"Stiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gave a farewell glance about my little-used library. It was then about the fifth hour. Agathemer gazing rather outside at the landscape than inside at the room remained frozen stiff, staring northward ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... whip her at all wuz she wuz cross to him. They had nine little children, she thought two or three children would be about all one woman could bring up well by hand, when that hand wuz so stiff and sore ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... goodman Theophilus buried; he was the best Nutcracker that ever dwelt in Enfield. Well, tis 9. a clock, tis time to ring curfew. Lord bless us, what a white thing is that in the Church porch! O Lord, my legs are too weak for my body, my hair is too stiff for my night-cap, my heart fails; this is the ghost of Theophilus. O Lord, it follows me! I cannot say my prayers, and one would give me a thousand pound. Good spirit, I have bowled and drunk and followed the hounds with you a thousand times, though I have not the ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... where I was layin' it was an almighty hard job to throw that loop around the axe handle, an' I reckon I must 'a' tried twenty times before I finally made to throw it over. Then I started pullin' easy-like on the belt to tighten the loop, so it would hold on the slippery handle. The belt was a leetle stiff, though, an' the loop wouldn't tighten very close. When I tried to pull in on it, the axe stuck in the crust that covered the softer snow underneath, an' the belt slipped ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... suddenly exclaimed Jimmy. "Well only get lame and stiff staying here, I feel as if I'd been rolled down hill in a ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... place, and in spite of the fact that his instrument is prose, the lyric quality of many a passage of Ren was as unmistakable as it was new. But the lyric impulse could not at once shake off literary tradition. It needed to learn a new language, one more direct and personal, one less stiff with the starch of propriety and elegance. The more spontaneous and genuine it became, the closer it approached this language. DELAVIGNE won great applause by his Messniennes (1815-19), but the lyric impulse was not strong enough ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... and bowed in his stiff affected way. But Varney's eyes had already gone on to Miss Carstairs, and he did not return that greeting. Seeing the little candidate lift his hat, her look followed his, and so her ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was sent for. Lombardi talked with me awhile first. He explained by means of several illustrations, that I must not stand cold and stiff in the middle of the stage, while I sang nice, sweet tones. No, I must let out my voice, I must throw myself into the part, I must be alive to it—must live it and in it. In short, I must act as ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... stately form, his black clerical garments, his sedate step and thoughtful mien added to the impressive effect of his appearance. His beauty, however, was marred by two serious defects. The lower half of his right ear had been torn away and his left arm was stiff at the elbow ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Sterility senfrukteco. Sterling vera. Stern (of ship) posta parto. Stern severega. Stertorous stertora. Stew boleti. Steward (of ship) sxipintendanto. Steward intendanto. Stick bastono. Stick glui. Stick bills afisxi. Sticky gluanta. Stiff rigida. Stiff neck koldoloro. Stifle sufoki. Stigma (bot.) rostreto. Stigma velkeco, malhonoreco. Stigmata vundpostsignoj. Stigmatise kalumnii, malhonori. Still (distilling) distililo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... from this determination, Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and they proceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; and the way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden by which they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition. After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; and having knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning), sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and roused a surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... himself, he was aware that a tall, lanky cowboy in chaps, woollen shirt, and stiff, broad-brimmed hat was pounding his cayuse over the head ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... but one means of egress—through the door by which Mr. Percy had entered. This door was near the angle of the room; so near that, as it swung inward, it almost grazed against a huge high-backed chair, stiff and grim, but reckoned among the elegant pieces of furniture that are always, or nearly always, uncomfortable. This chair occupied the angle, and behind its capacious back was comfortable room for one or two persons, should they fancy occupying a position ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and walked inland through the thin forest for a little way, stumbling often, but growing stronger and less stiff as I went, though I must needs draw my belt tight to stay the pangs of hunger, seeing that one loaf is not overmuch for such a voyage and such stern work as mine had been, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... he said musingly, "but until now I never realized how stiff and unreal the daub is. Shall I finish ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... while Victor, his pencil reluctantly slackening and his glance lingeringly rising from the paper, came back to sense of his surroundings. He stared at her blankly, then colored a little. He rose—stiff, for ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... altogether of that desire for pity and condolence, and that humility, which we often find in adversity. As then we esteem those persons vain and without sense who in walking hold themselves very erect and with a stiff neck, yet in boxing or fighting we commend such as hold themselves up and alert, so the man struggling with adversity, who stands up straight against his fate, "in fighting posture like some boxer,"[777] and instead ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... it on him, mother, tho' he's terrible unresigned to it; an' I've given him a stiff dose o' Jamaica Ginger. We can tell pretty soon whether he can take ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ascetics, and this is not an ascetic age," he said at length, with a half-laugh at himself for his stiff speech. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... later, he stood with Mrs. Scott, her bright young daughter and Trudy in Mr. Conover's livery-stable, he kept a stiff upper lip and waited for what ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... widow, aged between thirty and forty years, of a jaundiced complexion, and a piercing and malicious aspect. In her efforts to hide the inequality of her legs, she walked with a stiff and awkward air; and, wishing to be thought a wit, she increased her natural dullness by a ceaseless flow of small talk. I persisted in behaving towards her with a great air of respect, and one day she said that, having seen ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... followed by his manager. He was dressed in dimity; and his stiff figure and mutton-chop whiskers gave him at the same time the air of a magistrate and a dandy. Even when he was speaking, his features did not ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... feeling, now that his burst of anger had passed away, very tired of things in general, and of himself in particular. It was too dreadful, he thought, to be kept in bed on a fine day when he was quite well, only stiff and aching all over. Outside the air was balmy and still. The garden was ablaze with late dahlias, hollyhocks, and asters; and down by the tool-shed Mistress Pussy and her family would be contentedly sunning themselves beside the boxwood border—the close-clipped boxwood border, which ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... antiquity. The black figures were occasionally painted over in white or violet. These vessels are mostly small and somewhat compressed in form; they are surrounded with parallel stripes of pictures of animals, plants, fabulous beings, or arabesques. The drawings show an antiquated stiff type, similar to those on the vessels recently discovered at Nineveh and Babylon, whence the influence of Oriental on Greek art may be inferred. This archaic style, like the strictly hieratic style in sculpture, was retained together with a freer treatment at a more ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... you so stiff with me? You hardly look at me, and you touch me as if I were a piece of dirt. Supposing I take a brace and we start over, somewhere else? I am tired of knocking round. Come over and kiss ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... learn the cat to the kirn,' as they say in the North. But that's not all; a man, to get on, must win respect from those who are to jostle him hereafter, and it's good policy to show those roystering youngsters that Nick Alwyn, stiff and steady though he be, has the old English metal in him, if it comes to a pinch; it's a lesson to yon lords too, save your quality, if they ever wish to ride roughshod over our guilds and companies. But eno' of me.—Drawer, another stoup of the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saw, God bless 'em. Their third son, Julien, is in a regiment in the command of Longstreet, and when I look at him I see both his father and his mother, at whose wedding I danced again for a whole day and night. But now, Leonidas, I fear that my knees are growing a little stiff, and think ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to pray, 'Our Father, forgive us our trespasses.' Now, that we may have daily forgiveness for our daily sins and trespasses, mercy and goodness must follow us; or as Moses has it, 'And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord! let my Lord, I pray thee, go amongst us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance' (Exo 34:9). Join to this that prayer of his, which you find in Numbers: 'Now I beseech thee let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hurried on to the gate of my cottage and heaved a great sigh of relief when I heard the reassuring bang of the door as I closed it behind me? Coates, my batman, had turned in, having placed a cold repast upon the table in the little dining-room; but although I required nothing to eat I partook of a stiff whisky and soda, idly glancing at two or three letters ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... quickly from this phantom than from the last, and, while she did so, called out his name, and stepped to his side, stooping down and even touching him. He was breathing, though he was very cold and stiff, and she did not rouse him. Oh, Joanna was very thankful! But what should she do next? Life must be very faint, and frozen in the muscular, active young man. He had loitered at his sport till the dusk; he had been bewildered ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... through the crowd, and in her happiness painful to look upon. There was a light of wonder in her eyes and her lids trembled, and her otherwise wan little face was flushed. She wore a muslin dress, conspicuously white, and a stiff little veil coming to her shoulders. There were five pink paper roses twisted in the veil, and eleven bright green rose leaves. There were new white cotton gloves upon her hands, and as she stood staring about ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... broken. The stiff writing-paper of the outer cover revealed a second cover of stiff writing-paper precisely similar to the first; but on this last there was no superscription. It was tied round with fine white twine. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Cresswell coaches were wheeling along with precious burdens. In the first carriage were Mrs. Grey and Mrs. Vanderpool, Mr. Cresswell and Miss Taylor. Mrs. Vanderpool was lolling luxuriously, but Mrs. Grey was a little stiff from long travel and sat upright. Mr. Cresswell looked clean-cut and handsome, and Miss Taylor seemed complacent and responsible. The dying of the day soothed them all insensibly. Groups of dark little children passed them as they ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... as if to say: 'Ah ha! beat that who can!' But notwithstanding his merry look, at this last remark his face grew long; and with a melancholy shake of his head, he pointed to his hat which hung on a peg above him, and was swathed in a broad band of crape, terminating in two stiff skirts projecting from it like a rudder, and giving it the appearance of a corpulent butterfly in mourning, at roost ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... figure was gone, and though her complexion was as white and pure as marble, it denoted perfect health. With John Jr. she was still the favorite sister, the one whom he loved the best. "Carrie was too stiff and proud," he said, and though when he met her in New Haven, after a year's absence, his greeting was kind and brotherly, he soon turned from her to Anna and Nellie, utterly neglecting Mabel, who turned away to her chamber to cry, because ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... losing himself, going back, wandering aimlessly. He was at the end of his tether. For the last time he screwed up his will that was so near to breaking-point to climb up the steep alleys, and the stairs which went to the top of a stiff little hill, closely overbuilt with houses round a gloomy church. There were sixty red stone steps in threes and sixes. Between each little flight of steps was a narrow platform for the door of a house. On each platform Christophe stopped ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... stiff-backed chair he had been occupying for the last half hour, and took Blue Bonnet's hand. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... be expecting there? Probably some huge new animal for the Museum which has been caught somewhere for the King, for yonder stiff wearer of a laurel crown, who throws his head back as though he would like to eat the Olympians and take the King for a luncheon into the bargain, is Straton, the denier of the gods, and the little man with the bullethead is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... right down to business—if we want to beat Rockville," said Dave, to the others. "I understand they put up a stiff game with Elmwood. If we are beaten, all the fellows who were put off the eleven will have the laugh ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... JOHNSON. 'It must have come by inspiration. A thousand, nay, a million of children could not invent a language. While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a language; by the time that there is understanding enough, the organs are become stiff. We know that after a certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new language. No foreigner, who comes to England when advanced in life, ever pronounces English tolerably well; at least such instances are very rare. When I maintain that language must have come by inspiration, I do not mean that inspiration ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... began to fall and open all over the ship, the top-sails were mast-headed, and, as I looked down from the fore-top-mast cross-trees, where I remained to overhaul the clew-lines, I saw that the ship was falling off, and that her sails were filling with a stiff north-west breeze. Just as my whole being was entranced with the rapture of being under-way for Canton, which was then called the Indies, Rupert called out to me from the top. Ha was pointing at some object on the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... lived in excellent style in Washington, was very hospitable to his acquaintances and friends, whom he frequently entertained at his well-spread table, and was noted for that love of horses which has almost become a passion with Englishmen. To the public in general the deceased wore that stiff and formal appearance which characterizes the class of his countrymen to which he belonged, but in private life he is said to have been ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... free will Miss Patricia at this moment rose from her stiff chair and came and sat on the edge of the bed facing the younger woman. She showed no sign of relaxing either physically or mentally, or of any softening in her rigid point ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... its immediate result. The 'back bowed down always' for eighteen weary years is not too stiff to be made straight at once. The Christ-given power obliterates all traces of the past evil. Where He is the physician, there is no period of gradual convalescence, but 'the thing is done suddenly'; and, though in the spiritual realm, there still hang about pardoned men remains of forgiven sin, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... junk-bottle. This tree has the property of storing water in its hollow trunk,—a well-known fact, which has often proved a providential supply for thirsty travellers in a country so liable to severe drought. Here, also, we see the correa, with its stiff stem and prickly leaves, bearing a curious string of delicate, pendulous flowers, red, orange, and white, not unlike the fuchsia in form. The South Sea myrtle is especially attractive, appearing when in flower with round clustering ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... sleet blew every way,—into your eyes, down your neck, in like a knife into your cheeks. I could feel the snow crunching in under the runners, crisp, turned to ice in a minute. I reached out to give Bess a cut on the neck, and the sleeve of my coat was stiff as pasteboard before I ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of food. Knee-deep in the Man Sagar Lake, grey cranes sought their meat from God; every tint and curve of them repeated in the quiet water. And there, beside a ruined shrine, two dead cactus bushes, with their stiff distorted limbs, made Roy think suddenly of two dead Germans he had come upon once—killed so swiftly that they still retained, in death, the ghastly semblance of life. Why the devil couldn't a man be rid of them? Dead Germans were ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... dis,—where am I—in the name of goodness where am I? [Gazing around.] On the Catskill Mountains, by all that's miraculous! Egad! my rib will play the very devil with me for stopping out all night. There will be a fine peal sounded when I get home. [Rises.](135) How confoundedly stiff and sore my joints do feel; surely I must have been sleeping for a pretty long time! Asleep! [no;](136) I was awake and enjoying myself with as jolly a rum set of codgers as ever helped to toom out a keg of Hollands. I danced, and ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... the concierge, who, being a little stiff with age, had sent an attendant round with us, instead of accompanying us in person, he showed us a picture of Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes, who was once a prisoner here. On a table, beneath the picture, stood a little ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tease a porcupine, For reasons I'll relate, He's like a cushion full of pins That stand out stiff and straight. And if you stand too close I know He'll stick one in ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... attempts to lift five hundred pounds he failed, and that he should never try it again. This same gymnast owns a fine horse. Ask him to lend that horse to draw before a cart and he will refuse, because such labor would make the animal stiff, and unfit him for light, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... thoroughly accomplished during the exercise itself, as the muscular and other tissues are virtually flushed out owing to the more fluid character of the blood and its more ready and perfect circulation through all parts. One who feels stiff from severe exercise, or finds his tissues sore for other reasons, should be able to overcome this stiffness and gain a sense of refreshment through ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... went over the plain in the burning sun Wargrave looked back to where the striped body was borne along with stiff, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... merry, and Mrs. Batelier a very discreet woman, but mighty fond in the stories she tells of her son Will. After dinner, Mr. Spong and I to my closet, there to try my instrument Parallelogram, which do mighty well, to my full content; but only a little stiff, as being new. Thence, taking leave of my guests, he and I and W. Hewer to White Hall, and there parting with Spong, a man that I mightily love for his plainness and ingenuity, I into the Court, and there up and down and spoke with my Lords Bellassis ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... applied to her, the young lady, who aspires to be a good rider, should, even from her first lesson in the art, strive to obtain a proper deportment on the saddle. She ought to be correct, without seeming stiff or formal: and easy, without appearing slovenly. The position we have described, subject to occasional variations, will be found, by experience, to be the most natural and graceful mode of sitting a horse:—it is ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... amphitheatre in which fire and water, the two great forces which have made our planet what it is, still languidly contend where formerly they struggled desperately for supremacy. But the Grand Canon of Arizona is Nature wounded unto death, and lying stiff and ghastly with a gash, two hundred miles in length and a mile in depth, in her bared breast, from which is flowing fast a stream of life-blood ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... he found himself stiff from lying long in a cramped position. His face burned from the bites of the mosquitoes, which still hung in swarms about him, ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stone, so rough-hewn here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the charm of this incompleteness. Well! That incompleteness is Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of etherealising pure form, of relieving its stiff realism, and communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. It was a characteristic too which fell in with his peculiar temper and mode of living, his disappointments and hesitations. And it was in reality perfect finish. In this way he combines the utmost amount of passion ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... "A stiff job, son," muttered Denver. "I told you these birds wouldn't sleep with more'n one eye; and they's a few ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Bertha was unusually clever, lively and charming; she was not stiff or prim, she was very exceptional, but distinctly English, and he admired her more than all the Parisiennes in the world. Besides, he thought, one got very tired of them. When they were bourgeoises they were so extremely bourgeoises; when they were smart they were so ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... perpetually; they grow more and more comic, as a tragedy should grow more and more tragic. The rack, tragic or comic, goes round until something breaks inside a man. In tragedy it is his heart, or perhaps his stiff neck. In farce I do not quite know what it is—perhaps his funny-bone is dislocated; perhaps his skull is slightly cracked." Mark Twain's mountainous humour, of this early type, never contains the ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... not complain with words; but their red eyes and painful pace told all the story. If we came to rivulets, they used to lie upon their bellies, along the margins, with their heads in the flowing water. The nags were so stiff and hot, that, when they were reined into creeks, they refused to go forward, and my brown animal once dropped upon his knees, and quietly surveyed me, as I pitched upon my hands, floundering in the pool. I remember a stone dairy, such as are found upon Pennsylvania grazing ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... I made the campaign to Syria. Food and drink I had to carry on my back, I was bent down with weight as an ass is bent. My neck became stiff, like an ass's neck, and the joints of my back swelled. I drank rotten water, I was like a captive bird in the face of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to the dead man again. He put his big, warm hand with a curiously suggestive movement—a movement somehow suggesting protection—upon the stiff, clasped fingers. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... preliminary stage of Christianity, and the Jews as the remnant of a people who, as a punishment for slaying the Saviour of the world, had been scattered all over the earth. The present-day Israelites were represented as people who, urged by a stiff-necked wilfulness and obstinacy and almost incomprehensible callousness, clung to the obsolete religious ideal of the stern God in opposition to the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... Rogaciano were not much tired; I was somewhat tired, but was perfectly able to go for several hours more if I did not try to go too fast; and we three walked on to the river, reaching it about half past four, after eleven hours' stiff walking with nothing to eat. We were soon on the boat. A relief party went back for the two men under the tree, and soon after it reached them Kermit also turned up with his hounds and his camaradas trailing wearily behind him. He had followed the ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... you, Mrs. Cheeseman," answered Polly, holding herself very stiff; "but I didn't come here to set down, nor to talk neither. But I'm glad you're here, because you'll be a witness to what I say. I've come to give Mrs. Bubb a week's notice. She's often enough told me that she wants to keep her house respectable, and I'm sure she'll be glad to get rid of people ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... his coat. The bear's claws had penetrated through the skin, and had scored three gashes on his shoulder. But these, Luka said, were of no great depth, and beyond making his arm stiff for paddling for a day ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... he throws a ball, Just like a boy, with the curves an' all, An' he knows the kids by their first names, too, An' says they're just like the boys he knew. Some of the fellers are scared plumb stiff When their fathers are near 'em an' act as if They wuz doing wrong if they made a noise, But my pa seems to ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... we were too stiff and sore to ride farther, and we bivouacked on the trail beside a stream. I had no desire for further sleep, and I sat at the foot of a tree smoking and thinking. I had often "camped out" as a boy, and at West Point with the battalion, but I had never before felt so far away from civilization ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... corduroyed with branches of trees. At one time bad roads caused a halt of two or three weeks. Fuel was not always abundant, and after a cold night it was no unusual thing to find wet garments and bedding frozen stiff in the morning. Here is an extract from Orson Pratt's diary:— "April 9. The rain poured down in torrents. With great exertion a part of the camp were enabled to get about six miles, while others were stuck fast in the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... blow to the case against the accused. It was a pretty stiff one, you will admit. Already it had begun to collapse like a house of cards. Still, there was the assignation, and the undisputed meeting between Smethurst and Kershaw, and those two and a half hours of a foggy ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... and hiss, like a goose with a flock of goslins. I wonder what on airth Pugwash was a-thinkin' on, when he signed articles of partnership with that 'ere woman; she's not a bad-lookin' piece of furniture neither, and it's a proper pity sich a clever woman should carry such a stiff upper lip—she reminds me of our old minister ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of stiff scrambling I sat down to rest awhile, leaving the men to spy the neighbourhood. Of course they had to find something, so this time they found a "serow"—a somewhat scarce beast. I awaited the coming of the serow at various coigns of vantage where they said it was bound to pass, while the four ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to it that he could not hold on any longer. On went the boat, the poor Tin-soldier keeping himself as stiff as he could: no one should say of him afterwards that he had flinched. The boat whirled three, four times round, and became filled to the brim with water: it began to sink! The Tin-soldier was standing up to his neck in water, and deeper and deeper sank ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... people of God, if you supposed them selected on account of their own merit; their national character was by no means amiable; and we are repeatedly told, that they were not chosen for their superior righteousness—"for they were a stiff-necked people, and provoked the Lord with their rebellions from the day they left Egypt."—"You have been rebellious against the Lord (says Moses) from the day that I knew you." And he vehemently exhorts them, not to flatter themselves that their success was, in ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... at this interview. Lord Fawn became more than ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... were stiff with cold, but they managed to get everything on the sled and lash it securely with a rope and the leather belt from Betty's coat. Then, once more, they started back ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... Ghirlandajo's work possesses great strength, as does Michael Angelo's, but on wholly different lines. Ghirlandajo loved to represent grave, dignified figures,—which were portraits,—clad in long gowns, stiff brocades, and flowing mantles; and there are superb accessories in his pictures,—landscapes, architecture, and decorated interiors. On the other hand, Michael Angelo's figures are most impersonal, and each depends ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... I have said above, may be due to the naughtiness of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty of our own arguments; but it may also arise from an attempt on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach is nothing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Wuerttemberg repaired to Stuttgart to attend to his Duchy's government. Now began the love-story of his life, the long-drawn episode which made his name a target for the gossip and scandal of early eighteenth-century Germany; the episode which changed the simple, stiff family life of the Wuerttemberg ducal circle to a brilliant, festive court, which travellers tell us in their memoirs vied in magnificence with the glories of ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the garden paths, And all the daffodils Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. I walk down the patterned garden-paths In my stiff, brocaded gown. With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, I too am a rare Pattern. As I wander down The ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... no tide in the Sound except that which is caused by the wind, and as high water and a stiff breeze are essential to good sport, it is not possible to have good shooting every day. When the wind comes from the right quarter it makes a full tide, and drives the fowl nearer the shore and up into the creeks ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... are small, hard-shelled, grayish to brown beetles about 1/4 to 1/2 inch long, with stiff, slender snouts or beaks. They feed and lay eggs in the nuts and/or shoots of many kinds of nuts, including hickory, walnut, pecan, chestnut, hazelnut or filbert, and butternut. There are a number of species, but most of them ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... fancy's glow— They sleep with him who sleeps below: And, if thou mourn'st they could not save From error him who owns this grave, Be every harsher thought suppress'd, And sacred be the last long rest. Here, where the end of earthly things Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kings; Where stiff the hand, and still the tongue, Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung; Here, where the fretted vaults prolong The distant notes of holy song, As if some angel spoke agen, 'All peace on earth, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... given and received heavy blows; but unexpected help came from a Cliffords packer who happened to look in. We extricated ourselves as well as we could and ran back to the factory. I made Phoebe apologise to the chief for being late and, feeling stiff all over, returned ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... hart, and Walter let slip his hounds thereafter and he and the Lady followed running. Exceeding swift was she, and well-breathed withal, so that Walter wondered at her; and eager she was in the chase as the very hounds, heeding nothing the scratching of briars or the whipping of stiff twigs as she sped on. But for all their eager hunting, the quarry outran both dogs and folk, and gat him into a great thicket, amidmost whereof was a wide plash of water. Into the thicket they followed him, but he took to the water under their eyes and made land on the other ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... his hooks in a sweeping, clawing arc. It caught in the fabric of the fellow's suit, ripping a foot-long slit. Like a punctured ballon it deflated and became a shriveled, clinging thing. The Llott hung there over the rim of the port, instantly suffocated and frozen stiff in the vacuum and intense cold of space as the air and heat of the ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... forest on the left. Never before, winter or summer, had he climbed this hill without recalling something that made him happy, or to which he was looking forward. Now it was a dull, weary walk. He slipped in the damp snow, his knees were stiff, either from the party yesterday or from his low spirits; he felt that it was all over with the coasting-hill for that year, and with it, forever. He longed for something different as he threaded his way in among the tree-trunks, where the snow ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... and queen returned to our summer palace? And Spot and Silver and Song and Knipe, the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous as rigid etiquette demanded, since they were forever running after the butterflies. On we went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of the garden, past the weather-beaten sundial and the spinning-house and the smoke-house to the stables. Here old Harvey, who had taught me to ride Captain Daniel's pony, is equerry, and young Harvey our personal ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... paste for these custards of a pottle of fine flour, make it up with boiling liquor, and make it up stiff. ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... motives and for political services rendered, it is impossible to expect that while in office the appointees will not regard their tenure as more or less dependent upon continued political service for their patrons, and no regulations, however stiff or rigid, will prevent this, because such regulations, in view of the method and motive for selection, are plainly inconsistent and deemed hardly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... away, with the stranger in full chase, and bound to kill him as well as to oust him from the Swamp where he was born. Rag's legs were good and so was his wind. The stranger was big and so heavy that he soon gave up the chase, and it was well for poor Rag that he did, for he was getting stiff from his wounds as well as tired. From that day began a reign of terror for Rag. His training had been against owls, dogs, weasels, men, and so on, but what to do when chased by another rabbit, he did not know. All he knew was to lie low till he ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... black-thumbed, leathern-aproned, swart-faced knave of that noble mystery. But I tired of ringing hammer-tunes on iron stithies, and went out into the world, where I became acquainted with a celebrated juggler, whose fingers had become rather too stiff for legerdemain, and who wished to have the aid of an apprentice in his noble mystery. I served him for six years, until I was master of my trade—I refer myself to your worship, whose judgment cannot be disputed, whether I did not learn to ply ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the sailor said, 'I've been up agin it in these parts myself when I was a kid, and up agin it stiff, too; and there ain't nothing around here for the likes of ye. Take my advice and get out o' here. There's a big ship down here by the docks—Helvetia. Sneak aboard, get into a scupper or a barrel or something, and ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the PEACOCK, who enters slowly, with his head borne very stiff and high.] Master, dear Master, would you be so extremely condescending as to come and stand with your back to these sunflowers? Peacock! Sunflowers! ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... you, man?" the landlord said as he entered. "I didna think o' seeing you again. I thought it likely ye were laying stiff and stark somewhere out on the muirs. Eh, man, you are a foolish fellow to be mixing yourself up ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... truly. I would rather be A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun, And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own, Than one of these so trim and patent pearls With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down The stiff brocade ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bred and nourished sprang a political temper which, as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to English Home Rulers to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." It certainly was a state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient impression which in England go by the name of public opinion; and, if these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as no more than synonyms for ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... making his hospital rounds early in the morning, rather to the outrage of various head nurses, who did not like the staff to come a-visiting until every counterpane was drawn stiff and smooth, every bed corner a geometrical angle, every patient washed and combed and temperatured, and in the exact center ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pleasantly upon the ear, with a kind of honied, friendly whine, not far off singing, that was eminently Scottish. He laughed not very often, and when he did, with a sudden, loud haw-haw, hearty but somehow joyless, like an echo from a rock. His face was permanently set and coloured; ruddy and stiff with weathering; more like a picture than a face; yet with a certain strain and a threat of latent anger in the expression, like that of a man trained too fine and harassed with perpetual vigilance. He spoke in the richest dialect of Scotch I ever heard; the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pages without alluding at all to the ship on which he wrote. Well! the earliest of these was by far the most elegant in appearance. My eyes watered a little, as Ingham showed me on the first page, in the stiff Italian hand which our grandmothers wrote in, when they aspired to elegance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... down their flame into the pool which is the roadway, and you travel continually toward an incandescent floor without ever quite reaching it, beneath mysterious words of fire hanging in the invisible sky!... The automobile stops. You get out, stiff, and murmur something inadequate about the length and splendor of those boulevards. "Oh," you are told, carelessly, "those are only the interior boulevards.... Nothing! You should see our exterior boulevards—not ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the tramp up the bog, and as Wally was no better at this sort of climbing than any of the rest, he did not dishearten them by getting hopelessly ahead, but kept with the party. Occasionally they had to help one another up a specially stiff ledge, and this mutual accommodation was an additional source of comfort to the weak goers. Progress was very slow. Cash, having hauled himself up on to a little platform of moss, looked at his watch and was alarmed to find it was past one. The huge ravine, at ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... proceeding to allay the pangs of hunger with selections from the tray of anchovies, sardines, pickled beet, and sliced sausage, when his host entered, voluble and irrepressible as ever. The dignified Ogams shuddered inwardly as his strident voice awoke the echoes of the room, and their already stiff ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... strength and beauty. Those trees would have dignified anything. One of them, of the more rare weeping variety, drooped over the door of the lean-to, shading it protectingly, and hiding with its long pendant branches the hard and stiff lines of the building. So the green draped the grey; until, in the soft mingling of hues, the light play of sunshine and shadow, it seemed as if the smartness of paint upon the old weather-boarding would have been an ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... had invited me to take a glass of beer with him had been rather stiff in his own store, but the moment he turned the key in the lock he seemed to throw away his coldness and became very talkative. We sat down at a table and our beer ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... on, motionless. Outside, the blackness changed to grey, and the grey to white. He got up. He felt very stiff and cold. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hard to find any sign,' answered Dick; 'but he told us it was to be a stiff thing, and if we can't get hold of it we shall have to head for the station, that's all. But we'll have a good go at it. What about a cast round by that rabbit warren over there? The ground's half covered with soft soil the rabbits have thrown out of their holes. If he's gone that ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... reached the conclusion that he would have to ask his mother for the money. He knew that the undertaking would prove a trying one, so he dashed up to his room for the purpose of fortifying himself with a stiff drink ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... smoulder in her ruined heart as the fire may do in the ashes when all that was living and glorious has been consumed. Almost nothing as she became when Charlemagne left her, a mere body still wrapt in gorgeous raiment stiff with gold, but without a soul, she still dreamt of dominion, of empire, and of power. Governed by her archbishops, she rebelled against Rome, struggled for a secular and sometimes a religious autonomy, and came at last, as surely might have been prophesied, to ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... it. As you will notice, the soundhole is cut out of a piece of paper which follows the lines of one of the lower corners. So, upon the corresponding corner of the wood to be cut, I place this that represents the soundhole, exactly; and I dip a small stiff brush into lampblack, not too wet, rather dry than otherwise, and I dab on to the belly through the cut impression of the soundhole—then I reverse the paper, doing exactly the same at the other side of ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... in haste away; Shifts the scene again to her: She is found by friends next day Stiff and gory as she lay, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... heard With grief and tender pity stirred, And as his ears the story drank, Deep in his thoughtful heart it sank. His large full eyes in anguish rolled, His trembling limbs grew stiff and cold; Then fell he, like a tree uptorn, In woe too grievous to be borne. When Guha saw the long-armed chief Whose eye was like a lotus leaf, With lion shoulders strong and fair, High-mettled, prostrate in despair,— Pale, bitterly afflicted, he Reeled as in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... confessing to having been transported to the sabbath in a state of insensibility. Her judges, anxious to know how this was effected, released her from her fetters, when she rubbed herself on the different parts of her body with a prepared unguent and soon became insensible, stiff, and apparently dead. Having remained in that condition for five hours, the witch as suddenly revived, relating to the trembling inquisitors a number of extraordinary things proving she must have been spiritually ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... time the man that I partly took to be my father was a-backin' furder and furder from us, and at last he got clean agin the jamb o' the chimney, and then he looked up wild, as if he was a looking at the sky, and directly he spoke. 'This'll be a stiff blow,' says he. 'We're struck aft, and we'll be in the trough of the sea in a minute! God help us all!' And with that he began to climb up the shelves o' the cupboard, as though he was a climbin' into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... stiff ride, Fielding. But I'll do it in twenty-four hours, and bring Mustapha Kali ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... faced the fourteen miles back to Gannat very stiff. All during those hours I had been wondering at the novelty of Europe, and at all these young men now so different, at the silence and the cover, and the hefty, disposable little guns. But when I had my face turned southward again ...
— On Something • H. Belloc |
