"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found right here, as I have many times found among our American farmers, an intelligence (a literacy growing out of what I believe to be improper education) which was better able to discuss the problems of rural life than to grapple with and solve them. A dull, illiterate Polish farmer, I have found, will sometimes succeed much better at the job of life than his ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... fleet still expected the ships of Rhodes, and as Polyxenidas relied on the superior seaworthiness of his vessels, those of Tyre and Sidon in particular, he immediately accepted battle. At the outset the Asiatics succeeded in sinking one of the Carthaginian vessels; but, when they came to grapple, Roman valour prevailed, and it was owing solely to the swiftness of their rowing and sailing that the enemy lost no more than 23 ships. During the pursuit the Roman fleet was joined by 25 ships from Rhodes, and the superiority of the Romans ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... absorbed and scared in her adventure to reply. She actually managed to reach the top and to stand there tiptoeing the edge uncertainly, her small fingers clasping the tree-trunk convulsively and her arms trying to grapple with it for a surer hold. But suddenly she gave a piercing scream, and Nan, peering down through the branches in instant alarm, saw Ruth lying at the foot of the tree in a pitiful little motionless heap, and knew in a moment that she had ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... task? Statesmen as wise and patriotic as any the world ever produced, have shrunk from the task, confounded and abashed. Where is Clay! Where is Webster? All that was earthly of them, is no more. Long did they grapple with the monster slavery, and by their wise councils, through many a dark and stormy period, did they safely conduct the ship of State. But they are gone, and shall we now confide the interests of this great nation, to the keeping of a few sickly sentimentalists? No, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... life so but finding it so;—it is a plea that such as these should learn how experience, even under cramped conditions, may be finely and beautifully interpreted, and made rich by renewed intention. Because the secret lies hid in this, that we must observe life intently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we have a hundred lives before us, we can never conquer life till we have learned to ride above it, not welter helplessly below it. And the cramped and restricted life is all the grander for this, that it gives us a nobler chance of conquest ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... indolence of his mind, and his vacillating and uncertain disposition. He was, however, occasionally capable of intense application, and competent to make himself master of any subject he thought fit to grapple with; his mind was reflecting, combining, and argumentative, but he had no imagination, and to passion, 'the sanguine credulity of youth, and the fervent glow of enthusiasm' he was an entire stranger. He never had any taste for society, and attached himself early ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... array'd, Boldly by battery besieg'd Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction's devastating doom, Every endeavour engineers essay, For fame, for fortune, forming furious fray. Gaunt gunners grapple, giving gashes good, Heaves high his head heroic hardihood; Ibraham, Islam, Ismael, imps in ill, Jostle John Jarovlitz, Jem, Joe, Jack, Jill. Kick kindling Kutusoff, king's kinsmen kill; Labour low levels loftiest, longest lines, Men march 'mid moles, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... plans. He asked me humorously with whom I expected to affiliate, since he knew of no one who was likely to go with me; but I could see that he was pleased with my independence and hoped I might succeed in doing something to break the deadlock-grapple of Mormon and Gentile that held Utah apart from the rest of the country ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... these few Precepts in thy memory, See thou Character. Giue thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any vnproportion'd thoughts his Act: Be thou familiar; but by no meanes vulgar: The friends thou hast, and their adoption tride, Grapple them to thy Soule, with hoopes of Steele: But doe not dull thy palme, with entertainment Of each vnhatch't, vnfledg'd Comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrell: but being in Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee. Giue euery ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... supper, I will tell you a story well worth the hearing, as I think. There were two men once upon a time that went on pilgrimage; the one began when he was young and the other began when he was old. The young man had strong corruptions to grapple with, whereas the old man's corruptions were decayed with the decays of nature. The young man trod his steps as even as did the old one, and was every way as light as he; who, now, or which of them, had their graces shining clearest, since both seemed to be alike? Why, the young man's, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... has suffered in spiritual health by having sent to Coventry or to the stake so many theological Simpsons, Listers, and Pasteurs simply because they could not rest their minds in the hypotheses of very ill-educated men who strove to grapple with the highest of all intellectual problems at a time when knowledge was at ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... which the South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a man's ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... approaching horseman, he immediately raised himself on his fore feet and uttered a wild prolonged roar. Martin, who wished to entice the beast on to solid ground, where he could grapple with him better than in the midst of this unknown morass, and also, by way of provocation, cracked his long whip loudly. Maddened still more by this exasperating sound, the wild beast arose from his resting-place and rushed upon the horseman, who immediately ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... they murmur, at his conduct? Would they not, oh! would they not, rather admire, extol it! But, then, his debts, his overwhelming debts. All the rest might be faced. His desperate engagement might be broken; his family might be reconciled to obscurity and poverty: but, ruin! what was to grapple with his impending ruin? Now his folly stung him; now the scorpion entered his soul. It was not the profligacy of his ancestor, it was not the pride of his family then, that stood between him and his love; it was his own culpable and heartless career! He covered his face with his hands; ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... knee, as if awaiting the signal. Behind him, the Nervina, supporting the awakening Aradna. And in front of all, the powerful bulk of Hobart Fenton, standing squarely at the head of the stair, ready to grapple the first to reach ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... hand, pursued the captain close. Captain Mason sensed the lifted hatchet poised to split his head. He was too weak to run farther—he whirled, to grapple. He had not noticed that the sergeant's rifle was loaded. By a vigorous shove he pushed the Indian backward, down hill, and the tomahawk blade was buried in the ground. The gun! It was loaded and capped! He leveled and fired just in time, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... a champagne cork startled them to remembrance that this was a bump-supper, and a bump-supper of a peculiar kind. The turbot that came after the soup, the champagne that succeeded the sherry, helped to quicken in these men of thought the power to grapple with a reality. The aforesaid three or four who had been down at the river recovered their lost belief in the evidence of their eyes and ears. In the rest was a spirit of receptivity which, as the meal went on, mounted to conviction. The Sub-Warden made ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... was gray and sober; there was nothing of the gay expansion of the outward voyage; there was little talking or laughing among those autumnal men who were going seriously and anxiously home, with faces fiercely set for the coming grapple; or necks meekly bowed for the yoke. They had eaten their cake, and it had been good, but there remained a discomfort in the digestion. They sat about in silence, and March fancied that the flown summer was as dreamlike to each of them as it now was to him. He hated to be of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and she would like a cup of tea or some refreshment. She did not look at Jack, but, completely ignoring him, addressed herself to Zuleika with what seemed to be a direct challenge; in that feminine eye-grapple there was a quick, instinctive, and final struggle between the two women. The stranger triumphed. Zuleika's vacant smile changed to one of submission, and then, equally ignoring her brother in this double defeat, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... take a bold, manly stand, avow what we are actually doing, and adopt a measure which would at once conciliate and harmonize the whole North, we are to suffer a tremendous disorder to spring up and make mischief without end! Can we never get over this silly dread of worn-out political abuse and grapple fairly with the truth? Are we really so much afraid of being falsely called abolitionists and negro-lovers that we can not act and think like men! Here we are frightened at names, dilly-dallying and quarreling over idle words, when a tremendous crisis calls ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... centuries which have preceded and are destined to follow it. But there is good reason to believe, after all, that in one way it will be held remarkable, perhaps even unique,—as an age of violent contrasts, violent extremes. Here we are, seeking (however pathetically) to grapple with problems whose solution would wear an almost millennial tinge. There are men among us—and men of august intellects, too—who urge upon society the adoption of codes and usages which would assume, if practically treated, that the minds and characters of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... per post, a lecture by John Cairns on 'Rationalism, Ritualism, and Pure Religion,' or some such title, and have read it with interest, attention, and a good deal of admiration of its ability and, on the whole, of its spirit. But I can see from it that he is not the man to grapple with the scepticism of the age. He has not sufficient sympathy with it, he has not lived in its atmosphere, he has not visited its profoundest or tossed in its stormiest depths. Intellectually and logically he understands it as he ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... of language. Miss Marrable and I discussed Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest were talking. She is a delightful girl—so impulsive, so sensible, so entirely unaffected. She confided in me. She said: 'One of our miseries is that we can't find a gentleman who will grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.' Of course I soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and he shall grapple immediately.'—'Oh heavens! who is he?'—'Mr. Francis Clare.'—'And where is he?'—'In the house at this moment.'—'Will ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... amusement, the angry glow is ever before our eyes, colouring our vision, colouring our thoughts, colouring our emotions for good or for ill. We cannot escape it. Our personal destinies are inextricably interwoven with the fate directing the death grapple of the thousand miles or so of battle line, and arbitrating on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the loom and the anvil—he should have said the awl—and renegades from the lowest handicraft employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... assuredly was, swept also by a new emotion which I did not in the least comprehend, I yet fully realized the utter helplessness of my position in point of resistance. They were twenty to one. However much I longed to grapple with him who mocked me, the very thought was insanity; my only possible chance of escape lay in flight. To realize this was to act. I leaped backward, trusting for a clear field in my rear, and an opportunity to run for it, but the door by which ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the former, they were not men of genius. Capable of conducting, and willing upon the whole to conduct with loyalty and propriety the affairs of their country, while they kept within the beaten channel, they were not born to grapple with arduous situations. They had not that commanding spirit of adventure, which leads a man into the path of supererogation and voluntary service: they had not that firm and collected fortitude which induces a man to look danger in the ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... happened in the intervening thirty-one years. The Bampton lecturer of 1859 had to grapple only with the infant Hercules of historical criticism; and he is now a full-grown athlete, bearing on his shoulders the spoils of all the lions that have stood in his path. Surely a martyr's courage, as well as a martyr's faith, is needed by any ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... punches. But anything was preferable to another of those long, driving blows. He clung until his head cleared. Then he shook himself loose and dropped, as if dazed, to one knee. McTee's bellow of triumph filled his ears. The captain bore down on him with outstretched hands to grapple at his throat, but at the right instant Harrigan rose and lurched out with stiff arm. The punch drove home to the face with a shock that jarred Harrigan to his feet and jerked McTee back as if drawn by a hand. Before he recovered his ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... an iciness that brought with it a quickening, a sickening of the heart, and a dreariness that, whilst being depressing in the extreme, was, withal, sublime. Sublime and mysterious; mysterious and insoluble. A thousand fancies swarmed through my mind; yet I could grapple with none; and I was loth to acknowledge that, although there are combinations of very simple material objects which might have had the power of affecting me thus, yet any attempt to analyse that power was beyond—far ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... nailed down my resolutions, I had determined to hold fast to such threads of my common sense as remained. Only in the night-time, when sleep mocked me and all hope of escape was futile, was I forced to grapple with this new-born monster of folly. It drove me up across the Park to where the house, black and lightless, rose a dark incongruous mass above the trees, down to the sea, where the wind came booming across ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... manufacturing sector, which is dominated by the microprocessor industry. Tourism continues to bring in foreign exchange, as Costa Rica's impressive biodiversity makes it a key destination for ecotourism. The government continues to grapple with its large internal and external deficits and sizable internal debt. Reducing inflation remains a difficult problem because of rising import prices, labor market rigidities, and fiscal deficits. Tax and public expenditure ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... her living for several years, and was, because of it, to some extent acquainted with the grim realities of life. She did not know that while there are certainly hard men in Canada, the small farmers and ranchers of the West—and, perhaps above all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant trees in the forests of the Pacific slope—are, as a rule, distinguished by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is very seldom turned away. Still, watching her companion covertly, she understood that this man whom she had seen ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... ordinary mortals. He dashed the sword from the rover's hand, and placed him in such peril that, to avoid being cut down, he was fain to close with the Scottish Champion in hopes of overpowering him in the grapple. In this also he was foiled. They fell on the deck, locked in each other's arms, but the Frenchman fell undermost; and Wallace, fixing his grasp upon his gorget, compressed it so closely, notwithstanding it was made of the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... hear the chuckle of satisfaction and then he gasped, for the old man rose from his cot and tried to grapple with the younger man, who gave him a brutal push, throwing him back onto ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the support of that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safely lodged in the sanctuary of my heart,—never, never to be torn from thence, but with those holds that grapple it to life. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Jack!" growled the boatswain, addressing the sailor; "how can the stranger keep the bow of his craft on, and grapple at the same time? Just pass one end of the coil round your waist, and swing yourself gently ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... how the mind responds to the need for making an effort for the sake of somebody else. If I had had only myself to think of, it would, I believe, have been a considerable time before I could have adjusted my thoughts to grapple with this disaster. But the necessity of conveying the truth quietly to Audrey and of helping her to bear up under it steadied me at once. I found myself thinking quite coolly how best I might break to her ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Jesson's novel was the principal event of the following week. There had come no word from Emily de Reuss, nor had Douglas himself sought her. Better, he told himself, to face his suffering like a man, grapple with it once and for all, than to become even as Drexley and those others, who had never found strength to resist. She was beautiful, magnetic, fascinating, and he loved her; on the other hand there was his self-respect ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... progress of industry and happiness cause a steady increase in population, and must not the time come when the number of the inhabitants of the globe will surpass their means of subsistence? Condorcet did not grapple with this question. He contented himself with saying that such a period must be very far away, and that by then "the human race will have achieved improvements of which we can now scarcely form an idea." Similarly ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... error, into which it was possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Misery half carelessly made sport of Mithridates and of Merlin and of Moses, in ways that ballad-singers still delight to tell of. But with you, Dom Manuel, I shall deal otherwise, and I shall disconcert you by and by in a more quiet fashion. Hoh, I must grapple carefully with your love for Niafer, as with an antagonist who is not scrupulous, nor very sensible, but who is exceedingly strong. For observe: you obstinately desire this perished heathen woman, who in life, it well may be, was nothing remarkable. Therefore ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... weather. He slouched slightly in his gait, like the heavy man accustomed to the saddle. This was Dick Ware, the elder of the brothers and heir to fallen fortunes, mortgaged house and lands, and he gave the impression of failure, of a man who, in spite of thews and sinews, had been unable to grapple with circumstance. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... from the ground. The snake had not moved; and on getting up to him I struck him with the lance on the near-side, just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it firm in its place, while I dashed head foremost into the den to grapple with the snake and to get hold of his tail before he could ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... truth of man's differences, man's helplessness which the differences reveal, and man's fate hanging therefore upon a transcendent God, are the key truths for the religious life. It is with that aspect of life the preacher deals, and if he fails to grapple with these problems and considerations, ignores these facts, his candlestick has ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... apples both Paris and Adam Made mischief enough in their day:— God be praised that the fate of mankind, my dear Madam, Depends not on us, the same way. For, weak as I am with temptation to grapple, The world would have doubly to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... enabled to see that there was a room, the window of which was wide open, and lights burning on the table within. He made towards it in a moment, and entered it. To his astonishment, the first objects he beheld were Flora and a stranger, who was now supporting her in his arms. To grapple him by the throat was the work of a moment, but the stranger cried aloud in a voice which sounded ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... always easy to understand either what was done, or what was meant to be done, during that early sail era; but two things appear quite certainly. There is still shown the vehemence and determination of action which characterized galley fighting, visible constantly in the fierce effort to grapple the enemy, to break his ranks, to confuse and crush him; and further there is clear indication of tactical plan on the grand scale, broad in outline and combination, involving different—but not independent—action ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... "They don't run from the serpent Evil, that is wreathin' round their homes and loved ones, and a-tryin' to destroy 'em—they run towards that serpent, and hain't afraid to grapple with it, and overthrow it—by the help of the Mighty," ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... neighbour than from another. Besides, people who, like the Athenians in the present instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours, usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea, at the time when our quarrels had allowed ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... was accounted very lucky by the neighbouring clergy for having such a man, and not being exposed to all the vagaries of a young schoolmaster, or, perhaps, still worse, schoolmistress, with all the latest musical fancies of the training colleges. Neither had he to grapple with the tyranny of the leading bass nor the conceit and touchiness that seems inseparable from the tenor voice, since Mr Robins kept a firm and sensible hand on the reins, and drove that generally unmanageable team, a village ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... stringency and shrinkage of values, and all such funny business as that; but that's something I don't know a blamed thing about. What I can grapple with is this: If our county offices are worth $30,000, and there are other little after-claps and soft snaps, and walk-overs, worth, say $10,000, and the boys, say, are willing to do the fair thing, say, blow in fifteen per cent, to the central committee, and what they feel ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... passed his sword through and through the largest, and in its fall the wounded monster turned and bit savagely at the fore leg of a companion. The bone cracked as a rotten branch snaps underfoot, and in another moment the two animals were rolling over and over, locked together in the death grapple. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... in their inability to return in full to that world they had left, or even to take part in the affairs of this. Surely their case was far worse than his, for after a few years he would be freed from the bondage of matter, and would grapple with the mysteries which had become so fascinating; but with them it was different. Unfitted for either world, without a friend and alone, they must drag out their weary existence until the law of Karma was satisfied. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... In that slight startle from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall or ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... The snake had not moved, and on getting up to him, I struck him with the lance just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it fast in its place, while I dashed up to grapple with the serpent, and to get hold of his tail before ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... German bombs had landed. Particles of shrapnel began falling in the garden beneath the windows of our ward and we could hear the rattle of the pieces on the slate roof of a pavilion there. It is most unpleasant, it goes without saying, to lie helpless on one's back and grapple with the realisation that directly over your head—right straight above your eyes and face—is an enemy airplane loaded with bombs. Many of us knew that those bombs contained, some of them, more than two hundred pounds of melilite and some of us had witnessed the terrific havoc they wrought ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Death doomed to grapple, Beneath this cold slab, he Who lied in the Chapel Now lies in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... God create such men as I?— All pride and passion and divine desire, Raw, quivering nerve-stuff and devouring fire, Foredoomed to failure though they try and try; Abortive, blindly to destruction hurled; Unfound, unfit to grapple with ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... since had but one. One thing is to be specially noted as one of the chief and indispensable causes of his success. He had no vices. He never drank to excess, nor gormandized, nor gambled, nor even smoked, nor in any other way wasted the vitality needed for a long and tough grapple with adverse fortune. What he once wrote of himself in the early Herald was ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... scattered along the larger streams throughout the whole region; there are the French posts on the northern border, with each a priest and a file of soldiers, and a few Canadian farmers and traders. Under the cover of peace between the French king and the English king, there is a constant grapple between the French soldiers and the English settlers for the possession of the wilds which shall one day be the most magnificent empire under the sun; there are the war parties of Indians falling stealthily upon the English borders to the eastward; ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... deal teaming, working desperately to get something laid up for the winter. The summer excursion, with its laughter, its careless irresponsibility, had become a deadly grapple with the implacable forces of winter. The land of the straddle-bug had become a menacing desert, hard as ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... ghastly. I saw his face change, his finger tremble where it hovered above the fatal button; saw—though only in imagination as yet—the steely edge of that deadly plate of steel advancing beyond the lintel, and was about to dare all in a sudden grapple with this man, when a sound from another direction caught my ear, and looking around in terror of the only intrusion we could fear, beheld Eva advancing from the room in ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... semblance of peace, the national and religious rage burst forth on a wilder theatre. Thither it is for us to follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the Spaniard and the Frenchman, the bigot and the Huguenot, met in the grapple of death. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... fort his nigh approaches made, And darts and arrows spit against his foes, As ships are wont in fight, so it assayed With the strong wall to grapple and to close, The Pagans on each side the piece invade, And all their force against this mass oppose, Sometimes the wheels, sometimes the battlement With timber, logs and stones, they broke ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Gembloux, so that his left was only half a league distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg. The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with: he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner. We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, saying that he was lost, and that nothing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... men-at-arms form by themselves in one quarter to make and meet charges, and the light horse in another quarter to support, pursue, and harass[3] so in a fleet, the captain-general ought to order the strongest and largest ships to form in one quarter to attack, grapple, board and break-up the enemy, and the lesser and weaker ships in another quarter apart, with their artillery and munitions to harass, pursue, and give chase to the enemy if he flies, and to come to the rescue ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and strength, surging like an ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the sap dried and they died of their wounds. Sometimes, one side of a bush would shrivel first, causing it to double up like a creature agonizing. Some crouched like strange beasts watching to spring. Others thrust themselves ominously forward with projected arms, as if ready to grapple. Some brandished their flat leaves as the painter Wiertz, in his famous picture of Napoleon in Hell, made wives and mothers brandish their menacing fists at the man who had robbed them of their loved ones. All wore a look that suggested both agony and revenge. Christine ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... a dreadful inclination that stole upon me, as it thundered and lightened, to grapple with this man, or demon, and plunge him over the side. But, I constrained myself - I know not how - to speak to him, and in a pause of the storm, I crossed the ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Indeed we might invent many more such things. But subjects for perspective treatment will constantly present themselves to the artist or draughtsman in the course of his experience, and while I endeavour to show him how to grapple with any new difficulty or subject that may arise, it is impossible to set down all of them in ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... found himself. Raised to the throne after the victory of Chaeroneia had placed Philip at the head of Greece, and when a portion of the Macedonian forces had already passed into Asia, he was called upon to grapple at once with a danger of the most formidable kind, and had but little time for preparation. It is true that Philip's death soon after his own accession gave him a short breathing-space: but at the same time it threw him ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... with scorpions of moderate size, assailed the enemy without being seen. Certain ships which came nearer to the walls in order to get within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... this advice, furnished us with the nucleus of an air force. They made their own flying school, and established their own factory for the output of aircraft. They organized an air service with naval and military wings. They formed advisory and consultative committees to grapple with the difficulties of organization and construction. They investigated the comparative merits and drawbacks of airships and aeroplanes. The airships, because they seemed fitter for reconnaissance over the sea, were eventually assigned wholly to the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... to bed. It wouldn't show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can't eat porridge. I'm going to need all my strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won't understand ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... magic power of his unstudied action, and the thrilling intonations of his deep rich voice, rendered him, in his best days, "before public assemblies, almost irresistible." He managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... to the bravest—dormant sense impressions, running back to the cave age and beyond, become active, harry the mind with subtle, unreasoning qualms—and she was a girl, brave enough, but out of the only environment she knew how to grapple with. All the fearsome tales of forest beasts she had ever heard rose up to harass her. She had not lifted up her voice while it was light because she was not the timid soul that cries in the face of a threatened ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... when, in no small consternation, we bore away about one mile to the south-westward of the former station, and there let go the best bower anchor and cable in twenty fathoms water, to ride until the swell of the sea should fall, when it might be practicable to grapple for the moorings, and find a better ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... continues to expend for the necessary charges of life, and will not take the pains to gain something to supply the place of what he deals out, his funds must at length come to an end; and the misery of poverty fall upon him at an age when he is less able to grapple with it. ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... which was supported by a parliamentary grant, at the cost of L2100 per annum; and government proposed to continue this grant. There was another subject, he said, with which, although a difficult one, he was prepared to grapple. The bill only founded colleges in Ireland: the question was:—"Should these three colleges be incorporated into one great central university, or should parliament invest each of them with the power of granting degrees ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... it much easier to condemn M. SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very ingenious, and had a great appearance of truth; but still they said it was not truth. They never, however, as far as I could observe, thought proper to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or illogical in the conclusions which he drew from them; they generally confined themselves to mere assertions, or to minute and unimportant observations by which the real question ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of mine, and me made up our minds what to do, and we made a rush for a small gate that there was in the stockade, just opposite where the Injuns came in. We got through safe enough, but they had left men all round. Jack Robins he was shot dead. Bill and I kept straight on. We had a grapple with some of the redskins; two or three on 'em went down, and Bill and I got through and had a race for it till we got fairly into the forest. Bill had a ball in the shoulder, and I had a clip across the head with a tomahawk. We had a council, and Bill went off to warn some of the other ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... strength left him he fought madly. The Indian officers and sepoys blocking up the doorway could see nothing; but they could hear the choking gasps, the panting breaths, the muttered curses and the stamping feet of the combatants locked in the death-grapple. They could not interfere, they dared not fire. In ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... aluminium projectile only weighed 19,250 lbs., a much less weight than that of the transatlantic cable, which was picked up under similar circumstances. The only difficulty lay in the smooth sides of the cylindro-conical bullet, which made it difficult to grapple. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... beyond and outside all he knows or invents of good and bad, and can never have any concern with his good or his bad. It remains the pathway and territory of powers and mysteries, thoughts and energies on a gigantic and elemental scale; and that is why the mind of man can never grapple with the unconsciousness of the sea or his eye meet its eye. Yet it is the mariner's chief associate, whether as adversary or as ally; his attitude to things outside himself is beyond all doubt influenced by his attitude towards it; and a true comprehension of the man Columbus ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... of the regulation of interstate business. This country can not afford to sit supine on the plea that under our peculiar system of government we are helpless in the presence of the new conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection with them. The power of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce is an absolute and unqualified grant, and without limitations other than ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... perform it in. We must, as all men must, submit affairs to time, and not think of making time conform to our wishes; and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India,—to bring before your Lordships the direct articles, to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lordships' decision in that manner which the confidence we have in the justice of our cause ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to perform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn of Thor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairly spurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle with a toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in the grapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all. But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers for the first time that he has had for his antagonist the three ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... the general chatter, which went on after the meal was finished, and nobody appeared to notice that Kitty sat with her hand in Drayton's amid the happy laughter. Even Celia, who had her grief to grapple with, smiled bravely. Vane had given them champagne, the best in the city, though they drank sparingly; and at last, when Celia made a move to rise, Drayton stood up with his ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... up, with open mouth, and make a grab at my oar to keep me going straight ahead. I sung out to the people aboard the ships in mercy's name to take a shot at some of the bigger brutes, for I thought that I could grapple with the little ones; but either they didn't or wouldn't hear me; so away I pulled right out towards the Nab. Thinks I to myself, 'Perhaps the people in the lightship will lend a helping hand to an old seaman;' but not a bit of it. When they saw me coming with my train of forked-tailed brutes after ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... she said it, there was a look in the reader's eye that bespoke inability or reluctance to grapple with the revelation ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... of their weapon, to guard, and to strike safely with edge or point." They were also to be "practised in all the locks and gripes of Wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug or grapple, and to close." So much for their gymnastics individually. But the main thing was to be their military drill collectively. There was to be no mistake about this; it was to be no mere school-play. The 120 or 130 youths in each Academy, under its head-master, with his twenty ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... you have tried— So you have known The bitter-sweetness of Attempt, The quick determination and the dread despair That grapple and possess you as you strive ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... problems that confront them, and this work has been but indifferently done. The first step in the redemption of the social order is the education of the Christian conscience to discern the smokeless sins. It is with evils of this character that the nation is now in a life and death grapple; the church ought to be able, by its testimony, to lend effective ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... called the 'Temporary Relief Act,' which came into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution was at its height, and three millions of people received their daily rations. Sir John Burgoyne truly describes this as 'the grandest attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country.' Never in the history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner by the public bounty. It was a most anxious time—a time of tremendous labour and responsibility ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the council fire glared on the wise and daring. Now they dipped their noble limbs in your sedgy lakes, and now they paddled the light canoe along your rocky shores. Here they warred; the echoing whoop, the bloody grapple, the defying death song, all were here; and when the tiger strife was over, here ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the sufficient public influence nor received the recognition his merit deserved. He was by nature a thinker—a seeker after truth. There was no problem,—social, political or philosophical,—which he was not ready to grapple with. He could plunge into these subjects like a pearl-diver who means to touch bottom, and would never come out till his last breath was spent. This mental habit and his continual suffering made him only too serious, too much in earnest. Jests were ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... was interesting to all mankind. He preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the involuntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple; while he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off like a masquerade dress, make much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Gold Board met, but only to be informed that the Clearing-House was not yet ready to complete the work of Friday. Important accounts had been kept back, and the dealings, swollen in sum-total to five hundred millions, were beyond the capacity of the clerical force of the Gold Bank to grapple with. A resolution was brought forward proposing the resumption of operations Ex-Clearing-House. The measure took the members by surprise, for a moment quivered between acceptance and rejection, and then was swiftly tabled. It was an immense Bear scheme, for no exchange can transact business ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Henrietta, "I've something to find out too!" And Isabel saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She was at last about to grapple ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... treated me with greater distance and deference than before; I lost the entertainment of upstairs, and did not gain the interest of downstairs. The absurd position must be ended. I would hear what the duchess wanted of me; then I would go, leaving Lafleur to grapple with his increased labors as best he could. True, I should miss Marie Delhasse. Well, ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... wise, there needed no conjunction of planets to tell them that the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel between Spain and England would end, once and for all, in some great death-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, to the West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters, in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to have forfeited them by tyranny. But Spain itself had been respected by England, as England had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... halfback planted himself for the grapple, Dave suddenly dropped through that opponent's grip ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... benevolent, and self-effacing did not appear in every movement of our people, then no such qualities exist anywhere. The manner in which they rose to meet the emergency argues well for the city's future. Before the calamity was fairly upon them they sprang to grapple it and ward it off so far as possible. It was owing to them and to the military that the city was saved from starvation, anarchy, and disease. It also speaks well for men so severely stricken to be the first to send aid to a similarly stricken city, the ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... the coast as a cover for the troops which were being disembarked, was the principal work of the war-ships on the twenty-second of June, except in Guantanamo Harbour, where volunteers were called for from the Marblehead and the Dolphin to grapple for and remove the contact mines in the harbour. It was an undertaking as perilous as anything that had yet been accomplished, but the bluejackets showed no fear. Four times the designated number came forward in response to the ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... to my mind in a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in various ways to secure all that seemed most attractive about the project, or which filled my soul with longing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with my subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer contact with the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis for closer study of philosophical questions. I had been astonished at times to hear even the grave and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the lot of each member of society would be infinitely better under such conditions; why not strive to bring about such conditions? Is it visionary to hope and labor for this end? "Where there is no vision the people perish." It is a "death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word." The old system has broken down; it can let loose the furies, but it cannot bind them; it is impotent to save. The question is not whether the Word will triumph—that is certain—but ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it was as if this arm was not at all a part of him, but belonged to another man. His sober and reflective charger went slowly. The officer's face was grimy and perspiring, and his uniform was tousled as if he had been in direct grapple with an enemy. He smiled grimly when the men stared at him. He turned ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... pursue farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery forever ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... pounding of his heart as well as her own, mingled with the sharp intake of their heavy breathing, but these sounds were soon overcome by that of the tumult below. Shots and yells, the dull crash of blows, the shouts of men engaged in a death grapple, the sharp crackling of innumerable rifles, the inarticulate moans of pain, the piercing scream of sudden torture, were borne upward to them from out the blackness. They did not venture to lift their heads from off the hard rock; the girl sobbed silently, her slender form trembling; ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... boldly quitted the little satellite with our entire squadron and once more rapidly approached the red planet of war. This time it was to be a death grapple and our chances ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... persuades me that the average child is eminently statistical. "A horse is an animal with four legs—one at each corner," is fairly representative of the kind of information he seeks. When he becomes diffuse, we may feel sure he has had help. Sissy Jupes are of course to be found, who cannot grapple with facts. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... machiavelian hits nor disguises. The fight is close, desperate, deadly; it is yard arm to yard arm; it is heart seeking for naked heart, flashing eye to eye, visor down, and hot breath mingling with hot breath, as the foes close in the last grapple. The other idea is embodied in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and is represented by the Federal authority. The South, then, is taken to mean the one, and the North, its opposite. On one side barbarism, slavery, injustice, ignorance, despotism, the woes and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Christ's saying, 'What ye hear in the ear, that preach ye on the housetops,' expresses a universal truth which is realised in many regions, and ought to be most emphatically realised in the Christian. For surely of all the truths that men can catch a glimpse of, or grapple to their hearts, or store in their understandings, there are none which bring with them such tremendous consequences, and therefore are of so solemn import to proclaim to all the children of men, as the truth, which we profess we have received, of personal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... FAVORABLY by the attitude of these natives in the hills.... They seem to be a mongrel mixture of Tartar and Mongolian who are always ready, like the huge ungainly bears we have encountered in our pilgrimage, to grapple and devour one for the mere pleasure of seeing blood!... Maria seems quite interested in these notes,—today she insisted on giving me her impressions of how a NOVEL should be written.... She says that to make a story interesting it should be all movement from the opening line to ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... which usually characterized it. A shadow seemed to be hanging over her—a shadow, which, although it marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils. This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Boulevard du Temple, the friends agreed to meet at the office between four and five o'clock. Hector Merlin would doubtless be there. Lousteau was right. The infatuation of desire was upon Lucien; for the courtesan who loves knows how to grapple her lover to her by every weakness in his nature, fashioning herself with incredible flexibility to his every wish, encouraging the soft, effeminate habits which strengthen her hold. Lucien was thirsting already for enjoyment; he was in love with the easy, luxurious, and expensive ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... doubt that the hearty determination evinced by Masolino and Masaccio to deal with actual life, to grapple to their souls the visible forms of humanity, and to reproduce the types afterwards in new, vivid, breathing combinations of dignity and intelligent action, must have had an immense effect upon the course of Art. To judge by the few ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... whether that of a playful sneer or ferocious snarl, is one of the most curious which occurs in man. It reveals his animal descent; for no one, even if rolling on the ground in a deadly grapple with an enemy, and attempting to bite him, would try to use his canine teeth more than his other teeth. We may readily believe from our affinity to the anthropomorphous apes that our male semi-human progenitors ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... nobly; she was even more than at her best; but, in spite of all I could do, she would broach now and then. She was carrying too much sail for safety. I must reef or be dismasted and lose all, pirate or no pirate. I must reef, even if I had to grapple with him for ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... equivalent of the expression "Just one kiss" algebra has not yet been found quite able to grapple. It is believed, however, to belong ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... upon the raked arena Beneath the pennants of Vespasian, While seried thousands gazed—strangers from Caucasus, Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes, To see me grapple with the counterpart Of that I had been—the raptorial jaws, The arms that wont to crush with strength alone, The eyes that glared vindictive.—Fallen there, Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... think that the immediate future of poetry depends upon men of the stamp of Mr. Abercrombie, men for whom poetry is neither a plaything nor a sweet-sounding expression of desire or anguish or vague dreams; but a serious attempt to grapple with life through combined experience, thought, and vision. Long ago Meredith urged that if fiction was to go on living, it must give us "brain-stuff" and "food-stuff." But no poet has since arisen to make some similar claim for poetry; to urge that ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... immobility, it came to me that Emperor and Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip; the realization was as definite as though, like Ruth, I thought with Norhala's ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... The sight of their disconnected limbs aroused my ire to its utmost height, and I let them have the contents of the brass carronade, with ghastly effect. Next moment the hulls of the two ships were grinding together, the cold steel flashed from its scabbard, and the death-grapple ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... himself forward, meaning to scale the steps and grapple with his parallel, but in a moment the strong arms of Sigurd held him in the grip of a bear. Then he who stood at the summit of the steps, and wore the likeness of the lord of Sicily, lifted his hand and spoke, and his voice was as the voice of King Robert ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... learned long before this time, it was not the nature of Pyrrhus to remain on the spot and grapple with difficulties like these. If there were any new enterprise to be undertaken, or any desperate battle to be fought on a sudden emergency, Pyrrhus was always ready and eager for action, and almost sure of success. But he had no qualities ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to the utmost; but still when I looked before me, my very heart would sink within me at the inevitable approach of misery and want. Oh let none read this part without seriously reflecting on the circumstances of a desolate state, and how they would grapple with mere want of friends and want of bread; it will certainly make them think not of sparing what they have only, but of looking up to heaven for support, and of the wise man's prayer, 'Give me ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... fought in my youth," he said, "and now once more will I, the guardian of my people, seek the combat. I would not bear any sword or other weapon against the dragon if I thought that I could grapple with him as I did with the monster Grendel. But I fear that I shall not be able to approach so close to this foe, for he will send forth hot, raging fire and venomous breath. Yet am I resolute in mood, fearless and resolved not to yield one foot's-breadth ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... both unassuming and undemonstrative. He looked for and expected a clashing of races on election day in Wilmington, but that which took place on the 10th of November was far more than he was prepared to grapple with. The dawn of that fatal day found the streets of Wilmington crowded with armed men and boys, who had sprung, as it were, by magic from the earth. Aroused by loud noises in the neighborhood of his residence, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... from his captors and ran. A keeper pursued him, caught him up, and closed with him. There was a short, fierce struggle, and both men went down headlong, locked together in a savage grapple. The keeper was undermost, and the weight of his huge opponent knocked the breath out of him for the moment. The poacher leapt up, and aimed a terrific kick at his fallen opponent. The man would have received a severe injury had not the ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Satan smitten with amazement fell As when Earths Son Antaeus (to compare Small things with greatest) in Irassa strove With Joves Alcides and oft foil'd still rose, Receiving from his mother Earth new strength, Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... not heard how the Trojan horse Held seventy men in his belly? This dragon was not quite so big, But very near, I'll tell ye; Devour'd he poor children three, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he ate them up, As one ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... moment, but should be continued to the son and heir—whose remainder in tail subsisted still, though it might be hard to substantiate—and when his cousin Lancelot should come into possession, he might find a certain factor to grapple him. Mr. Mordacks hated Lancelot, and had carried out his banishment with intense enjoyment, holding him as in a wrench-hammer all the way, silencing his squeaks with another turn of the screw, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... people carried on a discussion thus, what agreement was possible between them? Yet where, upon the Christian side, was the attempt to grapple with the real difficulties now felt by unbelievers? Simply nowhere. All that had been done hitherto was antiquated. Modern Christianity seemed to shrink from grappling with modern Rationalism, and displayed ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his assailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king's guest fell, as if fascinated, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... individual with whom they were in daily intercourse, it is not extraordinary that their faith faltered, and that their powers of apprehension failed, as they pondered the prophecies relating to His advent. When they attempted closely to grapple with the amazing truths there presented to their contemplation, and thought of "the Word made flesh," well might they be overwhelmed with a feeling of giddy and dubious wonder. Even after the resurrection had ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... not forget the weakness when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel. Magnanimity is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... for an instant, as if to grapple freshly with the vague reminiscences that were endeavouring to escape from him, while the Canadian appeared like one suffering ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... fight; for we mightn't have seen each other till the boats touched. Let that be a lesson to you, captain. When you are on the lookout for a canoe, at night, lie in among the bushes. It must pass between you and the light, then, and as they can't see you, you can either grapple or shoot, just as ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... down. It must have been a terrifying experience to swing above such a horrible abyss by one leg, and for a moment Balisle lost his head. He screamed and started to grapple with his grim captor. ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... more. But think, Valeria, of ten particular constitutions to grapple with, ten sets of garments to provide, ten series of ailments to combat, ten—no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their developments and phases, rising, on this appalling decimal ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the Czar, were not trustworthy; and there was a party in France which might take advantage of the war to proclaim the second Napoleon or the Republic. King Louis XVIII. could not therefore be allowed to grapple with Spain alone. It was necessary that the principal force employed by the alliance should be one whose loyalty and military qualities were above suspicion: the generals who had marched from Moscow to Paris were not likely to fail beyond ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the fight is done, They bid you send your sword." And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; Out ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... repeated failures, the brave men who undertook the work accomplished it. A year before, their third cable had broken in mid-ocean, and it was now proposed to "grapple" for it. The "Great Eastern" was fitted out with apparatus, which may be likened to an enormous fishing-hook and line, and was sent to the spot where the treasure had been lost. The line was of hemp interwoven with wire. Page ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... frame quivering, and then fired question after question at the Indian. When the Navajo had replied to all, Joe drew himself up as if facing an irrevocable decision which would wring his very soul. What did he cast off in that moment? What did he grapple with? Shefford had no means to tell, except by the instinct which baffled him. But whether the Mormon's trial was one of spiritual rending or the natural physical fear of a perilous, virtually impossible venture, the fact was he was magnificent in his acceptance of it. He turned to ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the Great Avenger, History's pages but record One death grapple in the darkness Twixt old systems and the word. Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; But that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim Unknown Standeth God within the shadow. ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... teaching work was offered him at Merton, and by Mr. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while that London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining. 'Stay here a year or two,' Grey said bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and you are not one of the natures who can do without books. You will be all the better worth having ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
