"Tightness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and down again very softly, when the door into the Bedchamber was noiselessly pulled open, and Mr. Chiffinch came down the stairs. That dreadful look of tightness and pain was gone from his face: he was almost smiling. He nodded ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... enthusiasm. "He bringeth out the wolf, the great, the dreadful wolf!" At this instant the General hove into view, his feathered hat knocked over his eyes, the rope girding his chest with alarming tightness, and wee little Grip suspended by the nape of his neck as the wolf, "the great, the dreadful wolf!" A burst of irrepressible laughter from the audience greeted this tableau, and Putnam's mother cried out in ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... gradients. This occurred about the commencement of the great Potato Revolution—an event which I apprehend will be long remembered by the squirearchy and shareholders of these kingdoms. The money-market was beginning to exhibit certain symptoms of tightness; premiums were melting perceptibly away, and new schemes were in diminished favour. Under these circumstances, the Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Valley Company were beneficent enough to gratify my wishes to the full, and accorded to me the large privilege of three hundred ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... much contributes to increase the absorption in a wound as covering the whole limb above the sore with a bandage, which should be spread with some plaster, as with emplastrum de minio, to prevent it from slipping. By this artificial tightness of the skin, the arterial pulsations act with double their usual power in promoting the ascending current of the fluid ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... remarkable man. If he had not been so, he would hardly have been tolerated at the chateau, since he was not particularly beautiful, and not especially refined. He was in holy orders, as his tonsured head and clerical costume bore witness—a costume which, from its tightness and simplicity, only served to exaggerate the unusual proportions of his person. Monsieur the Preceptor had English blood in his veins, and his northern origin betrayed itself in his towering height and corresponding breadth, ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was a woman of twenty-eight, I should think, though of a type whose age is always doubtful; for she cannot have looked different when she was twenty, and at forty would look no older. She gave me an impression of extraordinary tightness. Her plain face with its narrow lips was tight, her skin was stretched tightly over her bones, her smile was tight, her hair was tight, her clothes were tight, and the white drill she wore had all the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of the two tail-pockets of his regimental coat; this 'monkey that had seen the world' suddenly appeared before the chiefs and warriors of his tribe; and as he stood before them, straight as a ramrod, in a high state of perspiration, caused by the tightness of his finery, while the cool fresh air of heaven blew over the naked, unrestrained limbs of the spectators, it might, perhaps not unjustly, be said of the costumes, 'Which is the savage?' In return for the presents he had received, and with a desire to impart ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... may be made to look very beautiful by being surrounded with fumed oak bookcases, eight feet high. The shelves should be made movable with Tonks' patent.[42] Mr. Gladstone[43] speaks of the looseness and the tightness of movable shelves, the weary arms, the aching fingers, and the broken finger-nails. This can be avoided by the use of the patent here named. The bottom cases should be deeper and wider, to take quartos and folios, but there should always be an extra ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... of voters always so necessary to an honest election was forever on the side of my lucky opponent. When I withdrew from the political field, impoverished by my efforts to advance the prosperity of my party, I embarked in a small commercial enterprise; but owing to the tightness of the times, and my want of capital, I was soon obliged to give up and throw myself upon the mercy of my creditors. I have tried popular amusements, and lost money—that is, I failed to make it. I even branched ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and had a sufficient touch of humour, he cultivated a languid stare, and was chary of speech; and although he was a well-built young fellow, he walked with his elbows out and his knees in, as if the tightness of his trousers and his boots made it nigh impossible for him to walk at all. Moreover, his dress was more rigidly correct than ever; and of course he carried the inevitable cane—inevitable as the ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... stood ankle deep in the turgid little rivulet, a tightness clutching at his chest, and with his head whirling. At his feet his antagonist lay motionless. He stepped out of the water, putting his foot into a tiny grove of trees that bent and crackled like twigs under his tread. He wondered if he would faint; he knew he must not. Away ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... extreme "tightness" caused him to fall asleep on the box when we started again, but the more seasoned ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... classed together, not because we can take them to pieces, and say they are alike in this, and not alike in that, but because we feel them to be alike altogether, though in different degrees. When, therefore, I say, The color I saw yesterday was a white color, or, The sensation I feel is one of tightness, in both cases the attribute I affirm of the color or of the other sensation is mere resemblance—simple likeness to sensations which I have had before, and which have had those names bestowed upon them. The names of feelings, like other concrete general ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... a time, then went on: "No gear-train or chain mechanism can be built of sufficient tightness, since in any mechanism there is some freedom of motion, however slight, and for this purpose the director must have no freedom of motion whatever. We must have a pure torque—and the only possible force answering our requirements is the four hundred sixty-seventh ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... going to happen anyhow," she said, with ominous quiet, and a grim tightness showed in the lines of her mouth. "I believe these Indians have just about reached the end of their rope. They have been very patient with us—that is patient from their standpoint. Now they have met with opposition, and ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... down a little stiffly (owing to the tightness of the hose), turned a clock-key. After a few rotations, the dog, being set in the right direction, moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... spread over me; it was pleasant; I did not care to withdraw my eyes. Presently the tightness in my face relaxed, I ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... eyes almost starting from his head between his determination to wind himself up to the point, and the tightness of his grasp on the chair. "It's—it's my ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... fitted him with an extreme, but somewhat unfortunate, military tightness. They were of an unpleasant greenish tint which did not match the green Homberg hat he wore. In his right hand he carried a short cane and yellow gloves. The morning was hot; his boots were patent leather. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... years old, and above six feet high, dressed in a gray suit; the coat, from its size, appeared to have been made for him some ten years before. He was remarkably narrow-chested and round-shouldered, owing, perhaps, as much to the tightness of his garment as to the hand of nature. His face was long, and his complexion swarthy relieved, however, by certain freckles, with which the skin was plentifully studded. He had strange wandering eyes, gray, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... when I forbade torture!" cried Ebbo, leaping from the rock in time to see the disgusting draught held to the lips of the captive, whose hands were twisted back and bound with cruel tightness; for the German boor, once roused from his lazy good- nature, was doubly ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nonsense! Do you want everyone to think that, now I'm out for myself, I can't make a go of it? What would Ingram and Biggerstaff think, if I began to talk money tightness? I didn't leave the firm, and strike out for myself to give ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... The remarkable tightness and plumpness of limbs and person exhibited by Foreign Affairs cannot have escaped observation. This attractive quality may be acquired by purchasing the material out of which the clothes are to be made, and giving the tailor only just as much as may exactly suffice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Boggs issued his order that we should be exterminated an' driven out. I can still see the soldiery ridin' up an' down, pillagin' our city, insultin' our womenfolk, an' cuttin' down our men. I can just remember the misery o' the winter through which we fled, an' the tightness o' my mother's arms about me as we crossed the Mississippi, goin' into Illinois for safety. From my earliest childhood my mind has bin made accustomed to travellin's, an' privations, an' deeds o' blood. That's the sort o' man ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... man of five-and-thirty, whose robust but symmetrical proportions gave to his dark blue double-breasted coat an air of tightness that just failed of compromising his tailor, had for his main facial sign a certain pleasant brutality, the effect partly of a bold handsome parade of carnivorous teeth, partly of an expression of ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... seeing all my beloved ones in England, I am so sorry to leave my dear little happy valley. We have done nothing but pay farewell visits lately; and I turn for a final look at each station or cottage as we ride away with a great tightness at my heart, and moisture in my eyes, to think I shall never see them again. You must not be jealous at the lingering regrets I feel, for unless you had been with me here you can never understand how kind and friendly all our neighbours, high and low, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... again, however, and now holds a good railroad position in the Northwest, where he is living with his family. His was about the quickest case of "loosening up from extreme tightness" that ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... now, I suppose?" Nan spoke irritably. The tightness of the doctor's bandages was causing ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of fingers instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the base of the ear where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin-stretch over the skull. And Michael liked it. Never had a man's hand been so intimate with his ear without hurting it. But these fingers were provocative only of physical pleasure so keen that he twisted and writhed ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... men had drunk from the jars?" He could not tell, but he feared that at least half the company had taken some portion, more or less. He had himself drunk a tumblerful, and he already felt uncomfortable, with a tightness of the throat, and a burning pain in ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a game—just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of him to have gone away like that—but of course he would come back. Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if some one had placed a hand on her and drawn ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... began to chatter, her hands shook, there was a tightness in her chest, her heart began to beat with hard, dull pulsations, and at times seemed to stop beating, and she gasped for breath. A terrible apprehension seized her, while the cold seemed to penetrate to her marrow. She never had felt such a sensation, she had never seemed to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... she laid her head upon his arm and whispered to him, "Sing it again, Shaky. The tightness across the top of my head is giving way. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... indebtedness which is paid in the usual way is decreased also. In consequence, there is a larger balance to be paid in bullion; the store in the bank or banks keeping the reserve is diminished, and the rate of interest must be raised by them to stay the effiux. And the tightness so produced is often greater than, and always equal to, the preceding ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!—shaking off the thought ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... fever subside, and still the tightness in the throat and cough continue to be troublesome, give Ipecac in place of Aconite. And when the cough seems to be deep seated use Bryonia instead ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... dunnage, and rolled against the bow several bulky bales of matting to conceal the work. Captain, when the "Speedwell" sailed from Hong Kong in command of our honored friend, one of her great bow ports below the water hung on its hinges without internal fastenings, and held in place only by the tightness of the caulking. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... I backed out from under the deck, and in the first place proceeded to search for the water complained of. I found it right aft, as Mrs Vansittart had suggested, and in order to test the tightness of the boat I baled it all out, or at least as much of it as could be got rid of with the baler, leaving no more than perhaps half a tumblerful. Then, wading ashore, I sat down on the sand, with my back against the upright oar to which the boat was moored, and began to review the ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... which shelf, and beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small pitcher was placed. I bored a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher and fitted in a plug of soft wood, which I pushed in or pulled out, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tightness at which the water, oozing from the hole and falling into the pitcher below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. Having arranged all this, the rest of the plan was simple. My bed was so contrived upon the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... heavily ironed, as, being witches, it was supposed to be very difficult to keep them from escaping; and as their ability to torment people with their spectres, was considered lessened in proportion to the weight and tightness of the chains with which they were fettered. It is not to be wondered at, that under these inflictions, at the end of two months, the invalid, Sarah Osburn, died. Tituba, however, lay in jail until, finally, at ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... stage the mother will notice a change. Instead of the tightness in the lower abdomen and pain across the back, she will feel a bearing down sensation almost as if she were having a bowel movement. This means the baby is ...
— Emergency Childbirth - A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help - Training Course, Lesson No. 11 • U. S. Department of Defense
... walls of the second story be upright. The recent fashion of a mansard or "French roof" is only making part of the wall of the house look like roof, at equal expense, at the sacrifice of space inside, and above all, of tightness. For, though shingles and even slates will generally keep out the rain, the innumerable cracks between the sides of them can never be made air-tight, and therefore admit heat and cold much more freely than any proper wall-covering. A covering of metal would be too good a conductor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... nearly precipitating all of us into the darkness beneath, and then continued its downward course with increased speed, until sparks flew from beneath us like flecks of fire from a blacksmith's forge, and in our breasts was a tightness that ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... searching, vindictive and yet woebegone. The mouth was sunken as the mouths of old men become from the loss of teeth, and the thin lips which used to be kindly and vacillating were drawn with a hard, unflinching tightness. The skin that had long been gray was now ghostly, with the shadowy, not quite earthly, hue of things about ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... contracting as it cooled, did not seem to contract uniformly, creating slightly unequal distances between teeth. This resulted in the chain hanging quite loose in some places and in others the tightness prevented adjustment. He contacted Will Russell, foreman of the Russell shop, where the automobile was made, and Russell showed him a device, built by George Warwick, who had made the Warwick bicycle. It was an internal-cut gear, according to Duryea's description, with sprocket teeth on its periphery. ...
— The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology • Don H. Berkebile
... rushed out. Then the second one burst and I lost my head and didn't know where I was going. I darted to and fro, tripping over tent-ropes and dashing up against revetments. I never had the wind up so much in all my life. I couldn't get my breath, there was a kind of weight on my stomach and a tightness round my chest and throat, and my knees kept on giving way all the time. The third one burst and I fell down and crawled under some ropes and lay flat against some sand-bags, trembling all over and feeling as though I was going to choke. I waited for a long time, but nothing ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... pillow, every beat of the heart is heard as a thump, which banishes sleep, and works the victim into a state of high tension. A pain in the chest, arms and elbows is often felt, limbs may swell (shown by the tightness of rings, collars, etc.) while the hands and feet are usually moist and clammy. The patient may have to empty the bladder every half-hour. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... of that time he begins to feel a peculiar corded and tympanic tightness about the epigastrium. A feverish condition of the brain, which sometimes amounts to absolute phantasia, now ensues, marked off into periods of increasing excitement by a heavy sleep, which, after ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... usually manifests itself in one leg first, and later affects the other; it is progressive, and ultimately ends in complete paraplegia. The pain is not confined to the region supplied by any one nerve root, but affects a diffuse area, and the patient complains also of a sensation of tightness in the limbs. There is never absolute anaesthesia, but there is relative anaesthesia for all forms of sensation, which extends as a rule as far as the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... perhaps entirely normal, and in certain suggestible and inflammable types of people it is peculiarly apt to occur. This kind of deception, although far more frequent and conspicuous in matters of love—and more serious because of the tightness of the marriage bond—is liable to occur in any relation of life. For most people, however, and those not the least sane or the least wise, the memory of the exaltation of love, even when the period of that exaltation is over, still remains as, at the least, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... late the next morning when they assembled at the breakfast- table, and they noted with pain that Mr. Walton did not appear at all well, though he made a great effort to keep up. He was very hoarse, and complained of a tightness in his chest. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... burying yourself in the gulf, the nightmare of suffocation continues that you progressively endured as you advanced along the bowels of the trenches before foundering in here. On all sides you bump and scrape yourself, you are clutched by the tightness of the passage, you are wedged and stuck. I have to change the position of my cartridge pouches by sliding them round the belt and to take my bags in my arms against my chest. At the fourth step the suffocation increases still more and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... causing the unanchored ladder to sway and twist until with each convulsive jerk I expected to be thrown off. I bruised and burned my palms with the tightness of my grip, my knees twitched and my face and back and chest were wet. But in spite of all this, waves of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... something in the current, and that in which Cluffe sat came wheeling swiftly round across the stream, and brought the gallant captain so near the bank that, with a sudden jerk, he caught the end of a branch that stretched far over the water, and, spite of the confounded tightness of his toilet, with the energy of sheer terror, climbed a good way; but, reaching a point where the branch forked, he could get no further, though he tugged like a brick. But what was a fat fellow of fifty, laced, and buckled, and buttoned ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... poles, Sarpent, if Sarpent you be," said Hurry, amid the groans that the tightness of the ligatures was beginning to extort from him—"run out one of the poles, and shove the head of the scow off, and you'll drift clear of us—and, when you've done that good turn for yourself just finish this ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a great matter, in addition to other advantages, to avoid the endless trouble and the miscarriages of movable shelves; the looseness, and the tightness, the weary arms, the aching fingers, and the broken fingernails. But it will be fairly asked what is to be done, when the shelves are fixed, with volumes too large to go into them? I admit that the dilemma, when it occurs, is formidable. I admit also that no book ought to be ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... and drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and treatment. Innocently remark that you are not well, or that somebody else is not well, and the same inevitable result ensues. You will learn how our bore felt a tightness about here, sir, for which he couldn't account, accompanied with a constant sensation as if he were being stabbed - or, rather, jobbed - that expresses it more correctly - jobbed - with a blunt knife. Well, sir! This went on, until sparks began to flit before his eyes, water-wheels ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... formed between the hollowed-out parts of the tap do not affect its tightness; and, besides, the turns of the tap have for their principal positions 90 and 180 degrees, instead of 45 and 90 degrees, as in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... without any tangible excuse, and are liable to occur during serious illness, after a large meal, after a cup of tea or coffee, or after taking alcohol. The heart may beat as rapidly as from 150 to 200 times a minute, or even more, with no other symptoms than a feeling of constriction or tightness in the chest, an inability to respire properly and a feeling of "air hunger." The patient almost invariably must sit up, or at least have his head raised. Attacks of cardiac delirium (often auricular fibrillation) ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... was accompanied by a chant by those who were standing around, assisted by the thumping of a hideous drum, to keep the time. The young brave who was undergoing this self-torture finally succeeded in tearing himself loose, and the rope relaxed from its sudden tightness and fell back toward the centre pole with a piece of the flesh to which it was tied. The victim, who, up to this point, did not move a muscle of his face, fell down on the ground, exhausted from ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Hill Clara leaned against him as he went. He slid his arm round her waist. Feeling the strong motion of her body under his arm as she walked, the tightness in his chest because of Miriam relaxed, and the hot blood bathed him. He held ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... stuffing-box, and into this a leather collar of U-section (marked solid black in Fig. 180) was placed with its open side downwards. When water reached it, it forced the edges apart, one against the plunger, the other against the walls of the recess, with a degree of tightness proportionate to the pressure. On water being released from the cylinder the collar collapsed, allowing the plunger to sink ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... returned the look. It was coming over her what Clara meant; a meaning so simple it was absurd she had not thought of it before—so hateful that it was all she could do to face it. She felt a tightness in her throat that was not tears. Shame and anger contended in her. Oh, for the power to have refused that shameful bargain—to have scorned it! She turned away. She closed her eyes. In her mind she saw the figure of Kerr moving quietly about the winding walks with Mrs. Herrick. She faced ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... follow them. I readily complied. But here a new difficulty occurred; the Moors, accustomed to a loose and easy dress, could not reconcile themselves to the appearance of my nankeen breeches, which they said were not only inelegant, but, on account of their tightness, very indecent; and as this was a visit to ladies, Ali ordered my boy to bring out the loose cloak which I had always worn since my arrival at Benowm, and told me to wrap it close round me. We visited the tents of four different ladies, at every one of which I was presented with a bowl of milk ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... for a long time against the tightness of the uniforms, and of the belts of the rank and file of the infantry, declaring that it impeded the movements and play of the muscles of the men, to such an extent as to deprive them of more than fifty per cent, of their usefulness. One day, during an inspection of the division ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... Tetzel for Chief Salesman, a Priest whose hardness of face, and shiftiness of head and hand, were known to him; and—here is one Hohenzollern that has a place in History! Poor man, it was by accident, and from extreme tightness for money. He was by no means a violent Churchman; he had himself inclinations towards Luther, even of a practical sort, as the thing went on. But there was ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... out the old-fashioned bell-handle her face sickened as she stood and she was down the steps again, the tightness squeezing her throat, her gloved hands fumbling the gate latch, and her knee flung against it, pressing ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... year, I seem fated to witness the childhood of many summer days. The carriage that bears him away is lost to sight—dwindled away to nothing among the park-trees. Five minutes ago, my arms were clinging with a tightness of a clasp that a bear might have admired round his neck. I was too choked with tears to say much, and kept repeating with the persistence of a guinea-fowl, but without the distinctness, "Come ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... he, 'if you place your hand in that of a somnambulist who, when awake, can press it only up to a certain average of tightness, you will see that in the somnambulistic state—as it is stupidly termed—his fingers can clutch like a vise screwed up by a blacksmith.'—Well, monsieur, I placed my hand in that of a woman, not asleep, for Bouvard rejects the word, but isolated, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... applications and accidents induce, warts and vegetations are the but too frequent results. These I have never seen in a circumcised individual, and their occurrence and frequency, as well as persistency, are directly proportionate with the degree of tightness, thickness, or redundancy of the prepuce and the irritability of the gland. As remarked by Lallemand, in reference to the victim of nocturnal enuresis becoming a future victim of nocturnal emissions, so it may be said of the person subject in early ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... saunter through the young summer night. There were so many little things to catch the eyes, so many of the little things down near the earth; expressions on faces of the passers, the set of a collar, the quaint foreign tightness of waist of a good bourgeoise who walked arm in arm with her perspiring spouse. The gilding on the statue of Joan of Arc had a pleasant littleness of Philistinism, the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli broke up the grey light pleasantly too. I remembered a little shop—a little Greek affair with a windowful ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... girl? Was she not by his side? The regeneration of Ireland and of Man? That could be done also; a little leisure and everything that can be thought can be done: even his good looks might be returned to him: he felt the sting and tightness of his bruises and was reassured, exultant. He was a man predestined to bruises; they would be his meat and drink and happiness, his refuge and sanctuary forever. Let us leave him, then, pacing volubly by the side of Mary, and exploring with a delicate finger his half-closed ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the curtain, and the veil of egotism is rent, and he shows us the crowd of living men and women, the endless groups, the landscape back-ground, the cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our imaginations and relieves one passion by another, and expands and lightens reflection, and takes away that tightness at the breast which arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is nothing in the world out of a man's self!—In this point of view, the Author of Waverley is one of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived, by emancipating the mind from petty, narrow, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... shown by Czermak in the following manner. Lying down on his back, he had the nasal cavities filled with tepid water. He then uttered the various vowel sounds, and ascertained from the quantity of water required to force open the closure formed by the soft palate the degree of tightness for each vowel. He afterwards constructed a very ingenious little apparatus, by means of which, in one of his lectures, he demonstrated this fact to his audience. It will be easily understood from the above explanation that, if the closure ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... her white jersey—the surface of it already furred with moisture—low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the air was thick and chill to breathe causing a tightness in her throat. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... feet from the ground. A pile of wood was collected and a fire lit and the brands made red-hot. Green-hide ropes were uncoiled to get the kinks out and coiled again ready for instant use, and every horseman saw to the tightness of his saddle-girth. Mick stood near the tree waiting to brand and cut, and with him were Fiddle-head and Jack Johnson for the front and back leg ropes, and Eagle to keep the brands hot and hand them when required. Poona and Uncle were each armed with a long pliant bull-hide ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... attraction drew him on, and he still advanced, when all suddenly he paused, trembling violently. His nerves began to throb acutely,—the blood in his veins was like fire,—there was a curious strangling tightness in his throat that interrupted and oppressed his breathing,—he stared straight before him with large, luminous, impassioned eyes. What—WHAT was that dazzling something in the air that flashed and whirled and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... opens out flat, and stays open. It also shuts up completely, and when closed stays shut. But how many books do we see always bulging open at the sides, or stiffly resisting being opened by too great tightness in the back? If the books you have had bound do not meet all these requirements, it is time to ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... hidden in the sighing grass, is linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature, they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as they tremble at the touch of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Balzac confided to his sister Laure. In order to force himself to take exercise, he used to correct his proofs either at the printer's or at her house. Sometimes the weather, to the influence of which he was very susceptible, sometimes his money-tightness, or his fatigue from protracted work would cause him to arrive with lack-lustre eyes, sallow complexion, glum expression and irritable temper. Laure essayed ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... shut with a tightness which curled the corners downward. Then, as he looked into the questioning eyes and anxious face of his companion, his own eyes softened, and he changed his mind in ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... in the same coal-pit, where gunpowder was used extensively in the operations. About six months after he commenced stone-mining, he became affected with a short tickling cough, expectoration of pearly tenacious phlegm, hurried breathing, tightness across the chest, frequent pulse (95), heat of skin during the night, and occasional throbbing in the head. Being young, and fearless of any danger from the occupation, although warned of the consequences, ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... portable property found on board the wreck. A gourd full of water was placed to Gervaise's lips by one of the men of a kinder disposition than the rest. He drank it thankfully, for he was parched with thirst excited by the pain caused by the tightness with which ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... partly by the two devil's dusts that filled the air; cadaverous faces, the muscles of which betrayed habitual suffering, coughs short and dry, or with a frothy expectoration peculiar to the trade. In answer to questions, many complained of a fearful tightness across the chest, of inability to eat or to digest. One said it took him five minutes to get up the factory stairs, and he had to lean against the wall ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... of resistance, our brave red faces slobbered over with tears, as we stood marked for execution! Never was there a finer specimen of deprecation in eloquence than we then exhibited—the supplicating look right up into the master's face—the touching modulation of the whine—the additional tightness and caution with which we grasped the waistbands with one hand, when it was necessary to use the other in wiping our eyes and noses with the polished sleeve-cuff—the sincerity and vehemence with which we promised never to be guilty again, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... The prisoners slept sitting up or falling over one another. They urinated and defecated with the handcuffs on, all of them hitched together. At various times they complained to their captors that the agony caused by the swelling of their wrists was unbearable—this agony, being the result of over-tightness of the handcuffs, might easily have been relieved by one of the plantons without loss of time or prestige. Their complaints were greeted by commands to keep their mouths shut or they'd get it worse ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... were due. First, the river rose and drowned some of his cattle and ruined a good deal of corn that had not been gathered. He worked hard, even desperately, to save what he could and not let the children know. Then Tom himself was taken with a queer feeling in the chest, a feeling of tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a doctor in Greenville before ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... February, she begged me to take charge of some shares of hers and to sell them for her. They amounted in value to sixty thousand francs, but she could not dispose of them on the Paris Exchange owing to the tightness in the money market. In addition, she could not obtain the interest due to her, which had mounted up considerably, as she had not had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... regard to the tightness of dress, is this. Every person should be dressed so loosely, that, when sitting in the posture used in sewing, reading, or study THE LUNGS can be as fully and as easily inflated, as they are without clothing. Many a woman thinks she dresses loosely, because, when she stands ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... understood and to be read with profit by brain-workers of all classes, whether in profession, in literature or business. It treats of the cause of headaches, the wakefulness, the illusions or delusions, and feelings of tightness in the head, which so many of our American writers and thinkers experience, and it gives valuable information available by laymen as to the prevention and remedy for this affection, which later on leads to insanity ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... mounted the raft, and, after dividing themselves into pairs, and taking hold of the slew-ropes in their hands, pulled them up as tight as they could. By this effort they caused the cylinder to turn round till its further revolutions were stopped by the increasing tightness of the hawser, which was wound on the cylinder as fast as the slew-ropes were wound off it. When all the ropes had been drawn equally tight, and the whole party of men had been ranged along the top in an erect posture, with their faces all ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... obtained with difficulty; the cost of his very education, which he had received at a school near Turlock, had, he knew, been grudged; his father had often grumbled that it was money thrown away, for, "Look at me," said he; "I taught myself." There was always, in short, a tightness in the Coe money market that augured any ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... message. Why did he delay? Her heart ached now worse than ever, the choking feeling in her throat returned, and her eyes grew moist. She steadied herself by holding to the door. Her fingers grew white at the tightness of her grasp; eyes and ears were strained in their intent ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... dreary the future looked to her. What was life worth without Guy, and why had she been thrown so much in his way; why permitted to love him as she knew she did, if she must lose him now? Maddy could not cry; there was a tightness about her eyes, and a keen, cutting pain about her heart as she tried to pray for strength to do what was right—strength to cast Guy Remington from her heart where it was a sin for him to be; and then she asked to be forgiven for the wrong she had unwittingly done to Lucy Atherstone, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Ferrol's clothes as he ran past. No matador ever played with the horns of a mad bull as Ferrol played his deadly game with Michael, the dancing bear. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter; he had a stifling sensation, a terrible tightness across his chest. He did not cough, however, but once or twice he tasted warm drops of his heart's blood in his mouth. Once he drew the back of his hand across his lips mechanically, and a red stain ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... best," there was a tightness in Miss Sallie's voice. "He never remembered his own mother, and was so little ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him. "Where were they ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... eyes deepened and a tightness gripped his throat. Slowly two great tears fought their way down through the dust on his face, and dropped lingeringly, one after the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... care, and the sloppy work often passed in the case of coal-gas services must on no account be allowed. It is no exaggeration to say that the success of an acetylene installation, from the consumer's point of view, will largely, if not principally, depend on the tightness of the pipes in his house. The statement has been made that the "paint" used by gas-fitters, i.e., the mixture of red and white lead ground in "linseed" oil, is not suitable for employment with acetylene, and it has been proposed to adopt a similar material ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... an austere life compressed within drab walls; nothing but sickness and suffering on every side. She had begun to think a great deal about those walls of late and—The bells of a convent pealed out softly in the distance, bringing a tightness to her throat. In spite of herself she shuddered. Those laughing children's voices mocked at her empty life. They seemed always to jeer at that hungry mother-love, but never quite so loudly as now. She remembered surprising Norvin Blake at play with these very ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... not drawn a breath since he entered the room. Her life had been standing still, waiting till these few stupendous seconds were over. Now they were gone and she could take up life where it had left off. The tightness in her throat relaxed. The crisis was over, the turning point was behind her. He had failed her, and he would have to pay. He would have to pay with months, even years of waiting. For it had never occurred to Anne Tresslyn to doubt that he would ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... of home with that desolate beach, those moving monsters, those caves, would seem absurd. Well, it was like leaving home, and as she stood looking around her a tightness came in her throat and her eyes grew misty. But Raft was moving now and she followed him, glancing back now and then until they crossed the river where she looked back for the last time. The river was almost deserted now by the young sea elephants, except at its mouth. ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... In many cases its tightness prevents the escape of the sebaceous matter that collects in the sulcus back of the corona, and the resulting irritation on the surface of the glans and the inner mucous fold of the prepuce ends in an inflammatory thickening of the latter, its inner surface ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... to remember that he had given her cause for a way. "There's a lot of women as wouldn't exactly regard me as a Merino, or a Southdown, either;" he gulped the coffee to ease the tightness in ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... this specialized organization of American activity remains to be considered—that of the labor unions. The power which the unions have obtained in certain industrial centers and the tightness of their organization would have seemed anomalous to the good Jacksonian Democrat. From his point of view the whole American democracy was a kind of labor union whose political constitution provided for a substantially ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... of Michael. It was disabled—but he still clung to his enemy. Anthony strove to disengage himself; but the other, aware that life or death depended on the issue of that struggle, hung on him with a convulsive tightness that rendered the advantage he had gained of no avail. The sword was useless. Anthony threw it into the boiling gulf at his feet. Both hands being now free, whilst one arm of his opponent hung powerless and bleeding at his side, he had greatly the advantage. He wrenched ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby |
