"Stave" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Prohibition. It is exactly a matter for the interference of the state. The Athenian in the comedy, wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant; and forthwith raises a jovial stave to Bacchus. Now all sensible people would not only be glad to enter into amicable relations with Smoke, but would even be content to pay a good sum for protection against the incursions from factory chimnies and other nuisances in their neighbourhood. But there ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... eat six regular meals a day, and between times stave off their appetite with numerous Schweitzer cheese sandwiches, blutwurst ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... variance with the terms on which they had so lately stood together. At length the speed of the pseudo herald could save him no longer from the fangs of his pursuers; they seized him, pulled him down, and would probably soon have throttled him, had not the Duke called out, "Stave and tail!—stave and tail! [to strike the bear with a staff, and pull off the dogs by the tail, to separate them.]—Take them off him!—He hath shown so good a course, that, though he has made no sport at bay, we will not have ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Wilt thou not put the scorn And instant tragic question from thine eye? Do thy dark brows yet crave That swift and angry stave — Unmeet for this desirous morn — That I have striven, striven to evade? Gazing on him, must I not deem they err Whose careless lips in street and shop aver As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? Surely some elder singer would ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... With the rear rockets, I rolled us over. For a moment we were hull-down to the passing discs. From our hull gravity-plates I flung a full repulsion. Would it stave them off, bend their orbit outward? It did ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... soul Melodious descant gave, But yet his voice so rich and sweet Swell'd not the sacred stave, The Christmas wreaths o'er arch and nave Were lingering still to cheer His parting visit to the fane Which he had ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... offering to play for nothing till Christmas; how kind and liberal he is! Mr. Abbott, Mr. Duraset, Mr. Ward, and all the others, have been as considerate and generous as possible. But the thing is doomed, and will go to the ground, in spite of every effort that can be made to stave the ruin off. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... right," said I. "Parker had suggested the walk, and a girl really does like to stave off a proposal as long as she can when she knows it is sure to come. Furthermore, it gives you a chance to describe the hat, and so make up for a few of the words you lost when she refused to discuss ball-dresses with ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... yet humbled him. His was a simple soul, and took its responsibilities seriously. He sought not to inquire for what high purpose Providence had so signally intervened to stave off from the East and West Looe Artillery the doom of common men. He only prayed to be equal to it. The Doctor's statistics had, in fact, scared him a little. I am ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... children on account of the heat, and their terrible water-swollen stomachs and the pitiful sticks of legs eloquently tell their own tale. Unable to find food, all are drinking enormous quantities of water to stave off the pangs of hunger. A man who has been in India says that all drink like this in famine time, which inflates the stomach to a dangerous extent, and is the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of "The Mermaid"; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... building, with a tower and bells; Where priest and clerk with joint exertion strive To keep the ardour af their flock alive; That, by its periods eloquent and grave; This, by responses, and a well-set stave: These for the living; but when life be fled, I toll myself the requiem for the dead." 'Tis to this Church I call thee, and that place Where slept our fathers when they'd run their race: We too shall rest, and then our children keep Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep; Meanwhile the ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... to undeceive her, but stopped in time. As a drowning man catches at a straw, so did he catch at this suggestion in his hopeless despair; and he suffered her to remain in it. Anything to stave ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... throughout by Rosalind and Orlando, compare, for example, the first speech of all, Orlando's speech to Adam, with what passage it shall please you to select—the Seven Ages from the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as Othello's farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive, if you have any ear for that class of music, a certain superior degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of the parts; a balance in the swing and the return ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... will follow many a stave. I know it well, so rings the book throughout; Much time I've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, For downright paradox, no doubt, A mystery remains alike to fools and sages. Ancient the art and modern too, my friend. 'Tis still the fashion as it used to be, Error instead ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was soft, and procuring a barrel-stave, the homicide went at the labor of digging a grave for ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... stave within a few feet of them, grunted discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion, who looked up and down the shaded cave of ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... up and down the social ladder did not stave off our craving for art; and there came about this time a very decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really grande passion had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him to turn his thoughts to painting as a means of livelihood. This ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... their runes were chiefly written: and the verb "write," which is derived from a Teutonic root, signifying to scratch or tear, is one of the testimonies of the usage. Their poems were graven upon small staves or rods, one line upon each face of the rod; and the Old English word "stave," as applied to a stanza, is probably a relic of the practice, which, in the early ages, prevailed in the West. Vellum or parchment afterwards supplied the place of these materials. Real paper, manufactured from the pellicle ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... representation of a bottle and glass, flanked by the words "Bon Vin de Macon a 8 et a 10 S." hinted intelligibly at the well-provided state of Monsieur Fricot's cellar. It was one of those humble eating-houses, abounding in the French capital, where a very hungry man may stave off starvation for about the price of a tooth-pick at the Cafe or the Trois Freres, and where an exceedingly thirsty one may get intoxicated upon potato brandy and essence of logwood for a similar amount. It needs a three days' fast or a paviour's appetite to induce entrance ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 'bout dat man," said the elder one. "You 'ten' ter yo' wuk an' finish dat bairl-stave. You spen's enti'ely too much er yo' time stretchin' yo' neck atter other people. An' you need n' 'sturb yo'se'f 'bout dem folks 'cross de street, fer dey ain't yo' kin', an' you're wastin' yo' time both'in' yo' min' wid 'em, er wid folks w'at comes on de street on ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And yet I eat, and drink, and shave, Like other people, if you watch it, And know no more of stave or crotchet Than did the primitive Peruvians, Or those old ante queer diluvians, That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal, Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal, By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at, Found out, to his great surprise, ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim struggle in the face of a desperate risk surpassed any remembered exhibition of fencers' skill with the steel. The trunk was bending visibly beneath the hewers, the river frothed more at their feet, and the giant logs were rolling, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... two leagues to your one, and I'm just leaving for home, so, unless you would like to go with me, perhaps you will let this conversation end without any more pointed remarks. If I chose, you know, I could drop you overboard in sight of your men, to swim ashore. My guns would stave your longboat all to pieces. But I've stayed long enough to give the lads a chance to have a good meal and a bit of fun—nothing's better than dancing, for the spirits, dad always said it was better than ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... crouch behind him, the young fellow stood at bay, hooting, shouting, and waving his stave in a semicircle, within whose sweep the creatures were not anxious to intrude. Weary at length of trying to surprise the fortress by a flank movement, yet reluctant to abandon the hope of seizing Pike, the wolves finally seated themselves upon their haunches ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to fifteen, when the stave was concluded with a shrill "Spell, oh!" and the gang relieved streaming with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well mashed, they rolled ton waterbutts on it, till the floor was like a billiard table. A fleet of chop boats ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... return to do what I want you to do. It won't be long! There's a vast difference between dawdling around a university learning something that is going to be useless while your father pays the bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to stave off an empty belly. You can ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... thou then speak of cowardice in me, thou craven heart!... A clever scheme hast thou devised to stave off death forever, if thou canst persuade each new wife to die ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of food, there is another important consideration. Work is at a standstill. Mobiles and Nationaux who apply forma pauperis receive one franc and a half per diem. Now, at present prices, it is materially impossible for a single man to buy sufficient food to stave off hunger for this sum, how then those who depend upon it for their sustenance, and have wives and families to support out of it, are able to live, it is difficult to understand. Sooner or later the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... that conviction. Their ablest leaders were not war-statesmen, and did not comprehend at once the full meaning of the war. They called it a 'conspiracy,' a 'rebellion,' an 'insurrection,' a 'summer madness,' anything but what it was—the American stave aristocracy in arms to subdue the people of the United States with every other aristocracy on earth wishing it success. But the people did not refuse the challenge. In April, 1861, they rushed to the capital, saved their Government from immediate capture ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... when that feast was done On the fire-lit green the dance begun, With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum Of old men ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... spectators at the play, receive the music into their hearts with an unmoved countenance, and walk like strangers through the general rejoicing. But let him feign never so carefully, there is not a man but has his pulses shaken when Pan trolls out a stave of ecstasy and ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for further words. The four quickly made for the gates. They opened and closed them quickly. Each held a stave that seemed not unlike a young tree, of which a ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... puncheon, tierce, hogshead, keg, rundlet; (of wine) 31-1/2 gallons; (of flour) 196 pounds. Associated words: gauntree, cooper, bilge, stave, hoop, chine. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... slaying, the poet to rise from his unfinished rhyme, the tender and gracious lady to cease from nice denying words (mixed though they be with pitiful sighs that break their sequence like an amorous ditty heard through the strains of a martial stave), and all men, gentle or base, to follow Death's gaunt standard into unmapped realms, something of majesty enshrines the paltriest knave on whom the weight of Death's chill finger hath fallen. I doubt not that ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... are of various forms. Those in Peterborough are formed of two hoops fastened together to form a globe and a stick or stave through the centre. The hoops are decorated with flowers and ribbons, and when the children possess one, the best doll is fixed on the stick inside the garland. Two girls carry the garland which is carefully covered with a white cloth. This is lifted ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... very still, and the cold wind that comes before the dawn whistled down them. In the centre of the Square of the Mosque a man was bending over a corpse. The skull had been smashed in by gun-butt or bamboo-stave. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... the laurell'd stave Are measures, not the springs, of worth; In a wife's lap, as in a grave, Man's airy notions mix with earth. Seek other spur Bravely to stir The dust in this loud world, and tread Alp-high among ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... grandfather, and all the homely belongings which he, a minister of the connection, could not be kept in ignorance of. It was but a momentary pang. Phoebe was not so foolish as to shrink before the inevitable, or to attempt by foolish expedients to stave off such a danger. She shrank for a second, then drew herself up and shook off all such ignoble cares. "I am myself whatever happens," was her reflection; and she said with something ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... herself from the sculptor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. At a distance, she still heard the mirth of her late companions, who were going down the cityward descent of the Capitoline Hill; they had set up a new stave of melody, in which her own soft voice, as well as the powerful sweetness ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... raked the fire about the door, which, although a sheet of flame, was still a door fast locked and barred, and kept them out. Great pieces of blazing wood were passed, besides, above the people's heads to such as stood about the ladders, and some of these, climbing up to the topmost stave, and holding on with one hand by the prison wall, exerted all their skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the roof, or down into the yards within. In many instances their efforts were successful, which occasioned a new and appalling ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... turn of the tide, although the wind was still off-shore; so that even to lie to at the mouth made rather a ticklish job of it. The men looked at one another, and did not like it, for a badly handled oar would have cast them on the rocks, which are villainously hard and jagged, and would stave in the toughest boat, like biscuit china. However, they durst not say that they feared it; and by skill and steadiness they examined all three caves quite enough to be certain that no boat ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to see this phoenomenon, we squeezed into the place with much difficulty; and who should this preacher be, but the identical Humphry Clinker. He had finished his sermon, and given out a psalm, the first stave of which he sung with peculiar graces — But if we were astonished to see Clinker in the pulpit, we were altogether confounded at finding all the females of our family among the audience — There was lady Griskin, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, Mrs Winifred Jenkins, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... noted that so far as the positions of the notes on the stave are concerned, the key of A[b] is as easy to sing in as the key of A, D[b] as D, and so on. This fact is sometimes overlooked, and unnecessary difficulties are created ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... the bitterest opposition of the best brains of both Houses. A most curious aspect of this singular law is that even the Minister, since deceased, who introduced it, subsequently declared himself against it, adding that he only forced it through in order to stave off something worse. Indeed, it is correct to say that Mr. Sauer, who introduced the Bill, spoke against it repeatedly in the House; he deleted the milder provisions, inserted more drastic amendments, spoke repeatedly against his own amendments, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the matter out of the hands of the Air Traffic Bureau. We are prepared to defy the ultimatum of the enemy, whoever he may be. But we want your help, Mr. Jones. Every ship of the Air Navy will be in the upper levels within the prescribed twenty-four hours, and we will endeavor to stave off their attacks until such time as you can fit the Pioneer for a journey to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... the rusty bars of the prison door, and the worn visage of the wounded Cavalier turning towards it as the flower turns to the sun. And surely Master Wildrake himself, with his glass of sack half-way to his mouth, never put it down to sing a finer Royalist stave than Lovelace's "To ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... our prayer, and crave Pardon, because thy lowlier stave Can do this plea no right, but wrong. Ask nought beside thy pardon, save Sweet water from the well ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... or two of them had avoided her, were almost worse to bear, and sitting alone in the gathering darkness the girl flushed crimson at the memory. There was also the grim question by what means she could stave off actual want to grapple with, and to that she could as yet find no answer, while her eyes grew dim as she glanced about the little room. Townshead had changed his quarters, and many of the trifles ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at the critical moment." The Amiens line being under fire, it was impossible to bring French reinforcements north in time to save Kemmel Hill and stave off the menace to the Channel ports. The tale of our losses is grievous, and for thousands and thousands of families nothing can ever be the same again. The ordeal of Paris has been renewed by shelling from the German long-distance gun, the last and most sensational of German surprise-packets. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Ulf, turning to the bluff old warrior, "since thou hast shown thy readiness to rebuke, let us see thy willingness to entertain. Sing us a stave or tell us a saga, kinsman, as well thou knowest how, being gifted with more than a fair ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear old land is thine, And thou a traitor slave of it: Think how the Switzer leads his kine, When pale the evening star doth shine; His song has home in every line, Freedom in every stave of it; Think how the German loves his Rhine And ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... animation. What is to be done with this apparatus? How fetter this stupendous engine of destruction? How anticipate its comings and goings, its returns, its stops, its shocks? Any one of its blows on the side of the ship may stave it in. How foretell its frightful meanderings? It is dealing with a projectile, which alters its mind, which seems to have ideas, and changes its direction every instant. How check the course of what must be avoided? The horrible cannon struggles, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of all to get the shrouds on one side cut through, so that the mast might come to the surface alongside instead of disturbing the balance of the boat below; and then they must climb up on the swaying bottom of the boat and stave in the key-holes, to let out the air which kept the boat too high in the water, and so ease her. After great exertions they succeeded, and Elias, who had got up on the top first, now helped the other two up ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... nothing is the matter. But if he merely answers "No-o-o!" he means yes, and in order to stave off sea-sickness he ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of Napoleon. It proved physically impossible for him to extend the Continental System widely and thoroughly enough to gain his point. In many cases, to stave off opposition, he authorized exceptions to his own decrees. If he could have prevailed upon every Continental state to close its ports to British goods simultaneously and for several successive years, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... me a moment with surprise, and after exclaiming, "How are you, my boy?" gave the bench a salutary kick, and whistled more vigorously than ever "Nix my Dolly;" and having gone through the stave, he turned to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... had been dealing in lumber for ever so long, that the most important and essential thing in life was lumber. There was something touching and endearing in the way she pronounced the words, "beam," "joist," "plank," "stave," "lath," "gun-carriage," "clamp." At night she dreamed of whole mountains of boards and planks, long, endless rows of wagons conveying the wood somewhere, far, far from the city. She dreamed that a whole ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... the horror from beginning to end. He could now move his toes. If only he could fall forward, grasp that incineration tube, turn it on Barter! With Barter unable to control him he would regain his senses in time, he hoped, to stave off the certain charge of Naka Machi, whose hatred for himself he ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... excesses committed in the name of civilization, in reality the price of our modernization, in a final desperate effort to rally their waning fortunes stampeded their awakening masses into a ruinous interracial war in order to stave off the torch ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... or long poem, by the time he went to table; and if he failed to do so, said the king, "he shall be hanged for his impudence in composing such a small poem about King Canute." Thorarin then composed a stave as a refrain, which he inserted in the poem, and also augmented it with several other strophes or verses. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... such pagan thirst!" exclaimed he who had been toasted, snatching the cup away. "Art thou altogether unslakable? Is thy belly a lime-kiln? Nay, shalt taste not a single drop more, Hubert, till we have a stave. ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Mag Trega and they unyoke there and prepare their food. It is said that it is there that Dubthach recited this stave:— ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... active, with no original laziness in his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... ordering that twenty-five per cent, of the revenues of the public lands (kugaideri) should be appropriated to increase the emoluments of the metropolitan officials. This decree spoke of the latter officials as not having sufficient to stave off cold or hunger, whereas their provincial confreres were living in opulence, and added that even men of high rank were not ashamed to apply for removal to provincial posts. As illustrating the straits to which the metropolitans were reduced ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... air of one used to being served on a tray outside the servants' quarters; and a German attendant with hands constructed especially for the purpose of kneading and gouging the innermost muscles of his master, who it appears had to be kneaded and gouged three times a day by a masseur in order to stave off paralysis, locomotor ataxia or something equally unwelcome ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... couple of huge casks on one side as if they had been light balls, and seized one of the large thick beams which had not yet been worked at "Marry, master," he cried, "marry, this is good sound oak; I wager it will snap like glass." And thereupon he struck the stave against the grindstone so that it broke clean in half with a loud crack. "Pray be so kind," said Master Martin, "pray have the kindness, my good fellow, to kick that two-tun cask about or to pull down the whole shop. There, you can take that balk for a mallet, and that you may have an adze ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... for goose," finished Tom. "Come, father, old Dictionary is in the doldrums; rouse him up with another stave." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... though, for that matter, they seldom hesitated to do anything they wished on account of the weather, as it was not so cold to the natives as to us. They played with balls, both large and small, and sleds of all descriptions; and if the latter were not to be had, or all in use, a barrel stave or board would be made to answer the same purpose. It was a rush past the window down the hill, first by a pair of muckluked feet, then a barrel stave and a boy, sometimes little Pete, and sometimes John. One barrel stave would hold only one coaster, and there ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... declare war till nearly three years after the war had begun in Europe. During most of that time the situation was this: Germany, to win at all, must win at once. The longer the Allies could stave Germany off, the more time they would have to collect arms and armies, powder, food, and ships, and the more certain they would be of winning in the end. Therefore they sent to America, which was rich and had many factories, for tremendous quantities ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... planters own a tobacco straightener and screw-press, inventions which materially lessen the manual labor of preparing the crop for market. Each hogshead is branded with the name of the owner, and thus shipped to his commission-merchant, when the hogshead is 'broken' by tearing off a stave, thus exposing the strata of the bulk to view. Of late years some planters have been guilty of 'nesting,' or placing prime leaf around the outer part and an inferior article in the center ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, And take his ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... mate raised his gun, firing the bomb directly down the great livid cavern of a throat fronting him. Down went that mountainous head not six inches from us, but with a perfectly indescribable motion, a tremendous writhe, in fact; up flew the broad tail in air, and a blow which might have sufficed to stave in the side of the ship struck the second mate's boat fairly amidships. It was right before my eyes, not sixty feet away, and the sight will haunt me to my death. The tub oarsman was the poor German baker, about whom ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... what can we do about it? We can't stop it, or even keep it within bounds. Our customers will give them, and people who have too much money or too little sense, give not only dollar bills or five dollar bills, but fifty dollar bills and even hundred dollar bills. We have tried to stave off customers who do such things: we believe that in the long run it would pay us ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... time Mrs. Brownlow, who had heard Cecil's boots on the stairs, and particularly wished to stave matters off till after the Friar's mission, had made a hasty conclusion of her lesson, and letting her girls depart, opened the door. She saw at once that she was too late; but there was no retreat, for Esther flew past her in shy terror, and Cecil advanced with the earnest, innocent entreaty, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he said, "the waist, since one has to make use of that hideous word, should be a gradual, imperceptible, gentle transition from one to another of woman's two glories, her bosom and her womb, and you stupidly strangle it, you stave in the thorax, which involves the breasts in its ruin, you flatten your lower ribs, and you plough a horrible furrow above the navel. The negresses, who file their teeth down to a point, and split their lips, in order ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... you were a millionaire, sir; and what are you? A pauper on my bounty, and on your brother Montagu's after me—a pauper with a tinsel fashion, a gilded beggary, a Queen's commission to cover a sold-out poverty, a dandy's reputation to stave off a defaulter's future! A pauper, sir—and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... schemer lurking near the door picked up their sense at once. Dr Pendle was the priest who was to drop the money on Southberry Heath, and Jentham the knave who was to pick it up. As certainly as though the man had given chapter and verse, Cargrim understood his enigmatic stave. His mind flashed back to the memory that Dr Pendle intended to ride over to Southberry in the morning, across the heath. Without doubt he had agreed to meet there this man who boasted that he could get blood out of a stone, and the object of the meeting was to bribe him to silence. But however loosely ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of his noble descendant and worthy representative!" This example was followed by all the gentlemen present. The harp struck up a triumphal strain; and, the old squire already mentioned, vociferating the first stave, they sang, or rather roared, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... raised by her unexpected good-fortune, Toni showed herself more than usually bewitching; and although she managed to stave off the declaration which still trembled on the young man's lips, she played games with him in the most friendly fashion, and bade him good-night at last with so sweet a smile that he almost fell upon his knees then and there and kissed the slim little feet in their ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... storm-toss'd and beating for the bay, They'll be howling and be growling as they drench it with their spray— For they'd like to heel it over to their laughter when it lists, Or crack the keel between them, or stave ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... soon as his voice filled the night, the woman's faltered and died; and he, holding on for a stave or more, would stop on a note that had a wailing fall, and the lapping of the waves or cry of hidden birds take up the rule again. This did not often obtain. Mostly he watched out the night, sleeping little, talking none, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy side, Or gathering mountain echoes as they glide, Hath greater power o'er each true heart and ear, Than all the columns Conquest's minions rear; Invites, when hieroglyphics are a theme For sages' ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... dear, foolish man, can't you see that it's you I want?" And she leaned forward, speaking quickly to stave off interruption. "Don't make a fuss about it, please; because I have settled everything in my mind. I'll ask Mrs Rivers to take baby and Parbutti for me. I know she gladly will. As for me, of course I go down to Dera to-morrow, and do what I can ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... stave off the expected storm as to justify himself, proceeded to give a true, though agitated, story of his and Georgie's adventures on the day of the Grandcourt match, appealing to Georgie at every stage in the narration ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... a number of theatrical representations of Mendelssohn's "Elijah." I have witnessed as well as heard a performance of "Acis and Galatea" and been entertained with the spectacle of Polyphemus crushing the head of presumptuous Acis with a stave like another Fafner while singing "Fly, thou massy ruin, fly" to the bludgeon which was playing understudy for ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire, and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shaped, shapen shave shaved shaved, shaven shear sheared sheared, shorn smell smelled, smelt smelled, smelt sow sowed sowed, sown spell spelled, spelt spelled, spelt spill spilled, spilt spilled, spilt spoil spoiled, spoilt spoiled, spoilt stave staved, stove staved, stove stay stayed, staid stayed, staid swell swelled swelled, swollen wake waked, woke waked, woke wax, grow waxed waxed (waxen) wed wedded wedded, wed whet whetted, whet whetted, whet work worked, ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... welcome as the Gladiateur, with reversed engines, hung against the current above the bridge of Saint-Benezet and slowly drew in to the bank. Our answering cheers went forth to them through the darkness, and a stave or two of "La Coupe" was sung, and there was a mighty clapping of hands. And then the gang-plank was set ashore, and instantly beside it—standing in the glare of a great lantern—we saw our Capoulie, the head of all the Felibrige, Felix Gras, waiting for us, his subjects and ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... indeed strange and flighty; and though she recurred to questions about the Ordination and the Bowaters, Julius perceived that she was forcing her attention to the answers as if trying to stave off his inquiries, and he came to closer quarters. "How is Terry? Has Dr. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sailors to take up upon credit. But the first lieutenant would not allow any of them to come on board until after the ship was paid; although they were so urgent that he was forced to place sentries in the chains with cold shot, to stave the boats if they came alongside. I was standing at the gangway, looking at the crowd of boats, when a black-looking fellow in one of the wherries said to me, "I say, sir, let me slip in at the port, and I have a very nice present to make you;" and he displayed a gold seal, which he held up to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... at dusk our Mess carouse, With catches strong and brave, The mules their tuneful hearts arouse, And answer stave for stave. 'Dumb nature' breaks in festive noise, Remembering in this East The mystic bond which knits the joys ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... consequences of eating forbidden animals vary considerably. Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of his black fellow improvised this stave:— ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... a compulsive stave Through all the bounds, from Beersheba to Dan; Come out! come out! who scorns to be a slave, Or claims ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... for some money to put off the infernal creditors, who have begun to flock into the house. There's the bell. Hang me, if it isn't another one! To come to the point, then, I wish you would loan me, say two hundred dollars. It is a small amount, but will stave them off a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... was eyed askance by his brethren. No one deigned to call him "Reb" Zelig, nor to prefix to his name the American equivalent—"Mr." "The old one is a barrel with a stave missing," knowingly declared his neighbors. "He never spends a cent; and he belongs nowheres." For "to belong," on New York's East Side, is of no slight importance. It means being a member in one of the numberless congregations. Every decent Jew must join ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... larger boats than ours; but it was impossible always to avoid concealed dangers, over which the waters did not cause the slightest ripple. The large boat struck on a sharp rock, and with such violence as to stave her bottom; she was immediately unladen, and temporarily repaired without injury to the cargo. Although the river is extremely low, there is a very large body of water in it; the outer banks are nearly a quarter of a mile wide, and far out of ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... when I am dead, bury me in my native France, with my cross of honor on my breast, and my musket in my hand, and lay my good sword by my side." Until this time the melody has been a slow and dirge-like stave in the minor key. The old soldier declares his belief that he will rise again from the clods when he hears the victorious tramp of his Emperor's squadrons passing over his grave, and the minor breaks into a weird setting of the "Marseillaise" ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... Joke, or singing Black-eyed Susan, or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave or two, or repeat the Doxology."—"Would I had Tom Laverick here," replied our novitiate; "he would sing your anthems like a sea-mew—a had been a clerk a-shore—many's the time and often I've given him a rope's end for singing psalms in the larboard watch. Would I had hired the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... from heaven, and we all hoped Baldwin was next, I tuned a slight stave to the words in Macbeth (D'avenant's) to be sung by a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the utter amaze of the drunken listeners and astonishment of the Indians, the game old officer trolled off this stave: ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... on to specify what further measures the South demanded, in sharp, incisive terms, but this extract suffices to show that our leaders used every power of tongue and moral suasion to stave ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... aright by the brothers, who see what her meaning is. Then she goes home to her husband; and here comes in, not merely irony, but an intentional rebuke to sentiment. Her husband is lying helpless and moaning, and she asks him whether he has slept. To which he answers in a stave of the usual form in the Sagas, the purport of which is that he has never known sleep since the death of Olaf his son. "'Verily that is a great lie,' says she, 'that thou hast never slept once these three years. But now it is high time to be up and play the man, if thou wilt have ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... was this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the sledge, or I'll stave your head in!" commanded MacVeigh. "Face the enemy, Pelly, and give 'em hell. You've got three rifles there. You can do the shooting while I hustle on the dogs. And keep yourself in front of her," he added, pointing to the almost completely ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... cheer him up by talking to him of my home, and how he might find his relations and friends, and then I bethought me that I would sing a song. I don't suppose that many people have sung under such circumstances, but I managed to strike up a stave, one of those with which I had been accustomed to amuse my messmates in the Naiad's forecastle. It was not, perhaps, one of the merriest, but it served to divert Clem's thoughts, as well as mine, from ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... boy. The light in those peering, bloodshot eyes told him that the longshoreman would mistreat that beloved uniform; and Johnnie wanted to gain time. Something, or some one, might interrupt, and thus stave off—what? ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... haggling and huckstering look than it need have had. Bacon, a subordinate of the Government, but a very important person in the Commons, did his part, loyally, as it seems, and skilfully in smoothing differences and keeping awkward questions from making their appearance. Thus he tried to stave off the risk of bringing definitely to a point the King's cherished claim to levy "impositions," or custom duties, on merchandise, by virtue of his prerogative—a claim which he warned the Commons not to dispute, and which Bacon, maintaining it ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... He saw evil and woe unspeakable fall on that world which he had left behind him, till the earth was filled with blood, and Antichrist seemed ready to appear, and the day of judgment to be at hand. And he had been called to do what he could to stave off this ruin, to make those young princes decree justice and rule in judgment by the fear of God. But he had failed; and there was nothing left to him save self-accusation and regret, and dread lest some, at least, of the blood which had been shed might be required ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... within her tepee making beaded deerskins for her father, while he longs to stave off her every suitor as all unworthy of his old heart's pride. But Tusee is not alone in her dwelling. Near the entrance-way a young brave is half reclining on a mat. In silence he watches the petals of a wild rose growing on the soft buckskin. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the fingers for love; but wine's the very heart of life. There's wisdom and truth in wine, there's valor in it, and it's powerful enough to make even good sound men fall in love. There's a stave I've heard which you may have if you will." And with much sound but little music Stefan ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to climb into the boat to get at or upset you,—we never could make out which, and didn't care, as the result to us would have been the same,—or else try to ram your boat and stave holes in it. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... perching himself grotesquely on the easy chair). I was ass enough to keep it until about ten minutes ago. Up to that moment I went on desperately reading to her—reading my own poems—anybody's poems—to stave off a conversation. I was standing outside the gate of Heaven, and refusing to go in. Oh, you can't think how heroic it was, and how ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... to talk of the men in the Eastfirth Quarter, and thou must always find something to say against them. At last your talk will come to Rangrivervale, and then thou must say, there is small choice of men left in those parts since Fiddle Mord died. At the same time sing some stave to please Hrut, for I know thou art a skald. Hrut will ask what makes thee say there is never a man to come in Mord's place; and then thou must answer, that he was so wise a man and so good a taker up of suits, that he never made a false ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... s'pose so, but with vessels like we got and the seamen sailing out of Gloucester we'll stave 'em off a long time yet, and even as it is, give me a breeze and a vessel like this one under us and we'll beat out all the steam fishermen that ever turned ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... he had not much of a voice, contrived to make his songs popular by the humour he threw into his tone, had sung about a stave or so, and Norris and the rest of the party, with laughing countenances, while listening to his song, forgot ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane. The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead. Marianne cried out in delight. She had forgotten her hope that the mares ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... pitch hot." In handing the sails, "to loose" is good English,—"to furl" is Armorican, and belongs to the Mediterranean class of words. "To rake," which is applied to spars, is from the Saxon racian, to incline;—"to steeve," which is applied to the bowsprit, and often pronounced "stave," is from the Italian stivare. When we get below-decks, we find "cargo" to be Spanish,—while "ballast" (from bat, a boat, and last, a load) is Saxon. A ship in ballast comes from the Baltic,—a vessel and cargo from the Bay ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... physical wants of men. These wants have, of course, become much complicated and refined: men wish not only to live, but to live commodiously and well. They want not merely a roof over their heads, but a pleasant and comfortable house in which to live. They want not merely something to stave off starvation, but palatable foods. In the satisfaction of these increasingly complicated demands a great diversity of industries arises. With every new want to be fulfilled, there is a new occupation, pursued not for its own sake, but for the sake ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grandsire's time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. His dinner is his other work, for he sweats at it as much as at his labour; he is a terrible fastener on a piece of beef, and you may hope to stave the guard off sooner. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion: Yet if he give him leave he is a good Christian to his power, (that is,) comes to ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various |
