilgrims ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... and away, and before you could count twelve Jack and Jill were after me. I saw them standing on their hind legs straining at the cord. Then the collars fell from them and they leapt forward like the light. My thought was to get back to the wood, which was about a minute's run behind me, but I did not dare to turn and head for it because of the long line ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... as one in a nightmare, straining forward eternally. She did not urge her horse, but he bore her so gallantly that she did not need to do so. Beelzebub had increasing difficulty ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... is true! I was reserved for something wonderful in this world. I have at last found that after which my soul has been straining. Ambition, love of art, love of Italy, these things which have occupied my spirit, and have yet left me continually unsatisfied, these were none of them my real destiny. I have sought for life, thirsting for it as a man in the desert thirsts for a well; but the life of the senses ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... possession of her that Alessandro was dead. On the sixth and seventh days she had walked each afternoon far down the river road, by which he would be sure to come; down the meadows, and by the cross-cut, out to the highway; at each step straining her tearful eyes into the distance,—the cruel, blank, silent distance. She had come back after dark, whiter and more wan than she went out. As she sat at the supper-table, silent, making no feint of eating, only drinking glass after glass of milk, in thirsty ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... yes, one may twist it into something like that without straining it unduly, I think. My mother and I shall be very glad to see you. I'm sorry she is not here to-night to say ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... strange how things fell out—but things have a habit of turning out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen reached the town where the National Championship was to be run, there on the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he used to know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown head, and a brown saddle spot—the same pointer he had seen two years before turn tail and run in that terror a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Straining that particular qualification and not having that measure in meaning meaner pressure is so unlikely that there is no dispute. The certain case is sure. That was the tame darkness and thunder did ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... all their ears and straining their eyes until they ached, they made their way through the littered streets until they realized from their frequent encounters with bush and hedge that they were ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... and would fain give it of her strength. Truly they who know still know nothing if the strength of love be not theirs; for the true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind. He who sees without loving is only straining ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... day it was When, with a shout that seemed to rend the air, The army hailed you Caesar! My poor heart Shook like the standards straining to the breeze With that great cheer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... look long, for all the dogs were straining their chains in one direction, and all their lines converged upon a little dark shed, where stood a cart: under the cart, between its lower shafts, she caught a doubtful luminousness, as if the dark while yet dark had begun to throb with coming light. This presently ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... arms above his head to yawn as does a man who has slept too heavily, found his biceps stiffened and sore, and massaged them gingerly with his finger-tips. His eyes took on the vacancy of memory straining at the leash of forgetfulness. He sighed largely, swung his head slowly from left to right in mute admission of failure to grasp what lay just behind his slumber, and thereby discovered other muscles that protested against sudden movement. He felt his neck with a careful, rubbing gesture. ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... foot by foot: up to the girth of the bay crept the straining muzzle of the grey, the eyeballs staring, the teeth bared, the nostrils wide, the foam flying with every jar of the hoof, up and up with a scant two yards of river-bank to spare upon the outer side, up and up till, leaning ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... bewildered, as if by the confusion of branches in a leafless forest. In the distance the mass of rigging resolved itself into a solid gray blur against the sky. The great hulks, green and black and slate gray, laid themselves along the docks, straining leisurely at their mammoth chains, their flanks opened, their cargoes, as it were their entrails, spewed out in a wild disarray of crate and bale and box. Sailors and stevedores swarmed them like vermin. Trucks rolled along the wharves like peals of ordnance, the horse-hoofs ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... wall, the buzz of a bee at the window, would bring the thought to me. Only to make me miserable, for it was a waste of golden time while the rich sunlight streamed on hill and plain. There was a wrenching of the mind, a straining of the mental sinews; I was forced to do this, my mind was yonder. Weariness, exhaustion, nerve-illness often ensued. The insults which are showered on poverty, long struggle of labour, the heavy pressure of circumstances, the unhappiness, only ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... real fear seemed to have crept into her voice. Her eyes were straining through the darkness. I forced a laugh ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his Obstinacy. Repeat his Lessons, and incourage his well doing. And this you may exercise in the Fields as you walk, calling him from his busie Ranging to his Duty. And then teach him to follow you close at the heels in a Line or string, without straining. ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... third year it was yet more necessary he should gain what money he could. For the laird found that his neighbour, Lord Lick-my-loof, had been straining every means in his power to get his liabilities all into his own hands, and had in great part succeeded. The discovery sent a pang to the heart of the laird, for he could hardly doubt his lordship's desire ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... men hauling and straining on the anchors, and the steam going furiously, but all in vain; the vessel would ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... suggested by my desperate situation. No man ever moved more lightly. The shoes which I had taken off in the lower hall were yet in my hand. I had caught them up after replacing the cushions on Adelaide's body. Even to my own straining ears I made no perceptible sound. I reached the balcony and had stretched myself out at full length behind the boarding, before the men below ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... relaxing at a more rapid pace in a revel of bracing fun. I never knew a man who understood so thoroughly how to live and succeed, because it seemed to me he knew how to discount everything unnecessary, so that he might take the time others gave to straining ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his brilliant friends, although in a state of inferiority which was mortifying to his vanity, like a poor squire straining every nerve to make his nag keep up with blooded ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... hesitated. Then Cyprien climbed up a chimney pipe, with the agility of a cat. Aimee, who must have consented to wait for him, stood on the tiles. We saw her plainly, black and enlarged against the pale sky, straining her children to her bosom. And it was then ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... for one like me to praise A lady, princess, goddess, artist such; For great ones crane their foreheads to her touch, To change their splendours into crowns of bays. But poets never rhyme as they are bid; Nor never see their ft goal; but aspire, With straining eyes, to some far silvern spire; Flowers among, sing to the gods cloud-hid. One of these, onetime, opened velvet eyes Upon the world—the years recall the day; Those lights still shine, conscious of power alway, But flattering men with ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... we smelt land, the morning the cloud banks above the eastern horizon came out hard and fast and sure (no dreamland this time), I stood at the ship's bow, saying nothing to anybody, only straining my eyes for the yet distant world we were coming back to out of that desolate white ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... feet; just a slow, steady pull from the oars, and a taut enough halter to lean on in the tight places. But others rolled over like logs when the full force of the current struck them, threatening to drag the boat under, as it and the horse raced away down stream with the oarsmen straining ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of futile chase faded into silence behind the straining fugitive, there might have been seen whirling through the ancient streets of London a weird and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... skirts to her slender body as she leaned against the gale, gripping her hat tightly with one hand and straining under the weight of the bag in the other. The ends of a veil whipped furiously about her head, and, even in the gathering darkness, he could see a strand or two ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... and as the fluted ones soon get shabby, these should be well washed inside and out with scouring soap and polished with Goddard's plate powder. A French fryer is invaluable; it will cost 7s. 6d. Three or four pounds of dripping clarified should be put at first; this will require straining. After being used once or twice, the fryer should then be washed out with soda water, well dried, and the fat put back; it can be renewed from time to time with some fresh fat, and it will keep good for weeks. When it looks very dark throw it away and start with a fresh lot of fat; ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... hundreds' weight could be taken in this way; for the pull upon the remora being towards the tail,—and therefore in a backward direction,—the sucking-fish could not be detached, unless by the most violent straining. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... into the house, shaken to her inmost soul. More than ever, she felt the chains that bound her. Straining against her bonds, she felt them cutting deep into her flesh. Anthony Dexter had bound her; he alone could set her free. From this there seemed ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... air resounds with tuneful notes From myriads of straining throats, All hailing Folly Queen; So join the swelling choral throng, Forget your sorrow and your wrong, In one glad hour of ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... them go as they are," replied Jack. "Every machine has what I'd call an 'economy notch.' Beyond that on either side more work may be done, or less, but at the expense of straining the engines or fuel or something. They're doing excellent work right now, so let's not disturb them. It won't be ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... steadily and rapidly more intolerable, Mr. Adams found himself straining farther and farther away from those Federalist moorings at which, it must be confessed, he had long swung very precariously. The constituency which he represented was indeed in a quandary so embarrassing as hardly to be capable of maintaining any consistent policy. ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... strange ones, shouldering together and standing apart from the others as they swayed to the lazy roll and dreamed with their pale, topaz eyes. And there was the Faun, stone deaf but observant, straining to understand what was taking place. Yes, and Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay were bitterly and eagerly side by side, and Ditman Olansen, crank-eyed, as if drawn by some affinity of bitterness, stood behind them, his head appearing between their heads. Farthest advanced ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the car with the speed and skill of a professional. I stood on the running-board, straining my eyes.... ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... saddle of the ridge-crest I tried to take my bearings. Below me slanted the green of pinyon, with the bleached treetops standing like spears, and uprising yellow stones. Fancying I heard a gunshot, I leaned a straining ear against the soft breeze. The proof came presently in the unmistakable report of Jones's blunderbuss. It was repeated almost instantly, giving reality to the direction, which was down the slope of what I concluded must be the third ravine. Wondering what was the meaning of the shots, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... of human duty. We ought neither to do evil nor suffer evil to be done, where our authority can prevent it, in order that good may follow. But in matters where our own will creates the offence, it is in some peculiar cases not only prudent but necessary to avoid straining a mind naturally delicate, beyond the powers which we know it to possess. We think, for instance, that it was wrong in Mr. Sinclair, at a moment when the act of separating from Osborne might have touched, the feelings of his daughter into that ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... a burning forehead against the lifted window-sash, straining her vision to follow his shadow as it moved through the murk of the court below and lost itself in the deeper gloom of the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... you won the war— You and you and you— Pressing and pouring forth, more and more, Toiling and straining from shore to shore To reach the flaming edge of the dark Where man in his millions went up like a spark, You, in your thousands and millions coming, All the sea ploughed with you, all the air humming, All the land loud with you, All our hearts proud with you, All ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... been a matter of indifference to me, an attitude in which I have persisted to this day. The musicians play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Sebastian Bach, but not one plays God Himself. No one can play the eternal comfort and blessing of tone and sound, its magic correlation with the eager, straining ear; so that"—he continued in a lower voice and blushing with confusion—"so that the third tone forms a harmonic interval with the first, as does the fifth, and the leading tone rises like a fulfilled hope, while the dissonance is bowed down like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... surplus since 1992. While economic management has been good, there remain important economic vulnerabilities. The most significant are debt-related: the government's largely domestic debt increased steadily from 1994 to 2003, straining government finances, while Brazil's foreign debt (a mix of private and public debt) is large in relation to Brazil's modest (but growing) export base. Another challenge is maintaining economic growth over a period ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... this kind it is very important to have the centering absolutely rigid so it will not spring when concrete is being tamped against it and thus weaken the cohesion of the concrete. It is also important to have the arrangement such that all the centering can be removed without straining or jarring the fresh concrete. The centers were generally removed in about three or four days after the concrete ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... perhaps to see as to her chances of getting out that night. The twilight darkened into night, and night wore on into the small hours, and now we gazed into the gloom anxiously, for at this time, if any, she would seek to run out. With straining eyes and the most intense quiet, we listen for the sound of paddle wheels. A stranger passing along our decks, seeing in the darkness the shadowy forms of men crouched in listening attitudes, would have fancied himself among a body of Indians watching stealthily some ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... contemporary English stage did not afford a model as worthy of imitation as the contemporary French stage. Of course, the native genius of Dickens is indisputable, but his artistic ideals are painfully unsatisfactory. His letters show him forever straining after effects for their own sake only, and striving to put just so much humor and just so much pathos into each one of the successive monthly parts into which his stories were chopped up. Very fond of the theater from his early youth, Dickens had come near going on the stage as an actor; and, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... watch in hand, he awaited the fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more to go—half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve—and nothing happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... We don't surrender, even to worthy adversaries, much less to a gang of common thieves, murderers, and criminals like yourselves. You have been accorded the privilege you sought, that of an envoy, and that was straining the point. Show yourself here again after two minutes have elapsed, and you'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... obliged to you—but I have sworn never to touch another drop of it. I'll just rest here with you." He threw up his head and Jud Carpenter saw how eagerly he inhaled the odor which came out of the door. He saw the quivering lips, the tense straining of the throat, the wavering eyes which told how sorely ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... or my love of literature in the least failing. I enjoyed even when flattest in my bed hearing Harriet Butler reading to me till eleven o'clock at night. Sir Henry Marsh prescribed some book that would entertain and interest me without straining my attention or over-exciting me, and Harriet chose Madame de Sevigne's Letters, which perfectly answered all the conditions, and was as delightful at the twentieth reading as at the first. Such lively pictures of the times and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... developer and flood the print, or that it would go on even after the water was poured on it. Moreover, in case of under-exposure, two minutes would not be so very tiresome, but four minutes would, besides which we would risk straining the print by such prolonged development. While I am not prepared to assert it as a rule, yet it has been my experience that the time of development varies almost inversely with the length of exposure; so that if the test-strip concludes development in half a minute with ten seconds exposure, ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... then Diego grasped his end of the stick and signaled the return trip. Again it took practically every ounce of strength they had in their muscular bodies, but they could move steadily now, instead of in straining, spasmodic jerks. The rawhide sizzled where it curled around the stick. They reached the end and stopped, and Jack commanded them to sit down and have a smoke before ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... little Frau, straining at the waist buckle and giving him a little pull here, a little tug there. "Rosa, come ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... her name and her children's from at least one stigma that rested upon it, had never been out of her mind. Now it was the one thing toward which her hopes, so lately torn from their rooted hold, were still straining. Jacques' son and her daughter—at least there should be that tie between herself and the man she loved. Some day perhaps her grandson would look at her with ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only entertained by individuals; and indeed there were many amongst the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher; he maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul; and believed that, from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... as existing—the due worship of its deities, and the religious care of its dead. Take marriage as an example: "the entry of a bride into the household—of one who as yet had no lot in the family life—meant some straining of the relation between the divine and human members,"[563] and the human part of the family must be assured that the divine part is willing to accept her before the step can be regarded as complete. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... ahoy! Old earth riding off the sun, And straining at your cable as you ride On the tide, Battered laboring and vast, In the blast Of the hurricane that blows between ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... light he saw there was but one small keyhole to the door, and he judged from that that it was fitted with some patent mechanical lock. There was no way by which he could open it, of course, and though he stood for a long time listening with straining ears against it he could not detect the slightest sound from whatever chamber or recess lay behind it. If there really was a man in there, thought Neale, he must surely feel himself to be in a living tomb. And after a time, taking the risk of being heard from outside the laboratory, he beat ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... eager vision seemed to catch, in a moment, each feature of the scene; the sandy beach—the rugged hill—her father's shallop—and he, standing in the position she had left him, gazing out into the sea; and with what a lingering, straining glance, did her eyes wander over that pathless ocean, while her heart sank within her, as she contemplated ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... conscious of a drift, of a widening space, and was making an effort to pull the two parts of her life together, that there should be no break, as one carried away to sea by a resistless tide grasps the straining rope that still maintains his slender ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... although another detective has come to the same conclusion, I myself have many misgivings, and you may be assured, Miss Darrow, that I shall lose no time in getting these doubts answered one way or the other. At present you may say to your friend Jeannette that I am straining every nerve in her ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... shot issued from it deafening him and his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with a trembling hand placed a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... left the Lady Arabella alone and mournful on the seas, not praying for favourable gales to convey her away, but still imploring her attendants to linger for her Seymour; still straining her sight to the point of the horizon for some speck which might give a hope of the approach of the boat freighted with all her love. Alas! never more was Arabella to cast a single look on her lover and her husband! ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Maxims, posted his men as best he could. There was no time to throw up earthworks, but a rough cairn of stone which stood in the middle of the hollow gave at least a central rallying-ground. Then they waited, watching the fleecy night vapours blow across the peaks and straining their ears for the first sound ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... know something on this department of nunnery discipline: I have had it tried upon myself, and I can bear witness that it is not only most humiliating and oppressive, but often extremely painful. The month is kept forced open, and the straining of the jaws at their utmost stretch, for a considerable ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... hunter's game-bag, a divided melon, etc. I frankly own that they would thrill me more if I knew their market price, so that I might be imagining what delightful meals I could offer my family without straining the household purse, which is my excuse for the intimate details concerning food and prices which I ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... one wide-spread, pitiless, truceless, desperate strife. And there will be terrible sights and sounds there. Fathers and sons, pastors and people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, with swollen veins and bloodshot eyes, straining towards each other's throats and hearts, reprobate men, and devils in form and features, hideous to as great a degree as are the beauties of the blest in heaven beautiful. And there are groans and curses, and everlasting wailings, as harsh ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... visit paid to the five captives, among whom was a female with a yearling about the size of a half-grown calf. The tame elephants went straight to the captives straining at the ropes, and bound their fore-feet tightly together. This was not done without furious resistance on the part of the betrayed beasts; but this resistance was overcome in a most brutal way by strokes of the trunk and by bites. Thereupon the merciless captors busied themselves removing ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... miles, of westerly currents, I, by my account, ran the Eos high and dry upon the Island of Barbadoes, three good weeks before we made the land. Thus, I had the satisfaction of looking on with placid indolence, whilst my messmates were furiously handling their Gunter's scales, and straining their eyes over the small printed figures in the distance and departure columns of John Hamilton Moore, of blessed (cursed?) memory, in a cabin over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, that was melting at the same time the youthful ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... I am pulling, I am hanging on to the rope and straining till I am almost off my feet; I am ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... A patient and careful census gives me nearly six hundred. And all this comes out of a purse no larger than a pea. By what miracle is there room for such a family? How do those thousands of legs manage to grow without straining themselves? ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... so overruling and engrossing that I lost even my intellectual sense of it; and now first I understood practically and feelingly the anguish of hope alternating with disappointment, as it may be supposed to act upon the poor shipwrecked seaman, alone and upon a desolate coast, straining his sight for ever to the fickle element which has betrayed him, but which only can deliver him, and with his eyes still tracing in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... dark and fearful whispered words from man to man went past, As of some dread and fatal deed which they must do at last. And night and morn and noon they prayed, oh blessed voice of prayer! That God would bring their trembling souls out of this great despair. And every straining eye was bent out o'er the ocean-wave, But they saw no sail, there came no ship the storm-tost barque to save. The fatal die was cast at length; and tears filled every eye As forth a gentle stripling slept and gave himself to die. They ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Mr Blackburn, did Kit disturb you at all last night? He was so uneasy that I had to turn out twice and go to him, and both times I found him standing at the top of the veranda steps, straining at his leash," (latterly we always tied him up at night) "switching his tail fiercely, and uttering half-suppressed growls, as though he scented or heard something unusual prowling near the house. It was only by staying with him for about half an hour that I at last succeeded ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... was running, and in the midst of the picture was the poor crippled frigate, rolling and labouring and staggering onward like a wounded sea-bird under her jury- spars and spray-darkened canvas, with a miniature ocean washing hither and thither athwart her heaving deck, and a crowd of panting, straining, half-naked men clustering about her pumps, while others were as busily employed in passing buckets up and down through the hatchways; the whole set to the dismal harmony of howling wind, hissing spray, the wearisome and ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... remarked Nort, straining his eyes to pierce the gloom and shadows into which the face of the tunnel and the locked gate were thrown by the moonlight ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... the swish of the trees lining the gorge was in her straining ears and half drowned its sullen sound. With feelings impossible to describe, she tossed up her arms to the skies, where a single brilliant star was looking through the mass of quickly flying, quickly disintegrating clouds. Then she sought again the safety of the guiding rail, ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... his master's weapons and warlike equipments in their respective places, the youths ascended the chariot, and Laeg shook the ringing reins and called to the steeds to go, and they went, and soon they were on the hard highway straining forward to the north. The sound of the war-car behind them outroared the roaring of the flames. Cuculain was a pale red all over, for ere the last combat was at an end that pool of the Boyne was like one bath of blood. His eyes blazed ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach; and we know that, in spite of their hatred of popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and his features gave the idea of a man in the act of straining himself. In consequence, one of the city wits, upon the emperor's desiring him "to say something droll respecting himself," facetiously answered, "I will, when you have done relieving your bowels." [767] He ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... we are from the Nile?" asked Cochrane. He rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of pennyroyal is better, however, and an ointment made by straining one ounce of the oil into two or three ounces of pure melted lard, or mutton tallow, forms an excellent antidote. This may be carried in a little box or bottle, in the pocket, and applied as occasion requires. Plain mutton tallow is also ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Aleck who in every case turned inland to skirt the chasm, gazing down with interest the while at the nesting-places of the sea-birds which covered nearly every ledge, each one being alive with screaming, clamouring, hungry young, straining their necks to meet the swift-winged auks and puffins that darted to and fro with ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... perhaps sprung highest was the absurdity of our prolonging the fiction that I had anything more to teach him. It sufficiently stuck out that, by tacit little tricks in which even more than myself he carried out the care for my dignity, I had had to appeal to him to let me off straining to meet him on the ground of his true capacity. He had at any rate his freedom now; I was never to touch it again; as I had amply shown, moreover, when, on his joining me in the schoolroom the previous night, I had uttered, on the subject of the interval just concluded, neither challenge nor hint. ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... acrobat, had become a street conjuror, had married the 'mysterious lady' out of the 'saw- dust,' as he expressed it - meaning out of a travelling circus. After that, 'things had gone 'ard' with them. They had exhausted their resources in every sense. One night, lying awake, and straining their brains to devise some means of subsistence, his wife suddenly exclaimed, 'How would it be if we were to try so and so?' explaining the trick just described. His answer was: 'Oh! that's too silly. They'd see through it directly.' This was all I could get out of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... almost afraid Ruth liked the kitchen best, with its tiled floor and patch of afternoon sun; with its tall clock in the corner, its line of straining geraniums in the low window-shelf, and its high mantle-piece crowned by two china dogs with red lozenges on them, holding baskets ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... at Hanover, in Seventeen Hundred Nine, was George Frederick Handel, six feet one, weight one hundred eighty, rubicund, rosy, and full of romp, aged twenty-four. George of Brunswick was to have the felicity of being King George the First of England, and already he was straining his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... and discover something they two could eat. A tempting-looking bunch of berries hung from a tree near her, and she thought that if she could reach them they might be of some slight use in allaying the pangs of hunger felt by both her and her dog. She was at once on her feet, and straining all her ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... courage enough to get into the saddle. His riding days were over. Even the stable mastiff, an old favourite with Brian, gave him a painful shock when the great tawny brute leapt out of his kennel, straining at his chain, and baying deep-mouthed thunder by ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... reverie, a strange spell chained Morton's attention to the chief and the guest, and he bent forward, with parted mouth and straining ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a minute later, inside a dark and ill-smelling room, the air of which was humid with the steam from a boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other ways improved by the presence of a jostling score of women, all straining their gaze upon the open door of the only other apartment—the bed-chamber. Through this they could see the workmen laying MacEvoy on the bed, and standing awkwardly about thereafter, getting in the way of the wife and old Maggie Quirk as they strove ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... more horsemen now, scores and scores of them, trampling through the shallow river. And beyond I could see a line of cannon, wallowing through the water, shadowy artillerymen clinging to forge and caisson, mounted men astride straining teams, tall officers on either flank, sitting their horses ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... close at hand came a murmur of voices. By straining his ears Dave made out the tones of William Jarvey. The former bookkeeper for the Mentor Construction Company was evidently talking to another man, but what was being said ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... Bagatelle, there is the serious regular conversation bore, who listens to himself, talks from notes, and is witty by rule. All rules for conversation were no doubt invented by bores, and if followed would make all men and women bores, either in straining to be witty, or striving to be easy. There is no more certain method, even for him who may possess the talent in the highest degree, to lose the power of conversing, than by talking to support his character. One eye to your reputation, one on the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... misery, for, after twelve hours of such sunshine as only our own California can show, we were sure to be gratified by an exceedingly well got up tableau of the deluge, without that ark of safety, a mule team, which, sister-Anna-like, we were ever straining our eyes to see descending the hill. "There! I hear a mule-bell," would be the cry at least a dozen times a day, when away we would all troop to the door, to behold nothing but great brown raindrops rushing merrily downward, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... consciousness. But the rude expression of the miserable woman at her feet, whose sobs grew more uncontrollable every moment, made it forever impossible that she should prattle again as she had to Santiago and Rezanov in the last day and night; and although she felt as if straining her eyes in the dark, her cheeks burned once more, and she rose uneasily ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... them when we reflect upon their power of accretion. The Gallionellae, invisible to the naked eye, can, of their heraldic shields and flinty armor, make two cubic feet of Bilin polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illuminated by their play of self-generated electric light, has been collected. Humboldt and Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power of discharging electricity at will, and their sporting about, exhibiting an intelligent enjoyment of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... remarked, as a general prevailing tendency amongst the great Italian masters of painting, that there is the same conspicuous leaning to regard the gigantic as a vulgar straining after effect. Witness St. Paul before Agrippa, and St. Paul at Athens; Alexander the Great, or the Archangel Michael. Nowhere throughout the whole world is the opposite defect carried to a more intolerable excess than amongst the low (but we regret to add—and ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... Water is bad, Portius[144] proposes straining it thro' Sand, and has given Figures of Machines to be used for that Purpose; but the Method proposed by Dr. Lind is still more simple, which is, to get a broad Cask with one End struck out; then put a longer Cask, with both Ends struck ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... in her low and pleasant voice phrases that were vague to me about her surprise, her delight at seeing me. But I did not listen to her. I was straining my ears towards that volume of chaotic noises which came swelling up ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... might think too lightly of all outward aids to religion.[586] Such errors might, and sometimes did, prove very dangerous. But one who knew them well, and to whom, as his mind expanded, their too parental discipline, their timid fears of reasoning, their painful straining for experiences, had become intolerable, could yet say of them, 'There is not throughout Christendom, in our day, a form of public worship which expresses more thoroughly the spirit of true Christian piety, than does that of the Herrnhut brotherhood.... It is the truest Christian community, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... we need to do is to pack up, go down to the dock and start from there. We must join the emigrants and follow them into the city. These are the only people who are finding America to-day. We must take up life among them; work as they work; live as they live. Why, I feel my back muscles straining even now; I feel the tingle of coming down the gangplank with our fortunes yet to make in this land of opportunity. Pasquale has done it; Murphy has done it. Don't you ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... traveling—that ten thousand dollars of another man's money was a responsibility I wanted to be rid of without the least possible delay. Pend d' Oreille was twenty-five or thirty miles south of us—a long afternoon's ride, but MacRae and I were glad of each other's company, and it was worth while straining a point to have even one night's shelter at a Police camp in that semi-hostile country. There were no road-agents to speak of, for sums of money large enough to tempt gentry of that ilk seldom passed ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... it putrifies, and then boil it over the fire to separate the oil, the remaining water becoming vinegar, when exposed some time to the sun. Lastly, by mixing the kernel with the liquor lodged within its cavity, and straining it through a cloth, they make a very good milk. The cocoa-nut tree resembles the date palm, except in not being so rugged and knotty. They will continue to thrive for an hundred years, or more, and two ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... figure pass down the path, and her straining eyes followed until it was lost in the mild wide ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... passed near him in the air, and that the wood about him was full of sobbing. Then, again, he felt his own mind within him begin to be occupied by doubtful troubles worse than these terrors, an anxious straining for ill news, for bitter and dreadful news, mixed with a confused certitude that such news had come indeed, disturbed and haunted him; and all the while about him in that stillness the rushing of unhappy spirits went like a secret storm. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand's breadth from the rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then, sitting on a branch, she looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below, seeing many a white fang in those grinning jowls, and the smouldering, red blink of those leaping ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... fat again until the pieces acquire a slight colour, when the fat is ready to be strained through a jar. We must not forget to stir the fat occasionally, to keep it from burning, and also to let it cool slightly before straining, for fear of accident; for boiling fat is very hot, more than twice as hot ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... unchildlike quiet. Mrs. Sandford did not know what to do; but indeed nothing could be done with Daisy. She could not be amused or happy; she did not wish Nora were there; she could only keep patient and wait, and wait, with a sore, straining heart, while the hours passed and Dr. Sandford did not come and she had no tidings. Was she patient? It seemed to Daisy that her heart would burst with impatience; or rather with its eager longing to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... him. In just the same way, at moments, she almost yielded to the temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her husband or Maisie Maidan to hers. She desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public scandals. For, watching Edward more intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... shalt assay Firmly to keep, the most part of thy life: Wish that thy lady in thine armes lay, And nightly dream, thou hast thy nighte's wife Sweetly in armes, straining her as blife:* *eagerly And, when thou seest it is but fantasy, See that ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to him is the supremely poetic fact of a situation which even one who knows of it merely by hearsay cannot refuse to feel. The tragical effect of the situation is in the straining and sundering of family ties among those who take one side or the other in the difference of the monarchy and papacy. I do not know how equally Roman society, in the large or the small sense, is divided into the Black of the Papists and the White of the Monarchists ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... way home the memory of those eyes haunted Ernestine. All the way home her ears were straining to catch the hoot of a motor-horn and the rush ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... straddling and swinging about between my legs, and in momentary danger of capsizing. Arrived at the "top," I came to a dead halt, and looked up. How to surmount that overhanging impediment completely posed me for the time. But at last, with much straining, I contrived to place my bucket in the "top;" and then, trusting to Providence, swung myself up after it. The rest of the road was comparatively easy; though whenever I incautiously looked down toward ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... doctor looked at each other in a dissatisfied manner, she wistfully, he disapprovingly, and then the doctor went out. Daisy's eyes followed, straining after him as long as they could; and when she could see him no longer they filled with tears again. She was looking as intent and wistful as if she might have been thirty years old instead of nine or ten, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... heard: Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining themselves to make the boat ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... of ripening in the air, a smell of sap once more on the move, of humid earths disintegrating from the winter rigidity, of twigs and slender branches stretching themselves under the returning warmth, elastic once more, straining in ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... he, "do not despond;" and seizing my arm, we moved with speed in the direction where lights streamed from the gay and pleasant mansion which we had so madly left. Ah, how with mingled hope and fear our hearts beats, as with straining eyes we looked toward that beacon. In an instant, even as we sped along, the ice opened again before us, and ere I could check my impetus, I was, with the lantern in my hand, plunged within the flood. My companion retained his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... He was about to sink down on the thwart, when his eye fell on a white spot in the horizon. He gazed at it without speaking; it might be only a sea-bird's wing. Again and again he looked with straining eyes. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... rolling in with ruin the fog is on the tide. Fate like a muffled steersman sails with that Norland gloom; The Snowflake in the offing is neck and neck with doom. Ha, ha, my saucy cruiser, crowd up your helm and run! There'll be a merrymaking to-morrow in the sun. A cloud of straining canvas, a roar of breaking foam, The Snowflake and the sea-drift are racing in for home. Her heart is dancing shoreward, but silently and pale The swift relentless phantom is hungering on her trail. They scour and fly together, until across the roar He signals for a pilot—and Death ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal wailings. The creaking of the masts, the straining and groaning of bulk-heads, as the ship labored in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the sides of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey: ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... too close a fit of it, and now that it was dried up at the edges and slightly shrunk, he found difficulty in removing it. Seeing, upon further effort, that he could not get it off without risk of straining the lamb's anatomy, he laid the problem across his knees again and searched his pockets for his knife. He had felt for it, not very thoroughly, before. The ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... rapidity of the whole catastrophe, and the sudden appearance of this new adventure bewildered her. The huge mysterious stranger almost frightened her. Though his eyes were shut and he made neither sound nor movement, she felt that he was searching her, that he was straining all his mental forces to steal the thoughts that were throbbing through her mind. As they drew near to their destination, she fiercely exerted the self-control that was one of her least developed virtues, and by the time they ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... will-o'-the-wisps, postponing retiring, as they are not yet accustomed to the vibration of the Atlantic greyhound, which trembles underneath them as if, like the real greyhound in full cry after a hare, it is literally straining every muscle to beat the record from the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... though not invariably thrown off in composers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of serious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt—but they only serve to prove the rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More consciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its own special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity. And it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of particular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... by gold and gun, Little treasures, houses,—nay, Guerdons of our dearest fight, Now are fuel for his sun, And the dreams that lit the night Burn as candles in the day. Yet we made thee, Man of Right, As our being plead to rise; Of our straining arm thy might; Even as we prayed for sight, Lo, afar thou hadst ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... with her eyes full of tears, aware of Fraulein standing between the open swing doors with Gertrude's face showing over her shoulder—its amazement changing to a large-toothed smile as Fraulein's quietly repeated "Prachtvoll, prachtvoll" came across the room. Miriam, after a hasty smile, sat straining her eyes as widely as possible, so that the tears should not fall. She glared at the volume in front of her, turning the pages. She was glad that the heavy sun-blinds cast a deep shadow over the room. She blinked. She thought they would not notice. Only one tear fell and that was from the left eye, ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson |
