"Clinched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him with a screech. Pulz was small but nimble, and understood rough and tumble fighting. He met Perdosa's rush with two swift blows—a short arm jab and an upper-cut. Then they clinched, and in a moment were rolling over and over just beyond ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859) revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846 occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the nineteenth ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... He bit his lip, clinched his hand, and without another word, struck fiercely with his spurs. With a snort of pain, the horse bounded forward, and Phoebe found ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... be—" vehemently interrupted Morton, then breaking off short as though at loss for descriptive of sufficient strength. He seemed to swell with passion as he clinched his fists and fairly stood upon his toes an instant, his strong white teeth grinding together. "It would be—simply hell!" he burst in again, hoarse and quivering. "It would ruin—everything! Can't the General give the order to-night?" he asked with intense eagerness, while the young officer, ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... woman, whom the best-natured of the band were attending, I saw Carmen, held by five or six of her comrades. The wounded woman was crying out, 'A confessor, a confessor! I'm killed!' Carmen said nothing at all. She clinched her teeth and rolled her eyes like a chameleon. 'What's this?' I asked. I had hard work to find out what had happened, for all the work-girls talked at once. It appeared that the injured girl had boasted she had money enough in her pocket to buy a donkey at the Triana Market. 'Why,' ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the weight of these thoughts upon her, crowned and clinched (so to say) by finding that the priest was even in the same cell as that in which she had visited the traitor, that there was no room any more for bitterness. Even as she waited, with Mr. Biddell behind her, as the gaoler fumbled ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... silver, or gold wire. A peasant who has brought in a bullock to sell is offered 90 copper "uten" (as the rings are called) for it; but he loudly protests that this is robbery, and after a long argument he screws the merchant up to 111 "uten," with 8 more as a luck-penny, and the bargain is clinched. Even then the rings have still to be weighed that he may be sure he is not being cheated. So a big pair of balances is brought out; the "uten" are heaped into one scale, and in the other are piled weights in the shape of bulls' heads. Finally, he is satisfied, and picks up his bag of rings; but ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... roughly on the side of the head. Half in anger, half in play the anthropoid turned upon him, his fangs bared and glistening. Long, hairy arms reached out to seize him, and, as they had done a thousand times before, the two clinched in mimic battle, rolling upon the sward, striking, growling and biting, though never closing their teeth in more than a rough pinch. It was wondrous practice for them both. The boy brought into play ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was over they were clinched in a grasp which meant gigantic strength on one side, and a good deal of practical bruising science on the other. But before there was an opportunity of testing the quality of either the dominie was between the men. He threw them apart like children, and held each of ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... startled me. I turned, And there against the wall, with ghastly face, And eyeballs starting in a frenzied glare, As in a fit, lay Judas; his weak arms Hung lifeless down, his mouth half open twitched, His hands were clutched and clinched into his robes, And now and then his breast heaved with a gasp. Frightened I dashed some water in his face, Spoke to him, lifted him, and rubbed his hands. At last the sense came back into his eyes, Then with a sudden spasm fled again, And to the ground ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story
... another, and it was free. Then "chop, chop, chop," and that long, serpentine neck was severed; the body, waving its great scaly legs and lashing its alligator tail, went swimming downward, but the huge head, blinking its bleary, red eyes and streaming with blood, was clinched on his arm. The Indian made for the bank hauling the rope that held the living body, and fastened it to a tree, then drew his knife to cut the jaw muscles of the head that ground its beak into his ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... seemed to desire peace for me; for himself a heart patient to suffer; a craving for sympathy, yet a perpetual self denial. It was only when he was absent from me that his passion subdued him,—that he clinched his hands—knit his brows—and with haggard looks called for death to his despair, raving wildly, untill exhausted he sank down nor was revived ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... denoting great agony, the drapery and bed-covering thrown off, and his whole body in a frightful condition of nervous contraction. From his open mouth escaped inarticulate sounds, his breathing appeared greatly oppressed, and one of his hands, tightly clinched, lay on the pit of his stomach. I was terrified at the sight, and called him. He did not reply; again, once, twice even, still no reply. At last I concluded to shake him gently; and at this the Emperor awoke with a loud cry, saying, "What ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... note them at the time shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands several times, finally closed and clinched them—a sure sign of energetic nervous action, and in that particular instance a sign of deception, because there was no energy in his remark and no reason for energy. I am not superstitious, but I believe in palmistry to a certain extent. Even more ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... hand to each of us, like a miser paying a debt, the dear delicious paper, the evidence of our liberty! on which was written, "by order of the transport board." This was enough, we devoured it with our eyes, clinched it fast in our fists, laughed, capered, jumped, screamed, and kicked up the dirt like so many mad men; and away we started for Princetown, looking back as we ran, every minute, to see if our ceroebrus, with his bloody jaws, was ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... taught her a sharper lesson. The scene she had witnessed coming down was now augmented and at its height. Such a crush of finery and folly she had never seen. It clinched her convictions concerning her state. She had not lived, could not lay claim to having lived, until something of this had come into her own life. Women were spending money like water; she could see that in every elegant shop she passed. Flowers, candy, jewelry, seemed the principal ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... author of one of the cases we shall afterwards relate suggests, it should be proposed as a preventive that the shoe-nails of animals regularly engaged in work on the metals should not be clinched in the regulation manner, but should have their points merely screwed off, and the nails afterwards ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... of the Russian's waving arms and placed his back to the moonlight. Meeting the fisherman's blind rush with a quick blow to his heavy jaw, he sidestepped and struck again. Boris blocked the fist with a sweep of his long arm and clinched. For an instant the bodies of the two men rocked in the gripping power of the embrace. Then they fell ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... his appeal, and Brilliana heard him to the end in silence, with her clinched hands pressed against her bosom. Then she turned fiercely upon him and her voice ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... drive past, his huge form looming up beside the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy had some slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard the hoarse roar of the doctor's voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on, and a few minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as the lamp was lit in one ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrelful. This is the "sulphur showers" we bear of. Even in Calidas' drama ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... sweet face That bent above me in my hiding-place That day amid the grasses there beside Her pleasant home!—"Her pleasant home!" I sighed, Remembering;—then shut my teeth and feigned The harsh voice calling me,—then clinched my nails So deeply in my palms, the sharp wounds pained, And tossed my face toward heaven, as one who pales In splendid martyrdom, with soul serene, As near to God as high the guillotine. And I had envied her? Not that—O no! But I had longed for some sweet haven so!— Wherein the tempest-beaten ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the candle to her hand, and she stood there holding it in a serious manner, as if it lighted some ceremonial. Then it was that Choate made the speech that clinched his hold ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... white, hands clinched so hard that the gems cut into her flesh, eyes fixed on the girl ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... of the deputies clinched the matter. French drew his revolver and advanced into the ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rich enough to fit out vessels worth four hundred thousand livres; rich enough to have sacks of diamonds and emeralds and fine pearls!" cried the Gascon, whose eyes sparkled and nostrils dilated, while his hands clinched. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the south, why should we not surprise the French crew, and carry off the 'Polly'? Once at sea, there is nothing that could touch her!" Paul's eyes glistened as he spoke, and the muscles stood out on his brawny arm as he clinched his fist, and added, "If I could only once lay hold of Dupuis's throat, and save the 'Polly,' ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... was! Better wine had been served before dessert, and they now shouted and sang so loudly and so out of tune that the air played by the strolling musicians could scarcely be distinguished. Many a table, too, groaned under blows from the clinched fist of some excited reveller. Every one seemed animated by a single desire-to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said Sam, as he also now climbed down from his seat, seeing that the matter was clinched and that he had gained a family for his county—"Sam Poston. I run the livery barn. I sure hope you'll stop in here, for you won't find no better country. Do you allow you'll move up to Ellisville ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... with a smile. "In my early days, when every dollar was of consequence, I often had a bad time after I'd made a risky deal. Used to think I'd been a fool, and I'd be glad to pay a smart fine if the other party would let me out. Yet if he'd made the proposition, I wouldn't have clinched ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... his large red fingers the tears trickled slowly, and fell upon the ground. For a moment he wept, and then wiping his eyes, said, "But wasn't it lucky that long-legged, salmon-colored Joe got here as he did! Another minute and you'd have been clinched, but now the tempest has blowed over, and for the rest of your life you'll ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... he done, teacher. He took the best, and when he got tired on't, he threw it away,"—the brawny hand at George Olver's side was clinched so as to appear almost colorless, yet there was little discomposure in his voice—"but cursin' him ain't a goin' to help us now. When a thing that's allays been precious to us has once fell, we can't ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... meaningless lie which took away more than life itself from one who had loved her truly in his way: this was a hypothesis so wild and weak that it collapsed at the first opportunity for calm, just examination. The sight of her again, the other night, had merely clinched the matter; driven by a glance the last nail in the coffin of Dalhousie's hope; and by the same stroke, swept away the last lingering trace of diabolical suspicion. But that Miss Heth had treated Dal pretty badly before the Beach ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... somewhat derogatory to the dignity of the officers, the volume was seized by the master-at-arms, armed with a warrant from the Captain. A few days after, a large nail was driven straight through the two covers, and clinched on the other side, and, thus everlastingly sealed, the book was committed to the deep. The ground taken by the authorities on this occasion was, perhaps, that the book was obnoxious to a certain clause in the Articles of War, forbidding any person in the Navy to bring any other person in the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... say not," replied Bobolink, scornfully. "It'd be a wonder if one out of four had shoes that'd hold on without a lot of rope. You clinched that idea the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... clinched and attempted to throw him, and he was twisting and writhing out of the advantage of the other's hold. They reeled about the room, locked in each other's arms, and came down with a crash across the splintered wreckage of a wicker chair. Joe was underneath, with arms spread out and held ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Bessie Hatch looked at that moment, with her black eyes flashing, her hands clinched, and her cheeks like two flaming poppies! Half irritated, half amused, Annie, the Irish nurse, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... else could understand but of which the Nabob himself well appreciated the insult; for, as he raised his head again, his tanned face was of the colour of baked earthenware as it leaves the furnace. He stood for an instant without moving, his huge fists clinched, his mouth swollen with anger. Jenkins came up and rejoined him, and de Gery, who had followed the whole scene from a distance, saw them talking together ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... leaped upon the German from behind. His right fist struck the man a stunning blow on the back of the neck. The German wheeled and clinched with his opponent, and for a moment they stood, arms locked about each other, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... head. Then remembering, in the midst of her anguish, some words she had been reading that morning, she repeated them with a bitter emphasis,—"What can wringing of the hands do, that which is ordained to alter?" As she did so she tore asunder her clasped hands, to drop them clinched by her side,—the gesture of despair substituted for ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... directed towards the republic of Venice, towards Bavaria, towards Silesia, or towards Lorraine; but we may rely upon it that Europe will be all on fire the moment he is master." A second interview, at Neustadt in 1770, clinched the relations already contracted at Neisse. Common danger brought together old enemies. "I am not going to have the Russians for neighbors," the Empress Maria Theresa was always repeating. The devastating flood had to be directed, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... days, when different clans were driven farther into the hills, they each clinched as much land as they could. In course of time, by petty quarrels, civil wars, and common feuds, the Nou-su were gradually thinned out. The Miao-tsi—the men of the hills and the serfs of the landlords, who four thousand ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... though I did not think he would be able to help me much; and so as to lose no time we began at once to think the matter out, and uncle said yes to all I proposed to do, which was his idea of helping me; for he said I drove in the nails and he clinched them. ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... he cried suddenly, and started at the sound of his voice in the stillness. The rain dripped on. A minute longer he lay without moving, his hands clinched. Then he sprang to his feet and gave ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and uncleanness," with what follows. "Neither would I read any further, neither was there any cause why I should." Saint Augustine does not, perhaps, mean us to understand (as his translator does), that he was "miraculously called." He knew what was right perfectly well before; the text only clinched a resolve which he has found it very hard to make. Perhaps there was a trifle of superstition in the matter. We never know how superstitious we are. At all events, henceforth "I neither desired a wife, nor had I any ambitious care of any worldly thing." ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... colonel looked with bewildered eyes on the little Blue- grass girl amazed, indignant, white with horror; Mavis shrinking away from her as though she were the one who had been threatened with a blow; the stranger lad with a bitten thumb clinched in the hollow of one hand, his face already reddening with contrition and shame; and savage little Jason biting a bloody lip and with the lust of battle still shaking him ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... for it was Frew who had clinched my views on the defencelessness of our West. "He spoke God's truth," I said, "but I cannot get a Virginian ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... a sight which rose before his eyes many times afterward and would not be blotted from his memory. It all came back to him now once more,—the agonized, horribly glaring eyes, the clinched hands and quivering throat, and the convulsive sobbing and gasping which would not cease tearing the wasted frame until death should bring the only possible help. It made him sick at heart to think that the gentle unselfish girl who was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... her back pressed against the roof arch and her hands clinched in her lap—she sat rigid, looking down. She seemed gripped in a pain that stiffened her body and made her face pinched and haggard. Under the light cotton covering her breast rose and fell. She was an embodiment of ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... managed to deceive the next one. Then came a mighty heave and when Juggins in far right was seen running like mad it looked as if Allandale had clinched another brace of runs then and there. But Horatio proved himself to be a hero, for he gobbled that drive, and the side was extinguished with ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... the author of an interesting article in our last number, entitled, 'TOUCHING THE SOUL.' The writer assumes that matter and spirit are so utterly opposite in their respective natures that they cannot be made to act together in any way. For instance, he says: 'Here again the argument is clinched by the mere distinction between matter and spirit, the one being the very antipodes of, and incapable of acting upon the other.' And again: 'To sum up the whole argument in a single sentence, the physical senses are dependent for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... face and form the expression of the hunter close upon his game. The line once interposed, he rode in the twilight among the disordered groups above mentioned, and the sight of him aroused a tumult. Fierce cries resounded on all sides, and, with hands clinched violently and raised aloft, the men called on him to lead them against the enemy. 'It's General Lee!' 'Uncle Robert!' 'Where's the man who won't follow Uncle Robert?' I heard on all sides—the swarthy faces full of dirt and courage, lit up every instant by the glare ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... about to speak when there burst in upon them the roaring scream of the siren. The note now was of deeper rage, and came in greater volume. Between his clinched teeth the naked one cursed fiercely, and then, as though to avoid further questions, burst into a fit of coughing. Trembling and shaking, he drew the canvas cloak closer to him. But at no time did his anxious, prying eyes leave ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... asked, "Why is man born with hands clinched, but has his hands wide open in death?" And the answer is: "On entering the world, man desires to grasp everything; but when leaving it ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... as he kicked and banged the door, shouted and swore, tearing about his small prison like a madman, and breathing threats of vengeance against his jailer, who stood pale but undaunted in front of the door, with a cocked revolver clinched tightly in both hands, waiting anxiously for the return of Gloriana with help from town, and thanking her lucky stars that neither of the small windows was on the ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Church, was in the congregation, and the next day I called at the United States Hotel to pay my respects to him. He said to me, "My young friend I was very much interested in that story last evening; it clinched the sermon. Our ministers in Cincinnati used to introduce illustrative anecdotes, but it seems to have gone out of fashion and I am sorry for it." I replied to him, "Well Judge, I am glad to have the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of telling ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... son's powers in controversy to be capital, Denis, who knew the mollia tempora fandi, applied to him for a hat. Whenever he drew a heretic, as a person who will be found hereafter without the wedding garment, and clinched the argument with half a dozen quotations from syntax or Greek grammar, he uniformly came down upon the father for a coat, the cloth of which was finer in proportion to the web of logic he wove during the disputation. Whenever he seated himself in the chair of rhetoric, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... he clinched his teeth and gathered the reins more firmly.—"Now for it, you young villain!" and raising his whip, he brought it down with a heavy slash on ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... can't see; for I'm as good as any body, and I've been particular about being civil to all of them. Still they don't like me, and they see that Minnie does, and they're trying to break up the engagement. But by the living jingo!" and the Baron clinched a good-sized and very sinewy fist, which he brought down hard on the table—"by the living jingo, they'll find they can't come it over ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... somewhere, they were forever meeting. It was not long before Case saw his world swept from before his eyes. He did his best with her, with her mother and friends, but she told him flatly that she loved Lieutenant Willett and would be no man's wife but his. That clinched Case's downfall—and hers, but not until after Case saw Willett at Camp Almy, and her mother's letters, and hers, began again to come, did he learn the worst. Then came Willett's devotions to Archer's gentle little daughter, and the rage within his ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... quite certain who struck first, the trial by combat suddenly commenced. There are very few rules attached to it in that country, where men do not fight by formula but with the one purpose of deciding the matter in the quickest way possible; and in another moment the two had clinched. They fell against the tree stump and reeled clear again, swaying, gasping, and striking when they could. It is probable that the Canadian was the stronger man, but, as it happened, his antagonist had been born ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... other time Lindsay would have reflected how characteristic was the gentle neatness of that, and might have resented with amusement the pulpit tone of the little epigram. But this moment found him only aware of the consent in it. His hand on Arnold's elbow clinched the agreement; he half pushed the priest into the room, where they dropped into seats. Stephen's hand went to his breast instinctively—for the words in the air were holy by association—and stopped there, since even the breadth of his sympathies did not ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy stood erect and graceful, throwing a rifle in the air and dancing to the song of his comrades. Dip, swish, bang! On they came with an increasing roar, the white ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the telephone and went to his bedroom to change his clothes, but not to "dress," he thanked God for having clinched matters so swiftly. Lady Sellingworth had certainly meant to let him down. Some instinct had told him what to say to her to make her change her mind. At least, he supposed so. For she had abruptly changed her mind after hearing of Miss Van Tuyn's invitation. But why had she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... in strutting, and wheeling round and round, and putting themselves in the most threatening attitudes, and uttering the most insulting expressions, the two koris became sufficiently provoked to begin the battle. They "clinched" in gallant style, using all three weapons,—wings, beak, and feet. Now they struck each other with their wings, now pecked with their bills; and at intervals, when a good opportunity offered, gave each other a smart kick—which, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... means so insistent upon publishing. Upon the second, it may be observed that when a philosopher is at the same time a poet, and therefore his own rhapsodist, it is probable that he will charm the understanding of many, but certain that he will bewitch his own. The certainty is clinched when the rhapsodist is without the humorous sense. It was the possession of that which enabled Charles Lamb, who loved him, to see him "Archangel, a little damaged," and even in one dreadful moment of his life to reprove ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the cities, and all the army and navy of the United States can not keep three million hungry people quiet. What then? Will this war between capital and labor be settled by human wisdom? Never. The brow of the one becomes more rigid, the fist of the other more clinched. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... mankind to their true relations with God. I will be their Arbiter in Religion. Then surely"—he lifted his face appealingly as to a person enthroned amidst the stars—"surely thou wilt release me from this too long life.... If I fail"—he clinched his hands—"if I fail, they may exile me, they may imprison me, they may stretch me on the rack, but they ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... figure under the moon's rays was terrible. I felt my tongue freezing, my teeth clinched. I was about to cry out in terror when, by some incomprehensible mysterious attraction, my glance fell below, and I distinguished, confusedly, the old woman crouched at her window in the midst ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... look at the main hatch. Feeling about round it, we found the points of the staple on which the hatchway bar worked above; they were not fastened with nuts as they would have been with us, but were simply turned over and clinched. We had no means of straightening them out, but we could cut through the woodwork round them. Setting to work at that, we took it by turns till we could see the light through the wood; then we left it to finish after dark. All this time we knew we were under ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed to make some experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of the coil, and it clinched my hand on them so that I couldn't let go. The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to back off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of these instruments and clasps a hole may be drilled through the horn across the fissure and the crack closed with a thin nail made of tough iron, neatly clinched at both ends. A plate of steel or brass is sometimes fitted to the parts and fastened on with short screws; while this appliance may prevent much gaping of the fissure, it does not entirely arrest motion of the edges, for the reason that the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... extremely difficult to infuse an air of quiet correctitude into her return through the window, and when she was safely inside she waved clinched fists and executed ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... And she clinched her teeth firmly together, even though she shuddered at her memories; and she renewed her oath to the demon, who, thereupon, kept her company the rest of the journey, till she reached the ancient and obscure farmstead in ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... she shall not have stays to pinch so fair a mould; she shall not have stays, nay, nay, sweet Kate." 'Twas then Mistress Penwick flew into a passion. She clinched her fists and her face grew scarlet; she shook her head and threw glances like sword-thrusts at Cedric, and said not a word but stamped her foot. As she did so, she saw that in Cedric's eyes that made her calm her passion on a sudden. 'Twas steel against steel. It was Janet's voice that drew ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... and I told mine, and Rina and Plaskett. And Natalie had left what they call a disposition behind her. Everything was all straight, but Garth clinched the matter by calling Mabyn to testify. He was carried in on a stretcher. And blamed if he didn't tell the truth! He'd had a close call, you see, and had what Garth called a change of heart. It was Rina did it; day and night ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... horror and admiration and pity, and begged to be allowed to see and bind up the mutilated finger. But he refused with superior indifference, clinched his bleeding finger in his fist and said it was n't anything and did n't hurt, anyway. Madge's mother called her away, and straightway there appeared at my door a boy with pale face, quivering lips, and tear-filled eyes, holding up a bloody hand. I bound up the wound, which was a clean ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... blow on the chest and struck out in return, hitting the footpad in the chin. Then the two clinched, and both rolled ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... old General. He claimed that my hogs had been gettin' into his field, and I told him that I didn't feel disposed to keep my hogs up when everybody else's were runnin' at large, and then he called me a scoundrel and we clinched. I took him so quick that he wasn't prepared for me, and I give a sort of a hem stich and down he went, right in the middle of the road. And there I was right on top of him. He didn't say a word, while I was wallowin' him, but when I let him up, he ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... ghostly warnings, among Fijians and Australian blacks. Lord Lyttelton's uneasiness and apprehension are conspicuous in all versions; his dreams had long been troubled, his health had caused him anxiety, the 'warning' (whatever it may have been) clinched the matter, and he ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... They clinched and pummeled when they could and where they could. The dog came up, circled the gyrating forms twice, then sat down upon his haunches at a safe distance, tilted his head sidewise and lifted his ears interestedly. He was a wise little dog; the other dog was also ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... executive acts, based upon considerations addressed to me alone and for which I am wholly responsible, I have had no invitation from the Senate to state the position which I have felt constrained to assume." Further on, he clinched this admission of full responsibility by declaring that "the letter of the Attorney-General in response to the resolution of the Senate... was written at my suggestion ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... toward the swaying figures. It was not an easy matter to stop the battle. Forrester and Harden were clinched but Enoch and Agnew were larger than either of the combatants and at a word from Enoch, Jonas seized Forrester, with Agnew. After a scuffle, Harden stood silent and scowling beside Enoch, while Forrester ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... was boiling hot; and thus Og was saved while all the other giants perished. According to another story, Og climbed on the roof of the ark, and when Noah tried to dislodge him, he swore that he would become the patriarch's slave. Noah at once clinched the bargain, and food was passed through a hole ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... "appropriately framed in silver dimes," as the "Clarion" put it. He was followed by Eddie Perkins, proprietor of a dubious resort on Mail Street. By this time coat-room franchises had suffered a severe depreciation. They dropped almost to zero when the newspaper, having clinched the lesson home with its "Photo-graft Gallery of Leading Dime-Hunters," exhorted its readers: "If you think you need your change as much as these men do, watch for the coupon in to-morrow's 'Clarion,' and Stick it in Your Hat." The coupon was ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it. Had it been a hint as to that which had finally clinched whatever it was that Kennedy had whispered to the Silent Boss that morning when we had ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... be surmised why the licentious King "should become gossip in so mean a house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, is clinched into the positive assertion of Hume as to a popular belief for which there is not the slightest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... said in passing that this was a distinctly shrewd guess, and the Cap'n promptly found something on the seas that clinched his belief. Bobbing toward Cod Lead came an overloaded dingy. There were six men in it, and they were making what shift they could to guide it into the cove between the outer rocks. They came riding through safely on a roller, splattered across the cove with wildly waving ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... come to meet me?" asked the queen, as she reached the foot of the last flight of porphyry steps that led into the ante-chamber to the banqueting-hall, and, looking round, with an ominous glance, at the chamberlains who had accompanied her, she clinched her small fist. "I arrive ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... They clinched; and the moment Roger felt those vast soft hands tightening upon him the shock brought back to him a sort of reason. Garman was the stronger. His right hand caught Roger's clenched fist within an ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... knotted between his eyebrows and at the corners of his eyes. His sou'wester still covered his head. At his mouth was a down-drawing, as of disgust before some offensive sight or smell, and the hand which had held the fish was clinched. He swallowed and found speech hard. Then Joan ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Joe, "but he only wounded him. After a while he got up and clinched me by the throat, and we had it over and over on the snow, till we both got so exhausted we couldn't do any thing. When we rested, we went at it again, and it hasn't been five minutes since I stuck my knife in his breast. When he fell, I stuck him four or ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... "Mother!" cried she, and clinched her hands above the sharp pain that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... gros chien!" cried Francois, as with flashing eyes and clinched fists he strode up to his ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... roll the long-submerged courtesy prefix as a sweet morsel under his tongue. With a day to spare he might have clinched the clerk's respect by taking a suite; the more luxurious, the better. But St. Louis, with at least two men in it who would sweep the corners in their search for him, was only a place to put behind him. So he said: "Neither; if I have time to get my supper and catch a train. Have ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... within, Silver leading the way. Old Fog's eyes gleamed and his hands were clinched. The younger man ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sacrificed on the altar of the American girl, an altar at which those other poor fellows had poured out some of the bluest blood in Germany and he had himself taken oath he would never seriously worship? He decided that he wasn't in real danger, that he had rather clinched his precautions. It was true that a young person who had succeeded so well for herself might be a great help to her husband; but this diplomatic aspirant preferred on the whole that his success should be his own: it wouldn't please him to have the air ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... Then they clinched, and, although his antagonist was the heavier, Merton thinks he could have whipped him had not the two younger marauders attacked him, tooth and nail, like cats. Finding himself getting the worst of it, he instinctively sent out a cry for ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... shared that opinion. The boyish and rather theatrical movement with which he turned his back upon me, showed at once that he had been coached in the suspicions that were now so finally clinched. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... not previously explained to Alf that to fling one's glove in a foeman's face was one proper form of deadly insult preceding mortal combat, for, ignoring lances, steeds and all about them, the assailed personage immediately "clinched," and the boys rolled over in a struggle, earnest, certainly, but altogether commonplace. It was with the greatest difficulty, while defending himself, that Grant was enabled to explain that his act was one rendered necessary by the laws of chivalry ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... his clinched fist with a threatening air and then, in calmer tones, he added: "But we must go to the station-house where the accomplice was removed. I wish to question ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... he had declared when that came out, "I might as well give in gracefully first as last." And he sat down at once and wrote a very handsome note to the little old earl, and that clinched ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... to plan for a municipally owned central distributing system," he was explaining to me the next morning; "these are too likely to get mixed up in politics. So last night we just about clinched our arrangement for having our city distributing system owned by the producers themselves. In the past we have had eight distributors with fifteen wagons handling the milk supplied from fifty dairy ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... to lift her eyes to the inquisitor, but her irrepressible twitter came again and she had to turn away to the big chimney. He clinched his teeth. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... lit on a heap of dusty volumes in one corner, and in reply to a question, which I put the next instant in a trembling voice, I was informed that I might have the whole pile for fifty cents, provided I'd clear them out on the spot. The bargain was no sooner clinched than I gathered the books in my arms and staggered under their weight in the direction of Mrs. Chitling's. Even for a grown man they would have made a big armful, and when at last I toiled up to my attic, and dropped on my ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... For this, when Oscar stretched his nether garment tight, in the act of washing his face, I smote him upon the fulness thereof with a long plug of chewing tobacco. "Aow!" he yelled, recurving like a bow and putting his hands to his wound. Promptly we clinched and fell upon old Charley. To the floor the three went, amid a shower of sparks from the cob pipe. "You dam pesky kids!" said the angry voice of Charles (the timbre of that voice, after travelling through four inches of nose, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... been, made some objection to the commandeering of his old-fashioned farm pump. He was at first supported in this by the officer in charge of the men billeted in the barn and sheds, but the Sapper explained the urgency of his need and cunningly clinched the argument by reminding the Infantry officer that probably he and his men would soon be installed in the trenches from which the mine ran, and that he—the Sapper—although he was not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched till death did them part—which, I'm very sorry to have to tell you, death wasn't decent enough to do on the stage. If the play could only have ended with everybody's funeral I should have called it a real ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... dreadful night. She was a little light-headed at times and with her head against the horse's neck, she murmured John DeWitt's name, or sitting erect she called to him wildly. At such times Kut-le's fingers tightened and he clinched his teeth, but he did not go to her. When, however, the frail figure drooped silently and inertly against the waist strap he seemed to know even in the darkness. Then and then only he lifted her down, the squaws massaged her ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... and then, as the deck heaved up to give added impetus to his lunge, he rushed. The angle of the deck kept the Irishman from taking advantage of his agility. He could not escape. One pile-driver hand cracked against his forehead—another thudded on his ribs. He leaped through a shower of blows and clinched. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... teeth clinched and his drooping muscles compelled by will; and as he rode and she walked to lend him support, leading her horse by a backward-stretched left hand, she counted off the distance to him continually—the increasing ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... He was sure he had seen it the night before lying on the bed with the others. Was it still there, or had it been stowed away in drawer or closet, irrespective of its danger from moths, for a reason he would give his eyeteeth to know but dared not inquire into till he had clinched his friendship with this old woman so thoroughly that he could ask her anything—which certainly was not the ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... will have to begin low down so as to get a grasp upon the details and technical points of the financial side of the business; but I'm willing to learn. Here comes the governor now; I guess he has it clinched." ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... I've got to find Ranscomb, and get back that first two hundred thousand I gave him. I can't stand this—detectives waiting for us wherever we stop, and you babbling rot—rot—" Words failed him; he clinched his hands and glared. ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... red poppies which were growing in the stubble and as still. They were in various positions. One lay on his back, with one knee raised like a man day-dreaming and looking up at the sky. Another was stretched stiff, with both hands clinched over his chest. One lay in the ditch close beside us, his head jammed into the muddy bank just as he had dived there in falling; another gripped a cup in one hand and a spoon in the other, as if, perhaps, he might have tried to feed himself in the long hours after the battle rolled ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... t' fightin'?' said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided. The three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney's last argument clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible, and to be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would eventually become ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling |
