"Clutch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment and put his hand to his head. The wold of vivid green grew gray, and life rceded from him into illimitable distance. He had one dim fading glimpse of a shaggy-bearded face looking down at him, and felt the clutch of an iron-hard strong arm under him, and then he lost hold even on ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... a dagger, which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? come, let me clutch thee:— I have thee not; and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight, or art thou but A dagger of the mind—a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... I felt as if I was beginning to fly right off over the blue sea, and away into the fleecy clouds, and as I made an effort to get rid of the clutch upon my shoulder, he said, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... something in the air—the balm of advancing spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun; or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the landscape—apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But however bewildered Florian's mentality ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... nature punishes any neglect of prudence. If you think the senses final, obey their law. If you believe in the soul, do not clutch at sensual sweetness before it is ripe on the slow tree of cause and effect. It is vinegar to the eyes to deal with men of loose and imperfect perception. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said,[669]—"If the child says ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bob-sleigh worked admirably, and if it happened to catch, there was always the banister to clutch at. Its popularity eclipsed even that of the soap-slide and the roller skates. The fun waxed fast and furious, not to say noisy. Bumpings and bursts of laughter began to echo downstairs on to the lower stories. Miss Hampson, coming to unlock the jam-cupboard ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... chair before the little window, automatically scanned the faces of those passing through the barrier, ready to release the clutch with a "Good evening" if the person were known to her, or to say in a dull monotone, "Six-pence, please," to a stranger. Every now and then she glanced at the darkening sky towards the North where clouds were gathering up, and after a while, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... world invisible, we view thee: O world intangible, we touch thee: O world unknowable, we know thee: Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... triumphant and grim. Nick fairly writhed in that iron clutch, and his face had assumed a sickly sallow color; while his eyes reminded Hugh of those of a hunted wild animal at bay, fear and defiance ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... Trojans; he, with brandish'd spear aloft, Sprang forth, and through the shoulder, from above, Deiopites wounded: Thoon next He slew, and Ennomus; then with his spear Chersidamas, in act to quit his car, Thrust through the loins below his bossy shield: Prone in the dust, he clutch'd the blood-stain'd soil. From these he turn'd; and wounded with his spear Charops, the high-born Socus' brother, son Of Hippasus; then forward sprang, to aid His brother, godlike Socus; close he stood Before Ulysses, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... man, but how did any man maintain a foothold there? He descended the rock, crying all the time: "Courage! Courage!" Suddenly his hands ceased to clutch the rocks, and he dropped. The water rose to his knees, but tempestuous as was the rush, he ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... for the officers to cry out, "Hold on for your lives." We struggled to windward, grasping whatever we could clutch. More and more the ship heeled over; then there came another loud report, the mainmast went by the board, the fore-topmast fell over the starboard bow, and the next instant the mizzenmast was carried away half up from the deck, while the sound of repeated blows which ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... political organization, the college and the legislature, however remote they may seem from the random impulses to cry and clutch at random objects with which a baby comes into the world, must start from just such materials as these. The same impulse which prompts a five-year-old to put blocks into a symmetrical arrangement is the stuff out of which architects ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ultimate contradiction which we name dogmatic religions. To make such a symbol once more fluid and flexible, to restore it to its place in the organic life of the soul, it is necessary to extricate it from the clutch of any dogmatic religion. I do not say that it is necessary to extricate it from religion, or even from every aspect of dogma; for it is of the very essence of such symbol to be a stimulus to the religious ecstasy and there ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... waters, as the squat craft heaves and rolls with rhythmic regularity. From somewhere below comes the monotonous throb of the protesting engines. A red light gleams suddenly on our starboard, and I catch my breath. AEons pass, it seems, before a panther-like clutch at the wheel carries us aside in time to let the offender plunge drunkenly past. We were near enough to throw a biscuit on her deck. A swift exchange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... sank and grew heavy, Doris was moved with an almost terrible understanding of the girl across the room. She wanted to push her on her way instead of holding her back, and at the same time she was striving to clutch her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... They bent eagerly over the board, each watching with feverish anxiety his companion's movements, each casting, now and again, a gloating eye upon the heap of gold and greenbacks that lay between them, and at times half stretching out his hand to clutch it. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... strapped steamer rug, my large yellow valise, and sundry smaller articles, were gone, I knew not whither. I did but know they had vanished utterly; wherefore I adhered with the clutch of desperation to my umbrella and my small black portmanteau. Even my collection of assorted souvenir postcards of European views, whereof I had contemplated making an albumed gift to my Great-Aunt Paulina, on my return to my beloved ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such: Her glance, how wildly beautiful! how much Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch! Who round the North for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear? how languid, wan, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... kind that I have been describing. If once we feel ourselves to be struggling in the black flood of that awful river, we shall want a firmer hold upon the bank than is given to us by some rootless tree or other. We must clutch something that will stand a pull, if we are to be drawn from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heroism superior in kind or degree to that which this illustrious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to snatch some human victim from the clutch of the destroyer thirsting for ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... opposing foe In deadly fight—yet brings to light no friend: In travail sore hope comes not to the birth— Fear hydra-headed terror still begets;— All fancies grim I see, and straight embrace, At hope I clutch, who still eludes my grasp; Her rainbow hues adored are but a frame That serve by contrast to make fear more dark. Severus haunts me—oh, I know his love, Yet hopeless love must mate with jealousy,— While Polyeucte, who has won what he has lost, Can meet no rival with an equal eye. The fruit of ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... know not where! Lured by voices that cry and cry, Drawn by fingers that clutch my hair, Called to the mountains bleak and high, Led to the mesas hot and bare. O God! How my heart's blood wakes and thrills To the cry of the wind, the lure of the hills. I'll follow you, follow you far; Ye voices of winds, and rain and sky, To the peaks ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... shrewd calculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, then why do they manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable to answer this question. But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in a lynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and ease the throttle of the noose about his neck so that ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... shall we run away from it? Such a gift of fortune it were a shame to take in an unworthy spirit. For what were madder than to spurn wealth that is set openly before us, and to desire it when it is shut up and kept from us? Shall we squeamishly yield what is set under our eyes, and clutch at it when it vanishes? Shall we seek distant and foreign treasure, refraining from what is made public property? If we disown what is ours, when shall we despoil the goods of others? No anger of heaven can I experience which can force me to unload of its lawful burden the lap ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... I confess that through love men win to sick disgust and self-despising, and for that reason I will not love any more. Now breathlessly the tall lads run to clutch at stars, above the brink of a drab quagmire, and presently time trips them—Oh, Sesphra, wicked Sesphra of the Dreams, you have laid upon me a magic so strong that, horrified, I hear the truth come babbling from ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... said, "through and through you are evil, I think, and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen— Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... fly upon the ear is unnoticed. The auditory nerve is anesthetic. There is a swaying of the whole body and an apparent failure of co-ordination, probably the effect of some disturbance in the semi-circular canals of the ear. The hands tremble and then clutch wildly. The head is inclined forward as if to approach some object on a level with the shoulder. The mouth stands partly open, and the lips are puckered and damp. Of a sudden there is a sound as ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... no reply, standing riveted to the floor in an attitude of unconsciousness, her arms folded tightly across her bosom, her throat constricted as by the clutch of a mailed hand, gazing on the horrible spectacle. Then all at once she perceived that Charlot was there, grasping her skirts with his little hands; he must have awaked and managed to open the intervening doors, and no one had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and woe, Like a thick midnight fog, moved there so slow, He did nor stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, scowl Upon his soul, And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout. Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found, Worked under ground, Where he did clutch his prey. But one did see That policy. Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rained about him blood and tears; but ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a whip. The stranger girl, too, had not blabbed but had even seemed to smile her forgiveness when Mavis turned, with no good-by, to follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little mountaineers had crossed the threshold of a new world that day. Together they were going back into their own, but the clutch of the new was tight on both, and while neither could have explained, there was the same thought in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in each heart, and both were in the throes of the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... patience just a moment longer, Then with safety clutch them fast— Thus the spirit of delay beguiles us, Till the lucky ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... apple of his eye, as you may say, and not bother him and the young man around the corner there in their boss trade, eh?' What say?" He was flushed and red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out—and after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose hastily ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... left hand, I threw out my right at the little jutting point. The tips of my fingers just reached their aim, but only touched without anchoring themselves. As I fell back, my foot missed its former support, and my whole weight came heavily on the feeble left hand. The clutch was instantaneously torn apart, and I was falling through the air. All was over! The mountains sprang upwards with a bound. But before the fall had well begun, before the air had begun to whistle past me, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... steady. First over the side goes Dunningham, backward, then Mr. Pulitzer facing forward, one hand on the gang-rail, the other on Dunningham's shoulder; then an officer and one of the secretaries, close behind J. P. and ready to clutch him ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... proportions. "Here was your life," he said, "your beautiful life opening and full—full of such dear seeds of delight and wonder, calling for love, ready for love, and there came this Clutch, this Clutch that embodied all the narrow meanness of existence, and gripped and crumpled you and spoilt you.... For I tell you my dear you don't know; ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for the storm was upon them with a wild, shrieking, hissing, deafening roar that nearly took Steve off his legs, and sent the doctor staggering forward to clutch at the nearest object that would offer a hold. In an instant the deck was white with a fine, powdery dust that bit and stung and filled the hair, penetrating to the skin. Voices were inaudible, but there ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... sails; you get all of it you have room for, and a ship of the line could do no more; indeed, your very nearness to the water increases the excitement, since the water swirls and boils up, as it unites in your wake, and seems to clutch at the low stern of your sail-boat, and to menace the hand that guides the helm. Or if you beat to windward, it is as if your boat climbed a liquid hill, but did it with bounding and dancing, like a child; there is the plash of the lighter ripples against the bow, and the thud of the heavier ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thrust, he must take good heed the animal does not knock it out of his hands by a side movement of the head; (29) for if so he will follow up the impetus of that rude knock. In case of that misfortune, the huntsman must throw himself upon his face and clutch tight hold of the brushwood under him, since if the wild boar should attack him in that posture, owing to the upward curve of its tusks, it cannot get under him; (30) whereas if caught erect, he ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... in alarm at Father Cipriano. Jurissa thrust his right hand under his cloak, and seemed to clutch some weapon. Even the counsellor's dame for a moment turned her eyes from the jewels she was admiring to the anxious countenance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... disrelish for his flippant tone, by removing her hand from his arm. But at once the faint hiss of a snake as it glided into the swamp from somewhere just in front of them made her clutch his wet sleeve afresh. His hints as to the nature of the treasure had roused her inquisitiveness to a keen point. Yet, remembering what he had said about her praiseworthy dearth of feminine curiosity, she approached the subject in a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... were breathless. Then she was being led over hard snow, towards a place where men stood, where there was new-turned earth, where a coffin lay upon the ground. She suffered the sound of more words which she could not follow, then heard the dull falling of clods upon hollow wood. A hand seemed to clutch her throat, she struggled convulsively and cried aloud. But ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... anything had happened to him, when something did happen which very nearly petrified me. I felt a clutch on my shoulder. Quickly turning my head, I was horrified to see him standing on his seat and ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Ellins," I breaks in, "but you're slippin' your clutch. Tricks! Why, he ain't even wise to what you want him to do it for. All he knows is that it's crooked, and he renigs on a general proposition. And, say, when a man's as straight as that, with the workhouse starin' him in the face, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... devil, a devil personified! I saw him to-day," murmured the monk, "I reached him but a finger, and he took my whole hand! No," sighed he, "the wickedness is in myself; it is also in this man, but he is not tormented by it; he walks with elevated brow, he has his enjoyment; I but clutch at the consolation of the church for my welfare! But if this is only consolation! If all here consists of beautiful thoughts and but resemble those which beguiled me in the world? Is it but a deception like unto the beauty of the red evening clouds and like ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch—but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, but Nightspore ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the city. One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were genuine. Still, as she went, she spied around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers. To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expression and a languid manner, struts leisurely towards us, with his hands in his pockets, thereby giving what I am forced to admit is an imitation of myself perfect in its burlesque. Ben Flint roars with laughter. I clutch the imp and throw him across knee and pretend to spank him. We struggle lustily till ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... then, and I shook like a leaf with the pain of it. Again and again I faced it, again and again I failed. It was physical pain, it was a thing that I could feel like a clutch at my heart. Was it not ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... walked to the door, and father and son were left together. John Jervase, banker, capitalist, driver of men, was not in the least like himself that morning, and his hands trembled so that he was fain to clutch one with another, and to hold both tight between his knees as ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... answer, she felt a mighty clutch on the oar, a clutch that strained her arms to the breaking-point as she tried to brace her knees against the runners of the ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... to one side by a quick movement, he sprang to his feet, and as Overman rose, fastened his enormous hairy left hand on his throat and closed it with the clutch of a bear. His enemy writhed and plunged the steel twice to the hilt in Gordon's breast before his big right hand found the knife and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... hot breath of the flames upon her cheek, and saw that the whole house had suddenly become involved in the universal destruction, that she knew what had befallen her, and that death was striving hard to clutch her and make ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... seized by sudden inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... "to see him clutch his flesh and shriek and mouth, is enough to make a man live sober for his remaining days," and he shook his big shoulders ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... against the canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became instantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken. One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperately for a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in some way he managed to save himself with his legs. He was hanging by them, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... link, Call no land free that holds one fettered slave. Until the manacled, slim wrists of babes Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee; Until the Mother bears no burden save The precious one beneath her heart; until God's soil is rescued from the clutch of greed And given back to labour, let no man Call ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of a landing company, refusing the help of the Flemings ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... not like to think of Cora in the clutch of those unscrupulous persons. The thought was like a knife to him. Jack saw his chum's new alarm and tried to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in honorable house with them. One day go by, and 'nother night come. Sick boy's mama have look of ivory lady as she rest her tired, and maid girl make tea. I watch by side of bed on floor. Big ache in heart clutch' me when I look round room and see blue soldier's suit hang' near. It have look of empty and lonely, dragon-fly kite in corner have broken wing. But when I bring gaze back Tke Chan, loveliest sight of ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... slipping her clutch to the lapel of his old coat, spoke. She looked into his eyes with a smile that was sweeter—oh, much sweeter!—for tears that dimmed it, and she choked most awfully between words. "Jim"—and a choke. "Jim, I'm terrified to think I nearly ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ravings. He fell to the floor and seemed stricken with a fit, and Bob thought the man had gone stark mad. He struck out and grasped those within his reach, and they were glad to escape from his iron clutch. For several minutes this wild frenzy lasted before he said ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... changed. This"—she gave herself a downward look—"this isn't the 'gel' he wants.... Probably by now he's given me up. Maybe he's found another. Everything that's bad and hateful can find me out here. Bad things can find you out and try to clutch after you anywheres. But when something wild and clean comes hunting for you, something out of the big lonely places—why, it would be scared to follow into ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... law that will deport me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help me to put up with the world, which cannot ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... grand hereditary master of the hangar, and Miss Annette Kellerman in charge of the swimming-pool. I am not denying that such a castle is easier to enjoy before the air has been squeezed out of it by the horny clutch of reality, which moves it to the journey's end and sets it down with a jar in its fifty-foot lot, complete with seven rooms and bath, and only half an hour from the depot. But this is not for one moment admitting the contention of the lords of literature that the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... what sum of money represents his debts?" Alston threw in, as you would clutch at the bit of a ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... every American schoolboy: "My country, in her intercourse with other nations may she always be in the right! But right or wrong, my country!" And he will never do a really good job of supporting her standards if, when the clutch comes, he ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... a hill, formidable from its narrow track and deep drop on either side. Dahlia, it seemed, jibbed sometimes, she must—Bluebell was paying no attention. Good Heavens! what was happening?—the leader backing and sliding! Jack's stinging whip and clutch at the reins could not arrest the catastrophe. Dahlia rears and falls over the edge, pulling sleigh and wheeler after her into a trough ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... went abroad that he was saving money. At first no one believed this except the man who told it, but there seemed after all to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree's trouser pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid to let it out of his clutch. Those who sat on dykes with him when his day's labor was over said that the wearer kept his hand all the time in his pocket, and that they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it slip through his ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... end of the craft began to rise. Very shortly the deck was in a level position. Then, as Harry continued to empty the water ballast, Frank and Ned, assisted by Jimmie and Jack, threw the clutch on the propeller shaft out of contact in order to permit the tail shaft to turn without moving ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... unhappy-looking,—were all represented. The men for the most part hardened and merciless, and many careless young gentlemen, some of them innocent-looking lads enough, but others, alas! showing painfully their habits of dissipation, in spite of their youth,—all waiting eagerly to clutch their winnings or silently lose ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... frieze-like material was turned up in the collar until it covered his ears. His neck was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he seemed, as the car now slid noiselessly down the long, sloping road, with the clutch disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead of him through the darkness in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not fled; I had brought back the body; I had handed over the property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I had yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that, when I found that I had done murder, the heart went out of me. Turn it which way I would, I could see no hope of escape by this ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... throat, her lungs seemed bursting, the blood was beating in her ears like the deafening roar of waves, and the room was darkening with the film that was creeping over her eyes. Her hands fell powerless to her sides and her knees gave way limply. He was holding her upright only by the clutch on her throat. The drumming in her ears grew louder, the tent was fading away into blackness. Dimly, with no kind of emotion, she realised that he was squeezing the life out of her and she heard his voice coming, as it were, from a great distance: "You will not languish long in Hawiyat ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... with perforated sides. This vessel is either mounted or hung on a vertical axis, and is lined with wire cloth. Having taken a proper portion of the melada into the centrifugal, the operator starts it to revolving, and by means of a friction clutch makes such connection with the engine as gives it about 1,500 revolutions per minute. The centrifugal force developed drives the liquid molasses through the meshes of the wire cloth, and out against the husk, from which it flows off into a tank. The sugar, being solid, is retained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... then pausing only long enough to clutch some of the gleaming jewels from the inanimate form, he stealthily withdrew, and, skulking unobserved along the corridors, passed out into ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... had at once sent for Dr. Brownlow as the nearest, and he was at home; but he could only look and do nothing, but attempt to revive circulation, all in vain; and with Marilda standing by, with one convulsive clutch of Angela's hand, the true mother of her orphaned life, little Lena sank to a peaceful rest from the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... said the prisoner, extending his arm as if to clutch at a still vague inspiration—"wait a moment. When I arrived in Paris I had with me a trunk containing my clothes. The linen is all marked with the first letter of my name, and besides some ordinary coats and trousers, there were a couple of costumes I ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... fathers and of themselves in wresting the fields of the South from the clutch of forest; in crimsoning American soil with their blood in every war that has been fought; in yielding of all of the best of their heart and mind for this country's good is, according to Mr. Dixon, to count ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... had made no miscalculation. He dropped on me once again, but this time as an inert mass. Burrowing out from under him, I sprang to my feet aglow with triumph—and found myself in the clutch of the second gentleman from the chimney-place, who apparently had come ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Pablo spoke, the guaco, which had hopped down to the lowest branches of a neighbouring tree, swooped suddenly at the snake, evidently aiming to clutch it around the neck. The latter, however, had been too quick, and coiling itself, like a flash of lightning darted its head out towards the bird in a threatening manner. Its eyes sparkled with rage, and their fiery glitter could be seen even at ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... gone to have it verified. But, in spite of everything, realization was difficult: the realization that, turn whither she would, there was upon her—upon that poor, tortured breast, the relentless clutch of death. Struggle as she might, through the ensuing months—the few, few ensuing months, that clutch must grow tighter and more cruelly tight, until—the end. During the years since her marriage Madame Gregoriev had, more than once, wished—nay, prayed for death. But ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... larger of the pulleys, D, round the second guide pulley, L, then back to the large wheel, and over a fixed guide pulley across to the reeling frame. Power is supplied to the latter by means of a friction clutch, and to insure even winding the usual reciprocating motion of a guide is employed. The measuring apparatus is pivoted at F, and by raising or lowering the nuts at the end of the bar the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... blood in my body rushed back to my heart—a deadly thrill ran through every limb—from shame and indignation, no doubt; my vision became obscure; it seemed as if my soul was leaving my body, and I fell forward fainting, and dragged her down to the bottom of the water in a mortal clutch. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... fellow, is just what they're fond of! And remember, them that are stupid, or the women folk, as can't put their money into use themselves, they take it to the bank, and they there, deuce take 'em, clutch hold of it, and with this money they fleece the people. It's ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... he had set forth in the former lectures on the Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell. His strange doctrine responded to the sympathies of the time, and gratified the immoderate love of the marvelous, which haunts the mind of man in every age. This effort of man to clutch the infinite, which for ever slips through his ineffectual grasp, this last tourney of thought against thought, was a task worthy of an assembly where the most stupendous human imagination ever known, perhaps, ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... They walked on slowly along the dike for a short time, talking busily, though not able to see where they were going, when suddenly Katharine felt her feet slipping. In trying to steady herself she let go of Gretel, gave a wild clutch at the air, and then rolled, rolled, right down a steep bank, and, splash! into a pool of water at the bottom. For a moment she lay half stunned, not knowing what had happened to her; then, as her sense came, "Oh," thought she, "I must be killed, or drowned, or something!" She ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... my intention in my eyes; or observed my fingers taking a firmer clutch of my gun, I know not, but at this moment he seemed to evince sudden fear, and, dropping down from the seat, he ran backward to the bow, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... reached this delightful point, and Livingstone was down on his hands and knees trying with futile dexterity to avoid the clutch of a pair of little arms that apparently were pursuing him with infallible instinct into an inextricable trap, when he became conscious of a presence he had not observed before. Some one not there before was ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... great for words. His right hand hung poised and moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to his face on ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... his knife, and Myles, with the energy of despair, holding him tightly by the wrist. It was in vain the elder lad writhed and twisted; he was strong enough to overbear Myles, but still was not able to clutch the haft ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there,—weeds and violets together,—not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... theme, and impatient to manifest our royal descent, in a paroxysm of enthusiasm we clutch our Cremona, clasp him lovingly to our shoulder, and high waving in air our magical bow, which is to us a sceptre, bring it down with a crash, exulting in the immortal harmony about to gush, like a mountain torrent, from the teeming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... her around the end of the altar. Tarzan strained at the bonds which held his arms pinioned behind him. The woman did not see—she had forgotten her prey in the horror of the danger that threatened herself. As the brute leaped past Tarzan to clutch his victim, the ape-man gave one superhuman wrench at the thongs that held him. The effort sent him rolling from the altar to the stone floor on the opposite side from that on which the priestess stood; but as he sprang to his ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... daring to shine in his presence; for being the president of an academy of which he, Voltaire, was only a simple member. Above all this, the king loved him, and praised his extraordinary talent and scholarship. Voltaire only watched for an opportunity to clutch this dangerous enemy, and the occasion soon ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... indeed, for a passing ship or boat would not only be going at great speed, but would be very unlikely to see his cockle-shell in the darkness, or to hear his cry in the roaring gale. Still he grasped that hope as the drowning man is said to clutch ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ben!" shouted Johnny, fearing lest his artistic labors in the way of the "Wild Indian" would be ruined, and then he and Mopsey sprang on the stage, rescuing the curtain from the frantic clutch of the ghost, and leaving that worthy to get to his ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... at hand," said Peter. "Will any one pass a rope round my waist? I am sure I could clutch him." ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Haywood, were anarchists like themselves, and although they professed contempt for law, as soon as they were arrested and brought up for trial, they clutched at every quibble of the law, as drowning men clutch at straws to save them; and, be it said to the glory or shame of the law, it furnished enough quibbles, not only to save them from the gallows, but to let them loose again on society with the legal whitewash ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... upon his wrist the scar from a saber cut which he had received in a duel outside of Paris when he was nineteen. She touched his hand as she scanned the red cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist. A quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close in a sort of clutch upon his hand. He felt the pressure of her pointed nails in the flesh ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... not let him go: that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the currents when the sails have been ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a fascinating sight. Few things could be finer than to see him snatch away a barbed-wire entanglement of blackberry-bushes, clutch a three-inch thorn sapling with his hairy left, and with one swing of his terrible right cut the taproot through. I had figured that it would take a month to clear away that mess along the brook, but on the evening of the fifth day Pop had ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... stream, and the crashing fall of the stones, which accompanied its course. Down, down went the poor wretches, now utterly overwhelmed by the torrent, now regaining their feet only to utter a scream, and then be swept off. Here a miserable struggler, whirled onward, would clutch at the banks and try to scramble forth, but the soft turf giving way beneath him, he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... face and his eyes started from their sockets. His head seemed on the point of bursting. He reeled, staggered, and then, together with his terrible assailant, fell heavily to the floor. As they did so, the old man's head struck on a sharp corner; he uttered a moan, and at last the deadly clutch on Peveril's ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... and laughed. "You funny little thing! You're rather sweet. George hasn't a clutch strong enough to hold me. You can be sure ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... raise his pistol, was the right one. He had seen her dark eyes aglow; he had seen the sunlit sheen of her black hair rippling in the wind; he had seen the white pallor in her face, the slimness of her as she stood over him in horror—he remembered even the clutch of her white hand at her throat. A moment before she had tried to kill him. And then he had looked up and had seen her like that! It must have been some unaccountable trick in his brain that had flooded her hair with golden ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... touch, Her lips whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such; Her glance how wildly beautiful—how much Hath Phoebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek, Which grows yet smoother from his amorous clutch, Who round the north for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear! how languid, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Though in gulfs Of yet unsounded ruin I should die At the end miserably, I still shall seek In life itself my refuge: not in God That stands apart from life, on heights of peace. All my desires, my visions, my dreams, my unrest, My loathing and my longing will I clutch And cry: "With all its bitterness on my head, My Will be done, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... of Charity turned and smiled at Maryette, made her a friendly gesture, threw in the clutch, and, twisting the steering wheel with both sun-browned hands, guided the machine out onto the road and sped away swiftly after ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... blush by praising you, but I give you a good mark for the whole affair. If you had excused yourself, or asked to be let off, or told a lie, it would have been ugly. What you did was in the best taste: and that is what I mean. The ugly thing is to clutch and hold on. You did more for yourself by being polite and honest than even George Meredith could have done for you. What I mean by the sense of beauty, as applied to morality, is that a man must be a gentleman first, and a moralist afterwards, if he can. It is ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... perspective of vision. For all his keenness of insight, he failed utterly to see into the mysterious mind of his wife. He could not penetrate that subtle interplay of traditional virtues and discover that she was in the clutch of one of the oldest and most savage of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... make a chinking sound, and the car lost pace. And then Mr. Britling saw a pleading little white board with the inscription "Concealed Turning." For the moment he thought a turning might be concealed anywhere. He threw out his clutch and clapped on his brake. Then he repented of what he had done. But the engine, after three Herculean throbs, ceased to work. Mr. Britling with a convulsive clutch at his steering wheel set the electric hooter snarling, while one foot released the clutch again and the other, on the accelerator, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... months. She had asked for ten months; not a day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the outside. And the check—it was a clutch at the heart that brought her brain up staggering—came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost rim of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of it; it was not long indeed before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for that hero was slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly by allowing others to throw themselves against his immovable legs and loins. But Harry Winburn was undeniably his master; from the first clutch of hands when they stood up, down to the last trip which sent him on to his back on the turf, he felt that Harry knew more and could do more than he. Luckily Harry's bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... clutch at my resolution. "People who do that kind of thing always get into trouble. She might miss her train. She's almost certain to miss ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fell clutch of Circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance My head is bloody ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hear der ghostes yell mit der outside?" said Carl, who had been thrust away from his clutch on Bud, and was standing in the middle of the floor, trembling ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentered all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my sight ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... each other, the girls came up; but they would have sunk again immediately if he had not been there to clutch them. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... looked out upon the cathedral—or into a troubled doze rather, from which he awoke all at once with a start, and, seeing the window shut, rose hurriedly to go and open it for the "Boy." He had done so before at night often when he chanced to forget it. But when he got to it now he had to clutch the frame to support himself, and he looked out stupidly for some seconds, wondering in a dazed way why the sun was shining when it should be dark. Then suddenly full consciousness returned, and he remembered. He should ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... another—ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... from the axe to tear With a chain-laden hand his master's crowned head, Thou gav'st thy hand unto the noble pair; Before ye, struck with horror, fell That Areopagus of hell. Be proud, O Bard! and thou, fiend-wolf of blood and guile, Sport with my head awhile; 'Tis in thy clutch. But hark! and know, thou Godless one, My shout shall follow thee, my triumph-laugh of joy! Aye, drink our blood, live to destroy: Thou'rt but a pigmy still; thy race shall soon be run. An hour will come, an hour thou can'st not flee— Thou shalt fall, Tyrant! Indignation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... prescription with a complacent grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his hand, chill dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental strictness, his liver turned instantly to water. However, he made a feeble clutch at Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, "Here's a many ingredients, and the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where we keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half an hour, Miss, could ye?" She acquiesced readily, for she was not habitually called ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I was badly "rattled"; I knew by the clutch of Sylvia's hand that she was too. But here I got a lesson in the nature of "social training." Some of the bright colour had faded from her face, but she spoke with the utmost coolness, the words coming naturally and simply: "We can't get through the crowd." And at ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... fern guess heave live talk kern start leap stick walk sperm wrath knee cliff chalk serve floor spleen writ lawn were czar have bronze daub herb haunch frank buzz fault strength flaunt slake snatch spawn sneak haunt smack dredge drift purse sharp clamp church fund clutch kneel ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... trotted beside Tim, obediently silent. He was so tired that his feet stumbled, but he plodded on, keeping a tight clutch on his friend's hand. ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... felt a tight clutch upon his arm, and Ralph pulled him around. Casting eyes outward, the captain saw that it was the lake that ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... came and went, and still the West held him in its powerful clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the sweet, new joy of a woman's love and devotion, and into his home came the happy music of children's voices. When his eldest boy was eight years old, his district elected him to the State senate, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... actor's mobile features were suddenly contracted under the lash of violent despair; and tears, genuine tears which he did not even think of concealing behind his hand as they do on the stage, filled his eyes but did not flow, so tightly did his agony clutch him by the throat. The poor ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... leaped through her brain. Perhaps they were this moment going down. Now she knew what it was like! This thing she had read of in newspapers! Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she, Betty Vanderpoel! And, as she sprang to clutch her fur coat, there flashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlines in the newspapers and the inevitable reference ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the step. It seemed an hour since he had first heard it begin to climb the stairs. It sounded heavily on the floor outside his door. There was a heavy tapping on the door itself. For an instant the clutch of Lowrie froze around his gun; then he twitched the muzzle back against his own ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... to dig out of your life quite a brilliant philosophy, though I suppose you do not know what that is. It's holding to your ideal, the thing that seems most worth while, and forcing everything else into line with that. Now, you see I had a bad handicap—a clutch on me that made me a weak, sickly fellow, but through it all I ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted herself in consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the eagle's clutch, as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may be noted, belong to two quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... right in plain sight. He had failed because his mind was so full of Grandfather Frog and Longlegs that he forgot to look around, as he usually does. Just skimming the tops of the bulrushes he sailed swiftly out over the Smiling Pool and reached down with his great, cruel claws to clutch Grandfather Frog, who sat there pretending to be asleep, but all the time watching Longlegs and deep down inside chuckling to think how he ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess |
