"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... motionless as a bee fifteen thousand feet in the air. Only the treble hum of the air turbine could be heard faintly through the transparent walls of the observatory constructed of the annealed clersite, which has taken the place of the unsatisfactory glass used by our forefathers. The toughness and tensile strength of this element, comparable to the best chrome steels, combined with its crystal clarity, made an ideal warfare observation unit. It was practically invisible and likewise quite bullet proof. The great strength of the material in our machine, ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... sometimes even by force; laudable efforts toward self-education; benevolent and philanthropic movements; reform organizations, and commendable business enterprise both in individuals and associations. These show a toughness of fibre and steadiness of purpose sufficient to make the backbone ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... he wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... the true power of money,—and no trouble with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end to ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... hypocrisy is the homage that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the venerable affectation of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could NOT converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their five-hours' exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Jack, suddenly, as he was on about a quarter of a mile ahead with his brother, Mr Rogers being busily transferring some water-beetles to Chicory's spirit-bottle, which escaped breaking after all from the toughness ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... country we must develop our own type of walnut, and it is quite the exception to find among any Persian walnuts growing on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast or in the middle of the country walnuts that are free from this tendency to astringency, to insipidity, and to toughness. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... a starling, as I consider this bird the very best for the amateur's purpose, not only on account of the toughness of the skin, but also because, being a medium-sized bird, it presents no difficult points in skinning, and with this bird before me I shall minutely instruct my pupil, pointing out each step that has to be taken and each difficulty that ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... infants. Most assiduously he looked through his Prayer-Book: not a word could he discover authorising captains in the navy to perform the rite. He pulled down all the books on his shelves and hunted them over; there were not many, certainly, but they made up by their quality and toughness for their want of number: not a word on the subject in question could he find. For many an hour and for many a day did he search, for he was not a man to be baffled by a knotty point or by an enemy for want of exertion on his part, though at last he had to confess that in ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a moment of extreme disgust and ennui, threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the custody of the evil one. Van Haubitz found himself in an awkward ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... small repairs, additions and improvements to the place. This manual work interested me, and, I dare say, bettered my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior, was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... try to carry off women and children. It was the consciousness, probably, of his weakness which made the old fellow so easily render up his prey to me on a former occasion. In spite of his age and probable toughness, I was tempted to see if I could get any steaks out of him, to form a supply of food should our stock of meat not be sufficient to last us till we could get home. I cut off a few pounds; but the smell of the flesh at last made me desist, thinking that neither ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... removed and an approximate uniformity of granules has been obtained by sifting. The term does not necessarily mean that the grinding mills have steel burrs. In fact, most firms employ burrs made of cast-iron or of a composition metal known as "burr metal", because of its combined hardness and toughness. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... adroit, the son was perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had not seldom repaired the blunders of that House. Those counsellors swayed him most who appealed to his family pride, or satisfied his other dominant feelings, attachment to the old order of things and a pedantic clinging ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... our time need some such friendly warning? Let us first get a hint from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind, who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness, the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this foreign climate. I have even seen it doubted whether a race of men can ever become ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... loads than smaller pebbles of the same sort of rock, but if the rock is of some of the tougher varieties such as trap, there is very little likelihood of even the smaller pebbles crushing. If the pebbles are of rock of medium toughness, the smaller pebbles might be crushed under the heavier loads. It is the usual practice to permit gravel to be used for the foundation course in which the pebbles are as large as will pass a 3-1/2-inch circular screen opening, and for the wearing course, as large as will ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... while hard, are brittle, and are not sufficiently tough; and that sandstone was impossible. Then he told them that good gravel, tough limestone and trap-rock were good road materials. Roads need materials having hardness, toughness and ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Shortly you will find a grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... show us that the conflict is already opened, and that it is serious. The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. An elective judiciary is a device so much in the interest of plutocracy, that it must be regarded as a striking proof of the toughness of the judicial institution that it has resisted the corruption so much as it has. The caucus, convention, and committee lend themselves most readily to the purposes of interested speculators and jobbers. It is just such machinery as they might have invented if they had been trying ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... your Aunt Jane knew all the rules of etiquette," said Felicity, designing to crush Peter with a big word, borrowed from the Family Guide. But Peter was not to be so crushed. He had in him a certain toughness of fibre, that would have been ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... manual materialistic love, as one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. A battle-axe was a person ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... which the air boats were constructed was either wood or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood—the boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not add materially to the weight while it gave leather-like toughness, provided the necessary combination of lightness and strength. When metal was used it was generally an alloy—two white-coloured metals and one red one entering into its composition. The resultant was white-coloured, like aluminium, and ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... here's another leg—come, my boy, we've still a leg to stand upon—Cullen has just finished one, and I could have sworn I ate the other yesterday. See, did Judy put one of her own in the hash—'ex pede Herculem'—you'd know it so any way by the toughness. Lend me your fork, Thady, or excuse my own. Well, when I get the cash from Denis's marriage, I'll get a carving-knife and fork from Garley's; not but what I ought to have one. Judy, where's the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... read through this manuscript he was reminded of a score of schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together. Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows. Benham had been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but who go out to them with a fierce sincerity. He ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... then ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The term "putting one's knees under a friend's mahogany," ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... to grub up acres on acres of splendid sheep pasture in search of roots. The only good they do is to dig up the Spaniards for the sake of their delicious white fibres, and the fact of their being able to do this will give a better idea of the toughness of a wild pig's snout than ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran to and fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and mud, I was first seized with admiration of their courage and toughness and then, "But after all, WHY—?" and the stupid ugliness of all this waste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it obviously wasted and deteriorated the coal.... And I had imagined ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... The toughness of glass, i.e., its ability to withstand variations of temperature, depends on its composition and the care taken in its annealing. In general, large pieces of glass should be heated very slowly in the smoky flame, and the larger the diameter of the tube the ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... moment knew that he was at a perilous crisis of his life. The movements of the practised swordsman could not be mistaken; he himself had little experience; all that he could rely on was his quick eye and the toughness of his muscles. He gave back, parrying the lunge, tempted to use his pistol upon his adversary. But now that the cannonading had ceased the shot might be heard by some of the Pirate's men, and before he could escape he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the stockade in a score of places, but, thanks to the toughness of the seasoned wood, the bullets that had penetrated had lost most of their strength. Beyond a few scratches from flying splinters, none ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... mould; mix thoroughly. Now try a little by poaching in a teaspoon; that is, fill a teaspoon with the mixture, pressing it in form, then drop it into boiling water for three minutes. Open the quenelle and taste it; if it is creamy, light, and well flavored, it is right, but if there is the least toughness, add a little more cream to the mixture. Notice also the seasoning; if more salt is needed, add it carefully, and try again, till you have the quenelle mixture just right, that is to say, creamy, light, very tender, yet keeping its form. At present quenelles ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... from the hides of animals these strange people caught on the lower slopes somewhere. But though they strained and twisted, they could not stretch them, the leather evidently having been cured to a marvelous toughness in these high altitudes. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the toughness of Sir Pertinax consistently to the end, Macklin remained true to the tradition of critical, satiric comedy that he had been bred in but that by this time had almost disappeared. Protesting against ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... must be literally of the very best and soundest description. Every single joint must be perfectly made with fireclay cement or paste. The fireclay bricks, &c., must be selected with regard to the amount of indestructible silica in the clay, consistent with hardness and toughness. Homogeneity of material must be obtained, having regard to expansion and contraction. The same material used for the bricks, &c., worked into a paste, must ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... sacrificed to it their whole individuality. No wonder that such little political unities held together as if their component parts had been welded, and that they continued to do so till they came into collision, and, from their hardness and toughness, rubbed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... the white, but the black ash is remarkable as the slenderest deciduous tree of its height to be found in the forest. It is often seventy or eighty feet tall, with a trunk not more than a foot around. The color of the trunk is a dark granite-gray and the bark is rough. The wood is remarkable for its toughness, and for making baskets the Indians prefer it to any other, except the trunk of a young ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... "here we are, Lignum and myself"—she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it like ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... that Sax and Vaughan were experiencing. In appearance, Sax was of slighter build than his thick-set friend, Boof, but the drover's son had inherited from his father a natural toughness and an ability to endure privation and hardship which Vaughan, although he was quite as plucky, did not possess. It happened, therefore, that though Sax was just able to keep control of himself throughout the terrible night which followed Yarloo's departure, ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... meat is cut into thin slices, boiled in a melon shell, stuck upon skewers, and dried in the sun. Prepared in this manner it will keep for several weeks, but requires a second cooking before being used, on account of its hardness and toughness. The fat which rises to the surface during the boiling is skimmed off and kept in joints of bamboo and turtle bladders, being much prized as food; I have even seen the natives drink it off in its hot fluid state with ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... line of the works in front of you, a handful of batmen and Headquarters' cooks may still hold up the greatest attack yet delivered, and you may spend the next month dashing your strength away against a barrier of ever-increasing toughness. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... property belonged, as it still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... did remarkably well in the recent fighting. I am not surprised, for I saw them training in England, and was impressed by their toughness—hard-bitten, short, powerfully built men, who took things ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... toughness. I believe in doing one job at a time—and my contract reads veterinary service, not personal problems. The job comes first ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... of fast chosen to resolve a chronic illness depends largely on available time, finances, availability of support people, work responsibilities, and mental toughness. If you are one of those fortunate people 'rich' enough to give their health first priority, long water fasting is ideal. If on the other hand you can't afford to stop working, have no one to take care of you and assist with some household chores, and/or you are not ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... you favor libertarian government," he said. "In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... which make up the cabbage head do not to an equal degree unfold (particularly is this true of hard heads); yet they exhibit a vitality of their own, which is seen in the deeper green color the outer leaves soon attain, and the change from tenderness to toughness in their structure: I think, therefore, that the degree of failure in the parallel may be measured by the difference between a higher and a ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... was soon over. No soup, of course; fish, in the state of preservation usually presented by a decayed country town; steak that rivalled the toughness of india-rubber; potatoes whose aspect said, "stranger, don't eat us"; pudding that would have produced a sense of discouragement, even in the mind of a child; and the famous English cheese which comes to us, oddly enough, ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Without the slightest hesitation I refer you to the Irish blackthorn, which can be chosen of such convenient size and weight as not to be cumbersome, and which, if carefully selected, possesses all the strength of the oak, plus enormous toughness, and a pliability which makes it a truly ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... to him. But from it he had brought another scar—the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter, rebel, outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who considered himself an exceedingly tough individual, that toughness steeled by the training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a power he did not ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... keep his forces together, provide at his own expense for their food and transportation, and take them back to Tennessee in good order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his own three horses, and himself marching on foot with the men, who, enthusiastic over his elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"—a title of affection that is familiar to this day. The government afterwards reimbursed him for his outlay in this matter, but his generosity, self-denial, energy, and masterly force ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... kind. In oil painting its unctious quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of marble; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the general introduction of hollow backs is probably somewhat as follows: Leather was doubtless first chosen for covering the backs of books because of its toughness and flexibility; because, while protecting the back, it would bend when the book was opened and allow the back to "throw up" (see fig. 1, A). When gold tooling became common, and the backs of books ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... let us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself—in India he wants to save money—and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I gazed ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... was in it, All its mystery and magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews, And it floated on the river Like a ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... to the amazing toughness of his skin, and its looseness, the ratel managed to, as it were, slide the bone of his leg between the jaws of the trap, leaving the skin and fur in, and the rest was mainly determined tugging ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... currents of fresh blood, of abounding life, and of vigorous strength. I cannot remember when I have felt so crisp, so springy, and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these intervals of good health he was mentally alert, — a prodigious worker, feeling "an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre" in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor, an exuberance that comes only from "a lordly, large compass of soul." As to his poverty, it must be said that few poets were ever ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the most beautiful make, of hickory, which is as durable as metal-spokes, not thicker than the middle finger, but strong enough for any required weight, and with great flexibility; and from its extreme toughness, calculated for the woodwork of implements. The apartment on the ground-floor was entirely occupied by machines in motion, and each was attended by a person who explained, with the greatest civility and intelligence, the uses of the various parts of the machine, setting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet weather. Basalt ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... hair and hide on the back of Kazan's neck, and the toughness of his muscles, saved him from that terrible fate of the vanquished. The wolf's teeth sank deep, but not deep enough to reach the vital spot, and suddenly Kazan put every ounce of strength in his limbs to the effort, and flung himself up bodily from under ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... he will notice many plates of superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the incessant din of hammers riveting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... Annealing. Toughness and Elasticity. The Process. Tempering. Tempering Contrasted with Annealing. Materials Used. Gradual Tempering. Fluxing. Uniting Metals. Alloying Method. Welding. Sweating. Welding Compounds. Oxidation. Soldering. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... medium size and height, with a figure pleasingly proportioned. His shoulders squarely set, and chest rounded out, tell of great strength; while limbs tersely knit, and a firm elastic tread betoken toughness and activity. Features of smooth, regular outline—the jaws broad, and well balanced; the chin prominent; the nose nearly Grecian— while eminently handsome, proclaim a noble nature, with courage equal to any demand that may be made upon it. Not less the glance of a blue-grey eye, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... as Mr. Hare has said, "able to argue with four or five at once;" could do the parrying all round, in a succession swift as light, and plant his hits wherever a chance offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of the due toughness might have carried it far. If ours is to be called, as I hear some call it, the Talking Era, Sterling of all men had the talent ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... in an attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed him ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his neck. He did not receive all of the wounds at the same time, over half an hour elapsing between the first and the last. Up to receiving the last wound he had declined to leave the firing-line, but by that time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent to the rear. The man's wiry toughness was ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... brown bread with a vengeance. On the mountain we might buy eggs and fowls; but as the first were generally bad when sold to us, we soon got disgusted with them; and though we put up with the fowls as a change of diet, their toughness and leanness would have made them rejected everywhere else. Being the rainy reason, we had great difficulty in purchasing a little honey. Wild coffee was now and then obtainable; but it made, in the absence of sugar, and with or without smoky milk, such a bitter, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... by the great simplicity which characterises it. The first stage is getting the liquid mass of glass about to be operated upon into a thorough state of toughness and pliability: one should be able to pull it like rosin or sealing-wax. The colouring of the mass is done while it is still in the furnace, by adding various chemicals, the principal of which are arsenic, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... groans under the burden, from being accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... require to be kept a proper time to be ripe and tender. The most consummate skill in culinary matters, will not compensate the want of attention to this particular. Though animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health as it is disagreeable to the taste and smell. As soon therefore as you can detect the slightest trace of putrescence, it has reached its highest ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... is tough, but wot'll toughness do for a feller agin iron shot. I feels just now as if a red-hot skewer wos rumblin' about among the marrow of my back-bone, an' I've got no feelin' in my leg at all. Depend upon it, messmates, it's a ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... it might be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus be communicated to the hair or muscles. From this fact and from the name of the plant, which means at once hard, tough, or strong, it is quite probable that its roots are believed to give strength to the patient solely because they themselves ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest betwixt the plantations ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... meters below its waterline, there gaped a symmetrical gash in the shape of an isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon toughness— plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to withdraw itself by a backward motion ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... he at all sorry; for although he had now been accustomed for several months to be on his feet all day long, day after day, and up to that moment had regarded himself as in the very pink of condition as to toughness and wiriness, the past day's journey had been a revelation to him in the matter of endurance. He had never before in his life experienced anything like the intense fatigue which now racked every joint in his body; and, ravenously hungry as he was, he felt that it would scarcely ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... mail. The Trilobite is an early and imperfect experiment of the class, and the larva of the modern king-crab bears witness that it has not perished without leaving descendants. How later Crustacea increase the toughness of the coat by deposits of lime, and lead on to the crab and lobster, and how one early branch invades the land, develops air-breathing apparatus, and culminates in the spiders and insects, will be considered later. We shall see that there ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... shivered through an apparently interminable night around an inadequate fire. None of us were experienced bushmen, and we had neglected to gather sufficient fuel. The wind was cold, and I had not then acquired that toughness of fiber and insensibility to extremes of heat and cold which long wanderings and ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... natural curve; the barb, or rather that which answers the purpose of a barb, being supplied by a small piece lashed horizontally across the top of the end of the curve. These peculiar wooden hooks are grown; the roots of a tree called ngiia, whose wood is of great toughness, are watched when they protrude from a bank, and trained into the desired shape; specimens of these hooks may be seen in almost any ethnographical museum. To sink the line, coral stones of three or four pounds weight are used, attached by a very thin piece of cinnet or bark, which, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... though tin, from its toughness when in the leaf, is perhaps the most suitable. Americans are superior to British in filling." ("Plain Advice on Care of the Teeth," Dr. A. ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... straight presented with credentials, 820 And in their way attended on By magistrates of ev'ry town; And, all respect and charges paid, They're to their ancient seats convey'd. Now if you'll venture, for my sake, 825 To try the toughness of your back, And suffer (as the rest have done) The laying of a whipping on, (And may you prosper in your suit, As you with equal vigour do't,) 830 I here engage myself to loose ye, And free your heels from Caperdewsie. But since our sex's modesty ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... a face of contempt. "The match o' that good soul's pastry for hardness an' toughness isn't found this side of ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... oft the next step promises the precipice. There are periods in every career when troubles are so strangely increased that the world seems like an orb let loose to wander widely through space. In these dark hours some endure their pain and trouble through dogged, stoical toughness. Then men imitate the turtle as it draws in its head and neck, saying to misfortune: "Behold the shell, and beat on that." But, God be thanked! victory over trouble has been ordained. In the blackest ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... to attract the attention are the enormous pinnacled anthills of red clay and sand, often with supporting buttresses. These singular structures, which are sometimes twelve feet in height, are of great strength and toughness—on breaking off a piece, they appear to be honeycombed inside, the numerous galleries being then displayed. The ants themselves are of a pale brown colour, a quarter of an inch in length. In sailing along the coast, these anthills may be distinctly seen from the distance ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... picked up one of the papers when there came a shuffling of feet in the passage outside, followed by a knock upon the door. The next moment there appeared in the doorway a short, stout young man. There was an indescribable air of toughness about him, partly due to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set close together. His ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness." But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He had looked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those formidable pages of fine ...
— The American • Henry James
... it all was reaching at the hearts of the boy and girl who were at the moment of parting. Marcel was silently whittling a stout twig of tamarack, whose toughness threatened to dull the keen edge of his sheath-knife. Keeko was standing a few feet from him, within a yard or so of the precipice which dropped sheer to the waters below. Her eyes were following the direction of the gaze of the old moose, and the picture ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Overseas Dominions but those of the United States would take part, and his estimate of the moral of the race on both sides of the Atlantic, and in both hemispheres, was fully justified by the events of the War. Colonel Henderson found in the race something more than toughness in its moral fibre, for he adds, "Tactical ability is the birthright of {18} our race. . . . In a conflict on the vastest scale (the American Civil War) the tactics of the American troops, at a very early period, were superior to those of the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... 1927, for example, was then seventeen feet in circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... AM. SOC. C.E. (by letter).—From its lightness, toughness, flexibility, and the facility with which it can be laid, wood pipe has manifest advantages for use in inaccessible places and where handling is difficult; loss in transportation is almost negligible, it will stand much unequal ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... and all his body began to tremble and totter to such a degree that he had to sink hurriedly into his great arm-chair. It seemed as if he were about to refute Bodoeri's good opinion as to the strength and toughness of his eighty summers. Bodoeri, in fact, could not keep back the peculiar smile that darted across his lips; innocent, un* sophisticated Annunciata observed nothing; and happily no one else was present Finally it was resolved ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... will feel anxious to know what our dinner was. We boiled a piece of the flesh of a rhinoceros which was toughness itself, the night before. The meat was our supper, and porridge made of Indian corn-meal and gravy of the meat made a very good dinner next day. When about 150 miles from home we came to a large ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... goat, and reckoned superior to all other leathers. The characteristics of the genuine morocco, sometimes called Turkey morocco, having a pebbled grain, distinguishing it from the smooth morocco, are its toughness and durability, combined with softness and flexibility. It has a very tenacious fibre, and I have never found a real morocco binding broken at the hinges. The old proverb—"there is nothing like leather"—is pregnant with meaning, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... March of 1856. Its terms satisfied the diplomatists both of France and England; they would probably have been less complacent could they have foreseen the day when this hard-won treaty would be torn up by the Power they seemed to be binding hand and foot with sworn obligations of perdurable toughness; least of all would that foresight have been agreeable to Lord Palmerston, Premier of England when the peace was signed, and quite at one with the mass of the people of England in their deep dislike and distrust of Russia ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... toughness of the filaments, the finer structure of the lichens is often difficult to study, and free use of caustic potash is necessary to soften and make ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... luxuries of home," and we certainly have much apparent, if little real variety. Once William produced with some palpitation something fricasseed, which he boldly termed chicken; it was very small, and seemed in some undeveloped condition of ante-natal toughness. After the meal he frankly avowed ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to the assassin's "unhand me villain!" the authority of law. So we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quality of toughness notably augmented by the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... hard volcanic material that was evidently not porous, was made to serve for the back of the building, a niche or groove being excavated along it, about ten feet from the bottom, for the insertion of the ridge poles. This was a task of some difficulty, owing to the toughness of the stone; but it was a necessary one in order to prevent the moisture from above trickling down into the interior between the roof and the face of the cliff. The lower ends of the ridge poles, which sloped down from the top at an angle of some fifteen degrees, were then firmly fastened ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... which is often combined chromium, increases the strength, springiness and toughness ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... man's going away that stretched the heart out till the strings grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love. For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness he tried to cut loose. If he had known God better he would never have tried that. He'd never have started ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... whip a savoury breakfast; in the winter-time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rosebush on the further bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. I was not less interested ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... place where they were not thicker than the poor man's plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up by the great oven-full and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming into ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... quantite negligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for this as for any other purpose that he had ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... discover heathen gods masked in the garb of Christian saints; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has once ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... young, you may feel bigger than I am, but you are not quite so tough, indeed toughness alone has saved me my life for a good many Christmas mornings. I am a tough old hen, I have seen the world; I have traveled. You know the island in the Napa River just above the railroad bridge? Well, I was wrecked there in my young days and ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... the meat generally furnished to us are, first, that it is too new. A beef steak, which three or four days of keeping might render palatable, is served up to us palpitating with freshness, with all the toughness of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Balder reflected that he could climb, and that the top of the tree would show him more than he could see now. The birch looked tolerably climbable and was amply high; as to toughness, he thought not about it. Beneath what frivolous disguises does destiny mask her approach! Discretion is a virtue; yet, had Balder been discreet enough to examine the tree before getting into it, the ultimate consequences ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... paid his daily visits to the "Blue Boar," losing flesh and gaining toughness with every lesson. The more he saw of Joe Bevan the more he liked him, and appreciated his strong, simple outlook on life. Shakespeare was a great bond between them. Sheen had always been a student of the Bard, and he and Joe would sit on the little verandah ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that energy to resist if not to dare, which formed the backbone of an otherwise somewhat weak, shadowy, and uninspiring character. And now, in the rapid fall of his fortunes, the greatest adventurer of the nineteenth century showed to the full those qualities of toughness and dignified reserve which for twenty years had puzzled and imposed on that lively emotional people. By the side of the downcast braggarts of the Court and the unstrung screamers of the Parisian ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... its streams of hot air into the already crowded and stifling room. Aoyama in person supervised the cooking. The animal was cut into small portions. Smoking hot the viands were placed under the noses of the gasping guests. With the great age of the beast it had accumulated great toughness. The younger members had the consolation of their jibes at the old fellows. They tore at, struggled with, the leathery fragments. But the latter had no teeth, and the malicious Aoyama would see to it that it stuck in their throats. "How, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... at first to no skill of my own; until I came to know better; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength, and the Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and more; for my heart was down, to begin with; and then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered, and as thick in the skull and hard in the brain as even ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... to the lot of any of my readers to have to cook periwinkles—and there are many worse things, when you are certain of their freshness—let them remember that they should be boiled in 'salt water'. This is to give them toughness; if fresh water is used, however expert the operator may be with his pin, he will fail to extract more than a moiety of the curly delicacy. These little facts, though extraneous to our subject, are ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... that they are so distinct and separately evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused, almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these of the Puritan and the Southerner, though ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... hand in hand with equal indifference to our local machines. His machine leaders warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the next election, which they did; but he possessed a seasoned-hickory toughness of ability to contend with adverse circumstances, and kept his head well above water. A better citizen does not exist; and our friendship has ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... more: it took ingenuity and inventiveness and cheek and second sight and cool heads in time of trouble and long heads on the job, from daybreak to daybreak. I'd rather go out and sell battleships to farmers, so far as the toughness of the job is concerned, than to tackle the job of persuading a wise young high-school product with two chums in another frat that my bunch and he were made for each other. What did he care for our glorious ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... her?—unless indeed Sarratt were killed in action. If he survived the war he would make her the best of guides and husbands; she would have children; and her sweetness, her sensitiveness would stiffen under the impact of life to a serviceable toughness. But meanwhile what could she do—poor little Ariadne!—but 'live and be lovely'—sew and knit, and gather sphagnum moss—dreaming half her time, and no doubt crying half the night. What dark circles already round the beautiful ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you want, but toughness. Metals have several properties, which are utilized for various purposes in the arts. Surprising as it may seem, wood has greater resisting power than diamond, and yet the precious stone is the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... equally close; and as the hanging cloak which he wore over it did not reach far enough down his back, it was impossible to view him behind without convulsive laughter. His shoes were made of some description of foreign bark, which had by some chemical process been tanned into toughness, and on his head he wore a turban of linen, made of the same material which furnished his other garments. Altogether, a more ludicrous figure could not be seen, especially if a person happened to stand behind him when he bowed. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in general. Darker and darker disclosures of Mr. Tubbs's perfidy would be required. But judging from his present recklessness, they would be forthcoming. For where was the Tubbs of yesterday—the honey-tongued, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... statement of his idea. Statements were too much like theories, in which one lost one's way; he only knew what he said, and what he said represented the limited vibration of which his confirmed old toughness had been capable. Still, none the less, he had his point to make—for which he took another instant. But he made it, for the third time, in the same fashion. "They'll manage in their own way." With which he ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... done brown, the same fryer and a little water would serve to take the toughness out of some strips of dried venison before she broiled them, and the great chief would be the best-fed man in camp until the hunters should return from the valley below ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... might, hardihood, potency, puissance, stamina; tenacity, toughness, durability; impregnability, invincibility; security, validity, conclusiveness, cogency, efficacy; support, stay; intensity, vividness; virility; vehemence, violence, force, impetuosity; fortitude; robustness, lustiness, stoutness, brawniness, muscularity, thew, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... should be able to 'go' as we say? And now that I've 'gone,' that is that I've come, must I just back out? No, no, I'll move on. I'm much obliged to you for your offer. I've enough money for the present. I've about my person some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me through together! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... air-cooled cylinders, in two sets of four, placed at an angle of ninety degrees to each other. The crank case was of aluminum and the shaft of vanadium steel, hollow, and specially treated to insure toughness. All the studs or bolts were of the same steel. Complete, with balance wheel, it weighed two hundred pounds. The ignition was accomplished by six dry batteries and a single-wire vibrating coil. It ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... was the official carver, respectfully to turn the classical though insipid bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to each of the honourable company, unless any one should be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer the vulgar ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... odd, too. One thing we can really be proud of here, besides the toughness of our citizens, is our public library. When people have to stay underground most of the time to avoid being fried and/or frozen to death, they have a lot of time to kill, and reading is one of the cheaper and ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... a fat man's hand and though it makes a dent that dent puffs back quickly. Do the same to the Muscular and you will find a firmness and toughness of fiber that resists but stays there longer once the dent ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... are sown on sod land for the purpose of renewing pastures, disking them will prepare them for receiving the seed. The extent of the disking will depend on such conditions as the toughness of the sod and the nature of the soil. Usually disking once when the frost is out a little way from the surface, and then disking across at an angle will suffice, and in some instances disking one way only ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... This toughness of the buffalo is by no means uncommon, but different animals vary much in their tenacity of life. Some fall at once to the first well-directed shot; others die hard. The animal the hunters were now ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... years, not knowing that in that kind of iron there is often a small mixture of nickel, such as our five-cent piece is made of, and that steel made from such a mixture is harder and tougher than any other kind. Bicycle-makers have found this out for themselves, and know the reason of the toughness, but it was a great ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... canoes, we are told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... under compulsion, until the great heart that was his shield was taken away; then—well they simply couldn't stand him, and so they were excusable for determining to discharge him—a thing which they mortally hated to do, and by lucky accident were saved from the necessity of doing;) his toughness as a bargainer when doing business for other people or for his country (witness his "terms" at Donelson, Vicksburg, etc.; Fred Grant told me his father wound up an estate for the widow and orphans of a friend in St. Louis—it took several ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The toughness of the sheets made them preferable to the softer and more yielding blankets, and the youth decided to use them exclusively. Each, of course, had been put together by deft hands and spinning-wheel, and was of firm, strong texture. Jethro was so familiar ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the horrors perpetrated here in the Revolution, but of the military burden of young France. One wonders how young France en- dures it, and one is forced to believe that the French conscript has, in addition to his notorious good-humor, greater toughness than is commonly supposed by those who consider only the more relaxing influences of French civilization. I hope he finds occasional com- pensation for such moments as I saw those damp young peasants passing on the mattresses of their hideous barrack, without anything ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... I have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, and the consequent decoction was admirable. Moreover, the bread had a skin of such thickness and impervious toughness, that ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... arises in this moment of awareness and non-understanding is almost sufficient to cause a choice of death rather than life at this point. Only because of the developed toughness, acquired through the aeons, does the majority of mammalian ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... Vickers Company. The Vickers military aeroplane is essentially a military machine. It is built of steel throughout. The skeleton of the machine is formed of an alloy which combines the qualities of aluminium and steel to ensure toughness, strength, and lightness. In fact, metal is employed liberally throughout, except in connection with the wings, which follow the usual lines of construction. The body of the car is sheathed with steel plating which is bullet proof against rifle or even shrapnel fire. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot |
