"Straining" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hate or the speech of affection; and the term ingwa, or innen,—meaning karma as inevitable retribution, —comes naturally to every lip as an interpretation, as a consolation, or as a reproach. The peasant toiling up some steep road, and feeling the weight of his handcart straining every muscle, murmurs patiently: "Since this is ingwa, it must be suffered." Servants disputing, ask each other, "By reason of what ingwa must I now dwell with such a one as you?" The incapable or vicious man is reproached ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds,—the shrill, broken whimpering of a ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were the emotions of my soul, when I discovered her to be the same individual lady who had triumphed over my heart, and to whose fate I had almost been inseparably joined! Her deplorable situation filled my breast with compassion. She knew me immediately; and, straining me gently in her arms, shed a torrent of tears, which I could not help increasing. At length, casting a languishing look at me, she pronounced with a feeble voice, "Dear Mr. Random, I do not deserve this concern at your hands: I am a vile creature, who had a base design upon your person—suffer ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... looked down upon his unwilling interlocutor, who, with muscles straining against the cords that held him, and with eyes nearly starting out of their sockets in an access of fear and of rage, was indeed presenting ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... he was far within the twilight depths of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemn —awful, even, and depressing to the spirits. At wide intervals his straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning and complaining ghosts of departed ones. So the sounds were yet more dreary than the silence which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... repeated upon both pairs of webs, a a a' a', may be considered as a second stage of the second operation, it being preferable to punch out the mortises in two stages in order to remove sufficient metal without unduly straining the bar. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... shout floated with the night breeze in at the windows; a man on the floor got to his feet and stood straining: a commotion was going on at the back of the gallery, and a voice ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... straining and kicking like an old man kangaroo. Anderson stuck to him, though, and with Sal's assistance held his finger on the block till Dad carefully rested the chisel on it and brought the hammer down. It did n't sever the finger—it only scraped the nail off—but it did make Joe buck. He ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... as happened in her last cruise, the topsail sheets were parted, and the great sails flapping and slatting out to leeward like a thunder-cloud, orders given in quick succession, then rally of men at the clew-lines, then a rush aloft and out on the straining yard, every movement of the vessel intensified, your feet sliding on the slippery foot-rope, with nothing to hold on to but the flapping sail, which threatens to knock you overboard every moment. The weather earing is passed, and then, "Light out to leeward;" you have your point barely ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and the survivors on the wreck began to sweep the dim horizon with straining eyeballs as a faint hope at last began to arise in their bosoms. Nor were these trembling hopes doomed to disappointment. At the eleventh hour God in his mercy sent deliverance. Through the glimmering dawn and the driving spray the lighthouse-keeper's daughter from the lonely ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... impudent message to a group of men whose eyes had been straining for months to see a relief ship head their way! Imagine sending such a message to the most illustrious discoverer the world has ever known! A more dastardly bit of cruelty ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... spying over the range to the westward, and Langdon was left to doctor a knee which he had battered against a rock the previous day. He spent most of his time in company with Muskwa. He opened a can of their griddle-cake syrup and by noon he had the cub following him about the tree and straining to reach the dish which he held temptingly just out of reach. Then he would sit down, and Muskwa would climb half over his lap ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... on with his adventures. "My horse was so wild, that he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees. He was dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career. At last, altogether beyond my control, he took his course directly up a stony steep, when suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and threw himself athwart the way my mad steed was taking. At this apparition ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... heavier. Motors of all sorts—beautifully finished limousines filled with boxes of ammunition or sacks of food, carriages piled high with raw meat and cases of biscuit. Even dog-carts in large numbers, with the good Belgian dogs straining away at the traces with a good will, and barking with excitement. They seemed to have the fever and enthusiasm of the men and every one was pulling with all his strength. In some places we saw men pushing heavily-laden wheelbarrows, with one or two ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... cries ceased, and without moving from her crouching position she listened with straining ears to the sounds that reached her from the stable. In a moment the clatter of horses' hoofs going at a furious pace swept by, then a dead silence fell. The intense quiet seemed to rouse her, and going ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... light On aught beneath the sun. Childhood, youth, beauty, To it had all one hue. Its rays reverted Right inward, back upon the greedy heart On which the gnawing worm of avarice Preyed without ceasing, straining every sense To that excruciable and yearning core. Some thirteen days agone, he comes to me, And after many sore and mean remarks On men's rapacity and sordid greed, He says, "Gabriel, thou art an honest man, As the world goes. How much, then, will you charge And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... the steering rudders out of the grip of the sailor guiding it. The rush of water swept him overboard. The Solon lurched. The wind smote the straining mainsail, and the shivered mainmast tore from its stays and socket. Above the bawling of wind and water sounded the crash. The ship, with only a small sail upon the poop, blew about into the trough of the sea. A mountain of green water thundered ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... straining eyes, and wondered if this was only a stupendous mirage, and why it seemed so different from all else that she had seen, and so ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... He says that during those hours when he sat awaiting his doom, the thought of death itself did not make a deep impression. "The struggle, the gasp, as the wearied arm should attempt to resist the impetuous waves; the straining vision, that should linger on the last ray of retiring light, as the deepening veil of water would gradually conceal it for ever; and the rolling billows heaving over the sinking and dying body, which, perhaps ere life should be extinct, might become the prey of voracious inhabitants ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... be ingenious —brilliant, even; it may be the fashion of the day, and a fashion that will hold its power of pleasing for half a century, but it will be a fashion. Mannerisms of course will not deceive us, nor extravagances, eccentricities, affectations, nor the straining after effect by the use of coined or far-fetched words and prodigality in adjectives. But, style? Yes, there is such a thing as style, good and bad; and the style should be the writer's own and characteristic of him, as his speech is. But the moment I admire a style ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... final item, and vowed she would not go a step. But he persisted, and in the end persuaded her. The stranger continued unmoved in his place; Merlier shifted not a pound's weight, but sat with a cold, indifferent face turned upon the straining horses. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... far more vital interest to her than men, and the next moment she was staring through the warm tropic darkness at the loom of the sails and the steady green of the moving sidelight, and listening eagerly to the click of the sweeps in the rowlocks. In her mind's eye she could see the straining naked forms of black men bending rhythmically to the work, and somewhere on that strange deck she knew was the inevitable master-man, conning the vessel in to its anchorage, peering at the dim tree-line of the shore, judging the deceitful night-distances, feeling ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... hearts and straining gaze the other victims watched the descent. It seemed to be more than human nature could endure to voluntarily face such a fate when a word would deliver them. So thought many of the spectators, and they ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... effort to kill and trample the raving impulse that had seized him in the presence of her shame, that clamoured to him to drag himself before her feet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words—he knew not what words, but he knew that they had been straining at his lips—to wreck his self-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose that had almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, by babbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the desert, faint with thirst, Upon the trackless and forsaken sands Sinks dying; him the burning haze deceives, As mocking his last torments, while it seems, To his distempered vision, like th' expanse Of lucid waters cool: so falsely smiles Th' illusive land upon the water's edge, To the long-straining eye showing what seems 530 Its headlands and its distant trending shores;— But all is false, and like the pensive dream Of poor imagination, 'mid the waves Of troubled life, decked with unreal hues, And ending soon in emptiness and tears. 'Tis midnight, and the thoughtful ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... looked him straight in the face. There was no doubt that the strain of his clever denials was telling upon him. His dark complexion had paled; in his eyes there was a fierce, haunted look as that of a man who was straining every effort to remain calm under ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... remember he paused and looked out over the bay for some time. It was roughish with occasional white caps, and had a dreary, stormy look. Our rowboat, moored to a landing stage or float, just off our place, was straining and tugging at ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... were wrapped in rough shrouds, ready to be committed to the deep when daylight broke, as we dared not show a light whereby to read the Funeral Service. I never waited so anxiously or thought the dawn so long in coming. I was waiting with my Prayer-book in my hands straining my eyes to make out the service; the men with their hats off, standing by the bodies, ready to ease them down into the sea. Our minds I fear wandered towards the danger that existed (almost to a certainty) of a cruiser making us out by the same light that enabled us to perform ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... hurried in fact on account of the girl's high restlessness. She had been expected, she had frankly promised, to be restless—that was partly why she was "great"—or was a consequence, at any rate, if not a cause; yet she had not perhaps altogether announced herself as straining so hard at the cord. It was familiar, it was beautiful to Mrs. Stringham that she had arrears to make up, the chances that had lapsed for her through the wanton ways of forefathers fond of Paris, but not of its ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... do; and the somewhat uneasy glances that he cast on the encroaching crowd right and left showed how anxious he was that no injury should befall the heavy divine monstrance, whose weight was already straining his wrists. When the slanting sun fell upon him in front, the monstrance itself looked like another sun. Choir-boys meantime were swinging censers in the blinding glow which gave splendour to the entire procession; and, finally, in the rear, there was a confused mass of pilgrims, a flock-like ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dent of hoof on the dry parched grass, the hound easily retakes it, straining on ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... patches. The generosity of one of our volunteers, Mr. Francis Sayre, the son-in-law of President Wilson, doubled its capacity. But buildings that are made of green wood, and grow like Topsy, are apt to end like Topsy—turvy. Now we are straining every nerve to obtain a suitable accommodation for the children. We sorely need a brick building, economically laid out and easily kept warm, with separate wings for girls and boys and a creche for babies. Miss Storr was obliged to leave us, and now for ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... a stormy night; a thick rain pattering on the flat roof which served as a ceiling, and the roaring of the wind in the chimney, answered to her hoarse voice. The boy became quiet, and straining his eyes, hearkened in a fright. It really seemed as if some one was knocking at the door. The old woman became frightened in her turn: her inseparable companion, a dirty dog, lifted up his head from sleep, and began to bark ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... from theoretic defenders, and apart from every soldierly individual straining at the leash and clamoring for opportunity, war has an omnipotent support in the form of our imagination. Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitements. The only relief from ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... to comfort her and straining metaphor to the utmost, said that if the finger of Providence had not made her oversleep herself she would undoubtedly have shared ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... causes quite a different feeling. He is perfectly wild, unfed, untended, and then he is the largest animal to be shot in the fields. A rabbit slips along the mound, under bushes and behind stoles, but a hare bolts for the open, and hopes in his speed. He leaves the straining spaniel behind, and the distance between them increases as they go. The spaniel's broad hind paws are thrown wide apart as he runs, striking outwards as well as backwards, and his large ears are lifted by the wind of his progress. Overtaken by the cartridge, still the hare, as he ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... half an hour before breakfast every morning; and by plenty of muscular exercise daily. The enema should be used occasionally, however, rather than allow the bowels to continue costive, and to avoid severe straining at stool. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... wavered as to maintaining gold payments, but only temporarily. In Berlin drastic measures were undertaken to accumulate gold in the Reichsbank. Vienna reports it to be well known that Germany had been for eighteen months before straining every nerve to obtain gold. Whatever sums of gold were included in the so-called "war chest" in Spandau (said to be $30,000,000) were also deposited with the Reichsbank. Gold was even smuggled across the borders of Holland on the persons of spies. Urgent demands were made upon the people ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... no one to replenish the fire, the light had grown dimmer, but a quick, shadowy flitting told Fred the brute was moving briskly about, only a few paces from where the lad was straining his vision to ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... fruit, but unfortunately was not yet ripe. There was also another species of the same genus, with yellow blossoms, in other respects very similar in appearance to the first. The white cedar was still abundant. When I returned to the camp, I found my companions busily engaged in straining the mud, which had remained in the water-hole after our horses and cattle had drunk and rolled in it. Messrs. Gilbert and Calvert had discovered a few quarts of water in the hollow stump of a tree; and Mr. Roper and Charley had ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... departed Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world which had once suited their embodied spirits. But Fleur heeded not these sounds; her spirit, far from disembodied, fled with swift wing from railway-carriage to flowery hedge, straining after Jon, tenacious of his forbidden image, and the sound of his voice, which was taboo. And she crinkled her nose, retrieving from the perfume of the riverside night that moment when his hand slipped between the mayflowers and her cheek. Long she leaned ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... typical of the different dispositions towards us. Aunt Mary was standing at the door, straining her eyes to see us sooner, and came forward to embrace me and to receive the kisses of her beloved nephew; then she whispered that "she had hoped Susan would have gone away on a visit to her friends; but ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of treating this problem was sure to be as scientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it most easily by translating his school-vocabulary into modern technical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... well;" and the big hand rested on the boy's shoulder to comfort him with its touch, but the man's face was turned with a straining expression towards the exit which he had last inspected, for it seemed to him that he had seen a streak of light, such as would be thrown ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... business in just one move. But when his bared arm felt the hot, bulging neck something terrible burst out of the depths of him. To kill this enemy of his father's was not enough! Physical contact had unleashed the savage soul of the Indian. Yet there was more, and as Jean gave the straining body a tremendous jerk backward, he felt the same strange thrill, the dark joy that he had known when his fist had smashed the face of Simm Bruce. Greaves had leered—he had corroborated Bruce's vile ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... a little extraordinary, while the legislature and the judges are straining every nerve to suppress low gambling and punish its professors, they are the passive observers of a system pregnant with ten times more mischief in its consequences upon society, and infinitely more vicious, fraudulent, and base than any game practised ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... heedless little beauty, do not lose sight of her;—there she is! see, how she glides along! now she dances with Etienne the rigaudon d'honneur: every one follows her with straining eyes and smiles: every one gives her glances of admiration. She loses not one of their regards; and she dances with added grace. Holy cross! holy cross! how she turns and winds, with her lizard-shaped head, and her little ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... would indeed be physically and morally impossible for him—anonymous letters or no—to lock the scandal much longer within his own breast. It had become a living and burning thing, like some wild creature straining at a leash. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dark when he awoke, and lay on the bed, motionless and trembling, his heart sinking in the knowledge that he should never have slept. For almost half a minute, eyes wide with fear, he lay in the silence of the gloomy room, straining to hear some sound, some indication ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse
... or Hell, it followeth that there be some Soules of dead men, what are neither in Heaven, nor in Hell; and therefore they must bee in some third place, which must be Purgatory. And thus with hard straining, hee has wrested those places to the proofe of a Purgatory; whereas it is manifest, that the ceremonies of Mourning, and Fasting, when they are used for the death of men, whose life was not profitable to the Mourners, they are used for honours sake to their ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... but without aim, the bullet striking the sand near his feet, and down he came headlong to the ground. He fell with his face turned towards me, and I never shall forget the horrible expression of it. His healthy complexion had, given place to a deadly blue, the eyes were wide open and straining in their sockets, the upper lip was drawn up, showing his teeth in a most frightful grin, the blood gushed from his mouth as if impelled by the strokes of a force pump, while his hands griped and dug into ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... on post duty tonight and maybe you don't know what that means. Well old pal its no Elks carnivle at no time and just think what it will be tonight with your ears straining for a cry from out there. And if the cry comes Al they won't only be the 1 thing to do and I will be the 1 ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... backwards and forwards and growing less crowded after every journey. One man, who was very large framed and stout, had to go through it twice because the rope broke. He made a good deal of fuss. My head ached, and after the involuntary straining and craning to miss no details was over, I felt sick and dazed. The people talked a great deal as they streamed back, loosening over the broader stretch of pebbles; they seemed to wish to remind each other of details. I have an idea that one or two, in the sheer largeness of heart that seizes ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... muscles are paralysed. The respiratory movements are thus impeded, and, as the patient is unable to cough, mucus gathers in the air-passages and there is a tendency to broncho-pneumonia. As the patient is unable to aid defecation or to expel flatus by straining, the bowel is liable to become distended with faeces and gas, and the meteorism which results adds to the embarrassment of respiration by pressing on the diaphragm. There is retention of urine followed by dribbling from overflow. As the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Hayat al-Nufus) rose in the heart of Queen Budur, and that affection for Amjad (son of Queen Budur) rose in the heart of Queen Hayat al-Nufus.[FN357] Hence it was that each of the women used to sport and play with the son of her sister-wife, kissing him and straining him to her bosom, whilst each mother thought that the other's behaviour arose but from maternal affection. On this wise passion got the mastery of the two women's hearts and they became madly in love with the two youths, so that when the other's son came in to either ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that he has—for all that he is! For every ounce of his strength, for every throb of his will, for every vision, every truth that he knows! To bear this, to save him here! And so he wrestles, so he rises, so he gropes and gasps; and in the moment of his fiercest straining, with the throb of all his being he bursts the barrier, he rends the veil; and infinite passion rolls in in floods upon him, he clutches all existence in his arms; and from his lips there bursts a mad frenzied shout of rapture—that makes ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... luck; the straight-backed gray-haired figure in the dark civilian suit, sitting alone at a tiny table in an alcove, caught his eye. He moved closer, straining for a clear glimpse through the crowd. Then he was sure. He had the biggest possible catch of the day in his sights; Admiral of Fleets ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... turned with one accord. Victory was theirs, but there was no time to taste the fruits of victory. They ran with straining muscles and gasping breath toward the distant mountain and the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... of the salt sea. From the moment that the Sea Queen leaves lower New York bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward. The adventures of Ben Clark, the hero of the story and Jake the cook, cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. Otis is a ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... most courteous fashion, first to the one of us, then to the other, and went out. He did not lock the door after him, and I could hear him addressing Cortinez outside. The girl started to speak, but I waved my shackled hand at her for silence. By straining my ears I could just ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... in the water for ten minutes in an uncovered kettle. Rub through a sieve the strawberries and the juice of the lemon and the orange: add the syrup after straining, mix everything and pour the mixture ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... modified by the ideas of this. There is a violence, an impossibility about men who have ideas, which makes one suspect that they could never be the type of any widespread life. Society could not be conformed to their image but by an unlovely straining from its true order. Well, in this nature the idea appears softened, harmonised as by distance, with an engaging naturalness, without the noise of ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... mast, the captain stood firmly in his elevated position, and, as the sun came slowly up and the golden radiance spread over the sky and sea, he swept the arch of the horizon to the south, east and west, straining his keen vision for the first sight of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... sure,' said Solomon,—'that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and howling of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... softly in the darkness, and thrilled John's heart, and shocked yet further the old ladies who sat within, straining their ears for the sound of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... phrase of "straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel," is, in the Eastern states, rendered "straining at a ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and a half of spring water, and strain the pulp through a cullendar. To every pint add a pound of fine sugar, with grated orange or lemon peel, and then boil the whole to a jelly. Or, having prepared the apples by boiling and straining them through a coarse sieve, get ready an ounce of isinglass boiled to a jelly in half a pint of water, and mix it with the apple pulp. Add some sugar, a little lemon juice and peel; boil all together, take ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... aged lady; to whom the child became a care after having been left an orphan. She was not bright, but he persevered in drilling her into memorising a child's catechism, and it was a most amusing picture to see her standing before him with fixed attention, as if she were straining every nerve, and reciting her answers with the drop of a curtsey at each word. She had not been taught to do this, but it was such an effort for her to learn that she assumed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... said, "can you see that space where the house stands? What a lonely place it looks! I wonder how I lived there for six years. I can see even the place where the canoe used to lie on the beach. There is one there now!" She stood straining her eyes to watch the scene once so familiar, until the steamer, drawing towards the landing-place, completely hid it from her. Then the lights on shore flashed out more brightly close at hand, and the figures of men waiting on the wharf could be ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the mental response to the external stimulus, there was a phantasy representing an imaginary wish-fulfilment: namely the desire to forsake the study of histology, with the eye-straining search through the microscope, in favor of the study ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... strings—all objects and all sounds that tell of Nature revelling in her force. Strange, bewildering transition from those pale images of sorrow and death to this bright youthfulness, as of a sun-god who knew nothing of night! What thought could reconcile that worn anguish in her brother's face—that straining after something invisible—with this satisfied strength and beauty, and make it intelligible that they belonged to the same world? Or was there never any reconciling of them, but only a blind worship of clashing deities, first in mad joy and then in wailing? Romola for the first time felt ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... yet straining his ears to catch those mournful sounds that grew faint and fainter with distance till they were lost in the rustle of the leaves. But, of a sudden, he stayed his going and stood with his head aslant hearkening to a sound that seemed to have reached him from the solitudes behind; and presently ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... body towards a huge rock, whereon he had slept, and straining his tough sinews, tore up the mighty fragment from the ground. The earth felt the shock, and its dark entrails trembled; but Kifri, undismayed, threw the wild ruin to the clouds. The labouring mountain returned quickly on the rebellious head ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the royal treasure on board of a squadron for Panama. He was accompanied to the shore by a numerous crowd of the inhabitants, cavaliers and common people, persons of all ages and conditions, who followed to take their last look of their benefactor, and watch with straining eyes the vessel that bore him ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... these occurs a description, taken from Ptolemy, of the construction of the (observing) armillary sphere. He says that this cannot be made to move naturally by any mathematical device, but "a faithful and magnificent experimentor is straining to make one out of such material, and by such a device, that it will revolve naturally with the diurnal heavenly rotation." He continues with the statement that this possibility is also suggested by the fact that the motions of comets, ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... return, the relic was found to have lost none of its virtues, and the good people and monks were all correspondingly made happy; in 1870, when the writer was in France, it was still working its miracles. Balzac found ample facts to found his famous "Droll Stories" without straining his imagination. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... have had if passed. The Insurgents felt themselves to be fully competent to bring about such pacification of the islands as they deemed necessary. At the time the resolutions were presented in the Senate their soldiers were straining at the leash, ready to attack their American opponents upon the most slender excuse. Aguinaldo himself could not have held them much longer, and it is not impossible that they got away from him as it was. They would have interpreted ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... motioning toward the bluff, and while Hardy was straining his ears a stunted black cat with a crook in his tail came into view, racing in wildly from the great pile of fallen bowlders that lay at the base of the cliff, and yowling in a hoarse, despairing voice, like a condemned kitten ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... widow plainly saw a larger vessel than often visited those seas approaching from the south-west. It was larger than Macdonald's sloop. She was straining her eyes to see whether it had two masts or three, when she heard the children's voices below. She called them up to her platform for the help of their young eyes; but when they came, they could spare little attention for the distant vessel, so full were they of the news that ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... current account surplus since 1992. While economic management has been good, there remain important economic vulnerabilities. The most significant are debt-related: the government's largely domestic debt increased steadily from 1994 to 2003, straining government finances, while Brazil's foreign debt (a mix of private and public debt) is large in relation to Brazil's modest (but growing) export base. Another challenge is maintaining economic growth over a period of time to generate employment and make the government debt ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the variability in the mental power of genius, leading to what may be called "a periodicity in production." Goethe has spoken somewhere of "the recurrence of puberty" in the artist. This idea may perhaps, without too much straining, be compared with the functional periodicity of woman. The periods in the life of a creative artist often assume the character of a crisis—a kind of climax of vital energy. Sterile years precede productive periods, to be followed by more barren years. The circle of ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... that his resentment will most heavily fall. Eugene, who had recently departed to organize the forces in Italy, is urged to threaten Austria with not fewer than 80,000 men, and to give out that he will soon have 150,000 men under arms. And, while straining every nerve in Germany, France, and Italy, Napoleon asserts that there will be an armistice for the conclusion of a general peace.[297] But the allies were not to be duped into a peace that was no peace. They had good grounds for expecting the eventual ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... noble sermon on the need of straining every nerve to virtuous training. Splendidly rhetorical ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... his arms up wildly, had reached the edge of the terrible precipice; he went over with a piercing cry into the abyss, with the last guide beside him, and Kaspar following him close in mute terror. Then Herbert Le Breton felt the rope straining, straining, straining, upon the sharp frozen edge of the rock; for an inappreciable point of time it strained and crackled: one loud snap, and it was gone for ever. Herbert and the chief guide, almost ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... chief physical evils of existence, we do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness, than guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion, the desolations of war, or the accidents or mortality. This may appear a strong statement; but we make it deliberately; and are deeply convinced of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense; but it is ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... navies controlled the sea. Her armies and her insular position gave her peace at home. The world was hers to exploit. For nearly fifty years she dominated the European, American, and Indian trade, while the great wars then convulsing society were destroying possible competitive capital and straining consumption to its utmost. The pioneer of the industrial nations, she thus received such a start in the new race for wealth that it is only today the other nations have succeeded in overtaking her. In 1820 the volume of her trade (imports and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... other side of the compartment, forever wiping the window with the napkin, and straining their eyes to see the invisible, diverted his unsettled attention. A new perception of how much he liked them and enjoyed having them with him, took hold of his thoughts. It had not occurred to him before, with any definiteness, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... one smooth, juicy lemon, and squeeze out the juice, straining it on the rind. Put one cup of sugar and a piece of butter the size of an egg in a bowl, and one good-sized cupful of boiling water into a pan on the stove. Moisten a tablespoonful of corn starch, and stir ...
— Recipes Tried and True • the Ladies' Aid Society
... light of the electric torch upon a narrow path through the ranks of casks, and led the way to the farther door. A good two feet of moonlight showed along the top. I heard Smith straining; then— ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... suffering all sorts of privations and hardships, to see once more the world of waters! And this, notwithstanding it had been so often unfriendly to me in my various travellings by land and water. I kept straining (and pumping) my lungs to breathe its pure cool air. Sahel is of considerable extent, but has no nucleus of houses in the shape of a town, consisting merely of a series of small villages and detached houses, like our cottage groups and farms, but, of course, in Moorish ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... gin refused to walk or move in any way, so we had to pack her on Czar, making her as comfortable as possible on Warri's blankets, with disastrous results thereto. Arrived at camp, I found that the rock-hole was bottomed, and now quite dry. Straining the putrid water brought by me through a flannel shirt, boiling it, adding ashes and Epsom salts, we concocted a serviceable beverage. This, blended with the few gallons of muddy water from the well, formed our supply, which we looked to augment ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... thinks no evil; if words and actions may be construed to a good sense, let us never put a bad construction upon them. How much hath the peace of Christians been broken by an uncharitable interpretation of words and actions? As some lay to the charge of others that which they never said, so, by straining men's words, others lay to their charge ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... observance of the laws of sexual morality, veracity, or common honesty. The rule of conduct of the parochial clergy has appeared to me to be to keep their influence over their flocks in purely ecclesiastical matters, and run no risk of straining that influence by interfering with their personal morality, or by making Christianity the difficult rule of life which it is ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... faithfully strengthen the hands of our brothers who toil so courageously at the front." In Brazil (and in other mission fields, too,) there is in many places a marvelous breaking away from the old attitude of indifference. The little handful of missionaries we have on the field are straining every nerve to meet the opportunities that are pressing upon them. They are not discouraged. They are as busy as life trying to meet the increasing demands. They are looking to the future with the largest hope. They are a band of the most ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... like to know? This comes, Kitty Clark, of letting you hitch a horse!" Blue Bonnet was straining her eyes for a sight of ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... she to look long, for all the dogs were straining their chains in one direction, and all their lines converged upon a little dark shed, where stood a cart: under the cart, between its lower shafts, she caught a doubtful luminousness, as if the dark ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... indeed—could it be the voice of her sister?—Was she still among the living, or had the grave given uly its tenant?—Ere she could state these questions to her own mind, Effie, alive, and in the body, had clasped her in her arms and was straining her to her bosom, and devouring her with kisses. "I have wandered here," she said, "like a ghaist, to see you, and nae wonder you take me for ane—I thought but to see you gang by, or to hear the sound of your voice; but to speak to yoursell again, Jeanie, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... old talismanic "forward!" The refrain is taken up, sent back along the column until the rearmost rider hears and shouts a returning echo, "We are coming, father Abraham!" No cowardice there. No lagging behind from choice. Every man was straining nerve and muscle to get ahead. We were fast gaining on the enemy and they knew it, trembling at every shout wafted to their ears. They grew desperate, dug the rowels into their horses, cursed their prisoners, threatened them, ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... moment the car, from which Peggy and Jess and Bess had alighted, rose from the pit. Then the hind wheels dropped into it with a bump, but the shock absorbers prevented serious damage. With the oxen straining and pulling it was finally hauled into the road and they were ready ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... third, and a restless undulation swept along the lines. Boom! for a fourth time roared a cannon, and some of the men laughed nervously. Boom! rolled out yet a fifth, and the ranks stood tense and rigid, every ear, every sense, straining. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... small boats flutter O'er the intervening space, Bearing hearts too full to utter Thoughts that flush the eager face! See young Eric foremost gaining— (For a father's love athirst!) Every nerve and muscle straining, But to touch the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... They were of the coarsest kind of holster-piotols, and had probably seen service in the Revolution. The stocks were rickety, the barrels thin, the bore almost large enough for grape, and really such as would receive and disgorge a three-ounce bullet with little straining or reluctance. They had been the property of his own grandfather, and their value for use was perhaps rather heightened than diminished by the degree of veneration which, in the family, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... less afraid; and when we crossed a swollen ford where a mule caught his forefoot between rocks and was drowning, it was Armenians, not Turks, who plunged into the icy water and worked him free without straining as much ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... wistaria and valerian, and the handsome wild caperplant; and against the wall stood rows of tall golden sunflowers late in their blooming; the sun they seldom could see for the wall, and it was pathetic always to me, as the day wore on, to watch the poor stately amber heads turn straining to greet their god, and only meeting the stones and the cobwebs, and the peach-leaves ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... all finished and he had indicated the pupils of the eyes with the fine-pointed punch. Then he sat some time at his bench with the beautiful piece of workmanship under his fingers, looking hard at it and straining his eyes to find imperfections that did not exist. At last he laid it down tenderly upon the stuffed leather pad and stared at the green shade of the lamp, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hook came out, and with a cry of terror poor Polly fell with a dull thud to the floor. Her dress knocked over the candle as she fell, and in a second the hay that was scattered on the floor was in a blaze. All the boys except Tommy Briggs rushed screaming from the barn, but he, by straining every muscle, succeeded in dragging Polly out of the now blazing building, and then, the necessity for exertion on his part being over, he fell in a dead faint by the side of ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... she was. She obeyed him instantly. There was a mighty heave, a terrible straining of the back and the knees, and Pirate was freed of his precious burden. The hardest part of it came now. Dick could not be made to slow down abruptly. He wanted to keep right on after his rival. So, between holding the girl with his right arm and pulling the horse with his left, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... upon high waves, and they sloped at appalling angles, but always they righted and kept afloat. The water sprayed them continuously and the wind made it sting like small shot, but that was a trifle to men in their situation who were straining merely to keep the breath ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... its rider on the slippery loam. A friend of mine who for safety's sake alighted from his horse to walk to the other side of the gully, had his foot so tightly lodged in the pasty mud that, in his straining to withdraw it, the foot slipped out of the shoe, which remained as firmly imbedded as before. His posture and predicament were naturally a good deal more amusing for his companions than for himself. Yet some of these roads in dry weather are excellent dirt roads. On a road in the Cibao ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk, Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke. In the mind of Rahero clearness came; and he opened his throat; And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boat Thunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man. —"The wind and the rain!" he shouted, the mustering word of the clan,[14] And "Up!" and "To arms, men of Vaiau!" But silence replied, Or only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of hideous revelry was enacted in the little glade beside which Madam Rothsay and Edith Hester had been left helplessly bound by their captors. From the moment of the girl's brave effort to warn the camp, these two had listened with straining ears to the babel of sounds by which the whole course of the tragedy was made plain to them. They shuddered at the volleys, at the screams of the wounded, and at the triumphant yells of the victors. They almost forgot their own wretched position in their horror at the fate ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... instead of steering, as she had been, towards the raft, was now seen directing her course after the French boat, the crew of which were evidently straining ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... sees the wisdom and reasonableness of our course. My son is even straining his sense of military duty to escort us to a place of safety, where you will ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... steps upon the deep soft carpet, her hand still clenched, her eyes flaming, her whole soul wrapped and consumed with jealousy and hatred of her rival. Ten struck, and eleven, and midnight, but still she waited, fierce and eager, straining her ears for every foot-fall which might be the herald of news. At last it came. She heard the quick step in the passage, the tap at the ante-room door, and the whispering of her black page. Quivering with impatience, she rushed in and took the note herself ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seems to out-run the province of words, somewhat as that did the province of notes. But, though this hunting, and checking, and floating, and flying in metre may be to strain the arts of prosody and diction, with how masterly a hand is the straining accomplished! The spear, the arrow, the attack, the charge, the footfall, the pinion, nay, the very stepping of the moon, the walk of the wind, are mimicked in this enchanting verse. Like to programme-music ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... cylinders and with a hiss the gas rushed into the bag when a turn of the wrench set free the precious stuff. Slowly the big yellow envelope swelled and assumed shape until by the time the last cylinder was empty it was tugging and straining to rise. But the boys had weighted it down with rocks and pegged its net ropes to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the thicket move first. 'Nay, I would have you lead.' Well then, offer up a prayer and follow. The way is dark and difficult; but we must push on. I begin to see a track. 'Good news.' Why, Glaucon, our dulness of scent is quite ludicrous! While we are straining our eyes into the distance, justice is tumbling out at our feet. We are as bad as people looking for a thing which they have in their hands. Have you forgotten our old principle of the division of labour, or of every man doing ...
— The Republic • Plato |
