"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... news I got, and for this here I found and fetched along. I need him. I was on a jury once, in a murder case, and they had the tool that done the job and the lawyers tagged it Exhibit A. This is it! He's got a name, but if I tried to say it, it would cramp my jaws and hold my mouth open so long that I'd get assifixiated with this smoke. This is Bill the Bomber! Demeter, hold up the goods we ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... of the ship was quiet, but it was not tranquil. Calhoun worked calmly enough, but there were times when his inwards seemed to knot and cramp him, which was not the result of any infection or contagion or demoniac possession, but was reaction to thoughts of the imprisoned para in the laboratory. That man had gobbled the unspeakable because he could not help ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... knuckle, which, in fine mutton, will be very tender, though dry. There are very fine slices in the back of the leg—turn it up, and cut the broad end, not in the direction you did the other side, but lengthwise. To cut out the cramp bone, take hold of the shank (which should be previously wound round with half a sheet of fool's-cap paper) with your left hand, and cut down to the thigh bone at g, then pass the knife under the cramp bone, in the ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... never been strong since that day under the furze bush. My first impulse was to roll myself up so tightly that I got the cramp, whilst every spine on my back stood stiff with fright. But after a time I recovered myself, and took ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... night, her danger of the early morning, the men fighting and the man dead; in spite of the excitement and risks of the afternoon, shaking the heart in relief only less than in encounter, and in spite of aching head and limbs, stiffening to cramp while she still sat and the man still slept, Amaryllis knew herself happier than ever ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... to breathe, and dived again. The last time all was still underneath the water, and a fear came over me that Alb had knocked his head against something, or got a cramp. But he appeared, spluttering, and announced that he had been cutting the wire through with the chisel. There it was in his hand, a thick, ugly coil, dangerous ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... chide you, dame, to amend you. You are too fine to be a Millers daughter; for if you should but stoop to take up the tole dish, you will have the cramp in your finger at least ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... the soap was. Now and then, in fact, in a sort of bravado I deliberately lost it, so as to be able to catch it again and put it back in full view on the tray. You can also rest your feet on the tray when you are washing them, and so avoid cramp. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... bank to talk confidences, and from what he knew of the sex they were as likely as not to sit there until doomsday, compelling him to appear before the angel Gabriel without even a shroud. He was conscious of the beginning of a cramp in his left leg and his shoulders were becoming icy. He had to be motionless, too, and that was another hardship. The least movement might betray him, for the women sat quite near, and Adnah was facing him. Thanks to the thickness of his leafy hiding-place ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... were equal to any emergency however sudden and unexpected. She was filled with daily wonder over their knowledge of practical details, and their extraordinary "handiness." If a herder met with an accident they seemed to know just what to do. If Choo Loo was taken with a cramp or some odd Chinese disease without a name, and laid aside for a day or two, Clover not only nursed him but went into the kitchen as a matter of course, and extemporized a meal which was sufficiently satisfactory for all concerned. If a guest arrived unexpectedly ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... the little speck on her lungs which brought us here after—after we had found that we had not as much money as we thought we had and an old fellow who had been an idling student, mostly living abroad all his life, felt the cramp of the material facts of board-and-clothes money. It made Mary well. It made me know the fulness of wisdom of the bee and the ant, and it brought me back to the spirit of America—the spirit of youth and accomplishment. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... see it all, the wide world-way, From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole; With never a one to say me nay, And none to cramp my soul. In belly-pinch I will pay the price, But God! let me be free; For once I know in the long ago, They made ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... perfect, therefore, must be like a perfectly fitting garment, which, beautifying and adorning the person, must yet never cramp or restrain perfect freedom of movement. Any visible restraint will mar its grace, as a wrinkle will mar the pure outline of ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... involuntary contractions of the muscles generally of the extremities, accompanied with great pain. The muscles of the legs and feet are the most commonly affected with cramp, especially after great exertion. The best treatment is immediately to stand upright, and to well rub the part with the hand. The application of strong stimulants, as spirits of ammonia, or of anodines, as opiate liniments, has been recommended. When ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... night with his father. One evening his love for home saved him from drowning. Running out from town and down to the water below the house, he plunged in as usual, but, when a little distance out from shore, was seized with cramp. The remedies in such a case—to kick vigorously or throw oneself on one's back and float—are just the remedies a man feels utterly unable at the time to try. He was alone and drowning when, his eye being turned at the moment to the cottage upon the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... proper self, but afraid of and ashamed of it. He stood not firmly on the ground, nor lightly poised like a gallant sailor, but loosely and clumsily like a ploughman who leaves off at the end of his furrow to ease the cramp. His hat looked as if he had slept in it, and his eyes as if he had ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... lying down, we find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of feeling or condition destructive to health tends to ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... importance to the thought, and dismissed it as much less interesting than the great difference displayed in their respective modes of riding. The Arab's exaggeratedly short stirrup would have given her agonies of cramp. She pointed the difference with a laugh of amusement and drew the man on to speak of his horses. The one Diana was riding was an unusually fine beast, and had been one of the greatest points in ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... not more than sixty per cent En Rapport with the Long Piece about Woman's Destiny. Now Josephine was right there to see that Everybody had a Nice Time, and she did not like to see the Prominent Business Men of the Town dying of Thirst or Leg Cramp or anything like that, so she gave two or three of them the Quiet Wink, and they tiptoed after her out to the Dining Room, where she offered Refreshments, and said they could slip out on the Side Porch and Smoke if ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... which fixes the plate to each pole (Fig. 2) is formed of a special alloy of lead and antimony, not attacked by acid. This gives rigidity to the rod, and hinders it from binding when the accumulator is taken out of its case. The copper piece which surmounts it is fitted at its base with an iron cramp, which is fixed in the lead, and above which is a wide furrow with two grooved parts, which being immersed in the lead hinders the copper from slipping round under the action of the screw. The rod is square, and is cast in a single piece. Against one of its surfaces the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... room would have been pleasant. To walk with her to the studio would have been a joy. As a novelist, I bitterly resented all the minute domestic worries, but as a human being I rejoiced in my new relationship. "Can I combine the two activities? Will being a husband and a householder cramp and defeat ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... complex tastes and adult interests back into the narrow limits of a child's toy-house. Could it be that she felt something of the same displeasure when she set herself fully to conceive what it would be to cramp herself and her complex interests and adult affections ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Helen Cameron could not have gained entrance to Briarwood; without the attested examination papers of Miss Cramp, teacher of the district school, who had prepared Ruth for entering Cheslow High School before it was supposed that she could go to Briarwood, the girl from the Red Mill would not have been ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air. "A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every mass and had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her a violent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion once during the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was not comfortable when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when she stood: Justine ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... or a horse of the staggers, or a knavish boy of the school, or an idle girl of the wheel, or a young drab of the sullens, and hath not fat enough for her porridge, or butter enough for her bread, and she hath a little help of the epilepsy or cramp, to teach her to roll her eyes, wry her mouth, gnash her teeth, startle with her body, hold her arms and hands stiff, &c.; and then, when an old Mother Nobs hath by chance called her an idle young housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her, then no doubt but Mother Nobs is the witch, and the young ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of invitation, answers to them, and the like—which they contain, and for their lessons in punctuation, spelling, and criticism. Their efforts to instruct upon other points are and must be worse than useless, because their precepts cramp without inspiring. A few good examples are more valuable, but a little practice is worth them all. Letter-writing is, after all, a pas seul, as it were; the novice has no partner to teach him manners, or the figures of the dance, or to set his wits astir. By effort, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... passenger nearest to our side of the coach,—a citizen of the eminently respectable sort, forty inches in girth, and of gray chin whiskers and mustache. He was well shod and well clad; so much could be seen as he climbed down between the wheels and stood stamping his feet to shake the travel cramp out of his legs. He looked thirsty and unhappy and bored. A flush of recognition crossed his face when he saw ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... eyes, pleading to be given an umpire. Every umpire had fled. They hid behind trees, borrowed silk hats and umbrellas and pretended they were visitors—any device, however mean, to avoid the task of umpiring for that young man. Provided his opponent did not go to sleep or get cramp, one game might last all day. Anyone could return his balls; but, as I have said, to get a ball past him was almost an impossibility. He invariably won; the other man, after an hour or so, would get mad and try to lose. It was his only chance ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... delicious slumber long unknown to him, and which seemed to occupy equally his mental faculties and his bodily frame, while the features were released from their rigid tenor, and the posture of the limbs, no longer disturbed by fits of cramp, and sudden and agonizing twists and throes, seemed changed for a placid state of the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing that my soul craved for, I had satisfied none but the most transitory desires and I had incurred a tremendous obligation. That obligation didn't restrain me from making desperate lunges at something vaguely beautiful that I felt was necessary to me; but it did cramp and limit these lunges. So my story flops down into the comedy of the lying, cramped intrigues of a respectable, married man...I was still driven by my dream of some extravagantly beautiful inspiration called love and I sought it like an area sneak. Gods! ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... affection of the ear, of the order of professional cramp; it is attributed to too much use ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... kissed her, "this is a new type of bride. Not the nerve-shattered, milliner-ridden creature with writer's cramp in her hand from thanking people for useless presents! You don't look as if ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... to herself, with her harsh, unsparing honesty, that it must be a "hitch inside;" a cramp or an awkwardness born in her, that set her eyes, peering and sharp, so near together, and put that knot into her brows instead of their widening placidly, like Rosamond's, and made her jerky in her speech. It was no use; she couldn't ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... that it was a curious thing that a number of men, knowing that there was nothing they could do, could quietly watch a man fighting for his life, and he did not think that any but the British temperament could do so. I also found out later that he and I had both had a touch of cramp while waiting for our turn to swim out ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... brilliantly or not at all, according to her sweet will. She learned to read with extraordinary rapidity, for she was eager to know more of that great world of which The Duke had told her such thrilling tales. Writing she abhorred. She had no one to write to. Why should she cramp her fingers over these crooked little marks? But she mastered with hardly a struggle the mysteries of figures, for she would have to sell her cattle, and "dad doesn't know when they are cheating." Her ideas of education were purely utilitarian, and what did ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... go; Eight o'clock is our breakfast hour, Those wittles they do soon devour; Oh! dear me, how they eat and stuff, Lave off with less than half enough. Nine o'clock you mount the mill, That you mayn't cramp from settin' still. If that be ever so against your will, You must mount on the traaedin' mill. There is a turnkey that you'll find He is a raskill most unkind. To rob poor prisoners he is that man, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... think everything is quiet another comes. I am quite alone at this minute, but don't you go for to worry; they'll be back soon and then perhaps I'll get a bit of something. It's pretty hard where I am sitting and I can't write you much of a letter, what with the cramp in my legs and the noise and wondering how soon the Sergeant will come and tell us to move up nearer our part of the line. I can see some of the line, not our bit, from where I am sitting. It's shining just lovely in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... will do: I may have overlooked a bird or two. Where are the biscuits? Are you getting cramp Down by the water there—it ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... of medicines. It is particularly useful in confined habit of body, as also diarrhoea, bowel complaints, affections of the kidneys and bladder, such as stone or gravel; inflammatory irritation and cramp of the urethra, cramp of the kidneys and bladder, strictures, and hemorrhoids. This really invaluable remedy is employed with the most satisfactory result, not only in bronchial and pulmonary complaints, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... steps, marines came ashore for the mail, stewards for fruit and fish, Red Cross nurses to shop, tiny midshipmen to visit the movies, and the sailors and officers of the Russian, French, British, Italian, and Greek war-ships to stretch their legs in the park of the Tour Blanche, or to cramp them under a cafe table. Sometimes the ambulances blocked the quay and the wounded and frostbitten were lifted into the motorboats, and sometimes a squad of marines lined the landing stage, and as a coffin under a French or English flag was borne up the stone steps stood at salute. ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... that you have not the right to treat your coming self in this way. Consider! Wealth does not inevitably vulgarize. On the contrary, it takes you away from the necessity of associating with people calculated to depress and cramp your life. There are many points of view which I am sure you have not adequately considered. Take the case of our friend Professor Cowper, for instance. He is a poor man with a scientific hobby ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pinch and cramp myself to do so,' was his fatherly remark; 'but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there—a mere trifle, Mr Jonas—but I prize it as a store of value, I ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... delivered a speech on the encouraging prospects of France, and Lannes made an appropriate address on presenting to the Government the flags taken at Marengo. Two more followed; one from an aide de cramp of Massena, and the other from an aide de camp of Lecourbe; and after the distribution of some medals the First Consul ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to feel that I'm not dreaming," confided Eph, almost in a whisper. "Whee! but it's fine to be out on a craft so big that you don't get a cramp in your leg from walking! Say, do you know, Jack," he whispered, "I am almost crazy to see one of this ship's ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... on the sands, holding our bone-headed Press-agent on a leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert Callender, author of Fate's Footballs, which opens at the Beach Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her. See! He has her. He is bringing her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... be 'feard to say dere ain't nothing in voo-doo. Some puts a dime in de shoe to keep de voo-doo away, and some carries a buckeye in de pocket to keep off cramp and colic. Dey say a bone dey finds in de jawbone of a hog will make chillun teethe easy. When de slaves got sick, de whitefolks looked after 'em. De medicines for sickness was nearly all yerbs. Dey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... of millions: the first faint scientific intimations that man is an all-pervading spirit. Not a body confined to a point in space, but the vast soul, which the ego in most barbaric modes conspires in vain to cramp. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... sometimes quite impossible to say exactly what is the trouble with the patient, except that she is out of health. The following are some of the symptoms which may arise: Headache, dizziness, biliousness, sour stomach, indigestion, diarrhoea, piles, costiveness, itching of the private parts, cramp and colic of the bowels, palpitation of the heart, swelling of the limbs and abdomen, pains in the back and loins, paleness and ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... he could see. Then the cold began creeping, creeping, up his arm; first his wrist, then his arm to the elbow, then his arm to the shoulder; how cold it was! And soon it began to ache. Ugly little cramp-pains streamed up his finger, up his palm, up his arm, till they reached into his shoulder, and down the back of his neck. It seemed hours since the little brother went away. He felt very lonely, and the hurt in his arm grew and grew. He watched the road with all his eyes, but no one came ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... the school on Monday morning and found it not so hard as she had supposed. Miss Cramp welcomed her kindly, and put her through quite a thorough examination to decide her grade. The Darrowtown schools had been so good that Ruth was able to take a high place in this one, and the teacher seated her among the most advanced ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... one Dirzed, into her own service. This Dirzed was spoken of as a generally respected member of something called the Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated, presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last that's been ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... extracted from a Borneon wood and called cajeput oil in England, a very strong aromatic medicine. This mixture proved itself very useful. If the patients applied in good time it invariably gave relief to the cramp and pain in the stomach; if the disease had gone on to sickness it was more difficult to administer. Sometimes we followed it up with ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... family nor State could anything be undertaken without some reference to the religious authority, where the pax deorum was the one essential object of public and private life, a power might be developed apt one day not only to petrify religion and stultify its worshippers, but thereby also to cramp the energies of the community, acting as an obstacle to its development within its walls and without. Had Roman law remained entirely in the hands of this self-electing college, one of two things must have happened: either that college would have become purely secular in character, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave to bring you up to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... as I told you before," he exclaimed. "You will not sink, and it will keep them from getting the cramp. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mrs. Burke. He recounted to me the particulars of his sudden seizure when he spoke last, from the cramp in his stomach, owing to a draught of cold water which he drank in the midst of the heat of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... range of political, religious, social, and domestic relations, the attempt made by the founder of Islam to provide for all contingencies, and to fix every thing aforehand by rigid rule and scale, has availed to cramp and benumb the free activities of life and to paralyze the natural efforts of society at healthy growth, expansion, and reform. As an author already quoted has so well put it, "The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey it is to ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... are equal, except perhaps the chairman, who has two more pens in front of him and a much larger ash-tray. Mr. BEVIN and Sir ERIC GEDDES smile affably across at each other, and the PRIME MINISTER and Mr. CRAMP find out how much they have in common, such as love of poetry and pelargoniums. The mine-owner offers the miners' representative a cigarette, and the miners' representative says to the mine-owner, "Many thanks, old boy; but I'll have one of my own." And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... the summer of 1665. He seems to have gone ashore to see the French authorities. Perhaps he drank too strong a punch of rum and sugar—a drink very prejudicial in such a climate to one not used to it. Perhaps he took the yellow fever, or the coast cramp; the fact cannot now be known. At any rate he sickened, and died there, "before he could accomplish his desires"—"all things hereby remaining in suspense." One account, based on the hearsay of a sea-captain, says that Mansvelt was taken by the Spaniards, and brought to Porto ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... after sunset, but we rested awhile to stretch our limbs after the cramp brought on by the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... dread. They could swim all day, those little scamps, and seemed to have no fear. Once, during his boyhood, Sam Clemens swam across to the Illinois side, then turned and swam back again without landing, a distance of at least two miles as he had to go. He was seized with a cramp on the return trip. His legs became useless and he was obliged to make the ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... confined themselves thenceforward to silent honesty, except on rare occasions, when either an extreme outrage, or a happier inspiration, loosened their tongue. But a soul is now and then incarnated, whom indulgent nature has not afflicted with any cramp or frost, but who can speak the right word at the right moment, qualify the selfish and hypocritical act with its real name, and, without any loss of serenity, hold up the offence to the purest daylight. Such ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... who came her plight to see Splashed tears in cups of milk or tea; The room it grew so very damp Her limbs began to feel the cramp. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... Freedom, then, consist In musing with our faces toward the Past, While petty cares and crawling interests twist Their spider-threads about us, which at last Grow strong as iron chains, to cramp and bind In formal narrowness heart, soul and mind? 20 Freedom is re-created year by year, In hearts wide open on the Godward side, In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, In minds that sway the future ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was a round-faced and rather green boy, fell under the influences of a large, plump, and very talkative lady who made the portage just behind us. She so absorbed and fascinated the lad that he let the engine run itself into some cramp of piston or wheel. There was a sudden crunching sound and the propeller stopped. The boy minimized the accident, but the captain upon arrival told us it would be necessary to unload from the boat while the engine ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... [Pen-paper] pedagogy of to-day and in this country. Not only has the daily theme spread as infection, but the daily lesson is now extracted through the point of a pencil instead of from the mouth. The tongue rests and the curve of writer's cramp takes a sharp turn upward, as if we were making scribes, reporters, and proof-readers. In some schools, teachers seem to be conducting correspondence classes with their own pupils. It all makes excellent busy work, keeps the pupils ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... began to give unequivocal signs of being unwell. He began to writhe in a most lamentable fashion, either with cramp in his stomach or in his limbs; and Uncle Prudent, thinking it his duty to put an end to these gymnastics, cut the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... speaking, wondering if she was referring to the tub. But I could feel my heart contract, like a leg-muscle with a cramp in it. And we stood there, face to face, under the flat prairie sunlight, ridiculously like two cockerels silently ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... wreath for the head"—Vicia Caroliniana—Vetch: Decoction drunk for dyspepsia and pains in the back, and rubbed on stomach for cramp; also rubbed on ball-players after scratching, to render their muscles tough, and used in the same way after scratching in the disease referred to under [^u][n]nagei, in which one side becomes black ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... there is some variety of opinion among medical men. A few hold that they cramp the feet, and prevent children from learning to walk as early as they otherwise would. If it were best for children that they should learn to walk as early as possible, the last objection might have weight. But it seems to me not at all desirable ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... several times in the same town where I have been, we remain strangers. At this time my father died suddenly. Last spring four suicides of friends in so many weeks had a very bad effect on my nerves. I am now in Berlin in better spirits, but the cramp continues ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to be illustrated by the ruin of His creation. One cannot help deploring that the great mass of religious books were not consigned to the flames before they were permitted to reach the eyes of the public. Books which exhibit Christianity and its claims with insipid feebleness, or which cramp its majesty into an artificial form at once distorted and mean, must grievously injure its influence. An intelligent Christian cannot look into such works without feeling thankful that they were not the books from which he got his conceptions ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... girth, girdle, cestus^, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [U.S.], cinch [U.S.], lariat, legadero^, oxreim^; suspenders. pin, corking pin, nail, brad, tack, skewer, staple, corrugated fastener; clamp, U-clamp, C-clamp; cramp, cramp iron; ratchet, detent, larigo^, pawl; terret^, treenail, screw, button, buckle; clasp, hasp, hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet^, tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast^, padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel^, stake, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Ritchey in the Gap is taken with a very severe attack of cramp colic. I relieve him speedily and effectually by means of active treatment. I found him in a state of almost indescribable distress from the acute pains he had. I decided very quickly, after a brief examination, that the cause of his trouble lay in a spasmodic contraction of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate, and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a declaration are permanent, afflicting, and irreparable. They are in constant progression from bad ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Normans crossed their not far distant Channel, or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by the Druids. Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman, generation after generation, each with its passing form of political faith: the England of traditional eld, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... says, he administered the juice of this life-giving plant to his fair lady-love, who "arose and blessed the bestower for the return of health." Water in which peas have been boiled is given for measles, and a Lincolnshire recipe for cramp is cork worn on the person. A popular cure for ringworm in Scotland is a decoction of sun-spurge (Euphorbia helioscopia), or, as it is locally termed, "mare's milk." In the West of England to bite the first fern seen in spring ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... be moulded into a bridge, and, being slow to cramp itself correctly, though pliant as a politician's conscience, the operation of folding it together had to be many times repeated. Next, shots must be made for her, she retaining her hold of the cue, to get into the way of it. Then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... peg-box diminishes rapidly in width under the volute. They must therefore be cut more or less wedge like, according to the modelling or proportion of the parts, so that when placed on, the screwing of the cramp will be direct. When this is done to satisfaction, the usual process advised for the glueing may be proceeded with, and being carefully seen to be in proper order, the cramp with pads against the outside cheeks of the peg-box ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... contracted at a poisonous little place, as they had afterwards found out, that they had taken for a summer; the other, the flower of the flock, a middy on the Britannia, dreadfully drowned, and not even by an accident at sea, but by cramp, unrescued, while bathing, too late in the autumn, in a wretched little river during a holiday visit to the home of a shipmate. Then Marian's unnatural marriage, in itself a kind of spiritless turning ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... of the hutch to smell very sour and become injurious to the health of the ferret, especially where four or five are kept together, as they are of a very perspiring nature. Always give them plenty of room to run about when you can; if you don't they are likely to take cramp. ...
— Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher - After 25 Years' Experience • Ike Matthews
... Port Mahon, October 15, 1799, Lord Nelson also details his late proceedings and intentions with regard to Malta; which, if not speedily forced to surrender, will call for the attention of more ships than he may have the power of placing there, and necessarily cramp other requisite services. The Chichester storeship, Captain Stevens, his lordship observes, is going with the officers of the Leander to Corfu, having now the Russian admiral's order for that ship's delivery; and he has no doubt that Captain Stevens, who appears an excellent seaman, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... forced upon the young. I would merely have each one educated according to his probable situation in life; and be taught that whatever is his duty, is honorable; and that no merely external circumstance can in reality injure true dignity of character. I would not cramp a boy's energies by compelling him always to cut wood, or draw water; but I would teach him not to be ashamed, should his companions happen to find him doing either one or the other. A few days since, I asked a grocer's lad to bring home some articles I had just purchased at his master's. ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... about 'em here, Mas'r Harry," said Tom in a whisper. "We don't know but what there's horrible ones living in these dreadful waters. That there cramp taking me in the leg like that made me feel as if one had got hold of me. I'm a horrible coward, Mas'r Harry, ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... him to copying circular letters. We used to send out a raft of them to the trade. That was just before the general adoption of typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. But Jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's cramp, and began nosing around again. The first thing I knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting machine on to me, and he kept them pounding away until they had made me give them a trial. Then it was all up with Mister Jim's job again. I raised ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... her pride. And sometimes, she dashed into flames to rescue a forgotten child; or she dived into the canal locks and supported a boy who was seized with cramp; or she swept up a toddling infant from the feet of a runaway horse: always imaginatively, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... singing lessons. Do you understand? It's bad enough to have her battering away at that piano like she had some grudge against it, and to have her visitors wriggle around and fidget and look miserable, as if they had cramp colic, while you make her play for them and have them get up and lie, and ask what it was, and say how beautiful it is, and steep their souls in falsehood and hypocrisy all on account of you. You'll have enough sins to answer for, old woman, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... o'er a barren spot; Whilst in the vale of Ignorance below, Folly and Vice to rank luxuriance grow; 10 Honours and wealth pour in on every side, And proud Preferment rolls her golden tide. O'er crabbed authors life's gay prime to waste, To cramp wild genius in the chains of taste, To bear the slavish drudgery of schools, And tamely stoop to every pedant's rules; For seven long years debarr'd of liberal ease, To plod in college trammels to degrees; Beneath the weight of solemn toys to groan, Sleep over books, and leave mankind ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the very tricks, of Threadneedle Street, you— Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Pippa Passes, in the last stanzas of Pacchiarotto, and in the Epilogue to the same volume. He insisted that what the critics meant by melody was a childish jingle of rimes like Mother Goose. Referring to Sordello, he makes the Second Student in Pippa Passes remark, "Instead of cramp couplets, each like a knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both classically and intelligibly.... One strip Cools your lip.... One bottle Clears your throttle." In Pacchiarotto, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... science and civilization is now terminated; but Christianity also had its middle age, and this, perhaps, is not yet fully terminated. There is still a remainder of the old spell, even the spell of human authority, and by which a certain cramp or confinement has been laid on the genius of Christianity. We cannot doubt that the time of its complete emancipation is coming, when it shall break loose from the imprisonment in which it is held; but meanwhile there is, as it were, a stricture upon it, not yet wholly removed, and in ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... boat that had ever climbed that current, I learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my triumph early and in one big chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful for that ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... a thump. Here was a chance for Dan; a word from her was all that was needed to make his path an easy one. Had she a right to withhold that word,—to cramp and hinder him? She did not speak for a good many seconds; she simply plied her needle with more and more diligence, while her breath came fast and unevenly. Suddenly a furious blush went mounting up into ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... poles, and while two remained in the boat to hold it off the rocks, the others carried my luggage to Atuona. I took the lead in a drizzling rain, carrying the light, mighty glad to stretch my legs after more than a dozen hours of cramp. Passing the house of the chief-of-police, I heard laughter and the clink of glasses. Bauda halted me with a leveled revolver, thinking we were a rum-smuggling gang. That brave African soldier was ever dramatic, and D'Artagnan could not have struck a finer attitude as he thrust ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... trowsers, I crept through the little window, and lowering myself gently by the rattlin of my hammock, descended slowly and noiselessly into the sea. I hung on thus for a couple of seconds, half fearing the attempt, and irresolute of purpose. Should strength fail, or even a cramp seize me, I must be lost, and none would ever know in what an enterprise I had perished. It would be set down as a mere attempt at escape. This notion almost staggered my resolution, but only for a second ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... later Oliver had splashed up to them, shouting "A rescue! A rescue! Guests Drown While Host Looks On Smilingly! What's the matter, Ted, you look as if you wanted to turn into a submarine? Got cramp?" ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... possessed me, overcoming me in spite of myself. Feverish impatience and resistance seemed futile, and in my resignation I began to realise that to avert cramp and disablement from cold—for a chill, moist breeze from the ravine played continuously on me—some sort of exercise must ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... and other large leaves, and we, of course, ate them with our fingers. Good as the food undoubtedly was, I was always glad when the meal was over, as it is very far from comfortable to sit with your legs doubled up under you. Afterwards I could hardly stand up straight, owing to cramp. I found it especially trying in Samoa, where one had to sit in this manner for hours during feasts, "kava"-drinking and "siva-sivas" (dances). Sometimes a glistening damsel would fan us with a large fan made out of the leaf of a fan palm, [6] which at times got rather in the ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... growing child should be free to move easily in his clothing; nothing should cramp their growth or movement; there should be nothing tight, nothing fitting closely to the body, no belts of any kind. The French style of dress, uncomfortable and unhealthy for a man, is especially bad for children. The stagnant humours, whose circulation ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it worked a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs this way when he was ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... help doubting the truth of the woman's statement unless she came to his assistance with food. Although almost starving, he was afraid to call for dinner lest she should ask him for some money in advance, but at that moment a cramp seized him, and turning pale he had to lean over the table to suppress the moan which rose ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... in their action, be free from the disturbance of uncontrolled breath action below them, or the hindrance due to misdirected effort above them. To direct consciousness to the vocal cords is to cramp them and prevent that free vibration and that perfect relaxation of the throat without which pure tone and true pitch ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... in my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... a rule, so moderate in drinking that the wine he had taken, supplemented by his misery, made him feel physically ill. He shuddered with cold as he dived into the water, and as he swam out he felt, for the first time in his life, a slight twinge of cramp. At another time he would have been somewhat alarmed, for the strongest swimmer is absolutely helpless under an attack of cramp, but this morning he was indifferent, and the thought struck him that it would be well for him if he flung up his ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... outrageously, that they were provoked to throw him into the Rhone, where he had nearly perished. But this is an inaccurate account of the accident which actually befell him. He was seized with the cramp when bathing in the river. His comrades saved him with difficulty, but his danger ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... dress, and eat, and follow fashion, though it may be at the risk of debt, ruin, and misery; living not so much according to our means, as according to the superstitious observances of our class. Though we may speak contemptuously of the Indians who flatten their heads, and of the Chinese who cramp their toes, we have only to look at the deformities of fashion amongst ourselves, to see that the reign of "Mrs. Grundy" ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the "Printed Rules for Emergencies," which will be of great use, as I should be apt to forget which to do for which. I mean I should be quite likely to do for burns and scalds what I ought to do for cramp. And when a person is choking, I might sponge from head to foot, which is what I ought to do to ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... property in their own hands, to be used for their own profit. Each State will then support its own government and contribute its due share toward the support of the General Government. There would be no surplus to cramp and lessen the resources of individual wealth and enterprise, and the banks would be left to their ordinary means. Whatever agitations and fluctuations might arise from our unfortunate paper system, they could never be attributed, justly or unjustly, to the action of the Federal Government. There ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous function of reiterating ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... the richer classes are as notoriously better than those of the poorer classes as the physique and looks of the remote country are superior to those of crowded towns. Where conditions are free from cramp, poor air, poor food, and herd-life, English physique quite holds its own ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... and put my head between my knees, and groaned. Then I straightened out my right leg and rubbed it, because a cramp was ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Muscles.—Outdoor games give the best form of exercise. Tennis, baseball, cricket, rowing, and swimming are sports which bring nearly all the muscles into use. Every boy and girl should learn to swim. It is dangerous to go swimming alone or to swim in deep water. Cramp may seize the muscles at any time, so that the limbs cannot be moved. Hundreds of persons are drowned every year by venturing in ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... said Scott; 'thrice a day we will feed them'; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... to be deliberately rude with her parent, would refuse to fetch and carry for her, was quickly bored over any little personal service performed for her, and did her best in every way to cramp the widow's ever freshly ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Christ, he felt far more strongly than did the Jews of Jerusalem, with their provincial horizon, how fatal such conditions as they meant to impose would be to the success of Christianity outside Judaea. The proud Romans, the highminded Greeks, would never have consented to be circumcised and to cramp their life within the narrow limits of Jewish tradition; a religion hampered with such conditions could never have become the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... is unused. Bad company is that which produces this atrophy of the finer powers; and it is strange to see how soon the deadly process of shrinkage sets in. The awful thing to think of is that the cramp may insensibly be set in action by a company which, as I have said, is composed of rather estimable people. Who can forget Lydgate in "Middlemarch"? There is a type drawn by a woman of transcendent genius; and the type represents only too many human wrecks. Lydgate was thrown into ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of this thing and that, and by and by they drove along the river, and Sam Clemens pointed out the place where he swam it and was taken with a cramp on the return swim, and believed for a while that his career was about ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... decision was taken, he set off towards the Old Tiverton Road, walking at great speed, flourishing his stick—symptoms of the nervous cramp (so to speak) which he was dispelling. He reached the house, and his hand was on the bell, when an unexpected opening of the door presented Louis Warricombe just coming forth for a walk. They exchanged amiabilities, and Louis made known that his father and mother ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... springing expectation that might have started to life at the words of Simon Verstage. The hostess cast a glance at Mehetabel, and saw that her face was quivering, that all color had gone out of her cheeks, that her hands were contracted as with the cramp. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... can be briefly stated. Browning's father was a gentleman of wealth and of original character, who allowed the striking individuality of his son Robert to develop itself in a natural way instead of attempting to cramp him into the mould of the other young Englishmen of his rank and time. At an early age he went to Italy, where he passed several years in diligent study of the institutions and art of that favored land as well as of her literature both ancient and modern. Young Browning had a great passion ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... doctor. As a matter of fact, Mawruss, Gladstein was one of them fellers which he ain't got a relation in the world. Mrs. Gladstein neither, except im Russland. That's the way it goes, Mawruss. A feller which he has got so many cousins and uncles that he gets writer's cramp already indorsing accommodation paper for 'em, understand me, lives to be an old man yet, and all the time his relations and his wife's relations is piling up on him; while a man like Gladstein which you could really say ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... where these poor timbers are? What though the crumbling walls turn dust and loam— I shall have left them for a larger home. What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot, When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I'll immerse My long-cramp'd spirit in the universe. Through uncomputed silences of space I shall yearn upward to the leaning Face. The ancient heavens will roll aside for me, As Moses monarch'd the dividing sea. This body is my house—it is not I. Triumphant in this ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... having equally various causes. One of these causes, giving rise to a comparatively simple form of the disease, is cramp of the ring-muscle of the windpipe, so contracting the windpipe that breathing is rendered difficult. A "wheeze" is heard in breathing, though there is no bronchitis or lung trouble present. The cause of this cramp is an irritation of the ring-muscle's ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... a very confused idea of what had happened. He had left Vernon without any breakfast, seized every now and then with hopeless despair and raging pangs which had driven him to munch the leaves of the hedges as he tramped along. A prey to cramp and fright, his body bent, his sight dimmed, and his feet sore, he had continued his weary march, ever drawn onwards in a semi-unconscious state by a vision of Paris, which, far, far away, beyond the horizon, seemed to be summoning him and waiting ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... "We decided that we'd go swimming with the lungs. Then we'd come up right next to the houseboat, and we'd be so surprised! Of course the people would come out to see us, then we'd say I had a cramp, and could we ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... snowshoes, measuring off half a mile, or a mile, and then beginning over again until at last the achievement of five hundred steps seemed to take an immeasurable length of time and great effort. Like the ache of a tooth came the first warning of snowshoe cramp in his legs. In the black night he grinned. He knew what it meant—a warning as deadly as swimmer's cramp in deep water. If he continued much longer he would be crawling ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... same were but true of the stomach," sighed Des Esseintes, racked by a cramp which instantly and sharply brought back his mind, that had roved far off, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... exhausted by his previous struggles and the extreme violence with which he had been dragged hither and thither in his passage from the wrecked ship's cuddy to the cave. He was bruised and aching in every joint of his body, and was, furthermore, suffering severely from cramp due to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood |
