"Stiffening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up and caught his Aunt by the umbrella hand. He saw her stiffening. He meant to prevent ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... elderly woman. "Your last bit of land—and to think it should go like that. I never dreamed I should have to say those words to my son." Then stiffening and turning to Collins. "But I did not come to complain, I came to see if justice cannot be done. This is robbery. That terrible man with the German name has robbed Arthur. It is quite plain. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... after something to eat—something which he knew would certainly scream as it died. For Marielihou was a mighty hunter, and her long black body could be seen about the cliffs at any time of night or day, creeping and worming along, then, of a sudden, pointing and stiffening, and flashing on to her prey like ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... upon the countenance of the princess? Was there a quick but imperceptible intaking of her breath? Was there a deepening in the expression of her matchless eyes, and an imperceptible widening of them, as they dwelt upon her companion? Was there a stiffening of her figure in its attitude of quiet repose, and did her muscles attain a sudden rigidity, induced by that startling announcement? Saberevski could not have answered any one of these questions. So perfectly were the features and the facial expression of Princess Zara under her control that she ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat, Wrote variations of the seaside joke We all do know and always loved so well, And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves Anon Will in that self-same room, with tattered quilt Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands, All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts, Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more, So that we may expect it not in vain, The joke of how with curses deep and coarse Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove. So ye Who greet with tears ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary process. Just up to what point it goes in any given ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... well known in Brown's Tract as the "Nessmuk canoe." She weighed just 17 pounds 13 3/4 ounces and was thought to be the lightest working canoe in existence. Her builder gave me some advice about stiffening her with braces, etc., if I found her too frail, "and he never expected ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... not particularly straight this sudden question introduced a stiffening into it which made it more upright than it had ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... or gracefully enjoy, Add new reproaches to thy fallen state, And make men scorn what they would only hate. "What pains, my brother, dost thou take to prove A taste for follies which thou canst not love! Why do thy stiffening limbs the steed bestride - That lads may laugh to see thou canst not ride? And why (I feel the crimson tinge my cheek) Dost thou by night in Diamond-Alley sneak? "Farewell! the parish will thy sister keep, Where she in peace shall pray and sing and sleep, Save when for ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... passed under this straining vigil. He had stirred slightly to ease his lean, stiffening muscles. The rough buildings of the camp slowly faded under the growing darkness. The activity of the camp became swallowed up, and only his keen ears told him of it. The pack ponies at their picketings, under the sheer walls beyond the cook-house, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... file, to give the least possible sign of their presence to the hostile sentinels, the French blasters advanced in a long line, at first with comparative rapidity, only stiffening into the grotesque rigidity of simulated death when the searchlights played upon them, and resuming progress when the beam shifted. Then as they approached the barrier they moved slowly and more slowly. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... she kisses The clay-cold stiffening hand; And, reading pleading efforts To make her understand, Answers, with solemn promise, In clear but trembling tone, To Dora's life henceforward ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... was a sudden stiffening of his right leg, followed a second later by a similar movement with his left. His right arm extended violently; then the ham-sized fist on the end of his left arm went through the plate glass window beside him. He leaped to the centre of the smoking compartment. For a moment he danced ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... little, the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening which had begun, relaxed. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... now carried the scent of the man to the crouching lynx. By a stiffening of the animal's muscles the Hermit knew that his presence had been detected. As the branch was close enough to bring the cat within springing distance, he deemed it time to assert himself. Accordingly, he sprang to his ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... been more keenly analytical than those of Mrs. Marshall-Smith. She saw perfectly the new attribute, and realized perfectly what a resolute stiffening of the will it signified. She had never admired and loved Sylvia more, and being a person adept in self-expression, she saturated her next speech with her admiration and affection. "Of course, you ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Com-tech's place as if some of the stiffening had vanished from his thin but sturdy legs. "They wouldn't do that—" he protested, but his eyes said that he knew ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... carving, half human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us like a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe Sicilian testimony unless corroborated, and this prevented ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... dressing the hair are fixed. They vary with the ages of female children, and there is a slight difference between the coiffure of the married and unmarried. The two partings on the top of the head and the chignon never vary. The amount of stiffening used is necessary, as the head is never covered out of doors. This arrangement will last in good order for a week or ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of it. "Swear? You won't try and back out of it?" he said, lifting his hand adjuringly. His companion solemnly drew his finger across his throat, as if cutting it, and the oath was taken. The one who had lost the cap, hitched up his trousers and pulled himself together, his whole figure stiffening with determination; then he put his hands upon the fence, vaulted it, and walked with bent head and firm step across the yard, looking like one who had staked his all upon one card. When he had secured the cap, and turned his back upon the House, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... with tenfold violence throughout his system, seemed to thicken, and then stagnate; his pulses bounded, staggered and ceased; cold moisture bathed his wan forehead, and his whole frame appeared stiffening with the death-chill. A few feet distant, by a window the very counterpart of the one near which he stood, loomed forth a shape—a substance, yet it cast no shadow—the moonlight shone through it, resting on the floor like slightly tarnished ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... stiffening her jaw rather ominously, "and it's just about time that he learned that he isn't always going to have it, too! It's very easy for him to have me do anything that is hard and stupid——Do you suppose," ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... else now saw quite clearly what Gerald's intentions were. Althea was dazed; she did not know what the bright object that had come so overpoweringly into her life wanted of her. She had feared—sickeningly—with a stiffening of her whole nature to resistance, that he wanted to flirt with her as well as with Lady Pickering. Then she had seen that he wasn't going to flirt, that he was going to be her friend, and then—this in the two or three days that followed Gerald's ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... internal improvements,—political events which commonly eclipse the intellectual aspects of nationality; but also in the Unitarian revolt of 1815, led by Channing, which loosed New England from the stiffening bonds of Calvinism, the Quaker schism in the Middle States, and the birth of the Campbellites in the West. The goodness of man was beginning to attract more attention than the total depravity of man. The North ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... mask, Madame," replied the captain, kneeling. He gently loosed the sword from the stiffening fingers. The master ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the hill by a broken road which skirts the heath and leads to the old bridge, the wind suddenly began to blow furiously. My darling, overwhelmed by it, caught hold of my leg and sheltered himself in the skirt of my coat. My dog, for his part, stiffening his four legs, with his tail between the hind ones and his ears waving in the wind, looked up at me too. I turned, the horizon was as gloomy as the interior of a church. Huge black clouds were sweeping toward us, and the trees were bending and groaning on every ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... elk. I pursued until night, and had almost overtaken him; but hope and strength failed me at the same time. What clothing I had on me, notwithstanding the extreme coldness of the weather, was drenched with sweat. It was not long after I turned toward home that I felt it stiffening about me. My leggings were of cloth, and were torn in pieces in running through the bush. I was conscious I was somewhat frozen before I arrived at the place where I had left our lodge standing in the morning, and it was now midnight. I knew it had been ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... who had been held captive by the Adil Shahs, and he proclaimed the eldest as king of the Dakhan.[252] This abortive attempt to subvert the rule of the five kings who had established themselves on the ruins of the single Dakhan sovereignty naturally fell flat, and only resulted in stiffening the hostility which these sovereigns felt towards ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... to brown; On the blue flower a bluer flower you spy, You stretch to pluck it—'tis a butterfly; The flattened tree-toads so resemble bark, They're hard to find as Ethiops in the dark; The woodcock, stiffening to fictitious mud, Cheats the young sportsman thirsting for his blood; So by long living on a single lie, Nay, on one truth, will creatures get its dye; Red, yellow, green, they take their subject's hue,— Except when squabbling turns them ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's feet before stiffening in death. Like the great automaton it was, it had scented the human beings just as the bull had scented them, "fussed" just as he had fussed, charged as he had charged, and died as he ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... reconcile it all with reality. He went slowly over to the prostrate "Slim" Rawley, whom the others had laid out decently upon the ground, half expecting him to leap up and laugh in their faces; but the already stiffening figure with the fiendish scowl upon its ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... for officers, soldiers and other uniformed members of the A.E.F. For the latter two classes, the cap will be of 20 ounce olive drab cloth, or perhaps a little heavier. There will be no show of coloring on the cap, and the stiffening of the flap will be the same color as the cap itself. When the cap is issued to a man, he will be expected to turn in his service ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... nothing like a tincture of Calvinism for stiffening a line of battle,' said Saxon. 'Look at the Swede when he is at home. What more honest, simple-hearted fellow could you find, with no single soldierly virtue, save that he could put away more spruce beer than you would care to pay for. Yet if you do but cram him with a few strong, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... glasses, were all that remained; and James Polder played with the cut fruit, the half-full cordial glass before him. "I am going to be brutally frank, Jimmy," she said again. "You know that is a habit of mine, too. You are a very brilliant young man, but you are not omnipotent—you require stiffening, like a collar. And I would be a splendid laundress for you. Harriet is a long shot too lenient. I might not be so comfortable to live with, but I'd be bracing. I'd have you in that dirty little superintendent's ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... must be going,' she remarked, stiffening again. 'Kindly conduct me to the exit. I thought there would have been more to inspire the mind in this place. . . . Good-bye. We will take good care ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... picturesque brigade appeared in wild perfection. Nearing a portage, spontaneously a race began for the best landing place. Like contending chargers, forward they bounded at every stroke. Vigorously the voyageurs plied their paddles. Stiffening their arms and curving their backs, they bent the blades. Every muscle was strained. The sharp bows cleaved the lumpy water, sending it gurgling to the paddles that slashed it, and whirled it aside. On they went. Now Oo-koo-hoo's canoe was gaining. As that brightly ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... but he found there were too many park keepers and police about: he saw he could do little for her that way. He was turning home with her again when one of her evil fits came upon her, this time taking its first form in a sudden stiffening of every muscle: she stood stock still with flaming eyes. I suspect we human beings know but little of the fierceness with which the vortices of passion rage in the more purely animal natures. This beginning he knew well would end in a wild paroxysm of rearing and plunging. He had more ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... real earnest. As he did so, Hikozaemon, despairing of success, hurled his dirk. Deep into the fellow's shoulder it went. "Atsu!" Savagely he turned on the old man. Hikozaemon was skilled in defence, but stiffening with age. His opponent showed himself an able warrior. "Ah! Ha! 'Tis Hikozaemon Dono. With him there is no quarrel. Deign to receive a wound." The old fellow's sword dropped helpless under a sharp rap over the wrist from the back of the blade. This was enough for the man's purpose. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... I folded the sanguine Sergeant's stiffening hands together across his fleshless ribs, and helped carry his body out to the dead-house at Andersonville, in order to get a piece of wood to cook ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... as the light breeze comes over, the wheat rustles the more because the stalks are stiffening and swing from side to side from the root instead of yielding up the stem. Stay now at every gateway and lean over while the midsummer hum sounds above. It is a peculiar sound, not like the querulous buzz of the honey, nor the drone of the humble bee, but a sharp ringing resonance like that ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... stiffening of the j'ints I'm getting. This liniment is fine stuff. I must be very careful of it, though; why, I'm a sight better already. Now then, first to wash my 'ands, and then to unpick the feather-stitching poor Ally did to-day. Poor darlin', she couldn't ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... stiffen in at least an hour and a half. It may be further remarked that, the outside of the kettle being black, the lid being light-tight, and all the apertures in it being firmly closed, nearly the whole process can be conducted by daylight, from the mixing to the stiffening, so that it is very convenient to be able to keep the emulsion in the same vessel during ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... said that his hands were soiled (I shuddered, for it might be with life-blood), and he would go and cleanse them; but some bitter jest turned his purpose, and he left the room with the other two—left it by the gallery door. Left me alone in the dark with the stiffening corpse! ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... out to the Italian. The fellow took it, surveyed it closely, felt in the pockets, and examined very critically the stiffening of the collar. Finally he put it on. He buttoned it closely around him, and passed his fingers through his matted hair. Then he felt the pockets once more. After which he yawned long and solemnly. This done, he looked earnestly at ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... starch-makers used between three and four thousand bushels a week. Thus a substantial gentlewoman in fashionable array might bear the food of a parish upon her ample bosom. A single manufacturer in Amsterdam required four hundred weekly bushels. Such was the demand for the stiffening of the vast ruffs, the wonderful head-gear, the elaborate lace-work, stomachers and streamers, without which no lady who respected herself could possibly go abroad to make her daily purchases of eggs and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spoke he caught the lad by the waistband with one hand, lifted him from the ground, and stiffening his muscles held him out at arm's-length for a few seconds ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... give free play for the involuntary action of the delicate vocal muscles connected with the larynx, which determine all the finer variations of voice. Whatever kind of vocal effort is made, the student should constantly guard himself against the least throat stiffening or contraction, against what vocalists call a "throat grip." He is very likely to make some effort with the throat, or vocal muscles, when putting the voice to any unusual test—when prolonging tone, raising or lowering the pitch, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... standing before His mirror fumbling with His moustache, which seemed unwilling any more to point upwards, but had a persistent droop. "Donner und blitzen!" He exclaimed irascibly as he added more and more stiffening paste. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... the wheeling days Until the cord goes slack, Until the very heartstring frays, Until the stiffening back Can ply no more; keep then the door, And, thankful in the sun, Watch you the same unending war Ontaken by ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... that such disciplines were superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party. With Lady Isabel's regime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... don't. As it happens, however, a good many of us are putting a contract through, and the boys want to get that beam fixed before the fast freight comes along. If they don't, it's quite likely she'll shake it loose or pitch some of them off the bridge. It has stood a few years, and wants stiffening." ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... malignant Sepoy bestowed the stiffening body upon the carpet, he released his horrible clutch upon the detective's throat, and, despite his manacles, began with desperate agility to search ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... atmospheres,—in singular confirmation of what had before been provisionally calculated from the mechanical theory of heat. His discovery of the true method of preventing the tendency of tubes to collapse, by dividing the flues of long boilers into short lengths by means of stiffening rings, arising out of the same investigation, was one of the valuable results of his minute study of the subject; and is calculated to be of essential value in the manufacturing districts by diminishing the chances ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... stiffening frost benumbs Her limbs, and clouds her heavy eye— And hark! her feeble moan becomes ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... raise the pelicans. But the instant his sight cleared the crown of the ridge he rushed forward, threw up his arms, and lifted his voice in a long, imploring yell. Hardly two miles away, her shapely canvas leaning and stiffening in the augmented breeze, a small yacht had just gone about, and with twice the speed at which she must have approached was, hurrying back straight ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... of the tomb. He saw Atma prostrate on the damp sepulchral mould, his face buried in his hands, and beside him lay still, and cold, and lifeless, a girl attired in bridal finery, with jewels gleaming on her dark hair and on her stiffening arms. It was Moti. ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... this result, the vocalist or speaker must begin by taking breath through the mouth, as we have already insisted, and at once, before there is time for any stiffening of parts, commence to intonate—i.e., as soon as enough air has been inhaled for the purpose intended. The correct position is facilitated when one taking breath through the mouth acts as if about to yawn. If this act be well imitated, the student will find, on looking ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... the older men, some of whom had already begun to feel their joints stiffening with rheumatism, she said: "Fishing's a hard game, boys, for the best of us. And it doesn't get any easier as we get older. There's a lot of you who will have to go into dry-dock before long and get patched up. And there's some that can't afford to lay up. You've been working ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... The body was chilling and stiffening. He looked back at the face. There was almost a smile on the lips; and one hand hung as if fallen from the windlass handle. A suspicion flashed through Wayland's mind. He could hardly give it credence. It was preposterous, unbelievable, like a page from the lawlessness ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... And as if to add to his discomfort, while climbing down the trail from the cemetery, he saw Judith on Buster, accompanied by the leaping Wolf Cub, overtake Scott Parsons and saw them race toward the post-office. Twilight came on, with the mud of the trail stiffening in the frosty air. An overpowering sense of loneliness urged Douglas across the valley and brought him to pause beside the Rodman corral. He dismounted at the buck fence and stood for a moment in the shadow of the Moose, wondering why ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... us, and won't be shaken off till he has worried us to death; the sword-fish stabs us with his sword; and the thrasher whips us to death with his own slender, but strong and heavy body. Then, men harpoon us, shoot or entrap us; and make us into oil and candles and seats, and stiffening for gowns and umbrellas," said the bone, in a tone ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... this familiar form cold reason had returned to oust the hopes and emotions which had usurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often do, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of the charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of stiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have spelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I was too ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... doubtless thought to find Prince Victor alone, stopped short, betraying disconcertion in the way he instinctively assumed the stand of a soldier at attention, bringing his heels together with an undeniable click, straightening his shoulders, stiffening both arms to rigidity at his sides. And for a bare thought his eyes rolled almost wildly in their deep sockets. Then he bowed twice, from the hips, with mechanical precision, profoundly to Victor, with deep respect to ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... much needed. All these queries and doubts however were soon put an end to when it became known that the Colonel had decided to land and practice an attack. He knew that at any moment his Regiment might be thrown into action, and as the long journey was found to have a stiffening effect on one's limbs he decided on some small practice manoeuvres before the actual ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... suddenly. His eyes closed. He jerked his head erect and looked bewildered. A second sank heavily into a chair. He said remotely, "Thish sfunny!" and abruptly went to sleep. The third found his knees giving way. He paid elaborate attention to them, stiffening them. But they yielded like rubber and he went slowly down to the floor. The fourth said thickly and ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... laboring under sudden emotion, his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously: there are dozens of cases noted, particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays, inspector, much as you may resent the limitation. No; what we can say is this. If he had been shot after the hour at which the world begins to ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... arching nets the roaring main, And scarce the meshy toils the copious draught contain, All naked of their element, and bare, The fishes pant, and gasp in thinner air; Wide o'er the sands are spread the stiffening prey, Till the warm sun ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... curved a fraction more it would crack. He could not move his feet for the strong coil of Ishmael's legs around his, and he knew that in a moment more he must fall backwards with the weight still upon him. The only joints in which he still had play were his ankles; stiffening them he began to incline forwards. Slowly the interlocked bodies, like a swaying tower, came up and up, till the watchers caught their breath wondering what would happen to the one who was undermost in the fall if both stayed ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... fixed awe went through my brain like ice; 30 A skeleton hand seemed clutching at my heart, And a sharp chill, as if a dank night fog Suddenly closed me in, was all I felt: And then, methought, I heard a freezing sigh, A long, deep, shivering sigh, as from blue lips 35 Stiffening in death, close to mine ear. I thought Some doom was close upon me, and I looked And saw the red moon through the heavy mist, Just setting, and it seemed as it were falling, Or reeling to its fall, so dim and dead 40 And ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... ago an article was discovered for the stiffening of corsets, which has revolutionized the corset industry of the world. This article is manufactured from the natural fibers of the Mexican Ixtle plant, and is known as Coraline. It consists of straight, stiff fibers like bristles bound together into a cord by being wound with two ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... of Delhi Gate it was as if a miracle took place. A stiffening passed along the squadron. A trooper caught sight of Ranjoor Singh standing beside some bullock carts, and passed the word. I, too, saw him. He was with a Muhammadan bunnia, and was dressed to resemble ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... Y.D. was stiffening, but his daughter averted what would in another moment have been an embarrassing situation with a ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... they clung, those two, in the actual shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... heavy gray fog was rising and enveloping everything in its deadening blanket. The fog penetrated into the doctor's lungs and an intolerable pain, as though hot irons were searing the tissues, tore him. He tried to cough, but the sound could not force its way through his stiffening lips. Darkness closed in on him and he swayed. He was dimly conscious that the Russians were swarming about Feodrovna, knives and clubs in their hands. Then through the night came an ear-splitting crack and a flash of orange flame. One of the Russians toppled and ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... streaming down her face. He bent over her, placed his hands upon her cheeks and kissed her, but instantly he drew back with his resentful stiffening of the shoulders. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 deg.-50 deg. Centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuehne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... for about half an hour, and began already to feel his muscles stiffening, and his joints losing their elasticity, while his breathing became oppressed, and his extremities were chilled, when he noticed from the wash of the water that he was near the shore. Soon he felt the ground under his feet; but, the moment he touched it, he sank up to his waist into ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... up my position at school in order to live in a poky little hole at eighteen pounds a year? What do you think I can do with myself all day in Trafalgar-road? Why, nothing. There's no room even for a piano, and so my fingers are stiffening every day. It's not life at all. Naturally, it's a great privilege," she pursued, with a vicious inflection that reminded him perfectly of Susan, "for a girl like me to live with an old man like you, all alone, with one servant and no sitting-room. But some privileges cost too dear. The ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... burdens were taken from their humps. Then, as if an afterthought had struck them, they slowly approached the scoop-outs and with the most indifferent air would take a mouthful of the liquid, then, stiffening their necks, they would lift their heads and calmly survey the scenery around them, till their drivers would draw their attention to the fact that there was at least another draught of water in the pool. It should be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... at Pelliter, but he could feel the quick, tense stiffening of the other's body. There was a moment's silence. Then Pelliter spoke in ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... last, cold; her arm was stiffening in the position in which he had left it; in a necessary forcible gentleness he composed her body. But he didn't hide her—not yet—with a sheet. That would follow soon enough. The blueness was receding, leaving ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glancing at the sunshine which streamed down the open companion-way. "Fair westerly breeze, with a promise of stiffening, if Louis ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... demand for cords, and the price of them, were much risen since this fashion came up." At this, all the company who were present lifted up their eyes into the vault; and I must confess, we did discover many traces of cordage, which were interwoven in the stiffening ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... the bore be oval or egg-shaped, throws the water passage out of line. In laying them, the author has taken the precaution to place under each joint a thin piece of wood, such as our honest shoe manufacturers use for stiffening in shoes, to keep the bottoms of the pipes even, at least until the ground has settled compactly, and as much longer as they may escape ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... He was as excited as any of the runners; there was the nervous thrill in his voice. "On your marks!" They put their hands to the ground; he ran his eyes along them to see that all were placed. "Set!" There was the instant stiffening of muscles. Then from the revolver came a click. Irving had emptied the six chambers in starting the other races, and had forgotten ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... with the stiffening of his will to dogged opposition, which, in its own slow quiet way, would go to any length to have its way. But he answered respectfully enough, his features, by a shrewd effort, relaxing into a seeming of his ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... was gained. The evil results of the movement were checked by the introduction of a supporting ship, midway between frigates and true ships-of-the-line. Sometimes classed as a battleship, and taking her place in the line, the 50-gun ship came to be essentially a type for stiffening cruiser squadrons. They most commonly appear as the flagships of cruiser commodores, or stationed in terminal waters or at focal points where sporadic raids were likely to fall and be most destructive. The strategical effect of the presence of such a vessel in a cruiser ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... eternal sleep, would not all the riches and glories of the world seem tame in comparison with such joy! Innocent had never seen death—she could not realise that this calm irresponsiveness, this cold and stiffening rigidity, meant an end to the love and care she had known all her life—love and care which would never be replaced in quite ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... blew, and a frost had set in sharp and keen. Already the sleet that had fallen was frozen in sheets along the road, which was thereby made almost impassable even to the sure footsteps of the mountaineer. The trees no longer sighed and moaned with the wind; on the stiffening firs lay beads of frozen snow, and the wind as it passed through them soughed. The ghylls were fuller and louder, and seemed to come from every hill; the gullocks overflowed, but silence was stealing over the streams, and the deeper rivers seemed scarcely ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... hatchet were there, caught up his cudgel and laid it across his knees—then sat quietly, waiting. Was it Black Jack, or someone even worse? Forced to do something to brace his nerves, he puckered his stiffening lips and began whistling a tune he had led in his clear tenor every year of his life at ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the spite in the man's eyes: but this time I was a step nearer, and before the weapon fell, I passed my sword clean through the wretch's body. He went down like a log, Croisette falling with him, held fast by his stiffening fingers. ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... General van Linsingen, who also had some German troops with him, was to assail the next section eastward, from the Uzsog to the Wyszkow Pass; and Army C, under the Austrian General von Pflanzer-Baltin, likewise supplied with a good "stiffening" of German soldiers, was accredited to the far-eastern section—the Pruth Valley and the Bukowina. These three armies represented the fighting machine with which Austria hoped to retrieve the misfortunes of war and recover at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... would have thumped his skull, as he once did the Cat's, and settled the affair in a minute; but now it took several minutes, during which he himself got roughly handled; so when the afternoon came he was suffering from one or two bruises and stiffening wounds; not serious, indeed, but enough to ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... one By the base of that icy steep, When over his stiffening limbs begun The deadly slumber of frost ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... stiffening his muscles and throwing his body forward, with the idea of stretching the suspenders to such an extent that he could crawl out of them; but was suddenly stopped by hearing sounds as of some one coming through ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... parts will look dirty. Never rub on soap; but remove grease with French chalk, starch, magnesia, or Wilmington clay. Make starch for them, with coffee-water, to prevent any whitish appearance. Glue is good for stiffening calicoes. When laid aside, not to be used, all stiffening should be washed out, or they will often be injured. Never let calicoes freeze, in drying. Some persons use bran-water, (four quarts of wheat-bran to two pails of water,) and no soap, for calicoes; washing and rinsing in the bran-water. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... is that over there?" inquired Hal, coming out of a brown study as he felt some reproach in the stiffening attitude of his companion. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... Davies, that you were reckless of my instructions, and I've sent for you to show, once and for all, what it has cost. Stand aside there!" he said sternly to the men, whom some instinct of pity had prompted to gather between them and the stiffening forms of the dead. "There are your hunters,—two of my best men, Mr. Davies, and who but you is responsible ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... his mouth did its meaning some injustice. And with this there happened that which dismayed many and puzzled all. Wesley's fists went up, but hung, as it were impotent for the moment, while his eyes glanced aside from his adversary's and rested, with a stiffening of surprise, on the corner of the ring where the old gentleman stood. A cry went up from the King's Scholars—a groan and a warning. At the sound he flung back his head instinctively—as Randall's left shot out, caught him ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
