"Stroke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his match. The brave Schippeitaro sprang upon him, and seizing him with his teeth, held him fast, while the young warrior with one stroke of his good sword laid the monster dead at his feet. As for the other cats, too much astonished to fly, they stood gazing at the dead body of their leader, and were made short work of by the knight and Schippeitaro. The young warrior brought back the brave dog to his master, with ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... of water in the canoe had increased so much, that my ardour for the chase began to give way to anxiety for my own safety. I perceived a large hole in the stern of the canoe, now almost level with the surface of the lake, through which the water gushed with every stroke of the paddle. The fore-part appearing free from injury, I immediately inverted my position,—a movement necessarily effected with much difficulty in so small a craft; and having thus placed myself, the stern was consequently ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... an innocent and simple soul to find out suddenly at a stroke the falsehood of some one upon whose truth the whole universe depends, the effect is such as perhaps has never been put forth by any attempt at psychological investigation. When it happens to a great mind, we have Hamlet with all the world in ruins round him—all other thoughts as of revenge or ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Microcosm of the vices, the frivolities, the hollow show, and the real beggary of the gay City—the gardens and the galleries of the Palais Royal. Surprised at the lateness of the hour, it was then on the stroke of seven, he was about to return homewards, when the loud voice of Gawtrey sounded behind, and that personage, tapping him on the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... picked up dead in the morning in a field, near a farmyard, in a ditch. Their horses even were found lying on the roads with their throats cut by a saber stroke. These murders seemed to have been accomplished by the same men, who could ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... up to his eyes in chalk and the profitable delights of pool. But Archie was too intent on his business to pay much regard to his friend's proper avocation. "Well, Doodles," he said, hardly waiting till his ambassador had finished his stroke and laid his ball close waxed to one of the cushions. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... shining brightly down upon him, fell contentedly asleep. See how many traces from which we may learn the chopper's history. From this stump we may guess the sharpness of his axe, and, from the slope of the stroke, on which side he stood, and whether he cut down the tree without going round it or changing hands; and, from the flexure of the splinters, we may know which way it fell. This one chip contains inscribed on it the whole history ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... he—"Let them come if they dare!"[236] Nothing but actual perusal of his despatches will afford any accurate idea of his blatant self-confidence at this time. It is quite evident that he regarded the above-quoted reply as a master-stroke of vigorous diplomacy. He drew special attention to it in a communication to Lord Glenelg, in the course of which he made use of language which must have almost stunned the conventional and decorous Colonial Secretary. "I am aware," he wrote, "that the answer may be cavilled at in Downing Street, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... engaged upon a most difficult stroke when Chris entered, and she stopped behind him lest she should disturb his aim. But he turned round at once to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the knife went up and came down, this time just below the beast's ear. A fearful bellow came after the stroke. Before the bull could retire, the knife was withdrawn and plunged in a third and last time. This third stroke wound up the encounter, for limping to one side the bull fell forward upon his knees, gave a kick or two with ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... character is a man descended from a line of ancestors whose lives have been wild and lawless, and who have wallowed in almost every form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the gradual weakening of the family stock. But with the generation just preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has begun. It is this process that goes ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... Tregars sat down. Far from annoying him, this sudden intervention of the manager of the Mutual Credit seemed to him a stroke of fortune. It spared him an explanation more painful still than the first, and the unpleasant necessity of having to confound a villain by ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... overcharged by some presentiment; Mrs. Welsh looking sad but bright, and their last glimpse of her was the feather in her bonnet waving down the way to Lochmaben gate. Towards the close of February 1842 news came that she had had an apoplectic stroke, and Mrs. Carlyle hurried north, stopping to break the journey at her uncle's house in Liverpool; when there she was so prostrated by the sudden announcement of her mother's death that she was prohibited from going further, and Carlyle came down from London in her stead. On reaching ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... He repeated the name louder. No answer still, and, leaning out yet further, he saw that the window had been shut. He lowered the bunch of flowers, and, swinging it backwards and forward, made it strike the window below—once, twice; at the third stroke he ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... liquor vender reeled, but, recovering himself in a moment, he aimed a heavy blow at the young gentleman's frontispiece. That 'parlor ornament' would have been sadly disfigured, had not the darky caught the stroke on his left arm, and at the same moment planted what the 'profession' call a 'wiper,' just behind Tom's left ear. Tom's private dram shop went down—'caved in'—was 'laid out sprawling;' and two or three minutes elapsed before it got on its legs again. When it did, it frothed at the mouth ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... roared with laughter at the joke, They recognized a gentlemanly fellow pulling stroke: 'Twas ROBINSON—a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven years ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... clock is allowed within her hearing. It was long ago noticed that the stroke of five or any series of five similar sounds would cause her ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... past at our country seat of Enfield to wit, the future attorney, the illustrious Martin Burney, taking his leisure, flying for a space from his nominal occupations, and his office empty of clients. He—that is, Martin—begs and entreats of you that if (heaven send it so!) by some stroke of fortune, in his absence there should arrive a belated client, you would inform him by letter here. Do you understand? or must I write in barbarous English to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cigars, radio gossip and unflagging courtesy. And on discovering that the chief was a sentimentalist at heart and a poet by nature, he had presented him with an inexpensively bound volume of his favorite author. Daring, but a master-stroke! He had not since wanted for ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... homage to the sagacity of this unwitnessed confession. Forewarned that I was coming, Madame had received from her Guru a convenient prohibition against further use of the shrine as a post-office; and now, by one clever stroke, she altogether forestalled an inconvenient investigation. Obstruction to experiments, or evasion, would have been such confession as I could use. Failure to obtain phenomena that could be verified ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... Quesada himself, and to that of Master Nicholas, the village barber. And these three friends would sit up until dawn arguing as to who was the better knight, Sir Lancelot or Amadis of Gaul, and how these both compared with the Knight of the Burning Sword, who with one back stroke cut in half two ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Kuhraeuber had no talent whatever for comforting mothers, and she was quickly requested to leave the busy and populous parsonage; whereupon she entered upon the series of driftings lasting twenty years, which landed her, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... this fear, he entered the king's room, whom he despatched with one stroke of his dagger. just as he had done the murder one of the grooms who slept in the chamber laughed in his sleep, and the other cried, "Murder," ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with a close resemblance to the manuscripts of the time, the most notable being the lowercase 'w,' which is brought into prominence by large loops over the top. The 'h's' and 'l's' are also looped letters, the final 'm's' and 'n's' are finished with an angular stroke, and the only letter at all akin to those in type No. 1 is the final 'd,' which has the peculiar pump-handle finial seen in that fount. The Dictes and Sayinges is printed throughout in black ink, in long lines, twenty-nine to a page, with space left at the beginning ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... since we left Louisville an' now we're nearly to Tuentahahewaghta (the site of Cincinnati, that is, the landing or place where the road leads to the river). It means that Timmendiquas has been massing his warriors for a great stroke." ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on, and it was necessary to take action again. England was waking up to a sense of its peril. Armies were gathering. The King had come back from Hanover, the troops were almost all recalled from Flanders. It was time to make a fresh stroke. Charles resolved upon the bold course of striking south at once for England, and early in November he marched. He set off on the famous march south. In this undertaking, as before, the same extraordinary good-fortune ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Boat!" And you don't often see Pair oars and their cox. in a nastier fix. They started all right, did this nautical Three, But they've managed to get in no end of a mix. That Steersman, he thought a good deal of his Stroke, And there seemed scarce a steadier oarsman than Bow, But they must have got "skylarking." Ah! it's no joke, And the question is what are they going to do now? For danger's a-head, and 'twill tax all their skill To avoid a capsize ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... poltron," said De Breze; "call him Nap." At this stroke of humour there was a general laugh, in the midst of which Duplessis escaped, and Frederic, having discovered and caught his dog, followed with that animal tenderly clasped ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hung on like a vice. The buck could swing his great neck a little, and drag the dog, but he could not shake him off. Rolf saw the chance, rose to his tottering legs, seized his hatchet, stunned the fierce brute with a blow. Then finding on the snow his missing knife he gave the hunter stroke that spilled the red life-blood and sank on the ground to know no more till Quonab stood ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sound of his own voice. "Perhaps he's a good fellow too." "No; no, no. A very bad fellow indeed," was heard from different parts of the room. "I don't know anything about him. I wasn't at school with Carbottle." This was taken as a stroke of the keenest wit, and was received with infinite cheering. Silverbridge was in the pride of his youth, and Carbottle was sixty at the least. Nothing could have been funnier. "He seems to be a stout old party, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... at times; but there are the children, you see—it is a woman's duty to find all-sufficient society in her children. And now, Clary, tell me about yourself. You have made a brilliant match, and are mistress of Arden Court. A strange stroke of fortune that. And you are happy, I ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... you might say, was a pretty kettle of fish for Aunt Barbree. Here not only was a loving husband killed, and a sister-in-law, but at one stroke two out of the three healthy lives on which the whole lease of Merry-Garden depended. She mourned William John for his own sake, because, as husbands go, she had reason to regret him; and Tryphena Jewell, for a poor relation, had never been pushing. Tryphena's fault rather had been ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for speech was of some event when he was directing an important "head of column." I believe that every general who has handled armies in battle most recall from his own experience the intensity of thought on some similar occasion, when by a single command he had given the finishing stroke to some complicated action; but to me recurs another thought that is worthy of record, and may encourage others who are to follow us in our profession. I never saw the rear of an army engaged in battle but I feared that some calamity had happened at the front the apparent confusion, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... with which to comfort the maiden, whom he had learned to love. He could only hold her hand and stroke her golden hair, but with this Undine ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... sword or fire of bale; —I have held that word till to-day, and to-day shall I change the tale? And look on these thy brethren, how goodly and great are they, Wouldst thou have the maidens mock them, when this pain hath passed away And they sit at the feast hereafter, that they feared the deadly stroke? Let us do our day's work deftly for the praise and glory of folk; And if the Norns will have it that the Volsung kin shall fail, Yet I know of the deed that dies not, and the name that shall ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to be rude," she said. Then suddenly catching sight of Manchon, she exclaimed, "Oh, what a beautiful cat! May I go and stroke him?" ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... keeping it for your sick father," she answered, drawing me closer to her side, laying her comforting cheek against mine, letting my arm keep its place, and my fingers stroke her hair. ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... a year ago,— To say how many I scarcely dare,— Three of us stood in Strasburg streets, In the wide and open square, Where, quaint and old and touched with the gold Of a summer morn, at stroke of noon The tongue of the great Cathedral tolled, And into the church with the crowd we strolled To see their wonder, the famous Clock. Well, my love, there are clocks a many, As big as a house, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... would fall. Back, Robins, back; Crump, stand aloof! Whitford, keep near the walls! Huggins, regard your own behoof, For lo! the blazing rocking roof Down, down, in thunder falls! An awful pause succeeds the stroke, And o'er the ruins volumed smoke, Rolling around its pitchy shroud, Concealed them from th' astonished crowd. At length the mist awhile was cleared, When, lo! amid the wreck upreared, Gradually a moving head appeared, And Eagle firemen knew 'T was ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... from injur'd volumes snipt away, His English Heads in chronicled array, Torn from their destin'd page (unworthy meed Of Knightly counsel, and heroic deed), Not Faithorne's stroke, nor Field's own types can save The gallant Veres, and one-eyed Ogle brave. Indignant readers seek the image fled, And curse the busy fool who wants a head. Proudly he shews, with many a smile elate, The ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... on hammering. "George!" said I again. He raised the hammer for another stroke, hesitated, then lifted his head with a jerk, and immediately I knew why he ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... detect in its unreflecting beadiness of glance some humanly cynical enjoyment at his loss of self-control. The wave of feeling had spent itself. Not thus was victory to be won. He paused to consider, then tried the knocker again. The knocker smote the wood with a hollow sound, like a stroke on the iron door of a vault, loud enough to rouse the dead. Charles Turold had a disagreeable impression of Robert Turold starting up in his grave-clothes at the summons, listening.... But no! The dead man was safe in his grave by this time. He ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... cultivated fields, and even morsels of a forest appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks that stretched out of one into another without intermission. But this was not till other innovators had broke loose too from rigid symmetry. But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe the first thought was Bridgman's) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses,—an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them ha! ha's! to ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... round with a great stroke just past his son's face. He dared not, even though so close, really touch the young man, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... a whisper, emphasized by a kick; "do you want to send her out of this with a hornets' nest tied to her back hair?—That's a lie, Mrs. Puttick. He's humbugging you. Scaife told me that his fits were nothing. Yes; he had a slight sun-stroke when he was a kid, you know, and the least bit of excitement ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... some cards, and played with the unknown men as if he had known them all his life. The luck was on his side, and soon the money of the other gamblers found its way from their pockets into his. On the stroke of midnight the cock crew, and in an instant lights, table, cards, and people all had vanished, and Hans ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... demons on the body that writhed and fell. "Cut the fiend up into inches, throw his carcass on the plain; Let the wolves eat the cursed Indian, he'd have treated us the same." A dozen hands responded, a dozen knives gleamed high, But the first stroke was arrested by a woman's strange, wild cry. And out into the open, with a courage past belief, She dashed, and spread her blanket o'er the corpse of the Cattle Thief; And the words outleapt from her shrunken lips in the language of the Cree, "If you mean to touch that body, you must ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... of airy Nothing to invoke A senseless Something to resist the stroke Of unpermitted Paw—upon the pain ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford
... comes in a second—usually when I am frightened. I suddenly feel nervous and shaky. I can't tell what is going on around me. I lose my hearing. Part of the time it is as though, I had a paralytic stroke of the tongue. The next day, perhaps, it is gone. But while it lasts it is terrifying. It's like walking into a new world, with everybody, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... exclaimed, in a loud and commanding voice, "What! the sons of those fathers who sucked the same breast shedding each others bluid as it were strangers'!—By the hand of my father, I will cleave to the brisket the first man that mints another stroke!" ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... middle of February the Earl of Liverpool was suddenly attacked by a paralytic stroke. By the end of March his case became hopeless, and Mr. Canning was summoned at that time by the king to Windsor. It was well known that dissensions existed in the cabinet, and that serious difficulties were created by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... moments passed, all stood so motionless—all save Angelo, swinging the silver censer—they might have passed for a sculptured group upon a marble tomb. One—two—struck from the old clock in the Lombard Tower at Corellia. At the last stroke the door from the garden was thrown open. Count Nobili stood in the doorway. At the moment of Count Nobili's appearance Maestro Guglielmi drew out his watch; then he proceeded to note upon his tablets that Count Nobili, having observed the appointed time, was not subject ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... about ye, Miss Budd," he said slowly, recovering himself resignedly from this last back-handed stroke of fate; "I warn't talkin' o' you, but myself. I was only allowin' to say that I was ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... speaker, and all the finest passages of which were the genuine outcome of his own enthusiasm—the great Ostrogoth recognised at once the man whom he was in want of to be the exponent of his thoughts to the people, and by one stroke of wise audacity turned the boyish and comparatively obscure Assessor into the Illustrious Quaestor, one of the great personages of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... on the journey back, the archbishop was told that his return to England would be very welcome to the king when he was ready to perform all duties to the king as other archbishops of Canterbury had done them. The meaning of this message was clear. By this stroke of policy, Henry had exiled Anselm, with none of the excitement or outcry which would have been occasioned by his violent ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... deep, mellow-toned stroke of a bell in the sun, and, as the two men shrank involuntarily into the deeper shade of the cliff, the great globe, a stupendous ball of crystal, five hundred feet in height, slowly emerged from the mouth of the tunnel and came ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... may in turn have gone forth from that little one! The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. The London costermonger told Mayhew that he thought every man would like his son or daughter to have a better start in the world than ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... quick glance. "Looks so," he returned. "Maybe a stroke,—though he's young for that. Maybe acute indigestion, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... of introducing Cuthbert Banks to Mrs. Smethurst's niece, Adeline. As Cuthbert, for it was he who had so nearly reduced the muster-roll of rising novelists by one, hopped down from the table after his stroke, he was suddenly aware that a beautiful girl was looking at him intently. As a matter of fact, everyone in the room was looking at him intently, none more so than Raymond Parsloe Devine, but none of the others were beautiful girls. Long as the members of Wood Hills Literary Society were ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... soul that hates life need not despair. The chances, as we come to estimate them, for and against the soul's survival after death, seem so curiously even, that it may easily happen that the extreme longing of the soul for annihilation may prove in such a balancing of forces the final deciding stroke. And quite apart from death, I have tried to show in this book, how in the mere fact of the unfathomable depths into which all physical bodies as well as all immaterial souls recede there is an infinite opportunity for any soul to find ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... A. FALCAM (since 9 May 1997); note—the president is both the chief of state and head of government; Vice President Jacob NENA became acting president in July 1996 after President Bailey OLTER suffered a stroke; OLTER was declared incapacitated in November 1996; as provided for by the constitution, 180 days later, with OLTER still unable to resume his duties, NENA was sworn in as the new president; he will serve for the remaining two years of OLTER's term head of government: President Jacob NENA ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... The ceaseless stroke of the reaping-hook falls on the ranks of the corn: the corn yields, but only inch by inch. If the burning sun, or thirst, or weariness forces the reaper to rest, the fight too stays, the ranks do not retreat, and victory is only won by countless blows. The boom of a bridge as a train rolls ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... length. I love my fellow-beings, but there is a limit to my philanthropy, and I shall not have my snow fall noisily just to make a critic happy. I might do it to save his life, for I should hate to have a man die for the want of what I could give him with a stroke of my pen, and without any special effort, but until that emergency arises I shall not yield a jot in the manner of ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... with water from my canteen. The leaves would retain the moisture and keep my head cool, and when they became stale and withered, would be thrown away, and fresh ones procured. Several men died on this march from sun-stroke; none, however, from our regiment, but we all suffered fearfully. And pure drinking water was very scarce too. It was pitiful to see the men struggling for water at the farm house wells we occasionally passed. In their frenzied desperation they would spill much more than they saved, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... had thus addressed himself to God, he smote the sea with his rod, which parted asunder at the stroke, and receiving those waters into itself, left the ground dry, as a road and a place of flight for the Hebrews. Now when Moses saw this appearance of God, and that the sea went out of its own place, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 1804 he had purchased the seigneury of La Petite Nation, far up the Ottawa. Louis Joseph Papineau followed in his father's footsteps. Born in 1786, he served loyally and bravely in the War of 1812. In the same year he entered the Assembly and made his place at a single stroke. Barely three years after his election, he was chosen Speaker, and with a brief break he held that post ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of the wrong sex for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who, discerning a helpless prey, had swooped ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... that was not strictly necessary. Yet it was neat and comfortable; but Pitt felt that expenditures were very closely measured, and no latitude allowed to ease or to fancy. He stood a few minutes, looking and taking all this in; and then the inner door opened, and he forgot it instantly. At one stroke, as it were, the mean little room was transformed into a sacred temple, and here was the priestess. The two young people stood a second or two ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... horses had been unharnessed and dusk was setting in, he would slip his gun under his arm and walk down among the willows. It was necessary only to wait. Two graceful forms, feeding under a grassy bank, hearing a slight rustle above, would shove with quick, silent stroke into the supposed safety of their native element. Harris would peer through the dusk for the brighter markings of the male, for only a game-murderer shoots the female in the nesting season. Then, as they separated a little, his gun would speak; a sudden splashing of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... had already snatched the dagger from her girdle, and with the jeering cry "This for my little Ruth, you jade!" dealt her a blow in the back. Then she raised the tiny blood-stained weapon for a second stroke; but ere she could give her enemy another thrust, Ephraim flung himself between her and her victim and wrenched the dagger from her grasp. Then planting himself before the wounded girl, he swung the blade aloft exclaiming in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... if the devil is the father of lies, was a stroke of honest work against him and his family, the world rewarded these men after the usual fashion. One of them, Robert Gardiner, escaped the search which was made, and disappeared till better times; the remaining three ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... reading in different parts of the room I did not appropriate the remark to myself, though I thought he had intended it for me. I paid no attention to him, however, until, just as I was turning the sheet inside out, the Spaniard, irritated by another stroke of ill luck, advanced to me, and demanded that I should either lay the newspaper aside or quit the room. I very promptly declined to do either, when he snatched the paper from my hands, and instantly drew his sword. I was unarmed, with the exception of a good sized whalebone cane, but my anger ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... try to be a little more practical. Our first duty is to our stockholders. We shall probably have the stones cut up into a number of smaller stones, on which we shall be able to realize a large sum. It's a rare stroke ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... their parts. The Greeks looked with astonishment on a single combat, such as they had seldom witnessed, and held their breath as they beheld the furious blows dealt by either warrior, and expected with each stroke the annihilation of one or other of the combatants. As yet their strength and agility seemed somewhat equally matched, although those who judged with more pretension to knowledge, were of opinion, that Count Robert spared putting forth some part of the military skill ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... ship but a single iron dog which bound the two tallowed surfaces together. One stroke of the maul knocked this away. Still ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "he must have had a stroke of apoplexy." The valet was peering into the vehicle as he spoke, and his comrades were approaching, when suddenly he drew back, uttering a cry of horror. "Ah, my ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... we can't jump aboard and take her," I heard Larry say to the stroke oar, behind whom he was sitting. "I'd be after getting back my fiddle, at ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... take an interest in him, which was not the case theretofore. What really affected Chief more than anything else was the confidence imposed in him some days after, when Harry gave him one of the bolos. It was almost touching to see the joy he expressed. The Professor thought it would be a stroke of policy to have the present come ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... localities, and then make it over to Mr. Polk? He will know how to handle it, and if it is valuable will certainly make it pay. With another year's work I can have the money, and by that means I can cancel that debt with one fell stroke, perhaps," he went on jubilantly,—and if it proved to do so many times over, he would only be the more ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... clamour of hammers on sheets of iron, the dry tap of the shoemaker's wooden wand on the soles of countless slippers, the thud of the coffee-beater's blunt club on the beans, and the groaning grunt with which he accompanied each downward stroke mingled with the incessant roar of camels, and seemed to be made more deafening and intolerable by the fierce heat of the sun, and by the innumerable smells which seethed forth upon the air. Domini felt ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... type), less grotesquely irrelevant and profane—though she does her bit. On the other hand, she is more active and less repetitive. When, the good fairy endowing her with beauty, she appeared as DORIS KEANE in Romance, that was an applauded stroke. And when she lied beneath the tree of truth and the chestnuts fell each time truth was mishandled, thickest of all when it was asserted that a certain Scotch comedian had refused his salary, this was also very well received. On the whole, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... roaring, let top-sails be towering, And sails to the motion of helm be flying; Though high as the mountain, or smooth as the fountain, Or fierce as the boiling floods angrily crying, Though the tide with a stroke be assailing the rock; Oh, once let the pibroch's wild signal be heard, Then the waves will come bending in dimples befriending, And beckoning the friends of their country on board. The ocean-tide 's swelling, its fury is quelling, In salute of thunder proclaiming your due; And, methinks, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of the Black Wood one evening, and he attacked me like a madman. I suppose I had to some extent the best of it, but when I got back to the Hall my arm was broken, I was covered with blood, and half unconscious. By some cruel stroke of fortune, almost the first person I saw was Lady Dominey. The shock was ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of careful purity of line. Even the Caslon type when enlarged shows great shortcomings in this respect: the ends of many of the letters such as the t and e are hooked up in a vulgar and meaningless way, instead of ending in the sharp and clear stroke of Jenson's letters; there is a grossness in the upper finishings of letters like the c, the a, and so on, an ugly pear-shaped swelling defacing the form of the letter: in short, it happens to this craft, ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English family life. So poor Soames had to become a solicitor. When his father died— by a curious stroke of poetic justice he died of scarlet fever, and was found to have had a perfectly sound heart—I ordained Soames and made him my chaplain. He is now quite happy. He is a celibate; fasts strictly on Fridays and throughout Lent; wears a cassock and biretta; and has more legal business to do than ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... there, after visiting his office and filling his pockets with his most precious papers. How, by a marvelous stroke of fate, he became one of the four persons who alone escaped from New York after the downpour began ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... the matter without further action or discussion," said the president, bringing her gavel down with an imperative stroke; for this last announcement had created a breezy flutter among the mischief-brewers, who had planned to have ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... they go Through the tall grass, a white-sleeved row. With even stroke their scythes they swing, In tune their merry whetstones ring. Behind the nimble youngsters run, And toss the thick swaths in the sun. The cattle graze, while, warm and still, Slopes the broad pasture, basks the hill, And bright, where ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... transfixion,—and the anterior muscles dissected up along with it. It should be long enough to fall down over the face of the bones at the point of section, and easily cover the point of the posterior flap, which is to be made by cutting through all the tissues with one bold transverse stroke of the knife. This operation, which is the plan of Mr. Teale of Leeds very slightly modified, is equally applicable at any point of the leg, with this difference only, that the length of the anterior flap must always be carefully proportioned to ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... bottom, and he said to his merchant-friend, "That Traugott is a most peculiar fellow; well, I must just let him go his own way; though if he had not fifty thousand thalers in my business I know what I should do, since now he never does a stroke of anything." ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... you like better the tradition of the Grecians, and ascribe the first inventions to men, yet you will rather believe that Prometheus first stroke the flints, and marvelled at the spark, than that when he first stroke the flints he expected the spark; and therefore we see the West Indian Prometheus had no intelligence with the European, because of the rareness with them of flint, that gave the first occasion. So as it should seem, that ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... followed cheering. The Cigarette went off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. Next moment the Arethusa was after her. A steamer was coming down, men on the paddle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you hurt?" Chirpy Cricket called to Mr. Cricket Frog from the bank of the duck-pond. Ever since a splash near-by had interrupted their talk, Mr. Cricket Frog had not swum a single stroke. He was floating, motionless, upon the surface of the water. And he made no reply whatever to Chirpy's questions. He acted exactly as if he had not heard them. The fitful breeze caught at Mr. Cricket Frog's limp form ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... again at last. Twice her lips opened to speak, and twice she closed them again. Robin continued to stroke her hand and wait for judgment. The ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... in lent, and gaue out commandements, that all such as had any thing to doo in receipt of the kings monie, should appeare before him after Easter, he tarried not to see Easter himselfe, but was called into another world by the stroke of death, there to render accompts for his owne acts here in this ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... they were off. Silvey's new skates cut the ice cleanly at every stroke, while his chum's duller pair skidded and slid now and then as he gained headway. Along the narrowing, west pond, past helpless beginners whose efforts not to appear ridiculous made them doubly so, past staid business men, past arm-linked couples from ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was all right so far, and Mrs. Nixey felt glad she had made sure of the ground. The little farm was worth L15 a year, and old Marlowe himself had once told her that his money brought him in L36 yearly, without a stroke of work on his part. How money could be gained in this way, with simply leaving it alone, she could not understand. But here was Phebe Marlowe with L50 a year for her fortune: a chance not to be ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... lady, for a benevolent angel!" muttered the pair, to which Elaine responded by moving over to the wretched bed and bending down to stroke the forehead of the ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... that which contrasted strangely enough with her sex, her beauty, and her youth. She bore in her strong hands, and bore with ease, a great two-handed sword—the two-handed sword of the executioner, her father—the two-handed sword that was the symbol of the stroke of justice in the eyes of all the world. With an air of pride the girl carried the great weapon, the pride of a child with its doll, of a mother with her infant, of a soldier ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... came to give up his Embassy—to have me take over his business. Every detail was arranged. The next morning I called on him to assume charge and to say good-bye, when he told me that he was not yet going! That was a stroke of genius by Sir Edward Grey, who informed him that Austria had not given England cause for war. That may work out, or it may not. Pray Heaven it may! Poor Mensdorff, the Austrian Ambassador, does not know where he is. He is practically ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... casket a charm which men say is called the charm of Prometheus. If a man should anoint his body therewithal, having first appeased the Maiden, the only-begotten, with sacrifice by night, surely that man could not be wounded by the stroke of bronze nor would he flinch from blazing fire; but for that day he would prove superior both in prowess and in might. It shot up first-born when the ravening eagle on the rugged flanks of Caucasus let drip ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... unguarded moment of relief was disastrous in its result. In a deep, careless stroke, his paddle struck a submerged log and the slender blade snapped short off with a loud crack, the ticklish canoe careened suddenly to one side, then righted again with a sullen splash. At the sound the silent point quickly stirred with life. There was the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been as Sanscrit to the Rector of Carlingford; and the only resource he had was to make in his own mind certain half-pitying, half-affectionate remarks upon the inexplicable weakness of women, and to pick up the stocking which his wife was darning, and finally to stroke her hair, which was still as pretty and soft and brown as it had been ten years ago. Under such circumstances a man does not object to feel himself on a platform of moral superiority. He even began to pet her a little, with a pleasant ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... with his eye the distance separating the swimmer from his goal and preparing for a mighty throw of the buoy he noted that the other's stroke was fast weakening. ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... exhilarated demonstration of which, one must keep one's head and not lose one's way. To cultivate an adequate intelligence for them and to make that sense operative is positively to find a charm in any produced ambiguity of appearance that is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly, an ambiguity of sense. To project imaginatively, for my hero, a relation that has nothing to do with the matter (the matter of my subject) but has everything to do with the manner (the manner of my presentation of the same) and yet to treat it, at close quarters ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and enthusiasm itself is healthful. Walking may also do so, if the walk has an object, as in mountain-climbing, when often the artistic feelings may be enlisted in the sport. Working out an ideal stroke in rowing, perfecting one's game in polo or ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... Hargrave got a note from Mrs. Farmingham, a line scrawled on her card to say that she would call for him at three o'clock. Her carriage was before the door on the stroke of the hour, and she explained that the money to redeem the jewels had arrived. The Credit Lyonnais had sent it over from Paris. She seemed a bit puzzled about it. She had telegraphed the Credit Lyonnais yesterday to send her eighteen thousand ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... evening he invites his friends to supper at the village Rimlich, near Wittenberg. After the supper, he addresses his companions in a speech of intense and pathetic remorse, praying that God will save his soul though his body is forfeit to the devil. He tells them that at the stroke of twelve the demon will come to fetch him. He begs them to go quietly to bed, and not to be alarmed if they hear a great uproar. At midnight a mighty wind sweeps over the house, and a terrible hissing is heard as of innumerable serpents. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... judicious lady looked very intelligent, but said nothing more. She sat down and began to stroke Annie's brown, dishevelled hair. But instead of showing very great sympathy for her niece, she had an unusually complacent expression. Gregory had a strong but discreet ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... to come against Rire-pour-tout singly, in succession. Our drums rolled the pas de charge, and their cymbals clashed; they shouted 'Fantasia!' and the first Arab rode at him. Rire-pour-tout sat like a rock, and lunge went his steel through the Bedouin's lung, before you could cry hola!—a death-stroke, of course; Rire-pour-tout always killed: that was his perfect science. Another and another and another came, just as fast as the blood flowed. You know what the Arabs are—vous autres? How they wheel and swerve and fight ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... triumvirate, of which the city has most reason to feel proud. The painting in the Palace of Justice was regarded as one of the happiest efforts of his pencil, and was not the less remarkable for having been executed with his left hand, after a paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... possible that the Spanish general, even so early as the period of his residence at San Miguel, may have meditated some daring stroke, some effective coup-de-main, which, like that of Cortes, when he carried off the Aztec monarch to his quarters, might strike terror into the hearts of the people, and at once decide the fortunes of the day. It is more probable, however, that he now ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott |
