"Wrench" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that make in a matter like this? Give them to me. You dare not keep them," she cried, tightening her fingers in the effort to wrench the letters from his hand. "Sister—doctor—speak to him! Make him give them to me—I ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... wrench free from Homer and run down the aisle to snatch the child from Scattergood's ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... followed, a voice cried, "Are you mad?" and there was the grating of chairs thrust hastily back. But, after a great wrench, her heart stood still within her as through the madness she perceived the purpose. As well as Edric of Mercia she knew that the young Viking's vulnerable point was his longing for his own self-esteem, a craving so unreckoning in its fervor that—should he have the guilty consciousness the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... not: Love may sink by slow decay; But by sudden wrench, believe not Hearts can thus ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... as he spoke, with one arm folded across his chest, guarding the secret which that old man was attempting to wrench from his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... insinuating cluck to the horses, while several passengers, who had alighted to gather blackberries from the ditch, scrambled hurriedly into their places. With a single clanking wrench the stage toiled on, plodding clumsily ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... same time Kathlyn was fighting vigorously to get free of the mob, Winnie was struggling with Pundita, striving to wrench the dagger from the grief-stricken ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... with the inexhaustible fertility of the soil, with an endless summer that gives the laborer two and even three crops a year, agriculture generally yields in Cuba a lower percentage of profit than in our stern Northern latitudes, where the farmer has to wrench, as it were, the half-reluctant crop from the ground. It must be remembered that in Cuba there are numerous fruits and vegetables not enumerated in these pages, which do not enter into commerce, and which spring spontaneously from the fertile soil. In the possession of a thrifty ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... had it occurred to our friend that the wrench might come through his interest in that branch of art on which Nick Dormer had rallied him. The beauty of a love of the theatre was precisely in its being a passion exercised on the easiest terms. This was not the region ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Britannia Bridge into their bed,[2] and Brunel to launch the Great Eastern steamship from her cradles. It has also been used to cut bars of iron, to draw the piles driven in forming coffer dams, and to wrench up trees by the roots, all of which feats ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... abroad—not to the Continent, but a much longer journey—to South Africa itself! You may have heard that mother spent her early life at the Cape, and now that father has gone it is only natural that she should wish to spend her last years near her brothers and sisters. It will be a wrench for me to leave England, and all the dear friends who have been so kind to me, but I feel more and more strongly that it is the right thing to do. We shall try to sell the Grange, but shall, of course, come back for a few weeks after the New ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... favorite trick of allowing his arm to be tackled flat against his leg, then, at the very moment his opponent thought he had him, Charlie would wrench up his ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... well-authenticated cases, possessed the "psychic force" which Maxwell, Richet, and Lombroso recognized? The hypothesis, difficult as it was, profoundly inexplicable from every point of view, was, after all, less of a wrench to the reason, came closer to the frame of his philosophy than the claims of Crookes and Wallace. To accept the spiritist faith even as a "working hypothesis" was impossible to his definite ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in Hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the Norman-English, or mixed language of the country: "For the sake of the God of Abraham, spare an unhappy old man! I am poor, I am penniless—should your irons wrench my limbs asunder, I could not ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... oh yet thyself deceive not: Love may sink by slow decay, But by sudden wrench believe not Hearts can thus be ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... around the base of his horns and tried to twist his neck. This enterprise, however, was too much even for the elephant's titanic powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong, trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs, and between them it seemed that the steel fence must go down under such ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... a horrible wrench at last to leave wife and children. "My most bitter trial," he writes—"an agony that still cleaves to me—was saying good-bye to the little ones. Thank God the pain was all on one side. 'Come back soon, papa!' they cried." His wife ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... as if she would wrench her fingers from their sockets, she clutched at her long white hair, and, rocking to and fro, moaned, "Woe is me, and woe the ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... always come a big wrench when one or other of two friends meets the man who is her mate. The old, tried friendship retreats suddenly into second place—sometimes for a little while it almost seems as though it had petered out altogether. But when once the plunge has been taken, and the strangeness ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... amazement, and almost in terror, the frantic woman drew from her bosom a long knife, and inflicted a deep wound upon him before he could wrench it from her determined grasp. The knife had penetrated to the rib, but not farther, having glanced off to the side. As the blood spread rapidly over his hunting-shirt, the maniac gave a wild laugh, and repeated in the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... an unknown destination—Portsmouth probably and then somewhere in Maine, hoping to wrench from fate the time to finish the score. It seems more than a little pompous to continue my explanation. The Grass, the United States, humanity, God—whatever we write about we ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... character is entirely modern. "Les Miserables" is a story of the city and of poverty, and can not be dissociated from them by any wrench of thought, however violent. Not that urban life or poverty are new elements in the school of suffering. They are not new, as pain is not new. This is the difference. In the old ages, the city and poverty were taken as matters of course. Comfort ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which shines red with blood after it has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old Bardic day of Britain; ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Santo, bubbling with silver domes, is the stem or flower of their exaltation; whether their seat at the head of a sun-steeped marsh (at whose mouth is Venice) hath itself unseated them; whether Petrarch set boiling what Saint Antony could not allay; what it was, how it was, who gave them the wrench, I know not—but the fact is that the people of Padua have been as freakish a race as any in Italy; at the mercy of any head but the aggregate's, pack-mules of a notion, galley-slaves of a whim, driven hither and thither in a herd, like those restless leaves ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... all this as he himself, the same but changed, stood there in the moonlight striving to recollect it all, and mysteriously failing. But at least, he did fail, and that was something. But oh, what a wrench it gave to life, thought, reason, to all her heart and being, to have that unconscious chit cut in with "only mamma for the girl!" What and whence was this little malaprop? Her overwrought mind shut away this question—almost in the asking it—with "Dearer to me, at least, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the late afternoon, one of the King's musicians will awake from dreaming of his home and will pass his fingers, perhaps, over the strings of his harp and, with the music, some memory may arise of the wind in the glens of the mountains that stand in the Isles of Song. Then the musician will wrench great cries out of the soul of his harp for the sake of the old memory, and his fellows will awake and all make a song of home, woven of sayings told in the harbour when the ships came in, and of tales in the cottages about the people of old time. One by one the other bands of musicians ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the child I adopted," she said. "The poor waif was deserted, and as to the wrench now, why, life has taught me, also, George, to take what joy one can and be willing to pay for it. We cannot afford to let a great blessing slip because we may have to do without ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... blank and lightless, its roof a black heap against the night sky. He paused to look up at it. He was still without any plan; not even now did he feel the need of one. To go in to break in, if that were the quickest way to stamp his stormy way up the room where Tom Mowbray was sleeping, to wrench him from his bed and then let loose the maniac fury that burned within him all that was plain to do. He cast a glance at the nearest window, and then it was that the door of the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... yourself—your own sorrows. I am a brute to have bothered you about her at such a moment; and now until you have told me what is paining you so I shall not let you speak of her." He was perfectly sincere. What were Kitty's possible and easy tears over the loss of her money to the unknown agony that could wrench a sob from a woman like this? "Dear Mrs. Horncastle," he went on as breathlessly, "think of me now not as Kitty's husband, but as your true friend. Yes, as your BEST and TRUEST friend, and speak to me as you would speak ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... unfair one," said Gerald, laughing, but still keeping his pistol pointed at the officer, who now caught sight of Norah, also with a pistol in her hand, standing a little behind her brother. He might have made an attempt to spring upon Gerald and wrench the weapon from his hand, but from the determined look of the young lady he thought, in all probability, that she would fire over her brother's head should he do so. He therefore stepped back and sat down on the only remaining stool in the cabin, folding his ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... were well matched in strength, but Frank felt that his antagonist was careless of his own life, for he had wound his legs round him, and, unable to wrench his arm from his grasp, was doing his utmost to prevent their ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... sprang wildly towards it, and with passionate intreaty implored mercy and protection. The young man, a son of Mrs. Brandon's by a former husband, immediately re-seized her; and with fierce violence endeavored to wrench her hand from the handle of the carriage door, which she clutched with desperate tenacity. The door flew open, the sudden jerk disengaged her hold, and she struggled vainly in her captor's powerful grasp. "Save ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... present from the past, of the bygone hope from the present effort. 'In the fulness of productiveness,' he confesses, 'at the hour when life is flowering, a young creature is snatched away, and cast upon a barren soil where all he has cherished fails him. Well, after the first wrench he finds that life has not forsaken him, and sets to work upon the new ungrateful ground. The effort calls for such a concentration of energy as leaves no time for either hopes or fears. And I manage it, except only in moments of rebellion (quickly suppressed) of ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... which are most intangible, which sound most trivial set down in black and white, that often take the strongest hold upon us. Habit, the little old dame, creeps in one day, sits by our fire, amuses us, comforts us, occupies us, and—before we know it—we feel a wrench if we are ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... country as yours. The east is hard and stony; the soil is stingy. The far west is a desert parched and barren, dreary and desolate as perdition would be with the fires out. It is better to dig wheat and corn from the soil than gold. Only a few days ago I was where they wrench the precious metals from the miserly clutch of the rocks. When I saw the mountains, treeless, shrub-less, flowerless, without even a spire of grass, it seemed to me that gold had the same effect upon the country that holds it, as upon the man who lives and labors ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... oblivion. The paths of life and glory lead but to the grave.' My soul was filled with conflicting thoughts, and for a moment even my faith seemed at a low ebb. I could hear my children's stifled sobs, and my darling wife shed silent tears. The thought of parting from them gave me the bitterest wrench. With my fleeting breath I gasped these words, 'That mercy I showed others, that show thou me.' The darkened room grew darker, and after that I died. In my sleep I seemed to dream. All about were ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... nothing that has endured for any length of time or has left a record of beneficence. Evolution in government is in accord with the processes of life, even to the extent that it is always after a time followed by degeneration; revolution in government is the throwing of a monkey-wrench into the machinery by a disaffected workman, with the wrecking of the machine, the violent stoppage of the works, and frequently the sudden death of the worker as a consequence. The English monarchy from Duke William to Henry VIII, is a case of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... himself to his accustomed place of prayer, and for a long space besought God with tears to grant him this favour, leaving himself entirely in His hands. And when he had thus prayed he took the tooth between his fingers, and it came out at once without the slightest pain or wrench, and he found himself freed from the impediment to his speech which it had caused. This tooth he carried about with him for a long time as a reminder of an act of Divine loving-kindness such as he was ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... door!" he said. She tried to wrench it open; the handle stuck—or perhaps the strength had left her wrist. But it was not courage that failed, for she faced ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... all this while, as the reader may believe, in great uneasiness; at length, struggling to get loose. I had the fortune to break the strings, and wrench out the pegs that fastened my left arm to the ground; for, by lifting it up to my face, I discovered the methods they had taken to bind me, and at the same time with a violent pull, which gave me excessive pain, I a little ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... moment the girl halted, pale and rigid, and her heart seemed to cease its beating; then, as she passed with averted head, Rosalie caught Duane's wrists in her jewelled grasp and released herself with a wrench. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... they came on boards either from the baskets they had brought with them, or from the boat's provision. But he prevailed, with his smile that was like a sneer, through all the events of the voyage; and took March's mind off the scenery with a sudden wrench when he came unexpectedly into view after a momentary disappearance. At the table d'hote, which was served when the landscape began to be less interesting, the guests were expected to hand their plates across the table to the stewards but to keep their knives and forks throughout ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a heavy wrench into his pocket and closed the kit-box. With the girl, he avoided any reference to the possible presence of the Japanese among the trees, but knowing that he was no match for them unarmed, with their skill in jiu-jitsu, he resolved to be in ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... be a wrench. A man's bound to have a cosey feeling about a place where he's been boss so long; and there is something about a Church—the drone, the scent, the half darkness; there's beauty in it, it's a pleasant drug. But he's not being asked to give up the drug ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... life we have but to ask of our own memories to know. With each one of us, if we are to advance beyond the steps of the last generation, there comes a time when our growing ideas refuse any longer to fit the childish grooves in which we were taught to let them run. How great the wrench is when this supreme moment arrives we have all felt too keenly ever to forget. We hesitate, we delay, to abandon the beliefs which, dating from the dawn of our being, seem to us even as a part of our very selves. From the religion of our mother to the birth of our boyish ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth: for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God," the language sounds so strange that it is scarcely intelligible; and if we do get to understand it, yet it seems to give a wrench, as it were, to our whole being, to command a thing ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... it. I had once stayed out, snow-bound, for a day and a half, nearly without food and altogether without shelter; and I was not going to get thus caught again. I also carefully overhauled my cutter. Not a bolt but I tested it with a wrench; and before the stores were closed, I bought myself enough canned goods to feed me for a week should through any untoward accident the need arise. I always carried a little alcohol stove, and with my tarpaulin I could convert my cutter within three minutes into a windproof ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... our antiquaries a little wrench towards taste—but it was in vain. Sandby and our engravers have lent them a great deal—but there it stops. Captain Grose's dissertations are as dull and silly as if they were written for the Ostrogoth maps of the beginning of the new Topography: ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... portion of men upon earth. Weary of these he may be; but still if the gods have breathed on him, and made him mad with the madness that men have called genius, there will be that in him greater than himself, which he knows,—and cannot know without some fierce wrench and pang,—will be numbed and made impotent, and drift away, lost for evermore, into that eternal night, which is all that men behold ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... for a moment in a single tale, and he set this portentous villain up against his hero,—thereby displaying his mastery of a major principle of play-making. Many a novel has seemed vulgarized on the stage, because the adapter had to wrench its structure in seeking a struggle strong enough to sustain the framework of a play. Many a story has been cheapened pitifully by the theatrical adapter, simply because he was incapable of seeing in it more than a series of striking scenes which could be hewn into ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... a pace or two, with a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being made more promising ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... very cheerful at the thought of his promotion. "It is a wrench, it is a wrench, madame la comtesse. I have been here for eighteen years. Oh, the place does not bring in much, and is not wealthy. The men have no more religion than they need, and the women, look you, the women have no morals. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Wells-Dinton gave one wrench. The tooth came out as though the patient were a block of marble. There was not a cry or a movement, such as one notes when nitrous oxide is administered. Hilda Wade was to all appearance a mass of lifeless ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... And supposing you arrived in time to help save him, but to do it you had not only to wrench the knife out of his hand and bandage the wound, but you had also to give over a paltry thousand thalers that you had saved up; and, furthermore, you had to do it all absolutely on the sly, so as to induce the sick man to accept ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... crushed to the floor; his pistol slipped from his grasp; two great hands choked a despairing cry from his throat. He saw the prophet's face over him, distorted with passion, his huge neck bulging, his eyes flaming like angry garnets. He struggled to free his pinioned arms, to wrench off the death grip at his throat, but his efforts were like those of a child against a giant. In a last terrible attempt he drew up his knees inch by inch under the weight of his enemy; it was his only chance—his only hope. Even as he felt the fingers about his throat ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad wrench to leave the dear old home." He continued, a tinge of melancholy in his voice: "You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; he is a rabbit. Alone, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... it was not Flemming's intention to throw Merriwell too suddenly. He wanted a little time to wrench Frank's back, and then he would cast his foe writhing and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... had so large a share. His motives and intentions, however are a mystery to me. He is a determined and relentless man, with the genuine character of an inquisitor; and had he any object to gain by putting Clifford to the rack, I verily believe that he would wrench his joints from their sockets, in order to accomplish it. But, so wealthy and eminent as he is,—so powerful in his own strength, and in the support of society on all sides,—what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or fear from the imbecile, branded, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and others whose duty it is to translate from Chinese into Manchu all documents submitted to what is called the "sacred glance" of His Majesty. In a similar sense, until quite a recent date, skill in archery was required of every Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a great wrench when the once fatally effective weapon was consigned to an unmerited oblivion. But though Bannermen can no longer shoot with the bow and arrow, they still continue to draw monthly allowances from state funds, as an ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... be much better if they had it then, because otherwise the interest would accumulate so. I got quite cross with them after a bit, and told them what I thought of them, and then they gave the gimlet such an excruciating wrench ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... little, trying to see better. If it were Boyd, he had to wrench him out of that line and get the boy back. A hot emotion close to panic boiled up ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the ideal. But the real offers us these terms in the shape of mutually exclusive alternatives of which only one can be true at once; so that we must choose, and in choosing murder one possibility. The wrench is absolute: "Either—or!" Just as whenever I bet a hundred dollars on an event, there comes an instant when I am a hundred dollars richer or poorer without any intermediate degrees passed over; just as my wavering ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... them to hold one of these picnics at the foot of the Palisades. During it she disappeared for nearly half an hour. She sat alone by the river. Suddenly, with a feverish wrench, she bared her breast, then shook her head angrily, rearranged her blouse, went back to the group, and was unusually gay, though all the while she kept her left hand on her breast, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... be so; but—" The mother's head droops, and her face knits as with a wrench of pain; recovering, however, she goes on—"but we could make ourselves known ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd by an unlineal hand, No son of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... difficulty Ducie managed to wrench open the smashed door. Then he called the Russian by name; but there was no answer. He could discern nothing inside save a confused heap of rugs and minor articles of luggage. Under these, enough in themselves to smother him, Platzoff ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... chiming all round, covering his face with his hands, and thinking himself back to Beaulieu; then, seating himself on a step, leaning against the wall, he tried to think out whether to give himself up to the leadings of the new light that had broken on him, or whether to wrench himself from it. Was this, which seemed to him truth and deliverance, verily the heresy respecting which rumours had come to horrify the country convents? If he had only heard of it from Tibble Wry-mouth, he would have doubted, in spite of its power over him, but he had heard it from a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... suddenly. "Tomba! That African can see in the dark like a cat. Why, just before we started I dropped a wrench, and I didn't have any matches handy to look for it. I was groping around in the dark trying to get my hands on it, and you know it was pretty black in the jungle. Well, along come Tomba. and he spotted it at once and picked it up. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... Clandonuil's[124] root when crown each shoot of sapling, branch, and stem, What forest fair shall e'er compare in stately pride with them? Their gathering might, what legion wight, in rivalry has dared; Or to ravish from their Lion's face a bristle of his beard? What limbs were wrench'd, what furrows drench'd, in that cloud burst of steel, That atoned the provocation, and smoked from head to heel, While cry and shriek of terror break the field of strife along, And stranger[125] notes are wailing the slaughter'd heaps among! Where from the kingdom's breadth and length ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... balustrade as he spoke, gave it a wrench, the stair shot from its fastening, was pushed back, and without another word Scarlett thrust in his lighted candle, followed it, and Fred stood looking in as ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... apartment at the end of a long and dark passage. The day filters dimly into it through a barred window no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley. On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench apart the bars of the window immediately overhead, through which he had lifted her one cold night—years ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Then the wrench on his bruised arms as they were pulled roughly back by the cords caused the veil of unconsciousness to gather over ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... heavily, borne down into the trough of the sea by the force of the gale, her timbers groaning, the spars creaking, blocks rattling, and the wind shrieking and whistling as it tore through the rigging and flapped the sails heavily against the masts with the noise of thunder, as if it would wrench them out ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... frame of mine was wrench'd With a woful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale, And then it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... get away from this place, where everybody hates me!" she replied sullenly, trying to wrench herself free. "Please let me go, and I'll never come back to trouble ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell. But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his patois and I English-French, I'll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... when he read, nor to the congregation who listened to the pathetic story of the "hearts torn asunder," an idea as to the incompatibility of missionary life with raising a family of children; nor that each and every missionary father had better have given his heart a decided wrench in the beginning, by abstaining from marriage, than have been a victim to perpetual domestic anxiety and have suffered ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... The wrench to the fisherman's knee proved more serious than he had anticipated. The doctor pronounced it out of the question that he should be moved ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... was to visit her there, but the thought of that month of separation so soon after we had become engaged saddened us and our hearts dreaded the ordeal. Still, come it did, and as I watched the train pull out of the station, carrying with it all that I loved best in the world, I felt a wrench at my heartstrings and a ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... understanding their own country; that, as Godkin himself did not comprehend America, he was an unsound teacher and made his youthful readers see her through a false medium. And I am further informed that in mature life it cost an effort, a mental wrench, so to speak, to get rid of this influence and see things as they really were, which was necessary for usefulness in lives cast in America. The United States was our country; she was entitled to our love and service; and yet such a frame of mind was impossible, so this ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... said Aunt Jane; 'but believe those who have gone through it all, my dear, when the wrench is ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... perspiration to alter the stately appearance of a three-inch high collar. Next he sprang over the fence into the field, found that the nail was too firmly wedged to be drawn from the horse's hoof with either fingers or a wagon wrench, and returned to ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... summer of 1867 passed over with little of incident, save one. We quitted Harrow, and the wrench was great. My brother had left school, and had gone to Cambridge; the master, who had lived with us for so long, had married and had gone to a house of his own; my mother thought that as she was growing older, the ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... legs, as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. It was the first great wrench of his life, the first gap which the angel Death had made in his circle, and he felt numbed, and beaten down, and spiritless. Well, well! I believe it was good for him and for many others in like case, who had to learn by that loss that the soul of man cannot stand or lean upon any ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Dick's voice. He was reclining in a deck-chair, wrapped around with rugs, and with a book lying in his lap. He was less drawn and pinched than when he first returned, but the change in him was still great enough to give her a sudden wrench at the heart. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... shriller note. "Kill him." "Hang him up by the heels and stone him." "Twist off his tongue," and so forth. Out shot a hand, a long, skinny, female hand, and a harsh voice cried, "Give us a keepsake, my pretty boy!" Then there was a sharp wrench at his head, and he knew that from it a lock of hair was missing. This was too much. He ought to have stopped there and let them kill him if they would, but a terror of these human wolves entered his soul and mastered him. To be trodden beneath those mire-stained feet, to be rent by those filthy ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... to wrench open the locks which held the covers, but failed. Suddenly he looked up, and glared ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... Those honourable scars which brought him fame; And horrid was the contrast to the view—— But let me quit the theme; as such things claim Perhaps even more attention than is due From me: I gazed (as oft I have gazed the same) To try if I could wrench aught out of Death Which should confirm, or shake, or make ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... was close at his heels he threw down his cap. The bear at once pulled up, smelt it all round, tossed it into the air with his snout, pawed it once or twice, then tore it to pieces with one wrench, and continued the chase. Very little time was lost in this operation. He was soon up with the man again; then a mitten was thrown down for his inspection. After that the other mitten went, the cravat followed, ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... he was in earnest, and, taking hold of the arrow again, gave it a mighty wrench. It came out, but the barbs of the arrow tore the flesh badly. Houston, however, paused only to tie up the wound roughly, and hurried back into the fight, though Jackson ordered him to the rear. Before long, two bullets struck him down, and he lay between ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... cried Captain Jimmie in dismay. He gave a wrench to the wheel, shouting orders to the Ancient Mariner to gee her around and go back, but he was too late. Before the gang-plank had been thrown out, or rope hitched, the Old Boys had leaped ashore. Captain Jimmie yelled at them to come back, but they paid no more heed than they would have ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... does it mean, this barren age of ours? Here are the men, the women, and the flowers, The seasons, and the sunset, as before. What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise To wrench one banner from the western skies, And mark it with ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... he can," replied the other. "He's thinkin' of buyin' the Stormberg, Wrench Wylie's big freighter, and he'd shift you on to her. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... merely that. But Dolly's eye saw that his step was unsteady, his face dull and flushed, and his eye had a look which even a very little experience understands. His air was haggard, spiritless, hopeless; so unlike the alert, self-sufficient, confident manner of old, that Dolly's heart got a great wrench. And something in the whole image was so inexpressibly pitiful to her, that she did the very last thing it had been in her purpose to do; she fled to him with one bound, threw herself on his breast, and burst ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... herself. She comes here and slaves so that he may have his chance. She is an angel, of course, an unselfish angel, and I'm a wretch." She lay still for a few moments, frowning fiercely, then suddenly the bedclothes went up with a wrench—"I don't care—she's ambitious too! She thinks he is clever, and wants him to be great! Well, so do I want to be great! If it isn't wrong for one person, it can't be for another. My motive is success, and I'll work ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... want to excuse; I only want to explain. To make it clear how it was possible that I, after this first vigorous wrench at my fetters, nevertheless for many years still led an irresolute double life, apparently the same happy pater-familias and prosperous man of the world, hiding my real, true life in the little seaport town and restricting it to the hours that I spent together with her, who had awakened ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... room jabbering into his phone. Then shakily the crew flipped their beam off to the side. The jar on my craft was terrific. Its nose caught the rushing tumble of air first, of course, and my tail sailing in a vacuum, swung around with a sickening wrench. My swooper might as well have been a barrel in the tumult of waters at the foot of Niagara. What was worse, the Hans kept me in that condition. Three of their beams were now playing in my direction, but not directly on me except for split seconds. ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter signalled to a porter, saying: 'Paradis'; and the porter laid hold of Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled. Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England. For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a look ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not against the common enemy, but a feeble defenceless female! Shame, Moor! shame! But that I reverence the public voice that named thee chief, and that I desire not to arrogate to myself a retributive justice, I myself would wrench from thee that command which thou shamest, and entrust it to the hands ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... had need; for in five-and-twenty winters had they never hailed one good day. Here failed him all his mighty crafts. Now it behoved him, that he crope in his skin into every corner, if peradventure there were any unresty wrench, (163) whereby he might yet once more betray Christ and all Christian people. Then retired he into Clugny, where he was held so fast, that he could not move east or west. The Abbot of Clugny said that they ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... gentleman around to the back piazza facing his study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more delicate ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... would make his politest bow, and say pleasantly, 'Thank you, sir, I felt a touch of the gout.' He told me once that if it was only a twinge, he chose a man of his own size; but if it was a positive wrench, he struck out at the biggest ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... boiled at the thought that she must exert strength to escape insult. She struggled violently when Brandt bent his head. Almost sick with fear, she had determined to call for help, when a violent wrench almost toppled her over. At the same instant her wrists were freed; she heard a fierce cry, a resounding blow, and then the sodden thud of a heavy body falling. Recovering her balance, she saw a tall figure beside her, and a man ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... rough. Once the lad's foot slipped into a crevice. In seeking to withdraw it he gave the ankle a wrench that caused him to settle down on the rocks with a half moan of pain. His shoe had become wedged in between the rocks so that he had difficulty in withdrawing it at all, and the injured ankle gave him a great deal of pain as he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... detached themselves from the group above the cliff, and were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne, Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, both ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly confidence, now to find cold neglect and contemptuous scorn—is a wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, however, some kind of miserable good luck, that while de-haut-en-bas rigour may depress an unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn something in his bosom, which, though it cannot heal the wounds of his soul, is ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... oft I have gazed the same, To try if I could wrench aught out of death Which should confirm, or shake, or make, a faith; But it was all a mystery. Here we are, And there we go: but where? Five bits of lead, Or three, or two, or one, send very far! And is ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... be said to belong to the great wall painting which Holbein finished in 1537 for the Royal Palace at Whitehall. But before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more great wrench. At midnight of July 12th, 1536, Erasmus died in the home that had been his own, except for the Freiburg interval, ever since John Froben's death in 1526; a death that had probably had much to do with Holbein's first departure from ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... know the aristocracy of the hamlet you must leave the friendly Green and the pleasant water of the Channel, climb the red rocks, tread the grassy road between the hemlocks and the pines, and find the farms. For, be it understood, by one's ability to wrench a living from the soil instead of the water is he known and estimated. To fish is to gamble; to plant and reap is ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... seem loosened in their sockets," he observed. "Now it seems to me, mates, if we were to file away at the upper part, just below the lowest cross bar, and could wrench out those two bars, as you are not very stout, there would be room for ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... The two knights held up their long lances to salute the King and Queen and ladies, and bowed to each other. A trumpet sounded, and the two horses rushed toward one another, the lances came against the strong armour with a crash, and the young knight felt a wrench, for his horse was thrown back on its haunches; but it recovered itself and dashed on, passing the other knight, until he wheeled it round and came to meet his opponent again. This time, just as they were going to meet, the horse of the older knight swerved, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... contracted eyebrows, as beautiful as the hills in spring, frowning eyes as clear as the streams in autumn, a face, with transparent skin, and a slim waist, was elegant and beautiful and almost the very image of Lin Tai-yue. Pao-yue could not, from the very first, make up his mind to wrench himself away. But as he stood gazing at her in a doltish mood, he realised that, although she was tracing on the ground with the gold hair-pin, she was not digging a hole to bury flowers in, but was merely delineating ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... left the bars and borers, The splitting wedges and the prying keys, Such aids as serve the soft-shod vault-explorers To crack, wrench ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... still he will not relax his hold. And so I may point out to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered all over, from the beginning of his political life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial decisions; I may cut off limb after limb of his public record, and strive to wrench him from a single dictum of the court,—yet I cannot divert him from it. He hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Kitty did not wrench herself loose at once. She wasn't quite sure that this was not a continuance of her nightmare. She knew that nightmares had a way of breaking off in the middle of things, of never arriving anywhere. The room looked natural enough and the pain in her shoulder seemed real ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... with a very strong hinge to the lid is invaluable to keep out flies, but the servants will probably wrench the lid off. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... up to date, and this morning came across in the motor to my destination. Is it not splendid? My luck has never yet failed to stand me in good stead. I won't deny, nevertheless, that it was a severe wrench parting from the old Cavalry Division after twenty months of service with it. I had formed many friendships there, among both officers and men, and it cost me many a pang to bid them good-bye. All partings from old associations are hard to bear even when ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... almost flat on the ground, hanging on to the pulley chain. The first cap was in place and, with a long wrench, Ewen was twisting it onto the thread. A new volume of gas was already rolling from the pit, while from the incline opposite the mouth of the new opening, gravel and clods of earth were shooting ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... beyond control he sent all hands on deck out of the engine room, remaining behind himself to look after the pump-engines. The passengers and crew immediately took to the boats. When he tried to get up on deck a few minutes later he found that he was cut off. He had to get a crowbar and wrench his way through an iron grating, before he could get to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... gave his heart a sharp, mysterious wrench, a longing for what he was putting away, the essence of the solemn ideals of love that run through the intricate meshes of the human soul. He knew that he loved her, that he wanted her for his very own, and his conscience told him it was not right. Of all her admirers he liked this one the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... into a hole. Perhaps with a little calmness and patience he could have released it. But in his wild hurry he tried to wrench it out. A sudden, sharp pain rewarded this insane effort. He lost his balance and went sprawling to the ground, another quick, excruciating twinge accompanying his fall, and lay there on the soggy ground like a woodchuck in ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... arrangements, as you suggested. In our conversation my wife was all that I hope you will some day know her to be; she is incapable of wanting me to do anything but what I think right; and admits the same possibility for herself: but it is much more of a wrench for her, for she has been able to practise her religion in complete good faith; which my own doubts have prevented ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... were increasingly great owing to the powerful fortifications erected by the Germans, and the presence of enemy submarines at Zeebrugge. Whilst, therefore, those risks might well be run in support of a real, strenuous, and powerful endeavour to wrench the coast-line from the enemy's grasp, the Admiralty felt that the Navy could not afford to sacrifice strength in hanging about day after day exposed to such risks, in the sole hope of rendering some slight help ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... would have been of an equal number of the scalps of his enemies. They proved that he was a brave. Every man would like to be a brave, though every man dare not. I confess I never had much ambition to wrench knockers, but that may have been because I was perfectly content with the world as it is without making it any more dangerous. I often think that people who put their heads into lions' mouths do not realise what a dangerous place the planet is ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... weapon she had used the day Randerson had taught her to shoot. It reposed on a shelf near the door that led to the porch, and was almost concealed behind a box in which were a number of miscellaneous articles, broken pipes, pieces of hardware, buckles, a file, a wrench. She examined the weapon. It was loaded, in excellent condition. She supposed it was left there for Hagar's protection. She restored it to its place and ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... he crooked an arm over the coping at a juncture when, had he not acted instantly, he must have swung back. There was a racking wrench, as though his arm were ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... finish my sentence before you make up your mind to be shocked.—When the devil goes out of a man, or a woman either, he gives a terrible wrench by way of farewell. Now, as the prophet Job teaches us, all disease ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... made a sheath for his weapon, the blackguard left it there, and thus, having trussed me as with a skewer, showed me his back and fled. The butt-end of the musket falling to the ground, gave me a terrible wrench of the head, but relieved me at the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... no hands on earth, Dare to wrench from home and hearth, Ye, whose hearts are sheltered well, By affection's holy spell; Oh, forget not those for whom Life is nought but changeless gloom! O'er whose days, so woe-begone, Hope ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... and went forward, reeling at first like a drunken man. But by the time he had reached the stairs he was master of himself again. Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord's end from the newel-post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin from the wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a moderate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... how silly he must have felt—the doctor I mean. After all the hours he spent and the things he said." She laughed with reminiscent amusement. "He threw the monkey wrench at it, too. And he thought he knew so ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... was still her ruling passion. And though strange misgivings annoyed and perplexed her, though her respect for Dennis daily increased, and at times a sudden pity and softness made her little hands hesitate before giving an additional wrench to the rack of uncertainty upon which she kept him; still, she would not for the world have abandoned her purpose, and such compunctions were as yet but the little back eddies of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... room, however, Helbeck had known the most blessed, the most intimate moments of the spiritual life. To-night he entered it with a strange sense of wrench—of mortal discouragement. Mechanically he went to his writing-table, and, sitting down before it, he took a key from his watch-chain and opened a large locked note-book ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that he must break down if he met that smile a moment longer, and, with a sudden wrench, he turned himself away; but he could not have spoken a word, if his reputation for strength had depended ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... for no more, but in his agony of spirit he gave himself a wrench sidewise, dislodging his rider, and made an ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... corner on West Ohio street, then walked hurriedly down Wells street. At a corner of the building which shadowed the river from the north he paused and listened; then with a quick wrench, he tore a door open, closed it hastily and silently, and was up the dusty stairs like a flash. At the top he waited and listened, then turning, made his way up two other flights, walked down a dark corridor, turned a key in ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... which betrays the presence in our souls of a deep-seated sin, is a divine messenger. We terribly misinterpret the true source of all that disturbs us when we attribute it only to the occasions which bring it about; for the one purpose of all our restlessness is to drive us nearer to God, and to wrench us away from our Assyria. The true issue of Ephraim's sickness would have been the penitent cry, 'Come, let us return to the Lord our God, for He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.' It is in the consciousness of loving nearness to Him that all our unrest is soothed, and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of millions of our ancestors, and from our own consciousness of Time, we have been forced to think wrongly. Not that the thing is abstruse. It is not. If we had no consciousness of Time at all, any of us could grasp it readily. But our consciousness works against us, and so we must wrench away. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... wrench Amber pulled himself together. He had been mentally a witness to the murder—had seen the Bengali, obese, monstrous, flabby, his unclean carcass a gross casing for a dark spirit of iniquity and treachery, writhing and whining in ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... tomb, took off his episcopal robes, and sat down among the monks. The legend goes on to say, that the staff remained embedded in the stone, and no hand could wrench it away, till Wulstan himself again took it up, when it yielded without effort. The King and Archbishop fell down at his feet, and entreated his ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... I felt at once that I was more than a match for him. We did not say a word. We made no noise. But, in our struggle, we got away from the wall into the middle of the gateway I dared not let go of his arms to take him by the throat. He only tried to jerk and wrench himself away. Had he succeeded, it would have been death for me. We never moved our feet from the spot, fairly in the middle of the archway but nearer to the gate than to the patio. The slaves, formed outside, guarded the bishop's coach, and I do not know that there was anybody else actually ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... resolve themselves at the point of action into such simple axioms. Dick should have a blessing and his sweetheart; he would do his best for Fairfax Preston; with his might he would keep his word. A great sigh and a wrench at his heart as if a physical growth of years were tearing away, and the decision was made. Then, in a mist of pain and effort, and a surprised new freedom from the accustomed pang of hatred, he heard the rustle and ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... a hearty wrench, turns and strides ahead of you into another room. You—and small boys in buttons, with cards and letters on platters, to whom he pays no attention—trot after him. A driving, forceful, dominating character, apparently. Looks at his watch frequently. Perpetually up and down from ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... thousand times carried despair to my heart, and made me gasp and pant for breath. Thus it was at the very opening of life, and thus it ever has been, and thus it is to-day. I have struggled, and with streaming eyes tried to wrench the chains from my bruised and torn body. My weary and long-continued struggles led to no termination. Termination! No! The lapse of time, that cures all other things, but makes my case more desperate. For there is no rest for me. Whithersoever ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... advised, and we made a simultaneous dash at the men who had possession of our guns. So unexpected was our onslaught, that we were enabled to wrench them from their hands. Before they could regain them we had sprung back into the house. Though the guns were all loaded, they fortunately did not go off in the struggle. From the easy way in which they delivered them up it was very evident they were ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... One swift bound—her hand was on the gas-pipe. All was darkness, save a dim stripe from within the open door of her mother's former dressing-room, close to where she stood. She seized the lock, drew it close, and had turned the key before the hand within had time to wrench round the inner handle. That same instant, the flash and report of a pistol made her cry ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... strewed the street thickly with sharp-pointed coil springs. One of these caught a tire, and Bobby, always on the alert for the first sign of such accidents, brought his car to a sudden stop, reached down for his tire-wrench and jumped out. Just as he stooped over to examine the tire, some instinct warned him, and he turned quickly to find three men coming upon him from the alley, the nearest one with an uplifted slung-shot. It was with just a glance from the corner of his eye as he ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... rift soared above him, stretching its tortuous ramifications, at different points, into every part of the wall that was immediately visible. The whole structure seemed, at this place, to have received a sudden and tremendous wrench. But for the support of the sounder fortifications at each side of it, it could not have sustained itself after the shock. The Pagan gazed aloft, into the fearful breaches which yawned above him, with ungovernable awe. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... sovereign. To the hilt of the sword of France the keys of St. Peter were henceforth so firmly bound that, though there have been great kings, and conquerors, and statesmen who have wielded that sword, not one to this day has been able, though many have desired, to wrench the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... and forbidding of any valley of equal size on earth, unless it be that of one of the usually frozen rivers in or near the Arctic circle. Even Mormon energy, industry, frugality and subservience to sacerdotal despotism, barely suffice to wrench a rude, coarse living from those narrow belts and patches of less niggard soil which skirt those infrequent lakes and scanty streams of the Great Basin which are susceptible of irrigation; mines alone (and they must be rich ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and almost instinctively grasped the shaft of the weapon with both hands. Had the Earl let go his end of the weapon, he would have won the battle at his leisure and most easily; as it was, he struggled violently to wrench the gisarm away from Myles. In that short, fierce struggle Myles was dragged to his knees, and then, still holding the weapon with one hand, he clutched the trappings of the Earl's horse with the other. The next ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... may learn not to be ashamed of changing our minds: but if we find ourselves in the wrong, to confess it boldly and honestly, as St. Paul did. What a fearful wrench to his mind and his heart; what a humiliation to his self-conceit, to have to change his mind once for all on all matters in heaven and earth. What must it not have cost him to throw up at once all his friends and relations; ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Dick and Albert a severe wrench to leave their beautiful valley. They had lived in it now nearly two years, and it had brought strength and abounding life to Albert, infinite variety, content, and gratitude to Dick, and what seemed a fortune—their furs—to both. It was a beautiful ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... conventionally enough with the statement that the writer was Captain Kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per cent. on net results. The actual figures had evidently not been conceded without a mental wrench, as the erasion beneath them showed, but there they stood in definite ink, and Kettle was not inclined to cavil at the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... chuckleheads always got to tell everybody something. It's a wonder they ain't sent you in to the Chink to borrow his meat auger, or out to the blacksmith shop for a left-handed monkey wrench, or something. Come on!" ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... tried to wrench himself free at the collar, at the same time raising his right knee with a forceful jerk. He wanted to drive that knee into the black ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... was soon connected to the first of the 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
... Europe. Here are, amongst others, the beautiful golden-ringed and dotterel plovers of Europe, and the American noisy plover. In the case which next claims attention (114) are the turnstones, that turn stones on the sea-shore in search of food; the oyster catchers, that wrench shell fish from their shells; and the South American gold-breasted and other trumpeters. The Cranes, of which there is an extensive collection, now claim the visitor's attention. They are from all parts of the world, and love the borders of rivers and ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... out, Blanche, and come and see your old friends.—O, I'm so glad to see you. We've been waitin and waitin for you ever so long. Come in, luncheon ain't gone down," cried out this hospitable lady, squeezing Pen's hand in both hers (she had dropped the Major's after a brief wrench of recognition), and Blanche, casting up her eyes towards the chimneys, descended from the carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing look, and gave a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tell me—who is she? You have insulted me. . . . I? . . . Not a single one can wrench herself from me, never! And you say to me such offensive words." . . . And, indeed, he looked really offended. Evidently there was nothing for which he might respect himself, except for his ability to lead women astray; it may ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... your face, didn't you? Now you go into the house by whatever back entrance there is, go to your room, wash the blood off your face, and stay there, otherwise, by God, I'll break both of your wrists as you stand here," and he gave the wrists a wrench that made the other wince, big and bulky ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... him. With a wrench that strains his heart he bursts loose from the devil's bonds that confine his limbs. The witch has vanished, and Helwyse seems to himself to fall headlong from a vast height, striking the earth at last ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... BOUQUINISTE. And if ever in all my 'human conduct' I have done a better thing to any fellow-creature than handing on to you this sweet, dignified, and wholesome book, I know I shall hear of it on the last day. To write a book like this were impossible; at least one can hand it on - with a wrench - one to another. My wife cries out and my own heart misgives me, but still here it is. I could scarcely better prove myself ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us of Fletcher at his best, in Philaster and the earlier plays. He fails here, as he always does, in the delineation of character. Nowhere is this break-down more characteristic than in Buckingham and Barnavelt. It gives the end of our play quite a wrench, and deprives Barnavelt of the sympathies which we had been forced to turn on him through his intrepid behaviour in the great trial scene. We had almost gained the conviction that his aims were really ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... but the words had scarce left her lips when they were followed by a cry of alarm. For the car had taken a sudden turn from the road and plunged into a growth of young poplars that fringed the hillside. The oldish man at the wheel gave it a violent wrench, but left his motor in gear, and the car half slid, half plowed its way into semi-vertical position among the young trees. The two occupants were thrown from their seat; the girl fell clear, but her ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the Doctors of my youth. By no sudden wrench, no violent transition, but gently, gradually, imperceptibly, the type has transformed itself into that which we behold to-day. No doubt an inward continuity has been maintained, but the visible phenomena are so radically altered as to suggest ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell |
