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More "Stiffen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peals roll through the sky. 'The depths are congealed in the heart of the sea'—as if you were to lay hold of Niagara in its wildest plunge, and were with a word to freeze all its descending waters and stiffen them into immovableness in fetters of eternal ice. So He utters His voice, and all meaner noises are hushed. 'The lion hath roared, who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and who would know it were I to leave your corpse to stiffen on the snow? But I bear you no ill will, and have no intention to hurt you. I would not harm a hair of your head. I will not subject you even to the inconvenience of having these fetters on your wrists, though you were unfeeling enough to place them on a man, the latchet of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... stillness of the night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor of his ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... continued late; which in the end was a good thing for the year's cut. The season was capricious, hanging for days at a time at the brink of a thaw, only to stiffen again into severe weather. This was trying on the nerves. For at each of these false alarms the six camps fell into a feverish haste to get the job finished before the break-up. It was really quite extraordinary how much was ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... long as we are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with continually ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Here a Hungarian army had been defeated in 1599 by Rumanians under Michael the Brave. Hermannstadt, however, marked the high tide of Rumanian victory. At this point the resistance of the enemy began suddenly to stiffen. And then came the report that the Rumanians were observing German uniforms among the opposing forces. Again Germany had come to the rescue. On September 13, 1916, the first German troops to arrive on the scene came ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... to such scenes, and to regard them lightly, threw off the sheet, and raised the corpses, one by one, that he might the better view them. One peculiarity Mr. Bloundel noticed; namely, that the limbs of these unfortunate victims of the pestilence did not stiffen, as would have been the case if they had died of any other disorder; while the blotches that appeared on the livid flesh made them objects almost too horrible to look upon. In many cases the features were frightfully ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and it is difficult to avoid damaging the smaller varieties. However, by firing with the full choke barrel at about fifty yards two or three pellets almost always hit even the smallest birds. A very good method of preserving them is to inject formol into the bodies which at once stiffen out and become rigid in any position they are placed. Birds can thus be set with the wings extended in a flying position or as if roosting, the effect being much prettier than any which can be obtained by stuffing. If is however, necessary ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... her towards him. He felt her yield, and heard her draw a fluttering breath. Her head drooped so that he could not see her face; she was slipping into his arms, and then, in the moment of surrender, he felt her body stiffen. She put her hands on his shoulder and pushed him back; the canoe lurched and he had some trouble to prevent a capsize. The water splashed against the rocking craft, and Sadie, drawing away, fixed her eyes on him. She was breathless, but rather from ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... now almost forgotten busk was a small slip of steel or wood, used to stiffen the stays. Florimel threatens to employ it as ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... her up tenderly; Lift her with care; Fashion'd so slenderly, Young, and so fair! Ere her limbs frigidly Stiffen too rigidly, Decently,—kindly,— Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... of a painter who wished his arm to be fixed in a straight position, and of a turner whose knee at his own request was permitted to stiffen at a right angle, as that position allowed ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... blood between them—you see that? And I heard the toff tell Zahn that the next time 'e saw 'im he'd about stiffen 'im. I heard it, or words to that effect. Now, I want you to bear witness that what I ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... none o' the fellers. I knowed fellers try to kiss her; but her style was to stiffen them with a clip under the ear, an' they sort o' took the hint, an' never come back. But by-'n'-by a man from the Queensland border, he bought the place next ours but one; an' our two fam'lies got acquainted. Wonderful clever ole feller he was, in regard o' findin' ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... rocks, Forever shattered, and the same forever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? And who commanded,—and the silence came,— "Here let the billows stiffen and ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... fact or some novel idea. I suppose that people bred from childhood to lean their backs against the wall of the Creed and the church catechism find it hard to sit up straight on the republican stool, which obliges them to stiffen their own backs. Which of these two girls would be the safest choice for a young man? I should really like to hear what answer you would make if I consulted you seriously, with a view to my own choice,—on the supposition that there was a fair chance ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that right leg on to the left and stiffen the knees with something (you'll probably be able to get a decent stick or two off that small tree), and shove the arm inside his leather legging. We've two pairs of putties you can bandage with, and there are puggries on all three topis. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... hard-grained little vein of common sense, against which my fanciful conceptions and poetical notions are apt to hit with just a little sharp grating, if they are not well put. In fact, this kind of woman needs carefully to be idealized in the process of education, or she will stiffen and dry, as she grows old, into a veritable household Pharisee, a sort of domestic tyrant. She needs to be trained in artistic values and artistic weights and measures, to study all the arts and sciences of the beautiful, and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... saw him stiffen in the chair, and his eyes narrow. The chains of fear and of shame which ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... other persons or creatures the expression of that feeling of emotion."[2] The behavior of animals exhibits the external features of sympathetic action very clearly. "Two dogs begin to growl or fight, and at once all the dogs within sound and sight stiffen themselves, and show every symptom of anger. Or one beast in a herd stands arrested, gazing in curiosity on some unfamiliar object, and presently his fellows also, to whom the object may be invisible, display curiosity and come up ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... "Good Heavens, no!" he cried. "I was speaking to the chauffeur." (Jackson's back seemed to stiffen a little.) "I've told him a thousand times to be careful about running up on people like that. Now this is the last time I'll warn you, Jackson. The next time you go. Understand? Just because you happen to be driving for me doesn't signify that ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... tooth still in place, and a small package upon which the name of the Saviour was inscribed. The lady picked up the package, when immediately the most fragrant odor pervaded the apartment, being exhaled by the miraculous packet, while the hand that held it was seen perceptibly to swell and stiffen; investigation proved it to be the holy prepuce stolen by the miscreant mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen in the Sockets. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... crank and turn once or twice. Fill space around can to within an inch of top with ice and salt (three parts crushed ice to one part salt), packing hard. Turn slowly at first, increasing speed when mixture begins to stiffen. Add more ice and salt as required. When mixture is very firm, wipe off cover, open can and remove dasher; scrape frozen mixture from dasher and sides of can, and pack down solidly; cover with paper and replace cover. Put cork in opening in cover. Pour off salt water if there ...
— The New Dr. Price Cookbook • Anonymous
... of iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken—each gem with a flaw— Be comforted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... none; for so they did discountenance poor Denys. And that whole day I wore in experimenting these German lasses; and 'twas still the same. An ye doff bonnet to them they stiffen into statues; distance for distance. But accost them with honest freedom, and with that customary, and though rustical, most gracious proffer, of the kissed hand, and they withhold neither their hands in turn nor their acquaintance ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran through him. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... live steam is opened and closed by the movement of a metallic diaphragm in the valve which is opened by spring pressure on one side and closed by steam pressure on the other side. To regulate this pressure, stiffen the spring to carry more, weaken it to carry less by turning the handle connected to this spring ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... in the intestines of horses, thereby impeding and in some instances totally arresting the process of digestion. These balls, almost circular in form, are composed of minute and rather stiff hairs, and several have been found in one animal. These hairs, numerous on the heads; do not stiffen sooner than the period of full bloom; hence, until that stage is reached in the growth of the plants, the danger from feeding cured hay made ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... springing waters, and prevents their tides; Seizes the rolling waves, and, as a god, Charms their swift race, and stops the refluent flood; The opening valves, which fill the venal road, Then scarcely urge along the sanguine flood; The labouring pulse a slower motion rules, The tendons stiffen, and the spirit cools; Each asks the aid of Nature's sister, Art, To cheer the senses, and to warm the heart. The gentle fair on nervous tea relies, Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes; An inoffensive scandal fluttering round, Too rough to tickle, and too light to wound; Champagne ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... found, Stiffen'd with frost upon the ground, And took her home; but when the fire Began new vigor to inspire, Swelling her neck with angry eyes, She fills the cot with hissing cries. The rustic then his axe did take, "Is this then the return you make? Is this your gratitude?" he said, ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... green at the business, and had petitioned Mary Condon to engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had had an inkling of what was coming, and had sent Bill Totts to join the union and investigate. Bill's job was in the wash-room, and the men had been called out first, that morning, in order to stiffen the courage of the girls; and Bill chanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when Mary Condon started to enter. The superintendent, who was both large and stout, barred her way. He wasn't going to ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task, and tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it somehow, for he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his affairs, and then went into the bath-room, where he shaved and growled for ten whole minutes. I itched to throw a bootjack at him, but compromised ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... seemed to the lad countless years the vise-like grasp was maintained upon his windpipe. He began to understand that his struggles were useless, and spent his entire energy in an effort to stiffen the cords of his neck, hoping to assist his breathing by so doing. Presently, as he ceased his struggles, the soldier who had so skillfully captured him set the lad ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the door and through it, close on her heels, slipped Brent. For, a little space the confusion took no account of her coming but the city man was standing directly behind her and he saw the pliancy of her attitude stiffen and then across her shoulder he recognized in a rear door the tense figure of ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... them they have a power over us just because of their natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood: experienced soldiers tell us that at first men are sickened by the smell and newness of blood almost to death and fainting, but that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood, at least for the moment, with a deep eager love. It is a principle that if we put down a healthy instinctive aversion, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... so profound that we could hear the horses in the distant stable-yard rattling their harness—one of the younger "Excelsior" boys burst into a hysteric laugh, but the fierce eye of Yuba Bill was down upon him, and seemed to instantly stiffen him into a silent, grinning mask. The young girl, however, took no note of it; following out, with lover-like diffusiveness, the reminiscences thus ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the victim creeps.— To him has destiny a spirit given, That unrestrainedly still onward sweeps, To scale the skies long since hath striven, And all earth's pleasures overleaps. He shall through life's wild scenes be driven, And through its flat unmeaningness, I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen, And midst all sensual excess, His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven, Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink; And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given, Still must he ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the lagoon shallows below us. "The hussy!" she hissed, once and implacably. Jones had stopped at the sound, but went ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... later life in Chicago and all the regions which he visited, brings into play his higher gifts and excludes his lower. Under slight obligation to imagine, he runs slight risk of succumbing to those conventionalisms which often stiffen his work when he trusts to his imagination. Avowedly dealing with his own opinions and experiences, he is not tempted to project them, as in the novels he does somewhat too frequently, into the careers of his heroes. Dealing chiefly with action not with thought, he does not tend so ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... more than a moment in the making. Against the now paling sky I saw the Doctor's figure suddenly stiffen. Slowly he lifted the Sacred Crown from off his head and laid it on ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... the streaming bullets, zoomed upward into a half loop and rolled into position to fire at the leading attacker. The German was slow and Larkin poured a stream of lead into the cockpit. He saw the pilot stiffen, as one who has received a sudden shock or surprise, and then slump down. The plane thundered on for a moment, then nosed down, out ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... him all the time she was speaking, and only half realised that her indignation was warmly simulated in order to produce an effect upon him and stiffen a wavering determination. For a moment Gaga did not speak. He was turning the matter over in his mind, and Sally saw the changes of opinion that passed across his face. Weakness, submission, obstinacy, bewilderment were all to be observed. Above all, weakness; ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... want to do. Put it in such a disagreeable way that your backbone'll stiffen up a bit and give us something to start with. If I make you mad all the better—so long as you don't go back to fools like Gardner, who never hesitate to give a fellow like you a sample of what that drug'll ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... she was continuing these operations, she felt the child stiffen on her knee, and looking, saw the little eyes glide and roll as though drawn by a power foreign to the will. A neighbour, who was hastily called, declared it to be convulsions, and for some hours the little life hung in the balance. It was ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... then that I saw Markovitch's face that had been puckered with pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the doorway, quietly watching us, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... oppressive to his impatience, that he was beginning to think of giving up the idle venture, when suddenly he came face to face with a perpendicular and impassable wall of cliff. This curt arrest to his progress was just what was needed to stiffen his wavering resolution. He understood the defiance which his ready fancy had found in the stare of the eagle. Well, he had accepted the challenge. He would not be baffled by a rock. If he could not climb over it, he would go round it; but he would ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... kid," said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... she entered with the confident air of the morning. Directly she saw Viola, however, she seemed to stiffen with resentment, and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... eyes, and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that from the cloudy hold Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the yellow-mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth, and nurse with dew, The germs we lay to slumber here. O blessed harvest yet to be! Abide thou ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... reddened, and the striking-muscles of his arms and shoulders seemed to stiffen and grow tense. His wife fluttered ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... for a moment, dropped his hand and slowly turned away. Mr. Challoner felt Oswald stiffen in his arms, and break suddenly away, only to stop short before he had taken one of the half dozen steps between ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... seemed to stiffen into resistance. His eyelids drooped, and little lines showed themselves suddenly at either side of his thin mouth. His father saw it too, for the hand that he had lifted entreatingly sank again, and his voice was tremulous as ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the snow so as to stiffen whilst the coffins are being made, and the wounded are being attended ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... TO STIFFEN NEW NEEDLEWORK.—In the chapter on Irish lace, page 441, we said that new needlework of that kind had to be ironed; this should be done in the following manner: when the lace has been taken off its foundation, lay it, face downwards, on a piece of fine white ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... form; but it appears to have some physical influence over us. In looking at a fine drawing, say of a strong man, we seem to identify ourselves with it and feel a thrill of its strength in our own bodies, prompting us to set our teeth, stiffen our frame, and exclaim "That's fine." Or, when looking at the drawing of a beautiful woman, we are softened by its charm and feel in ourselves something of its sweetness as we exclaim, "How beautiful." The ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... floor with your face downward, and palms of hands flat upon the floor by your sides. (2) Inhale complete breath and retain. (3) Stiffen the body and raise yourself up by the strength of your arms until you rest on your hands and toes. (4) Then lower yourself to original position. Repeat several times. (5) Exhale vigorously through the mouth. (6) ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... sneeze. There is a chilly vapor off him—a swampish miasma—that puts me in a snuffling state, beyond poultice and mustard footbaths. No matter how I huddle to the fire, my thoughts will congeal and my purpose cramp and stiffen. My conceit too will be but a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... throughout the country. Arms and ammunition, especially heavy artillery in which the Turkish army was notoriously weak, constantly arrived from Germany and Austria. Every train from the central countries brought German army officers and a sprinkling of German noncommissioned officers with which to stiffen the Ottoman troops. The army was mobilized and General Liman von Sanders, a distinguished German officer, was appointed inspector general of the Turkish army. Immense stores of food and munitions were concentrated at Damascus, Constantinople, Bagdad, and on the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a Cleeve, glancing swiftly at Bateese, saw his body stiffen suddenly with his hand on the tiller; saw his eyes travel forward, seeking his brother's; saw his face whiten. Dominique stood erect, gazing back, challenging. Beyond him John caught a glimpse of Father Launoy looking up from his breviary; ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thine! My sovereign's charge, and adverse fate, Have made our meeting all too late; Yet this may Argentine, As boon from ancient comrade, crave— A Christian's Mass, a soldier's grave." Bruce pressed his dying hand—its grasp Kindly replied; but, in his clasp It stiffen'd and grew cold— And, "O farewell!" the victor cried, Of chivalry the flower and pride, The arm in battle bold, The courteous mien, the noble race, The stainless faith, the manly face! Bid Ninian's convent light their ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... frame, and brings back a glow to the cheek and a lustre to the eye, and swiftness to the brain, and power to the whole nature. Or as some plant, drooping and flagging beneath the hot rays of the sun, when it has the scent of water given to it, will, in all its parts, stiffen and erect itself, so, when the Spirit is poured out on men, their whole nature is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... watching that trigger finger. As he saw it stiffen he dropped suddenly almost to his knees, the bullet passing over his head and embedding itself in woodwork across ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... one the North King's searching lance Touch'd, and they stiffen'd at their task, and died; And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance; 'God is as close by sea as land,' he cried, 'In His own light not nearer than this gloom,'— And look'd as one who o'er the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the president of the Whitewater Commercial Club, composed of the leading merchants of the town, and Mr. Noonan was the apostle of the liquor interests. Remington felt his back stiffen as he stepped ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... defence was much encouraged by the recent crushing defeat that the British fleet had met with in attempting to pass the American batteries at Charleston. Thrice welcome after the disasters of the unlucky Canada campaign, this success tended greatly to stiffen the backbone of the army, in the face of the steady and ominous accumulation of the British land and naval forces in the lower bay. Then again, the Declaration of Independence, read to every brigade in the army (July 9), was received with much enthusiasm. Now, for the first time since hostilities ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... weapon, a stone tied in a crotched stick, from the heap of wedding gifts, and smites PADAHOON to the earth, standing threateningly over him. The others stiffen into tense attitudes, drawing their blankets tighter, their eyes burning bright. PADAHOON draws the knife that hangs in a sheath ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... rest, And shades its eyes and waits to see How sweet its waking smile will be. The tempest now may smite, the sleet All night on the drowned furrow beat, And winds that, from the cloudy hold Of winter, breathe the bitter cold, Stiffen to stone the mellow mould, Yet safe shall lie the wheat; Till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue, Shall walk again the genial year, To wake with warmth and nurse with dew The germs we lay to ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... contracted and dry; and the little fat that there may be is friable, and shrunk within its integuments. The flesh of animals slaughtered whilst under considerable depression of vital energy (as from previous bleeding) has a diminished tendency to stiffen after death, the feebleness of this tendency being in proportion to the degree of depression. It presents, also, an unnatural blue or pallid appearance, has a faint and slightly sour smell, and soon becomes putrid. When an animal has died otherwise than by slaughtering, its flesh is ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... of the motor disturbance. Even in infancy the motor signs of sexual excitement are the most obvious indications of orgasm; thus West, describing masturbation in a child of six or nine months who practiced thigh-rubbing, states that when sitting in her high chair she would grasp the handles, stiffen herself, and stare, rubbing her thighs quickly together several times, and then come to herself with a sigh, tired, relaxed, and sweating, these seizures, which lasted one or two minutes, being mistaken by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... they came out into the busy mart. The old mahout congratulated himself upon the docility of his find. It would stiffen the bidding to announce that she was gentle. He even went so far as to pat her on the shoulder. The steel film did not cover all her nerves, so it would seem; the patted shoulder was vulnerable. She winced, ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... the advantage of being very quickly and easily prepared. She made a cup full of strong coffee, strained out the grounds very carefully, and added as much sugar and milk as though for drinking hot, and enough isinglass to stiffen it, and either left it in the cup or poured it into a mould, and when cold it was ready to turn out and serve as a jelly. This was only given occasionally, as it was not considered very strengthening; but nurse found it useful to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... still and lifeless, except for an odd cart or two on the high road, a few dotted figures in the village streets. Below the flying-men the packed thousands are crouched still to earth. At the sound of the engine's drone, at sight of the wheeling shape, square miles of country stiffen to immobility, men scurry under cover of wall or bush, the long, moving lines in the trenches halt and sink down and hang their heads (next to movement the light dots of upturned, staring faces are the quickest and surest betrayal of the earth-men to the air-men), the open roads are emptied of men ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... in the wilderness! How romantic, how inexpressibly delightful, that idea seems to some minds! Ay, even when the weight of years begins to stiffen the joints and slack the cords of life the memory of God's great, wild, untrammelled, beautiful wilderness comes over the spirit like a refreshing dream and restores for a time something like the pulse ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... till it was close up, convinced us that the cavern was of an enormous length, and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were approaching behind the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... stiffen in his chair. Lawler's smile, cold and mirthless, brought a pulse of apprehension through him, and Lawler's voice, slow, clear, and distinct, forced the blood from his ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... resumed, to all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the same clearness of understanding as we; the same recognition that it is GOD and not the Devil who rules the World; the same power of discrimination between different kinds of truth.... Had our LORD come later, He would have come to mankind already beginning to stiffen into the fixedness of maturity.... The truth of His Divine Nature would not have been recognized." (pp. 24-5.)—Is this meant for bitter satire on the age we live in; or for disparagement of the Incarnate WORD?... But in the face of such anticipations, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... by the strong, there is great peace in finally giving up and lying down by the roadside. The hour often fiercely wished for, and as often repelled with awe, is here. The visible is about to become invisible. It is your turn to pass into the unknown. You have seen other faces stiffen, and other people carried out and forgotten. Your face is now going to chill the touch. You are going to be carried out. But, most wonderful of all, you who have been so keenly alive are glad to creep close to Death and lay ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... most of those obstacles to give them strength," answered the Queen, her hands tightening a little. "The King would be pliant in my hands were this man not beside him to stiffen him. Is there any other man in the world who would have dared to put me to the test he did? ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it's weakening to his insides, and it causes ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... of it about with me for months. Where I got it matters nothing; the whole point is that a mere sniff reduces flesh to clay. I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know, but I always felt it worth while to be forearmed against the very worst. Well, a bottle of this stuff is calculated to stiffen an ordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and I remembered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the small hours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I begged them to give me a drink before they left me. And ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... never leave you alone again," he whispered passionately, but to his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... not to slake the thirst, but to colour, with an intoxication now soft, now strong, the most diverse emotions: the sadness of memories, the tendernesses of friendship, the transports of love, the warmth of the quiet house, when without the furious storm and the bitter cold stiffen the universe of nature. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. He's ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... mountain range, And stretch'd the sky above, so that the air Impregnate chang'd to water. Fell the rain, And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that nought stay'd its course. My stiffen'd frame Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, And dash'd it into Arno, from my breast Loos'ning the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurl'd me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in his muddy ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... melted butter and lard; one-half cup brown sugar; one-fourth teaspoonful each of ginger and cinnamon; one heaping tablespoonful grated sweet chocolate, mixed to a paste with a little hot water. Blend the ingredients thoroughly, then stir in one teaspoonful soda in one cupful of sour milk; flour to stiffen. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various
... feet, head downwards, over a fire, rolling on a bed of prickly thorns, jumping on a couch filled with sharp knives, boring holes in their tongues, and sticking their bodies full of pins and needles, or perhaps holding the arms over the head till they stiffen in that position. Meantime in other places whole regions are given over to sensual indulgences, and companies of abandoned women are connected with different temples and consecrate their gains to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the crown. Reform would be a self-denying ordinance, if not an act of political suicide, as well as a blow at George III. Privileged bodies do not reform themselves; proposals by Burke and by Pitt and by others were rejected one after another; and then the French Revolution came to stiffen the wavering ranks of reaction. Not till the Industrial Revolution had changed the face of England did the old political forces acknowledge their defeat and surrender their claim to govern the nation ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... lively originals; but the difficulty was to get them of any truthful sort whatsoever, for the babies regarded the photographer—the kindest and mildest of men—with the gravest suspicion: and the moment he appeared, little faces, all animation before, would stiffen into shyness, and the light would slip out of them, and the naturalness, so that all the camera saw, and therefore all it could show, was a succession ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... terribly angry at this, and I felt my lips stiffen, and it was as much as I could do to say, 'What could happen to break our engagement? Ephraim is solemnly promised to me, and it is just the same in God's sight as if we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy in the meantime set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straighting the arms by its side. 'Best to do this,' she muttered, 'ere he stiffen.' She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, and awaited the approach of those whose voices ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pounding, rubbing, and wringing soiled linen, thereby overtaxing the delicate physical system. While feeling tired and jaded, all reeking in perspiration, they rinse and wring the clothes out of cold water and hang them upon the line with arms bare, when the atmosphere is so freezing that the garments stiffen before they finish this part of the task. Is it any wonder that acute suppressions occur or ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... change that had passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... thought I would come down, in case she made a descent and you wanted some one to stand by and stiffen you." ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... European point of view, an extraordinary dearth of servants, and this endures in spite of a great peasant immigration. The servile tradition will not root here now; it dies forthwith. An enormous importation of European serfs and peasants goes on, but as they touch this soil their backs begin to stiffen with ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... the light pressure of Sir Reginald Elphinstone's hand upon his arm, and turning, he saw the baronet raise his hand and point. He looked in the direction indicated, and in a moment his frame seemed to stiffen with eagerness as he gazed. For there, standing knee-deep in a pool, some two hundred yards away, and quite alone, was an animal not unlike a giraffe, but very much smaller, and with a neck that, although not so long in proportion to its ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Susquehanna. Tired as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. Little evidences of the subtle but ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... day will come when fate's decree And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee; Phœbus and Paris shall avenge my fate, And stretch thee here before the Scæan Gate." He ceased. The Fates suppress'd his laboring breath, And his eyes stiffen'd at the ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... for the value of the service itself, that He calls for it so long and so repeatedly, till at last the iron sinew gives way: no, but for the sake of bending the iron sinew itself, and when it is bent in one direction, I conclude He does not mean to stiffen it there, but would have it bend perhaps back to the very same position as at first it was so hard to bend it from, with this one wide difference, that in the first case it was so in its own will, but now in His will. Perhaps thou thinkest ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... recalled, too, the bitter voice with which his mother had spoken to a kinsman as she turned from the ragged burying ground, where only the forlorn cedars were green. She was leaning on the boy's thin shoulders at the moment. He had felt her arm stiffen with her words, and, as her arm stiffened, his own ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... on the folly of impatience and the necessity of repose. By thus long continuance in one posture, my sinews began to stiffen, and my reluctance to make new exertions to increase. My brows were heavy, and I felt an irresistible propensity to sleep. I concluded to seek some shelter, and resign myself, my painful recollections, and ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... sequence of events was permissible or even thinkable in the presence of game. The Dog at first intimation by scent must convey the fact to the Man, must proceed cautiously to locate exactly, must then stiffen to a point which he must hold staunchly, no matter how distracting events might turn out, or how long an interval might elapse. The Man must next walk up the birds; shoot at them, perhaps kill one, then command the Dog to retrieve. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... wine. The Summer looks out from her brazen tower, Through the flashing bars of July, Waiting thy ripened golden shower; Whereof there cometh, with sandals fleet, The North-west flying viewlessly, With a sword to sheer, and untameable feet, And the gorgon-head of the Winter shown To stiffen ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... this gaining the public highway, along which we would walk to the entrance to grandma's demesne. This was preferable to a short-cut and rolling under the barbed-wire fencing in the long grass sopping with dew, which at midnight or thereabouts would stiffen with the soft frosts of this region that would flee ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... sackcloth couch the Monk arose, With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd; A hundred years had flung their snows On his thin locks ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... speak lightly, although there was a plain vein of anxiety in his voice; for when a fellow has covered nearly thirty miles since sun-up, every rod counts after that; and following each little rest the muscles seem to stiffen wonderfully. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... misery of longing, and once by the far-away barking of a dog. It came up deadened, as if from fathoms below. He stood up and listened, but the sound was not repeated. His lacerated feet burned and throbbed; his bruised muscles had begun to stiffen, so that ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... army by rapid movements between the two Belgian corps. That of the Meuse fell back in great disorder upon Liege; that of the Scheldt was also forced to beat a rapid retreat. Leopold, whose reign was not yet a fortnight old, joined the western corps and did all that man could do to organise and stiffen resistance. At Louvain (August 12) he made a last effort to save the capital and repeatedly exposed his life, but the Belgians were completely routed and Brussels lay at the victor's mercy. It was a terrible humiliation for the new Belgian state. But the prince had accomplished his task and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... areas that the federal government should not leave and should address and address strongly. One of these areas is the problem of illegal immigration. After years of neglect, this administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the protection of our borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And tonight, I announce I will sign an executive order to deny federal contracts to businesses ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... so hard that you cannot find an easy spot to lie on. You are always worse before storms. After sitting a little while you stiffen up, feeling much better after moving about. The tendons of your legs have a drawing sensation, and feel as if too short. There is more or less of numbness and paralysis, and a wooden sort of feeling of the ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... about to answer and then, suddenly, he seemed to stiffen, his hand, which was conveying a match to his cigarette, remained motionless, the flame of the match flared up and then went out in a gust of wind. "Look, Bob, look," he said, in a low voice. "What do you see ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... experiencing a sinking sensation, a feeling of collapse, at the order "Fix Bayonets!" their hands trembling violently over the task. But when the bugle sounds the charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands grip the rifle with grim determination. "It was his life or mine," said a young Highlander describing his first battle, "and I ran the bayonet through him." There is no time for sentiment, and ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... cried Pete, coming to the bedside, glass in hand. "Drink it up, boy. It'll stiffen you. My faith, but it's a oner. Aw, God is good, though. He's all that. He's ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Stiffen too rigidly, Decently, kindly, Smooth and compose them; And her eyes, close ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... expands you beyond your common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the putting on of the cap, and the relief, followed by further expansion and ecstasy, which ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... ready for us. Objects we travel on, if horses, often stampede or are stampeded; if wagons, they break down; if shanks, they stiffen; if feet, they chafe. No such trouble befalls Birch; leak, however, it will, as ours did this morning. We gently beguiled it into the position taken tearfully by unwhipped little boys, when they are about to receive birch. Then, with a firebrand, the pitch of the seams ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... has written: "Once in possession of every fact in the case, the President withdraws, commences the business of consideration, comparison, and assessment, and then emerges with a decision." From such a decision it is difficult to shake him and continued opposition serves merely to stiffen his resolution. Wherever the responsibility is his, he insists upon the finality of his judgment. Those who have worked with him have remarked upon his eagerness, once he has decided a course of action, to carry it into practical effect. The President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, Thomas G. Masaryk, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... of his own national and private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should never consist of more than three sections, and the angler should look well to his joints after a wetting, as they are apt to swell and stiffen in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... warm, but a little too dark; soon he emerged again and glanced around, relieved to discover that the world was still in its old place. He was not clever at learning tricks. I tried to make him stand on his head, but he refused to stiffen out. Snakes have not much sense ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the air Impregnate chang'd to water. Fell the rain, And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that nought stay'd its course. My stiffen'd frame Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, And dash'd it into Arno, from my breast Loos'ning the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurl'd me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in his muddy spoils ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... smile stiffen as he wondered what could be going wrong. Surely, they could not doubt his loyalty! A hasty glance at Colonel Korman revealed no expression on the military facade ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... rise behind Miller's ears. He could feel his hair stiffen like filings drawn to a magnet. His glance struggled to the soda fountain. What he saw there shook him to the core of ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we must push ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be thinned down with sandpaper. If the dressed skin is wanted to lie flat as for a rug, it can be moistened on the flesh side; then stretched out and tacked fur side up on a board, the table top or the floor until dry. If this should cause it to harden or stiffen too much break it ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... mites; you stiffen on a bench And stoop your curls to dusty laws; Your petal fingers curve and clench In slavery to parchment saws; You suit your hearts to sallow faces In sullen places: But no pen Nor pedantry can make you men. Yours are the morning and the day: You should ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... until clear, then pour it into moulds and put them in a cool place to set. One calf's foot and one cow heel will be more economical than two calfs feet. If fruit is desired to be in the jelly, it must be put in when the jelly begins to stiffen in ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... distinctions, however, were unknown to Jane. If you were in a temper, you were in a temper. That was flat. And she rather wanted to rouse Nevil's. Heated opposition would stiffen ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... hold in fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal for us ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... looking at her he would have seen the Leopard Woman's frame stiffen at the mention of this name. For a moment she ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... him from head to foot. He lifted his hands, as if he must cry aloud in anguish. Then suddenly his face and figure seemed to congeal and stiffen with some awful inward coldness—the frost of the last circle of the Inferno—it spread upon him till he stood like a soul ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... neck is paralysing, because the cervical nerve- centres are affected. The poor thing's legs stiffen; and all is over in a second. The murderess now sucks the victim's blood at her ease and, when she has done, scornfully flings the drained corpse aside. She hides herself once more, ready to bleed a second gleaner should the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... leg is broken below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be moved, ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... sponge, three cups sugar, one cup butter, three eggs, one teaspoonful soda dissolved in a little water, one pound raisins, one teaspoonful each of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice; flour enough to stiffen. ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... their footsteps and their laughter. They loved music, but they spoke of it with a stupidity that was revolting. The coarse indiscretion of their enthusiasm wounded the boy's modesty of feeling. When they praised a work that he loved it was as though they were insulting him personally. He would stiffen himself and grow pale, frozen, and pretend not to take any interest in music. He would have hated it had that been possible. Melchior ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... be said, it must be admitted that the Christian religion has something astonishing in it. Some will say, "This is because you were born in it." Far from it; I stiffen myself against it for this very reason, for fear this prejudice bias me. But although I am born in it, I cannot help finding ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... he added, seeming to stiffen his shoulders in resentment at the calmness with which she regarded him. "I tell you that I waive the authority of a father and appeal to your gratitude; I remind you that I saved your life—leaped into the cold water and seized you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... an absent, far-away look, his arms and legs seemed to stiffen, and a tremor ran through his limbs. Chris watched ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... happens that exactly these movements result from these feelings, that just these organs are affected by these passions? Might I not just as well want to know why a certain wounding of the ligament should stiffen ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... shut me from my kind; And, lest I stiffen into stone, I will not eat my heart alone, Nor feed with ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... are here, should mean continuous unfoldment, advancement, and this is undoubtedly the purpose of life; but age-producing forces and agencies mean deterioration, as opposed to growth and unfoldment. They ossify, weaken, stiffen, deaden, both mentally and physically. For him or her who yearns to stay young, the coming of the years does not mean or bring abandonment of hope or of happiness or of activity. It means comparative vigour combined with continually larger experience, and therefore even more usefulness, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... he spoke, but here a low, venomous snarl from Black Bart checked his words. Kate saw him stiffen—his lips parted to a faint smile—his head tilted back a little as if he listened intently, though she could hear nothing. She was not a yard from him, and yet she felt a thousand miles away. His head turned full upon her, and she would ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... in their eyes; As if they could, the prudent fools, Adjust such live-long growth to rules, As if so strong a soul could thrive Fixed in one shape at thirty-five. Leave him to us, ye good and sage, Who stiffen ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... still thick enough in the brain of Bill Gregg to make him obey automatically. He stumbled into his clothes and then shambled dizzily to the door and opened it. As the light from the room struck down the hall Ronicky saw his friend stiffen to his full height and strike a hand across ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... and it shall be done," can be fulfilled even to the letter, if we have the faith of the Apostles, and such as the Lord commanded them to have. For which is more strange, that a mountain should descend into the sea; or that mountains of water should stiffen of a sudden, and, firm as a rock only at an old man's feet, should flow softly everywhere else? All the city wondered; and the greatness of the sign was bruited ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... strong and virile and brutal in him seemed to harden and stiffen in the moment after he had seen the beach-comber collapse limply on the sand under the last strong knife-blow; and a sense of triumph, of boundless self-confidence, leaped within him, so that he shouted aloud in a very excess of exhilaration; and snatching up a heavy ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... was continuing these operations, she felt the child stiffen on her knee, and looking, saw the little eyes glide and roll as though drawn by a power foreign to the will. A neighbour, who was hastily called, declared it to be convulsions, and for some hours the little life hung in the balance. It was during these hours that Deborah fought ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... violent taking possession by an embodied force that had broken loose and was not to be controlled any longer. As his great voice had done a moment before, his great strength, too, seemed able to fill all space in its enveloping and undeniable authority. Every time she tried instinctively to stiffen herself against its might, it reacted, affirming its fierce will, its uplifting power. Several times she lost the feeling of the ground and had a sensation of helplessness without fear, of triumph without exultation. The inevitable had come to pass. She had foreseen it—and all ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... very great pain, it is a grave mistake to put the knee in splints to prevent bending. What is wanted is to encourage bending as far as that can be done without much pain, so that the joint may not permanently stiffen. Even where, by the use of splints, permanent stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first of a slight bending, and then, with ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... of the dead silence, the clatter of a pebble struck on the girl's raw nerves and made her wince. She saw the muscles of Lynch's back stiffen and the barrel of his Colt flash up to cover the narrow entrance to the ledge. For an instant she hesitated, choked by the beating of her heart. Should she cry out? Was it the man really coming? Her dry lips parted, and then all at once a curious, slowly moving object barely ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Branksome greets thee by me, Says, that the fated hour is come, And that to-night I shall watch with thee, To win the treasure of the tomb." From sackcloth couch the Monk arose, With toil his stiffen'd limbs he rear'd; A hundred years had flung their snows On his ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... darkness seemed to stiffen with sudden attention. The voice was like, and yet not like ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... short, the commander-in-chief's unfitness was graphically portrayed in the conversation with Cornwall from the quarter gallery of the flag-ship. "If you approve and will go down with me, I will go down." Like so many men, he needed a backer, to settle his doubts and to stiffen his backbone. The instance ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... in my power, and who would know it were I to leave your corpse to stiffen on the snow? But I bear you no ill will, and have no intention to hurt you. I would not harm a hair of your head. I will not subject you even to the inconvenience of having these fetters on your wrists, though you were unfeeling enough to place them ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... perfectly clean, stiffen it by dipping it into a little gum-water, and pin it out on a pillow, in the proper form, to dry. Then darn it with embroidery cotton, every square of the pattern being ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... rarest of all types of drama; because characters strong enough to determine and control a humorous plot almost always insist on fighting out their struggle to a serious issue, and thereby lift the action above the comic level. On the other hand, unless the characters thus stiffen in their purposes, they usually allow the play to lapse to farce. Pure comedies, however, have now and then been fashioned, without admixture either of farce or of serious drama; and of these Le Misanthrope ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... course, but it seems particularly hideous, because I'm not a bit an immovable sort. I ride and play tennis and dance, all those things, more than most people. I care about them—a lot." One could see it in the vivid pose of the figure. "And, you know, it's really too much to expect. I won't stiffen gently into a live corpse. No!" The sliding, clear voice was low, but the "no" ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... heir was about to make his declaration, he felt his tongue stiffen at the recollection of the dead man, just put away in his grave, and a doubt seized him as to what lengths his father's benevolence might have gone. Flore, who was quite unable even to suspect his simplicity of mind, looked at her future ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will keep up the fire. My veins would stiffen without it. It has carried me so far, and it must to the ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... bolting their own, they saw a great hound with stiff legs and erect hackles, alert in every hair of his body—but no supper. The supper, very slightly masticated and swallowed with furious haste, was already beginning its task of helping to stiffen Jan's fibers and give fierceness to the lift of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... the grocer, and Mr. Acroyd, the shoemaker, would be sitting there talking to Mr. Belk, who was justice of the peace. And they would see Papa. The young men squatting on the flagstones outside the "Farmer's Arms" and the "King's Head" would see him. And Papa would stiffen and draw himself up, trying to look ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... was round me stiffen, and there was silence for a moment, then my lord swore a great oath, and let his clenched fist fall so heavily on the table, that the red French wine which stood before him splashed right out of the beaker, a foot or two in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... hapless creatures small To sweet seeds that the withered grasses hold?— The little children of men go hungry all, And stiffen and cry ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the capacity and fielding power of a club in this stage, but experienced onlookers knew the fallacy of such a premature decision. Often the very fellows who displayed carelessness in practice would stiffen up like magic when the game was actually started, and never make a sloppy play from that time on, their throwing being like clock-work and their stopping of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... especially heavy artillery in which the Turkish army was notoriously weak, constantly arrived from Germany and Austria. Every train from the central countries brought German army officers and a sprinkling of German noncommissioned officers with which to stiffen the Ottoman troops. The army was mobilized and General Liman von Sanders, a distinguished German officer, was appointed inspector general of the Turkish army. Immense stores of food and munitions were concentrated at Damascus, Constantinople, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath its quakery influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over against the Market Place, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... eighty, or, prematurely, at fifty or thirty, repair does not equal waste, and degeneration of tissue results. More cells are destroyed by wear and tear than are made up from nutriment. The friction of the machine rubs the stuff of life away faster than it can be replaced. The muscles stiffen, the hair turns white, the joints crack, the arteries ossify, the nerve-centres harden or soften: all sorts of degeneration creep on till death appears,—Mors janua vitae. There the curves unite, and men and women ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... of the night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... forth.—'Then,' said Davidson, 'we must crave help of Him that will hear us.' Not only was Melville excluded from the Assembly, but its business was not allowed to proceed till he left the town, lest he should stiffen the brethren who resorted to him for advice against the King's proposals. The royal measures were, after all, only carried by ten votes; and even that majority would not have been secured had the King not declared, with his usual disingenuousness, that he had ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... apply this stigma in practice would be extremely difficult to carry out, would involve all kinds of difficulties and complications in trade and in finance, and that the threat of it is more likely than anything else to stiffen the resistance of the Germans and to force them to rely on their militarist leaders as their only hope of salvation. However, the Committee points out that recent legislation shows a desire to ascertain and ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... fact, for now the fight was over the men began to stiffen, and several unexpectedly turned faint, it proving that though not a single man was seriously wounded, nearly every one of those who had followed Joe Cross in his gallant achievement of boarding the schooner, and in beating down the slaver's crew when they forced their ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... be," said Jean. "What's the use of me if I'm not to help? No. Don't stiffen and look at me like that. I'm not offering you charity. Perhaps you may have heard that I've been left a lot of money—in trust. It's your money as much as mine; if it's anybody's it's God's money. I felt I just couldn't pass your door this morning, and I spoke to you, though I was frightfully ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... had a side view of the bird, but every three seconds the head would be jerked towards me, showing the bright yellow colour of the open mouth. The reeling would last about three minutes, then the bird would unbend or unstiffen and take a few hops about the bush, then stiffen and begin again. While thus gazing and listening I, by chance, met with an experience of that rare kind which invariably strikes the observer of birds as strange and almost incredible—an example of the most perfect mimicry in a species which has its own distinctive song and is not ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... that had passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to do good, but of your heavenly Master and his ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... Drouillard, and three of the Kentuckians, and started on up the left-hand stream with one boat. The current of the river seemed to stiffen. It cost continually increasing toil to get the boat upstream. They were gone for several days, and no word came ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... they shriek; and groans and dismal sounds Stun my scared ears, and pierce hell's utmost bounds. No more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and retreat the shores; Swift o'er the waves we fly; the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mending the telephone-wire under fire; each time it would break they would curse and tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen resolution—the second ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... Son, and we're proud as Punch of you, that you want to be not only in America's 'First Hundred Thousand,' but in her 'First Ten Thousand.' We know it will stiffen your spine considerably to hear that your family are behind you. Well, we are—just ranks and rows of us, with our heads up and the colours waving. Even Grandfather and Grandmother are as gallant as veterans about ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... wedge in the intestines of horses, thereby impeding and in some instances totally arresting the process of digestion. These balls, almost circular in form, are composed of minute and rather stiff hairs, and several have been found in one animal. These hairs, numerous on the heads; do not stiffen sooner than the period of full bloom; hence, until that stage is reached in the growth of the plants, the danger from feeding cured hay made from ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... stiff sort that wouldn't feel at home with me," observed Mrs. Belloc. "New York usually stiffens people up. It's had the opposite effect on me. Though I must say, I have learned to stiffen with people I don't like—and I'll have to admit that I like fewer and fewer. People don't wear well, do they? What IS the matter with them? Why can't they be natural and not make themselves into rubbishy, old scrap-bags full of fakes and pretenses? ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... attitude was, to a large extent, justified because many articles of the heretical creeds were of purely pagan origin. Given similar conditions to-day, our easy tolerance of opinion would disappear. If Islam, for instance, were to-day a serious menace to the Faith, Christians would automatically stiffen their attitude towards monophysite doctrines. Toleration of the false Christology would, under those circumstances, be treason to the true. The Church of the fifth century was menaced from many sides. Monophysitism was the foe at her gates. That heresy ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... Bull and were out for mischief. They had been missing from the agencies several weeks; had been ghost-dancing with their fellows from Pine Ridge to the west, and were by this time probably on their way to swell the ranks and stiffen the back of that big chief of the Minniconjou Sioux—"Big Foot," as known to the whites, Si Tanka, as known to the Indian Bureau, and "Spotted Elk," so said Iron Shield, the scout, as known to ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... they stiffen themselves, Richard. They know they are going to have their photograph taken, and can't ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... regularly jolly; though now he's a minister, perhaps he'll stiffen up and turn sober. Wont it be a shame if he does?" and Thorny looked alarmed at the thought of losing his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... that English was a foreign tongue to him seems to have intensified this quality; as though the hardness and steepness of its challenge forced the latent scholarship in him to stiffen its fibres to ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... a bit and called his orderly, who again impressed Johnny with his military preciseness when he stood at attention and saluted. Captain Riley's whole manner seemed to stiffen to that military preciseness, though Johnny had thought ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the fowl-run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen as he walked, while his face deepened in colour. Ukridge's breezy way of expressing himself is ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... seemed for an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it bled! Much that would help her! Ove Ramel offered to let them stay on at the Castle for Waldemar Daa's lifetime, but he got no thanks for his offer; I was listening. I saw the ruined gentleman stiffen his neck and hold his head higher than ever. I beat against the walls and the old linden trees with such force that the thickest branch broke, although it was not a bit rotten. It fell across the gate like a broom, as if some ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... suds with Ivory or Castile soap and add to it a handful of salt to set the color. Wash each piece through this, and rinse through two clear waters to which just enough vinegar to taste has been added, the latter to brighten the color, then stiffen in cool starch and hang in the shade. When washing delicate colored fabrics a tablespoon of ox gall may ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... plank makes hard wheeling. If the planks are so long between the "horses" or "bents" used to support them, that they spring badly, it is usually a simple matter to nail a cleat across the underside of the planks and stand an upright strut underneath to support and stiffen the plank. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... grew dark, their hands began to stiffen, and they were carried off by the sea one ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... close the Wall vp with our English dead: In Peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillnesse, and humilitie: But when the blast of Warre blowes in our eares, Then imitate the action of the Tyger: Stiffen the sinewes, commune vp the blood, Disguise faire Nature with hard-fauour'd Rage: Then lend the Eye a terrible aspect: Let it pry through the portage of the Head, Like the Brasse Cannon: let the Brow o'rewhelme it, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... queer fellow? How's your middle leg? Got a match on you? Eh, come here till I stiffen it ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... in the Mormon's gaze. For an instant his face worked spasmodically, only to stiffen into a stony mask. It was the old conflict once more, the never-ending war between flesh and spirit. And now the flesh ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting his game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and—how led who can say?—she would fly like a wireless message ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... But I thought I would come down, in case she made a descent and you wanted some one to stand by and stiffen you." ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... so fill'd with bloody circumstance, Of this damn'd deed, that stiffen'd me with horror. Vardanes seem'd to blame the hasty act, As rash, and unadvis'd, by passion urg'd, Which never yields to cool reflection's place. But, being done, resolv'd it secret, lest The multitude should take it in their wise Authority ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... her work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... I could see Allyn stiffen as a peculiar sick look crossed Chase's dry face. And suddenly I heard all the ugly little nicknames—Subspace Chase, Gutless Gus, Cautious Charley—and the dozen others. For Chase was afraid. It was so obvious that not even the gray mask of his ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... planets scowl, Where hell hounds ravage, and the furies howl; Though chang'd, deform'd, still, still ye meet my view, Ye still are left to hear my last adieu! My friends, my children, gor'd with many a wound, Whose mangled bodies strew the ensanguin'd ground, To parch and stiffen in the blaze of day, Consign'd to vultures, and to wolves a prey, Your toils are past; no more ye wake to feel Lust's savage gripe, or rapine's reeking steel! And Thou, to whom my wedded faith was given, On earth my solace, and my hope in heaven, Approv'd in manhood, as ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of involution relate to its mouth and to its ligaments, for these structures are also chiefly muscle. The mouth of the womb, lately stretched to permit the exit of the child, gapes widely for a time; but ultimately its lips are drawn together, the tissues which compose them stiffen, and the canal which they enclose is narrowed to almost microscopical dimensions. When involution is complete, the uterus has so far regained its virginal character that no trace of childbirth remains other than a few small fissures in the margin ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... fasten a cock's feather in his cap, almost like a gentleman, and hang his cloak over one shoulder, and pull up his hose till they almost cracked, so as to show off his leg? Ah, he had handsome legs, my poor Vito, and he never would use anything but pure beeswax to stiffen his mustaches. No, he never would use tallow. He was almost ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... of the 23. Scheme; and by the 2. Figure of the 26. Scheme; the one is a quilly or finny substance, consisting of several long, slender and variously bended quills or wires, something resembling the veins of leaves; these are, as 'twere, the finns or quills which stiffen the whole Area, and keep the other part distended, which is a very thin transparent skin or membrane variously folded, and platted, but not very regularly, and is besides exceeding thickly bestuck with innumerable small bristles, which are onely perceptible by the bigger magnifying Microscope, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time and the wind and weather should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... of complete silence. Mrs. Boyce's face might have been seen by a close observer to quiver and then stiffen as she stood in the light of the window, a tall and queenly figure in her sweeping black. But she said not a word, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... got down to work, and presently had a regular production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen, cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a wonderful-looking ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... particular good fortune in the matter of wind and weather had favoured England. She had won, against apparent odds, because her sons had found out on many a venturous voyage how the great game of war by sea ought to be played; and her enemy had not. She had won decisively. Philip might stiffen his pride and boast that he could yet send forth fleets mightier than the lost Armada. But on the day of the fight off Gravelines the doom of his power was sealed; and the Empire of the Ocean passed from ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... felt himself to be, instinct told him that he could act now as it would be impossible to do later, when his wounds began to stiffen and his muscles to refuse to obey his will. No bones were broken. He could still keep his feet and use his arms; and when the faithful servant brought up a horse and helped his master to mount, Paul felt that ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to the crowded haunts of men, and the porter touching his hat to him for a prospective twopence at the railway station, is the welcome confessor of his disallowed divinity. It is, alas! the most common and humbling feature of human nature that we all stiffen our backs with pride when the knee of some fellow-creature is crooked in homage to us, although that homage may be bought for twopence! No wonder that the man in whose character vanity is the chief essence cannot long endure contact with Nature; Nature respects ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... the Susquehanna. Tired as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... employes might probably be weeded out with advantage. The remaining tenth—thoroughly efficient—should be retained; but, whatever you do, do not break up Sir Evelyn Wood's army, which is destined to do good work. Stiffen it as much as you please, but with Englishmen, not with Circassians. Circassians are as much foreigners in Egypt as Englishmen are, and certainly not more popular. As for the European population, let them have charters for the formation of municipal councils, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... I perceived, by the uncovered window, that the yielding dusk of earliest morning rendered it unnecessary. Without it, the next instant, I saw that there was someone on the stair. I speak of sequences, but I required no lapse of seconds to stiffen myself for a third encounter with Quint. The apparition had reached the landing halfway up and was therefore on the spot nearest the window, where at sight of me, it stopped short and fixed me exactly as it had fixed ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... Miss Ladd replied. "I see no reason for delay. I'd rather tell them now than just before or after we get to Hollyhill. If we tell them now they'll have a couple of hours in which to stiffen their courage. There are eleven girls besides you two. Suppose you call them here in three lots in succession, four, four, and three, and we'll tell them quietly what has occurred and give them a little lecture as to how ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds, and to enjoy a great deal of happiness, in this ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... feel the feminine side of the chapel stiffen—Hogboom was the worst fusser in college. He was chronically in love with no less than four girls and was devoted to dozens at a time. We had reason to believe that he was at that time engaged to two, and spring was only half over at that. ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... One always enjoys listening to his friend. What this Friend says to us will change radically our conceptions of Himself, and of life. It will clear the vision, and discipline the judgment, and stiffen the will. ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the uniform he wore insulted by cowardly brutes without making a resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much the hope these few words carried with them, as ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... cool enough now," said Washington, his wet clothes already beginning to stiffen on his back in the wintry blast. "I shall not despair so long as I remember that one faithful saint is praying for me," referring to the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... La Mothe's grip upon the chair grew more tense, and his hand so shook that the whole chair was shaken as he felt the girl stiffen against his knuckles. What his hopes were he did not dare admit, though the foundations of his faith were never shaken. Better even than the girl he understood how great was the issue Commines played for in his effort to move her from ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... late; for Alcantara was already staggering under the loss of blood, and soon fell to the ground. Pizarro threw himself on his invaders, like a lion roused in his lair, and dealt his blows with as much rapidity and force, as if age had no power to stiffen his limbs. "What ho!" he cried, "traitors! have you come to kill me in my own house?" The conspirators drew back for a moment, as two of their body fell under Pizarro's sword; but they quickly rallied, and, from their superior numbers, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... upon dust-colored frame houses set down at intervals on the dusty buff plain, each with its dusty wheat or barley field adjacent, the crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch No.2." Then comes a road made up of many converging wagon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling street, in which glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to each other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring, and without a veranda like all the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... on poor old Ahuna, or let loose upon him the ghost of Kaaukuu's father, supposed to be crouching there in the corner, who commanded Ahuna to divulge to her the burial- place. I tried to stiffen him up, telling him to let the old ghost divulge the secret himself, than whom nobody else knew it better, seeing that he had resided there upwards of a century. But Ahuna was old school. He possessed ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... my dressing-room to tell me." Betty felt the whole slim body stiffen itself with a determination to seem calm. "He said he was going to find out where the old Duke of Broadmorlands was staying ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sense is a coarse open texture of cotton or hemp, loaded with gum, and used to stiffen certain articles of dress. But this was certainly not the mediaeval sense. Nor is it easy to bring the mediaeval uses of the term under a single explanation. Indeed Mr. Marsh suggests that probably two different words have coalesced. Fr.-Michel says that Bouqueran ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... proportion of one equivalent for three of the total calcium is most convenient for the formation of oxychloride of calcium. If the mixture is made with carbonate of lime (pulverized chalk), it will not stiffen in the air; but if lime and carbonate of calcium are employed at the same time, the mass stiffens like cement, and can be moulded into bricks or plates. The best way to operate is to mix first a part of the ore and well pulverized ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... very bad blood between them—you see that? And I heard the toff tell Zahn that the next time 'e saw 'im he'd about stiffen 'im. I heard it, or words to that effect. Now, I want you to bear witness that what I ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... appeared, and under his instructions the end of the flexible hose from the crude oil tank was carried aboard and connected by a union to a pipe on the lower deck. A wheel valve at the tank was turned, and Merriman could see the hose move and stiffen as the oil began to flow through it. An hour later the valve was turned off, the hose relaxed, the union was uncoupled and the hose, dripping black oil, was carried back and left in its former place on the wharf. The second ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... sunset tints faded from the sky; the far-off crests of the Orange hills grew darker; the nearer files of pines on the Whatnong Mountain became a mere black background; and, with the coming-on of night, came too an icy silence that seemed to stiffen and arrest the very wind itself. The crisp leaves no longer rustled; the waving whips of alder and willow snapped no longer; the icicles no longer dropped a cold fruitage from barren branch and spray; and the ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... all appearance, his first imperturbability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concentrate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost's seasoned bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was all. Quasimodo fell back exhausted. Amazement gave way, on his features, to a sentiment of profound and bitter ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... from our neighbor Williams, waiting for the squad to come and help me eat them. Very bad writing this, I know, by the light of the fire, holding the paper first folded, then bent, then skewed, anything to stiffen it and catch the light, while every moment I must shift it as I move my hand ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... necessity of Counterbracing, there are various opinions. The object of it is to stiffen the truss and check vibrations. If a load be placed over any panel point, it causes that portion of the truss to sink, and produces an elevation of the corresponding panel point at the other end of the truss—thus producing a distortion, ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... his misused body stiffen, that when he was called it required another ten minutes and a second glass of whisky to unbend his joints and limber up ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man, and her knee-joints will soon begin to stiffen. Self-assertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does not ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fight. Some who fight see present human growth and the growth of human demands on resources as the stark unavoidable realities they are, and seek mainly to guide them and mitigate their effects. Others stiffen their necks against development to meet those demands, staunch enemies to all reservoirs and other forms of compromise, stubborn if highminded nay-sayers against the ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... visage pale and wan; A sketch of life, a remnant of a man! Whose livid lips, as now he moulds a grin, Like charnel doors disclose the waste within; Whose stiffen'd joints within their sockets grind, Like gibbets creaking to the passing wind; Whose shrivell'd skin with much adhesion clings His bones around in hard compacted rings, If veins there were, no blood beneath could force, Unless by miracle, its trickling course;— ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... groans and dismal sounds Stun my scared ears, and pierce hell's utmost bounds. No more my heart the dismal din sustains, And my cold blood hangs shivering in my veins; Lest Gorgon, rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors arm'd, and curls of hissing snakes, Should fix me stiffen'd at the monstrous sight, A stony image, in eternal night! Straight from the direful coast to purer air I speed my flight, and to my mates repair. My mates ascend the ship; they strike their oars; The mountains lessen, and retreat the shores; ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man, As modest stillness, and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage: Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let it pry through the portage of the head, Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the use of ties and by the barrel vaults of the cross arms, and these in their turn depend on the thickness of the walls. The lower buildings attached to the church in the form of side-chapels and the narthex also helped to stiffen and buttress the cross walls. The system is by no means perfect in these late churches. It was apparently found impossible to construct drum domes of any size, except at the extreme risk of their ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... and tried to make her distinguish between the public and the private virtues. But the word "responsibility" slipped from him and he felt her stiffen. This was preaching, and she hated preaching even more than history. Her attention strayed again and he rallied his forces in a last appeal. But he knew it was a lost battle: every argument broke against the close front of her indifference. He was talking a language she ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... time, as she watched him, she saw his features stiffen, as though a suspicion, a foreboding ran ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feasting is that it expands you beyond your common sense. One excess induces another, and a finer one. This acceptance of the ridiculous is good for you. It is particularly good for an Anglo-Saxon, who is so self-contained and self-controlled that his soul might stiffen as the unused limb of an Indian fakir stiffens, were it not for periodical excitements like that of the Christmas feast. Everybody has experienced the self-conscious reluctance which precedes the putting on of the cap, and ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... their brains boil, scorches the ground, dries up the springs, and brings forth endless numbers of mosquitoes to sting their bodies and try their patience. The Promised Land!... At night they have the terrible cold to make their eyes smart, to stiffen their joints and ruin their lungs. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... its dusty wheat or barley field adjacent, the crop, not the product of the rains of heaven, but of the muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch No.2." Then comes a road made up of many converging wagon tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling street, in which glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to each other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring, and without a veranda like all the others, is the "St. Vrain Hotel," called after ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... felt her shoulders stiffen, and all the fighting blood which was in her as truly, if less offensively than in himself, leaped in her pulses. Defiant words rushed to her lips, but remained unsaid, because something grotesque about his attempted ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... then saw the white youth stiffen with swift decision, saw him whirl to face the crag. For a moment he stood with eyes riveted upon the Agong till the little knob swung toward him, then he bent slightly at the knees and his hand swept back with a swiftness that seemed to bring the pistol leaping to meet the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... did not neglect any precaution which might save his strength for the morrow. He lay down upon his bed, stretching himself at full length, and carefully keeping his right arm free, lest, by letting his weight fall upon it as he lay, he should benumb the muscles or stiffen the joints; from time to time he rubbed a little strengthening ointment upon his wrist, and he was careful that the light should not shine in his eyes and weary them. At six o'clock his seconds appeared with the surgeon they had engaged, and the four men ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a coward, really," I went on; I smiled painstakingly into his stupid pink face that seemed suddenly to have grown pinker; and then I felt my smile stiffen upon my lips, for he had whirled around on the piano stool on which he was sitting, and he smiled back at me, but not as he would have done in Mrs. Whitney's ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the thunder-oak of Geismar to worship their god, Thor. Strange things will be seen there, and deeds which make the soul black. But we are sent to lighten their darkness; and we will teach our kinsmen to keep a Christmas with us such as the woodland has never known. Forward, then, and stiffen up ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... yellowish-red in colour, and do not stiffen the cloth. The iron may be dissolved by placing the stain in a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid, when, on adding ferrocyanide of potassium, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... hour passed. I resolved, under the pressing circumstances, to resort to extreme measures. I threw a pitcher of cold water over Rouletabille's head. He opened his eyes. I beat his face, and raised him up. I felt him stiffen in my arms and heard him murmur: "Go on, go on; but don't make any noise." I pinched him and shook him until he was able to stand ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... duration. To the wondrous dexterity of his adversary, Sintram opposed his far superior size; and he dealt so fearful a blow on the horned helmet, that a stream of blood rushed forth, the small man fell as if stunned, and after some frightful convulsive movements, his limbs appeared to stiffen ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... white face of that child Mary Traill as she fled in horror before the jeering ruffian whom he had slain, and other things even more unspeakable seen on that dreadful evening rose now before the eyes of his memory to stiffen his faltering purpose. The Spaniards had shown themselves without mercy or sentiment or decency of any kind; stuffed with religion, they were without a spark of that Christianity, the Symbol of which was mounted on the mainmast of the approaching ship. A moment ago this ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... face. His hands were numb, dead. He lay supported by his elbows, his eyes gazing blankly at the unlit fire. Five minutes passed; he did not rise. He seemed dazed, stupid, terror-stricken. Five more minutes passed. He did not move. He seemed to stiffen, to grow rigid, and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... darkened the flame in the Mormon's gaze. For an instant his face worked spasmodically, only to stiffen into a stony mask. It was the old conflict once more, the never-ending war between flesh and spirit. And now the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... dear. It has to be done; and the braver you are, the sooner it will be over. You are bound to suffer the first few times, but it would be ten times worse to allow the joint to stiffen. Now be brave, and try to take just two steps with me! I will support you on one side, and—" Nurse looked round questioningly—"Mr Harold will take the other. You can lean all your weight on us. We won't let ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to the lad countless years the vise-like grasp was maintained upon his windpipe. He began to understand that his struggles were useless, and spent his entire energy in an effort to stiffen the cords of his neck, hoping to assist his breathing by so doing. Presently, as he ceased his struggles, the soldier who had so skillfully captured him set ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... standing well in the centre of our force, it was possible to see the uniforms of that band of renegades which Sir John had armed and equipped that they might kill their neighbors, as the men came up to take the place of the retreating redskins, and, if anything had been needed to stiffen the backs of our people, surely they got it when seeing those whom they had once called friends, moving into ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... your breath. You'll want it when the muscles stiffen. 'Cre nom d'un pipe! To think that I, Furneaux of the Yard, should queer the finest pitch I ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... could no longer move along fast enough to keep the warmth of life in his body. To add to his trouble, his foot, which had been broken in Tennessee previous to his capture, was now giving him great pain, and threatened to cripple him wholly; indeed, it would stiffen and disable the best of limbs to compass the journey he had made in darkness over strange, uneven, and hard-frozen ground, and through rivers, creeks, and bogs, and ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the snow! An easy death! Gentle surcease of mortal breath! I sink, I stiffen, I'm foredone! The feeling though's a pleasant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... Tired as I was I could not forbear a smile when this Mohican saluted the noble river by its Algonquin name in the presence of those haughty Iroquois who owned it. And it seemed to me as though I could hear the feathered crests stiffen on the two Oneida heads; for this was Oneida country, and they had been maliciously reminded that the Lenape had once named for them their river under circumstances in which no Iroquois took any pride. Little evidences of the subtle but ever-living friction between my Mohican and the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... 27th he met the proposal more directly by pointing out that, so far from such a policy conducing to the maintenance of peace, it would merely offend the pride of the Germans and stiffen them in their present attitude.[147] Two days later Sir Edward Grey pointed out to M. ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... his head. If the whole thing were not disposed of within the next few months the fellow would turn up again like a bad penny. It saved a thousand a year at least to get rid of him, besides all the worry to Winifred and his father. 'I must stiffen Dreamer's back,' he thought; 'we ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... indeed: that came out more and more with every word he said and with the particular way he said it, and Maisie could feel his monitress stiffen almost with anguish against the increase of his spell and then hurl herself as a desperate defence from it into the quite confessed poorness of violence, of iteration. "You're afraid of her—afraid, afraid, afraid! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" Mrs. Wix wailed it ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... must be admitted that the Christian religion has something astonishing in it. Some will say, "This is because you were born in it." Far from it; I stiffen myself against it for this very reason, for fear this prejudice bias me. But although I am born in it, I cannot help finding ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... them, they have a power over us, just because of their natural offensiveness. They are like the sight of human blood. Experienced soldiers tell us that at first, men are sickened by the smell and newness of blood, almost to death and fainting; but that as soon as they harden their hearts and stiffen their minds, as soon as they will bear it, then comes an appetite for slaughter, a tendency to gloat on carnage, to love blood (at least for the moment) with a deep, eager love. It is a principle ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... assembling an army. In the winter small units of this Archangel army began co-operating in various places, and as the winter wore on, began to take over small portions of the line, as at Toulgas, Shred Mekrenga, Bolsheozerki, usually however with a few British officers and some Allied soldiers to stiffen them. Although many of these men had been drafted by the Archangel government and as we have seen by such local county governments as Pinega, they were fairly well trained under old Russian officers who crept out ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... as he doubtless did the beaters, huntsmen, and keepers of the estates over which he formerly shot. It has been his ambition to make Europe one vast Kaiserdom estate. But the sands are running out, and each "bag," whether by Zeppelin or submarine, serves but to stiffen the backs of the Allies and horrify neutral nations. Some day the accumulated horrors of the Kaiser's ideas of sportsmanship will have taught the latter the lesson that Kaiserdom with Europe as a Kaiser estate ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... resistance of some sort? He knew he would be shot down instantly if he did, and they would be glad of an excuse, but that would be only cutting short the agony. The veins swelled on his forehead, and he felt his limbs stiffen. He made a sudden movement, but the big breed caught his arm and whispered in his ear. It was an Indian saying which meant that until the Great Spirit Himself called, it was folly to listen to those who tempted. It was not so much the hope these few ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the fish house on the dock, Henderson could only advance a few steps at a time. He was straining every nerve to protect and assist Edith. He saw no one he recognized near them, so he slipped his arm across her back to help support her. He felt her stiffen against him and catch her breath. At the same instant, the clearest, sweetest male voice he ever had heard called: ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... down and back. Chest out. Stomach up. Thumb along the seams of trousers. Knees straight, not stiff. Heels on line and together. Do not stiffen the fingers: The mind ought also to ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... scream at the sound of a gun, Which we POINTERS consider as part of the fun. We range the wide fallows, or quarter the stubble, While the labouring sportsman, alive to each double, Hails the high stiffen'd tail, and the motionless joint, And cautiously warns the whole field of the point; As by magic transfixt, all the signal obey— With the death dealing tube, he hastes up to his prey." To the Pointer a bandy leg'd TURNSPIT replied, "All you've said, worthy ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... long enough to lose the lovely entrance of Dublin Bay, stiffen her limbs, and confuse her brains, and she stood still as the stream of passengers began to rush trampling by her, feeling bewildered and forlorn. Her cousin's voice was welcome, though over-loud and somewhat piteous. 'Where are you, stewardess? ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... work in the kitchen Vaniman sat with the Squire in front of the fireplace and smoked his pipe, but not with his customary comfort; the tobacco seemed to be as bitter as his ponderings; he was trying to stiffen his resolution to go away ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... know what to do. I called an ambulance. But the moment the door opened, his body seemed to stiffen again. He had one other convulsion—and when he grew ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... alone again," he whispered passionately, but to his horror he felt her stiffen and fall to the ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... gaze made him stiffen in his chair. Lawler's smile, cold and mirthless, brought a pulse of apprehension through him, and Lawler's voice, slow, clear, and distinct, forced the blood from his face, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Dan Boggs, breakin' loose all at once, like he's so honest he can't restrain himse'f, an' jest as Texas heads out for the Red Light; 'you're a heap onknown to me, but I takes a chance an' stands your friend. Now yere's what you do. You stiffen yourse'f up with a Colt's '44, an' lay for this Texas Thompson. He's a rustler an' a hoss-thief, an' a murderer who, as he says, has planted forty-two, not countin' Injuns, Mexicans an' mavericks. He oughter be massacred; an' as it's come ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... who steals jam in the pantry ought not to get poisoned. She should get after a pot of warm glue, which should be made to miraculously stiffen the moment she gets it into her mouth, and have to be gouged out of her with a ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... years ago we met," he resumed, "in the Wabash Avenue place. I noticed her when the bidding on a rocking chair started. A pretty girl. And as is often the case among women who attend auctions—a bug, a fan, a fish. You know, the kind that stiffen up when they get excited. The kind that hang on your words and breathe hard while you cut loose with the patter, and lose their heads when you swing ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... draggled swans most eagerly eat The green weeds trailing in the moat; Inside the rotting leaky boat You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen still more, the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy crept into the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... child is usually a letter of thanks; somebody has sent him a box of chocolates. The thanks tend to stiffen a child's style; but in any case a letter is the occasion of a sudden self-consciousness, newer to a child than his elders know. They speak prose and know it. But a young child possesses his words by a different tenure; he is not aware of the spelt and written aspect of the things he says every ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little body on a table. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hats have in part supplanted it today among stockmen. The boardlike felt was practically indestructible. The brim flapped a little and, in time, was turned up and perhaps held fast to the crown by a thong. The wearer might sometimes stiffen the brim by passing a thong through a series of holes pierced through the outer edge. He could depend upon his hat in all weathers. In the rain it was an umbrella; in the sun a shield; in the winter he could tie it down about ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... of fishing is very novel. The guns, heavily loaded with powder, are fired as nearly over the fish as it is possible to be done from the canoe. The concussion of the air seems to so stun them that they stiffen out on their backs, and there lie apparently dead for a minute or so. The men hunting them, aware of this, the instant they have fired immediately set to work with their long-handled gaff hooks, and gather in as many as they can ere the fish return to consciousness, and those ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... perambulator, they briskly pick themselves up, briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble and spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their neighbours. As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for them. Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without some expenditure of energy. The animal, which can be likened, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... below the knee, lay the boy on his back and put a pillow or a bag stuffed with grass lengthwise under it. Then put a board or a hewed sapling on the under side of the pillow to stiffen it, and bandage the pillow and the board or sapling firmly to the leg. If the boy has to be ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... them for life. One elects to stand on one foot until it becomes impossible for him ever to put the other to the ground. Another determines to raise his arms to heaven, never taking them down. In a short time, after excruciating pain, the joints stiffen so as to render any change impossible, and the arms shrivel until little but bone is left. Some let their nails grow into their flesh and through their hands. The forms of these penances are innumerable, and those who undergo them are regarded as holy men ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Pudneys. I knew at last what I meant—I had ceased to wince at my responsibility. I gave this supreme impression of Saltram time to fade if it would; but it didn't fade, and, individually, it hasn't faded even now. During the month that I thus invited myself to stiffen again, Adelaide Mulville, perplexed by my absence, wrote to me to ask why I WAS so stiff. At that season of the year I was usually oftener "with" them. She also wrote that she feared a real estrangement had set in between Mr. Gravener and her ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... asked Sylvia. "I'd rather have someone besides Pat, but the others are either away or worse than Pat. You're good for Pat if she isn't for you. You sort of stiffen her up—she told me so. Pat needs whalebone. When her purse gets flat her morals dwindle; mine always get scared stiff. I'll write twice a week, Joan, my lamb, Sunday and Wednesday. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the civilised nations of the world." It need not be said that any attempt to apply this stigma in practice would be extremely difficult to carry out, would involve all kinds of difficulties and complications in trade and in finance, and that the threat of it is more likely than anything else to stiffen the resistance of the Germans and to force them to rely on their militarist leaders as their only hope of salvation. However, the Committee points out that recent legislation shows a desire to ascertain and record the extent to which aliens are ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... hall rug. He should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part. Until we reached my room! On its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I reflected, amused, as I switched on ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... man's hat. It was turned up on one side with a big breastpin. I noticed it wasn't any eight-dollar hat; she had to fix it that way to stiffen the brim in front. It was ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... but the difficulty was to get them of any truthful sort whatsoever, for the babies regarded the photographer—the kindest and mildest of men—with the gravest suspicion: and the moment he appeared, little faces, all animation before, would stiffen into shyness, and the light would slip out of them, and the naturalness, so that all the camera saw, and therefore all it could show, was ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... that ground. "Child, the properties both of wax and pitch I am well acquainted with. With wax I stroke the silken threads with which I stitch your dainty shoes; the shoes I am at this moment making, I sew with coarse cord, and use pitch to stiffen it, for the hard-fibred customer who is to wear them."—"Who is it? Some one of great consequence, I suppose?"—"Of consequence, indeed! A proud master, on wooing bent, who has no doubt whatever of coming ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... dog! Everybody has noticed it. Let a dog turn away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail not merely defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon. Man has no choice but to surge and boil, or stiffen preposterously. Knowing the popular sentiment about his marketing—for men can see behind their backs, though they may have nothing to speak with—Tinman resembled those persons of principle who decline ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... pass over the driving axle. Hard cast iron blocks are riveted between the guard plates to serve as guides for the axle bushes. The side frames are connected across the ends, and cross stays are introduced beneath the boiler to stiffen the frame sideways, and prevent the ends of the connecting or eccentric rods from falling down ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... stood quite still looking at her. He saw her start for a moment as she recognized him, and her eyes swept him over with a half incredulous, half startled expression. She drew a little breath. And then Andrew saw her suddenly and instinctively stiffen. She looked him in the face and bowed very slightly, without ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nerves of our company, and they had all regained their composure and self-command. But this new and unexpected disaster, following so close upon the fear which had recently overpowered them, produced a second panic, the effect of which was not to stiffen them in their tracks as before, but to send them scurrying in every direction in ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... Washington at the end of the first five minutes. Marie was white with rage. Was this a girl she was trying to guard, or was it an eel? She would get her cornered with the ball, Sahwah would measure Marie's height with her eye, locate the basket with a brief glance, stiffen her muscles for a jump, and then as Marie stood ready to beat down the ball, as it rose in the air, Sahwah would suddenly relax, twist into some inconceivable position, shoot the ball low to center and be a dozen feet away before Marie could get her hands down from ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... find yourself inclined to change your mind before morning, just murmur over to yourself, 'England expects every man to do his duty.' That will stiffen your back." ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... must—stiffen my back," he said sternly to himself, as he neared the dingy schoolhouse toward which, from all directions, he could see his audience making its way. It was not the first time he had addressed these girls and women, in so informal and unostentatious ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... meeting him in the park." The detective leaned forward in his chair and spoke gently, as if merely reminding the girl of some insignificant fact which she had presumably forgotten, yet there was that in his tone which made her stiffen, and she replied impulsively, with a ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... produced tasty dishes that have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations. Their cooking was truly a folk art requiring much intuitive knowledge, for recipes contained measurements such as "flour to stiffen," "butter the size of a walnut," and "large as an apple." Many of the recipes have been made more exact and standardized providing us with a regional cookery we ...
— Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking • Unknown
... and rules. Next, with the tendency of its greatest, most arresting personalities either to revolt from these organisms or to reform, rekindle them from within. So that the institutional life of religion persists through or in spite of its own constant tendency to stiffen and lose fervour, and the secessions, protests, or renewals which are occasioned by its greatest sons. Thus our Lord protested against Jewish formalism; many Catholic mystics, and afterwards the best of the Protestant reformers, against Roman formalism; ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... of poetry about them. The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants of an unsophisticated Arcadia. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... determination not to let them see her flinch at any kind of horror. That was the spirit of sahibdom that is not always quite commendable; it is the spirit that takes Anglo-Saxon women to the seething, stenching plains and holds them there high-chinned to stiffen their men-folk by courageous example, but it leads, too, to things not quite so womanly ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... from fust to last!" burst out Billy. "If a angel from heaven comed down-long and tawld 'e the truth 'bout un, you wouldn't b'lieve. God stiffen it! You make me mad! You'd stand 'pon your head an' waggle your auld legs in the air for un if he ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... moment he had been dreading had come. Some one who knew him! He turned his head slowly, and Elsa, who had not dropped her hand, could feel the muscles of his arm stiffen under the sleeve. He held the stranger's eye defiantly for a space. The latter laughed insolently if silently. It was more for Elsa's sake than for his own that Warrington allowed the other to stare him down. Alone, he would have surrendered to the Berserk ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... war weapon, a stone tied in a crotched stick, from the heap of wedding gifts, and smites PADAHOON to the earth, standing threateningly over him. The others stiffen into tense attitudes, drawing their blankets tighter, their eyes burning bright. PADAHOON draws the knife that hangs in a sheath ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... cocked jauntily up from the higher corner, that sometimes droops from the lower;—it was as eloquent as a dog's tail, and he removed it only for the more emphatic modes of speech. He assumed a broad black ribbon for his glasses, and wore them more and more askew as time went on. His hair seemed to stiffen with success, but towards the climax it thinned greatly over the crown, and he brushed it hard back over his ears where, however, it stuck out fiercely. It always stuck out fiercely over his forehead, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... we can do," she said, "doin' ain't easy. Not when you're well along in years. Your ways seem to stiffen up some. When I was a girl, I could 'a' been quite an elocutionist if I could 'a' had lessons. I had a reg'lar born sense o' givin' gestures. But I never took. An' now I declare I don't know of anything I could do. It's the same way, I guess, with quite ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... the form of Mrs. Julian Jones stiffen, although she kept her gaze fixed balefully upon two mud-hens that were prowling along the lagoon shallows below us. "The hussy!" she hissed, once and implacably. Jones had stopped at the sound, but ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... very slowly and carefully to from 1,800 to 2,000 deg.F. and forge thoroughly and uniformly. If the forging operation is prolonged do not continue forging the tool when the steel begins to stiffen under the hammer. Do not forge below 1,700 deg.F. (a dark lemon or orange color). Reheat frequently rather than prolong the hammering ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... crag, crystal, quartz, granite, adamant; bone, cartilage; hardware; heart of oak, block, board, deal board; iron, steel; cast iron, decarbonized iron, wrought iron; nail; brick, concrete; cement. V. render hard &c adj.; harden, stiffen, indurate, petrify, temper, ossify, vitrify; accrust^. Adj. hard, rigid, stubborn, stiff, firm; starch, starched; stark, unbending, unlimber, unyielding; inflexible, tense; indurate, indurated; gritty, proof. adamant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... distant from the road. The negroes by themselves would never have consented to this plan, so great was their dread of bugaboos, but they derived courage from the companionship of white men, and, to stiffen their resolution, I told them how, when wearing the crown piece about my neck, I had escaped by night with nine companions from a place with stone walls ten feet thick. This impressed them greatly—Noah in particular; and in the evening, when we halted for our bivouac in the forest, he ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... that the cavern was of an enormous length, and the words "Long Gallery" in the note which Soma had dropped came up before my mind. There was no doubt that the cave was the meeting spot which Leith had mentioned, and as I felt Holman's body stiffen as he shouldered against me for a share of the peephole, I knew that he believed that the treacherous brute was one of the three that were approaching ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... age we live in Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle The savants ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thumped the ground, then they felt it stiffen, and were again on the alert. Venning ran his fingers lightly along the jackal's back till he reached the nose, which was pointing straight up. Without a moment's delay he raised ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... air. "Three!" he thought, his eyes fixed steadily on Antone's right hand, as he still advanced toward the angry man. For he had noticed that the Mexican wore no cartridge belt. Again he sprang to one side as he saw Antone's finger stiffen upon the trigger, and the ball rattled through the bushes behind him. "Four!" he thought, veering toward the west. The Mexican turned his horse to follow, and Mead, with eyes fixed on the trigger, and noting, too, the slant of the barrel, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... literally held its breath as the girl paused before replying. Her hands shut hard at her sides, her body seemed to stiffen and rise, then she turned formidably with the fires of slumbering vengeance burning in her wonderful eyes—vengeance for her mother, for her lover, for her rescuer, for herself—she turned slowly toward the cowering nobleman and said distinctly: ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... would break they would curse and tremble, but immediately go out and repair it accurately, slowly, no skimped work, repeating the performance again and again. There is in our spirit some reserve force which on occasion the will uses to stiffen resolution—the second wind ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... water. Fell the rain, And to the fosses came all that the land Contain'd not; and, as mightiest streams are wont, To the great river with such headlong sweep Rush'd, that nought stay'd its course. My stiffen'd frame Laid at his mouth the fell Archiano found, And dash'd it into Arno, from my breast Loos'ning the cross, that of myself I made When overcome with pain. He hurl'd me on, Along the banks and bottom of his course; Then in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the 26. Scheme; the one is a quilly or finny substance, consisting of several long, slender and variously bended quills or wires, something resembling the veins of leaves; these are, as 'twere, the finns or quills which stiffen the whole Area, and keep the other part distended, which is a very thin transparent skin or membrane variously folded, and platted, but not very regularly, and is besides exceeding thickly bestuck with innumerable small ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... splendid corpse of a royal tiger has been brought in in a bullock-cart, the driver claiming the reward of fifteen dollars, and its claws were given to me. It was trapped only six miles off, and its beautiful feline body had not had time to stiffen. Even when dead, with its fierce head and cruel paws hanging over the end of the cart, it was not an object to be disrespected. The same reward is offered for a rhinoceros, five dollars for a crocodile (alligator?) and five dollars for a boa-constrictor ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just slaughtered, from which they also frequently extemporized drawers, cut while reeking, and left to stiffen to the shape of the legs. A heavy-stocked musket, made at Dieppe or Nantes, with a barrel four and a half feet long, and carrying sixteen balls to the pound,[6] lay over the shoulder, a calabash full of powder, with a wax stopper, was slung behind, and a belt of crocodile's skin, with four knives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... this kind Manlia felt rather than heard or saw a change in Brinnaria next her, felt her stiffen and grow silent, rigid and tense. Manlia glanced at her, followed her gaze and became interested in the fight Brinnaria was watching. Before them, not immediately below them, but some distance out in the arena, fought a conspicuous pair of gladiators. One was a great hulking full-armored ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... or four days the feet lose their natural elasticity, and the knees begin to stiffen. When you observe this, it is time to give the legs any angle you wish, and arrange the toes for a standing position, or curve them to your finger. If you wish to set the bird on a branch, bore a little hole under each foot ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Gardo carried the same heavy weather from Barnegat Light to the Virginia capes. Beyond Cape Henry the blow began to stiffen and increased every hour as the freighter plowed steadily southward. Bucking head seas every mile of the way, she picked up Diamond Shoals four hours behind schedule. As she plunged past the tossing light-ship, Larry, squinting through a forecastle port, wondered how long its anchor chains ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... jealous quails or village-cocks inspect Each other's necks with stiffen'd plumes erect; Smit with the wordless eloquence, they know The rival passion of the threatening foe. So when the famish'd wolves at midnight howl, Fell serpents hiss, or fierce hyenas growl; Indignant ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... and private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should prefer a more generous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... night, startled many a wakeful warrior and timorous mother from their repose. But such sounds in a disorderly hamlet of barbarians were too common to create alarm or uneasiness; and the wary and the timid again betook themselves to their dreams, leaving the corse of their chief to stiffen on the floor of his ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... a hoarse call from the engineer as he swept around the curve and saw the pretty figure on the track so close to his train. Madge felt the wave of heat from the locomotive. It seemed almost to scorch her, it was so near. She felt her fingers stiffen with fear; her hold on her pony's mane relaxed. She knew she was slipping off her horse's back ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... brusquely, not waiting for the gasp of pained surprise of the little Clerk to end. He was glad to see the figure beside him presently straighten itself, as though to be braced for a task of difficulty. Indignation and resentment were good things to stiffen a man's back. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the wire cables by the ordinary connecting rods, and giving stiffness to it by a trussed railing, a latticed framing of wood hung directly from the cables, and the timbers of the roadway being fastened to this by stirrups, the wooden lattice served both to suspend and to stiffen the road. It was a serviceable and cheap structure, built in two weeks, and answered our purposes well till it was burned in the next autumn, when Colonel Lightburn retreated before a Confederate invasion. [Footnote: ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... spoke, he felt his legs stiffen and turn to marble. And when he went on to relate the affair of the horse in the same manner, he became visibly stone up to the waist, stiffening miserably—a thing which at another time he would have paid in ready money, but which now his heart ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... horses, thereby impeding and in some instances totally arresting the process of digestion. These balls, almost circular in form, are composed of minute and rather stiff hairs, and several have been found in one animal. These hairs, numerous on the heads; do not stiffen sooner than the period of full bloom; hence, until that stage is reached in the growth of the plants, the danger from feeding cured hay made from ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled, the colour left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... meet. For another thing, they've had a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota, and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... making out how easy it was. Make out it was the very devil. Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Give at the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will half step forward to catch you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat him to it. Stiffen up and straighten up with an effort of will-power—will- power's the idea, gameness, and all that, and kiss your hands to the audience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your heart's ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Page's features and his shirt front, but his whole personality seemed to stiffen. He sat up and made an outward movement on the seat of his chair which signified, "My hat and overcoat are in the hall, and if you do not at ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... enough," answered Molly, with the air of one who had experience; "just stiffen yourself out and fall over. But I don't believe you could ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... had better walk for the present," suggested Tad. "We shall stiffen up if we ride in ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... said Moran, with a grin. Nor did he flinch when the weapon in Wade's hand seemed actually to stiffen under the tension ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... know that, in riding mules down steep or long hills, you do much to stiffen them up ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... Mrs. Laden started bringing in the dinner. Mrs. Laden is a widow; she has been with us since my mother died, the year after I was born. She is violently anti-liquor. Reluctantly, she condones Dad taking a snort now and then, but as soon as she saw Bish Ware, her face started to stiffen. ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... eyes, brimming with light and laughter, were on his face, but she failed to see him slowly stiffen to hide the sudden, wild leaping of his heart. Could it be that he saw the far-off vision of ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... the explanation of the change that had passed over you, and had given me so much pain!—my little Alma, who loved so dearly to give, and who has lately been so hard and cold that the very idea of an appeal from a poor family seemed to close her heart and stiffen her face into determined opposition. You cannot be a princess, dear, and do some great thing. I am afraid there was more pride than holy love in your plan. You should not think of yourself when you want to do good, but of your heavenly Master and his suffering ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... A policeman, I was informed, was a being to hold in fear, not in respect. He was to be avoided, not to be made friends with. The result was that, as did all boys, I came to regard the policeman on our beat as a distinct enemy. His presence meant that we should "stiffen up"; his disappearance was the signal for us ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... the first pause, "you are in trouble." She could feel him stiffen, and hurried on: "What can I do? You know you can ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
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