"Clutches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as anybody would, that this was to call for help, and we resolved to continue our siege; for we were all enraged to see ourselves so baulked by a few wild people, whom we thought we had safe in our clutches; and, indeed, never were there so many concurring circumstances to delude men in any case we had met with. We resolved, however, to try another stink-pot the next night, and our engineer and gunner had got it ready, when, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... only. But in the fifteenth century the League won by force of arms a small bit of Italian territory about Lake Lugano, and in the sixteenth the powerful city of Bern annexed the Burgundian bishopric of Lausanne and rescued the free city of Geneva from the clutches of the Duke of Savoy. Other Burgundian possessions of Savoy were seized by the canton of Freiburg; and after awhile all these subjects and allies were admitted on equal terms into the confederation. The result is that modern Switzerland is made up of what might seem to be most discordant ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... ugly old Boy! I tell you beware! If you fall in his clutches there's badly you'll fare! Look here at his picture, his claws and his tail, If you make his acquaintance you're sure to bewail! ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... inhibition of capitalistic methods. The actual coming of war induces a brief panic in the marketplace, and during this momentary paralysis of private acquisitors the State makes a desperate attempt to subdue their activities to its own needs. By the mere instinct of self-preservation it clutches at some rudiment of Socialism, and makes a diffident gesture in the direction of nationalisation—(of the railways, for instance). But the capitalists of England can point with pride to the fact that they very soon pulled themselves together. ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... danger of attack by one of these ferocious, manlike beasts was quite sufficient. She no longer believed in the weird soul transmigration that the therns had taught her before she was rescued from their clutches by John Carter; but she well knew the horrid fate that awaited her should one of the terrible beasts chance to spy her during ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... levied upon him by some portion of the Ring. Even the great writ of Habeas Corpus—the very bulwark of our liberties—was repeatedly set at defiance by the underlings of the Ring, for the purpose of extorting money from some innocent man who had fallen into their clutches. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... upon the cross and the tools which have been used in making it,—the cross to which his treason had doomed his friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away in the madness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... but if he steal my brother, I must be silent. Who says this? Our Constitution, consecrated by the callous consuetude of sixty years, and grasped in triumphant argument by the left hand of him whose right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip. Justice, venerable with the undethronable majesty of countless aeons, says,—SPEAK! The Past, wise with the sorrows and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, echoes,—SPEAK! Nature, through ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... P. Sybarite; who, having bounced up from a supine to a sitting position, promptly and peevishly swore, rolled to one side (barely eluding clutches that meant to him all those frightful and humiliating consequences that arrest means to the average man) and scrambled ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... of Deity—an ideal to which even savages attach the qualities of justice and mercy—left the masses ready and eager to grasp at a religion that gave them some other personified god, than the Mikado, much as a drowning man clutches ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... the scent now, without a doubt," said the stranger. "Keep up your heart, young man, and we'll get the money out of this scoundrel's clutches just as certain as you got the birds from the Engelhorn for my friend. Jump into the carriage. Follow the dog, postilion. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to the Maker of Messasebe, and Messasebe therefore may bide his time. But when the sport of the floods begins, and the currents are reversed, and the streams hurry down with cross tributes from the hills, and the wild waters have forgotten all control—then is when Messasebe the Mighty grasps and clutches with his wide fingers, and exults as ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... an excuse for everything, did not exist in the case as an excuse. Madame therefore made the greatest possible disturbance about the matter, and obtained his dismissal from Monsieur's household, without reflecting, poor blind creature, that both Malicorne and Montalais held her fast in their clutches in consequence of her visit to De Guiche, and in a variety of other ways equally delicate. Montalais, who was perfectly furious, wished to revenge herself immediately, but Malicorne pointed out to her that the king's countenance ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "scenes" which men dread, yet despising Lucy a little in spite of himself for the very quality he most admired in her, and wondering if she were really capable of feeling at all. Sometimes little Tom would be brought downstairs to roll about the carpet and try his unsteady little limbs in a series of clutches at the chairs and table; and on these occasions the meal was got through more easily. But little Tom was not always well enough to come downstairs, and sometimes Lucy thought that her husband might have something to say to her which the baby's all-engrossing presence hindered. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... such crafts as the Osprey was; and so Captain Beardsley prudently came about and sailed leisurely back toward the point from whence he started. This move was just what brought her first prize into the clutches of the Osprey. ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... For years he had drunk to excess—but theretofore only when HE chose, never when his appetite chose, never when his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appetite, long lying in wait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... about you, and so I am going away; my parents will not have me at home, so I am going back with Helen Winston, till my brother Lawrence comes to fetch me, he will no doubt set me up comfortably and then I shall at least be free from your clutches, even if I am forced into marrying ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... around the edge. This done, he told the clerk to step within the ring, take off his clothing, and make denial of God and the Holy Trinity. The bullets, said the hunter, must all be cast between eleven o'clock and midnight, or the clerk would fall into the clutches of the devil. At eleven o'clock the dead coals began to glow of their own accord, and the two men began the moulding, although all manner of ghostly apparitions tried to hinder them. At last there ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the toughest of muscle with the softest of hearts. He was always ready at any moment to become the champion of the oppressed on the slightest provocation. His alliance with Pugsy Maloney had begun on the occasion when he had rescued that youth from the clutches of a large negro, who, probably from the soundest of motives, was endeavouring to slay him. Billy had not inquired into the rights and wrongs of the matter: he had merely sailed in and rescued the office-boy. And Pugsy, though he had made no verbal comment on the affair, had ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... anxiety concerning the future, and all sorts of uncertainties and terrors! What a mistake! What a blunder he had made! Ah! if he could only begin again. He sincerely wished that the great adversary of mankind had the Viscount de Coralth in his clutches. For, in his despair, it was the once dear viscount that he ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... The same remark applies to Herm, where my last visit to the shell-beach was on the 22nd of July, when I saw several adult Common Terns about, but no young ones with them; all these were probably birds which had been robbed of one or more clutches of eggs. ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... is another and still stronger sentiment—the regard for chastity. Many an American officer whose brave wife accompanied him in a frontier war has been asked by her to promise that he would shoot her with his own revolver rather than let her fall into the clutches of licentious Indians. Though deliberate murder is punishable by death, no American jury has ever convicted a man for slaying the seducer of his wife, daughter, or sister. Modern law punishes rape with death, and its victim ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Tromp was no marriage, and the ducats, dollars and diamonds bequeathed by Van Tromp to "my wife, Elizabeth," would instantly melt into air—into very thin air, so far as the Countess was concerned; provided, of course, they had not actually passed into her clutches. In fact, they were legally hers, for the will had been admitted to probate. Those of the family objecting could offer no valid opposition, and she had been put in possession, but, by a strange neglect ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... knew she didn't usually ask him anything about me. She settled everything herself. But this—and the very thing I didn't want her to ask him, too. But of course I couldn't help myself. That's the trouble. Youth is so helpless in the clutches of old age! ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... one, but to please himself. Of course you all know the story of Ulysses and the one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, in the Odyssey of Homer? Turner chose for his picture the moment when Ulysses has escaped from the clutches of Polyphemus, and sailing away in his boat, taunts the giant, who stands by the water's edge, cursing Ulysses and bemoaning the loss of his sight. Turner has used this mythical scene as an opportunity for creating stupendous ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... showing), and in spite of opposition and disparagement, secured for his own country and the furtherance of art the perishable fragments of Phidian workmanship, which, but for his intervention, might have perished altogether. If they had eluded the clutches of Turkish mason and Greek dealer in antiquities—if, by some happy chance, they had escaped the ravages of war, the gradual but gradually increasing assaults of rain and frost would have already left their effacing scars on the "Elgin marbles." As it is, the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... by it as by the roar of a great waterfall. You see a wave of unusual magnitude rolling in from far beyond the wild revelry of waters on 'The Rips.' It leaps into the arena as if fresh and eager for the fray, clutches another Bacchanal like itself, and the two towering floods rush swiftly toward the shore. Instinctively you run backward to escape what seems an impending destruction. Very likely a sheet of foam is dashed all around you, shoe-deep, but you are safe—only the foam hisses away in ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... coming to a place like this?" Hamar demanded, as soon as he had freed himself from Kelson's clutches. "We can't ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... it's because of a woman—you will understand—you who write articles in which you say that there should be pity for such unfortunates as I am—for one is a miserable wretch when a woman has you in her clutches, and you have no money—and then, with that sort, once you have started getting mixed up in their affairs, you are jolly well caught—you have to do as you are told—and always they ask more and more of you.... Ah, Monsieur, the death of Captain Brocq ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... my life, Jervoise," he said, holding out his hand to his friend. "They had got me so firmly in their clutches, that I thought my ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... and sisters!" he shouted, "here we are a-kneelin' at the altar's foot and what's goin' on outside? Why, the Devil's got his clutches in our midst. The horn of the wicked is exalted. They're sellin' rum—RUM—in this town! They're a-sellin' rum and drinkin' of it and gloryin' in their shame. But the Lord ain't asleep! He's got his eye on 'em! He's watchin' 'em! And some of these fine days he'll send down fire out ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... lifted him up and laid him gently upon his shoulder, to carry him to his castle; but, as he passed through the thicket, the rustling of the leaves waked Jack; and he was sadly afraid when he found himself in the clutches of Blunderbore. Yet this was nothing to his fright soon after; for, when they reached the castle, he beheld the floor covered all over with the skulls and bones of men and women. The giant took him into a large room, where lay the hearts and limbs of persons who had been lately ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... ouf!" which is capable of a variation of tone and meaning truly extraordinary. Mahmoud is sufficiently polite, but shows no sign of friendliness, I am glad to say. As I bore Eblis out of reach of his clutches he threw the cane either at him or me, and then ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... breath was too precious for curses. The Spartan flung his ponderous weight downward. A slip in the gliding sand would have ruined the Athenian instantly; but Poseidon or Apollo was with him. His feet dug deep, and found footing. Lycon drew back baffled, though the clutches of their hands were tightening like vices of steel. Then again face to face, swaying to and fro, panting, muttering, while the veins in the bare backs ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... two harridans fighting out their quarrel on the floor. The loser is laid flat upon her back; the victress, belly to belly with her adversary, clutches her with her legs and prevents her from moving a limb. Both have their poison-fangs wide open, ready to bite without yet daring, so mutually formidable are they. After a certain period of waiting, during which the pair merely exchange threats, the stronger of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... changes, however, when once you get into the clutches of the average French dressmaker. By his side, Barabbas would appear a gentleman of exceptional honesty. I have often, in idle moments, imagined myself a cannibal, and, in preparing my daily menu, my first dish would ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... gently on his leg, and immediately afterwards he heard a man's voice, in a quietly gruff tone that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips. For an instant, in his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of Satan himself. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... about that. If we could only notice her in time, I've no doubt we're nimble enough to jump into our holes before she could do us any harm. It's in her velvet paws, there's where she hides her cruel claws till she gets us in her clutches—that's where her power lies. With those paws she can tread so lightly that we can't hear her coming. And so, while we are still dancing heedlessly about the place, she creeps close up, and before we know where we are she pounces down on us and has ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... herself (not, by the way, a very sound authority) she went straight from Warsaw and the clutches of the lustful Paskievich to St. Petersburg. Considering, however, that Poland was at that period under the domination of the Czar, it is highly improbable that, after her expulsion, she could have set foot in Russia without a passport. Had she ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... of fifteen years ago; the story told him by the Swedish lady; recent incidents and happenings in English politics; and finally the tone in which Euphrosyne's father had described the snatching of his own innocent from the clutches of Miss Blanchflower. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his Majesty." We can easily imagine the delight with which Foster would hail the issue of this proclamation. How he would read and read again with ever fresh satisfaction its stringent clauses. That pestilent fellow, Bunyan, was now once more in his clutches. This time there was no chance of his escape. All licences were recalled, and he was absolutely defenceless. It should not be Foster's fault if he failed to end his days in the prison from which he ought never to have been released. The proclamation ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the suspicion of bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... business. He's not so much of a rancher, but he has influence at Santa Fe and El Paso and Douglas. I made an enemy of him. I never did anything to him. He hates Gene Stewart, and upon one occasion I spoiled a little plot of his to get Gene in his clutches. The real reason for his animosity toward me is that he loves Florence, and Florence is going to ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... eyes when I ring the bell and ask them to do anything. It is useless to disguise the truth, Mother Oldershaw, between you and me. When I went upstairs into that sickroom, I marched blindfold into the clutches of a jealous woman. If Mrs. Milroy can turn me out of the house, Mrs. Milroy will; and, morning and night, she has nothing else to do in that bed prison of hers but ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... posing as a prophet. You can put it in your memoirs some day—if my prophecy comes true. It's the story of an American naval officer, a young lieutenant, who—well, he went wrong about a year ago. He got into the clutches of a woman spy in the employ of a foreign government. He met this woman in Marseilles on our last Mediterranean cruise and fell in love with her—hopelessly. She's one of those devilish sirens that no full-blooded man can resist and, the extraordinary part of it ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... have an interview with the Lady Margaret, to hear her wishes and opinions concerning the future, and will pray her to do all that she can to aid your suit with the fair young lady, and to keep her at all events safe from the clutches of the ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... used to have a good deal of influence over Newton when he lived in our cottage as a boy. Don't you remember—I got him to go to school regularly, and saved him from the truant officer's clutches on ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... have been difficult to find a more serviceable-looking set of men; and the expression of their faces, as they took their last look at the grave of the Mercers, boded very ill for any Indian who might fall into their clutches. ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... cab somewhere about midnight. A holograph will made on the eve of Waterloo and preserved for fifteen years by the faithful depositary; a good doctor, of course; many bad Jesuits, of course; another, and this time virtuous, though very impudent, carrying-off of the other young woman from the clutches of the hated congreganistes;[73] a boghei;[74] a jokei; a third enlevement of the real Ludovica, who escapes by a cellar-trap; and many other agreeable things, end in the complete defeat of the wicked and the marriage of the good to the tune of four ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... his motives and his methods. But the girl he did not understand, and her presence on the Yellow Knife disturbed him not a little. Had chance thrown her into the clutches of Lapierre? And had the man set about deliberately to use her school as an excuse for the establishment of a trading-post within easy reach of his Indians? MacNair was inclined to believe so—and the matter caused him grave concern. He foresaw trouble ahead, and a trouble that ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... whilst the mouth and lower part of the face generally protruded like an alligator's, and gave him a truly diabolical appearance. I confess a thrill of horror passed through me, as I realised that two doubtless tenderly reared English girls were in the clutches of this monster. Once I thought I must have been dreaming, and that the memories of some old story-book I had read years ago were filling my mind with some fantastic delusion. For a moment I pictured to myself the feelings of their prosaic British relatives, could they only have known what had become ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... me sweetly, and, like all women when stuck between the issues of a dilemma, or held in the clutches of truth, she persisted, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... were afraid to say little White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheld something appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnified and distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletons walking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the sign ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... a cripple sits in his room, with a mother eternally stitching for bread, and watches out of the window the giant crane swinging vast weights through the sky. One night, while he is half-dead with fear, the great crane swoops down upon him, clutches his bed, and swings him, bed and all, above the sleeping city, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Jew were tied down close to the palms of his hands, to preserve the deceased from the devil's clutches. While the body was being washed, an egg was put into a glass of wine, and the deceased's head anointed with the mixture. Those who were not reconciled to the departed, before his death, kissed his great toe and asked pardon, lest ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who emerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his large hands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wander aimlessly until some emotion grips him when the knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the edge of the table. And all the while he will be breathing hard like a man who has swum a distance. When he reads his poems he chants and one would think that he communed with himself save that, at the pauses, he shoots a powerful ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... day to hide himself in the most solitary parts of the woods, he finds there only those animals whose rapid flight enables them to escape his clutches. Sometimes, however, after the exercise of prodigious patience on his part, by lying in wait the whole day, at a spot where he knows they will be certain to pass when the sun goes down, a defenceless roebuck will occasionally ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... colder Is my breath than thine was ever. Thy wild armies vex the faithful With a thousand varying torments; Well! God grant that I discover Even worse, before I perish! And by God, I'll give thee none. Let God hear what now I tell thee! Yes, by God! from Death's cold clutches Nought, O greybeard, shall protect thee, Not the hearth's broad coalfire's ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... by now that Aunt Agatha had picked the wrong man for this job of disentangling Gussie from the clutches of the American vaudeville profession. What I needed was reinforcements. For a moment I thought of cabling Aunt Agatha to come over, but reason told me that this would be overdoing it. I wanted assistance, but not so badly as that. I hit what seemed to me ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to pull out the basket. His fingers had just clasped the handle when there came a sudden interruption—a rush, a growl, and some very sharp teeth had inserted themselves into the back of his ragged jacket. Poor Moses found himself, to his horror, in the clutches of a great mastiff. The creature held him tight, and laid one heavy paw on him to prevent ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the neighbourhood until the 2nd of February and stationed Commandant Mears with the guns to the east of the Wilge River. The English formed a circle round him, but he succeeded in getting the guns away in safety. When he was out of their clutches, I sent him orders to bring the guns through the blockhouse line between Lindley and Bethlehem, and then to ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... o'erleap my fence, oh let my vines escape Your clutches, I beseech you: the bloom ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... plotting wholesale murder"—and Susan thumped and kneaded her bread with as much vicious energy as she could have expended in punching Francis Joseph himself if he had been so unlucky as to fall into her clutches. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... will go well, and he will be helped on, and not half-killed by it. Men on shore can rescue a man who is being washed to and fro in the surf, by holding together, very firmly, hand-in-hand, and forming a line down to the sea: the foremost man clutches the swimmer as soon as he is washed up to him, and holds him firmly while the wave is retiring. The force of the indraught is enormous, and none but ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... place. Stevens then nudged other pieces so that they fell out, only to see them also rounded up. Hour after hour he kept trying—doing nothing sufficiently energetic to create any suspicion, but attempting everything he could think of that offered any chance of escape from the clutches of their captors. Immovable at the plate, his hands upon the controls, he performed every insidious maneuver his agile brain could devise, but he could not succeed in separating their vehicle from its fellows. Finally, after a last attempt, which was foiled as easily as ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... not put it that way, Mr. Scott," Hobson replied, his small, malignant eyes gleaming with delight at the ease with which his prey was falling into his clutches. "It is like this: Ralph Mainwaring and Thornton are prejudiced against me; I might not be able to work them as successfully as I could wish, but you and I could work together very smoothly. I could remain invisible, as it ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... became cruel in an instant. He forced her hands behind her, holding her imprisoned in his arms. He tilted her head back. His eyes shone down into hers like the eyes of a tiger that clutches its prey. He quelled ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... said with dignity, re-seating himself in the chair from which he had risen, in order to free himself from his son's clutches, "if I lost the money, I also made it. This was a flourishing concern before you were born. If the worst comes to the worst you are only where I started. But we are far from being ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... veined and streaked and spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect you can make out upon every one of them the three letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the most convenient things in the world; they roll with the least possible impulse just where the child would have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they have a great talent for standing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of the United States clings to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of needlework, of the latest bazaar and the agreeable address delivered thereat by Mr Cargrim; the epicene pastime of lawn tennis was touched upon; and ardent young persons discussed how near they could go to Giant Pope's cave without getting into the clutches of its occupant. The young men talked golfing, parish work, horses, church, male millinery, polo and shooting; the young ladies chatted about Paris fashions and provincial adaptations thereof, the London season, the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... little her tension relaxes. The magic robe of youth, renewed, falls from her thin shoulders. At a sound from the inner room she gasps, clutches her hands together on her breast, her eyes wide with terror and remorse, starts running ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the manners of our country, which then could admit of such a representation; the simplicity, if not the libertinism, of the age was great. A play was acted in one of the principal ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the mass of their light infantry. There they steadily waited, keeping up a continuous discharge of missiles the while, or launching their long spears; whereby they dealt wounds to the cavalry troopers and death in some cases to the horses. But when they were all but within the clutches of the advancing heavy infantry (8) of the Lacedaemonians their firmness forsook them; they swerved and fled, and there died of them on that day about three hundred. ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... upon all the dark and terrible ways of Autocracy,—there ensued a fearful scene. An attack was made upon the coach in which Vjera Sassulitch was to be carried home—apparently with the object of getting her once more into police clutches. There was a clash of swords and a confused tumult. Gensdarmes and police broke in upon the mass of people, who wished to protect her. Shots were fired. A nobleman and relation of Vjera, Grigori Sidorazki, lay dead in the street. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... early, and got off as quickly as possible. We could not breathe freely until we were out of the clutches of Ouweek. Some of them, however, paid a farewell visit to the Sheikh, who received them very graciously, as politely as any Spanish bandit, and sent this message to me:—"Yâkob, go in amen (peace or security) to Ghat, fear nothing from any one, for you are under ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... black moss water. For the greater part of the cold weather it had been frozen and snow-bound. But now, swollen with spring rains, the ditches of the Sunk were lipping to the overflow. Stair took the great iron gelleck and with a blow or two knocked back the clutches of the flood-barriers. Then flinging down the huge crow-bar, he fled for his life, the ink-black water hissing and spurting at his heels. It was not noisy, that water. It ran silently, almost oilily, but all the same it followed after, and it was swirling black about Stair Garland's ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Monsieur l'abbe," asked Madame de Montcornet, "that I saved the poor child from the clutches ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... we have had, as we supposed, Hobo Harry himself in our clutches. Each of those eight separate times the prisoner who was supposed to be Hobo Harry has confessed that he ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... meet him, or keeps you standing till you are fit to sink, or holds you fast when you wish to keep an engagement, or hinders you listening to important conversation,—then there is no mistake, the truth bursts on you, apparent dirae facies, you are in the clutches of a bore. You may yield, or you may flee; you cannot conquer. Hence it is clear that a bore cannot be represented in a story, or the story would be the bore as much as he. The reader, then, must believe this upright Mr. Bateman to be what otherwise he might ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... positively, my friend. But I do know that the little Carmen said I should not die. And she said the same of you when, as I would swear, you were in the fell clutches of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... woman. Whereat I remembered my North Dane mother, and saw my rage red in my eyes, and smote him with the skull of Guthlaf, so that he was wine-drenched, and wine-blinded, and fire-burnt. And as he reeled unseeing, smashing his great groping clutches through the air at me, I was in and short-dirked him thrice in belly, thigh and buttock, than which I could reach no higher up the mighty ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... all had that experience. You merely fell into the clutches of some shrewd men, and a designing woman. Fortunately you have discovered the truth before any great harm has been done, and I stand ready to give you a chance now on the winning side. I would rather have you with me than opposed, and ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... on the seat between us. 'If you move at all when we pass through towns,' he went on, 'I stick this into you very deep.' Somehow, I knew that he meant to carry out his threats to the letter. At first I was more angry than hurt or even alarmed. Then I began to believe that I had fallen into the clutches of a lunatic, and grew horribly afraid. I saw that we were following the London road, and it oppressed me like a dreadful sort of nightmare to be speeding through a familiar district, a countryside dotted with the houses and estates of personal friends, and be unable to stir or utter a ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Bucklaw, in the same disparaging manner, "it lies with Sir William's policy to secure the next best match, since he cannot barter his child to save the great Ravenswood estate, which the English House of Lords are about to wrench out of his clutches." ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... had died of a complication of bhang-drinking and opium-eating; and as a consequence, James was full of humorless imagination, spells of moodiness and outbursts of hilarious politics. Every native who acquires a facility in English immediately sets out to rescue India from the clutches of the British raj, occasionally advancing so far as to send a bullet into some harmless individual ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... the ground-glass shop-door open, and two well-known forms in succession block its portals—those of Gregory and Bainrothe! Would Caleb send them on our track, or would the better part of valor come to his aid and save me from their clutches? ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... residence! Great heavens," said he, throwing up his long arms, "where will this tremendous circulation stop! Who knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst comes to the worst, New York, also, may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be able to stop my progress!" Those days in Paris with him were simply tremendous. We dined at all possible and impossible places together. We walked round and round ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... like an icicle, and a stern resolve came upon her. Whatever happened, she saw her duty plainly before her. She had introduced Mr. Turner to Miss Hastings, and she was responsible. It was her moral obligation to rescue him from the clutches of that designing young person, and she immediately reminded him that she had an engagement to give him a tennis lesson every day. There was still time for a set before dinner. Also, far be it from her to be so forward as to call him Sam, or to annoy him with silly chattering. ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... exclamations. When thus screaming, her movements are those of alternate tension and tremor. For one instant she clenches her hands, holds her arms out before her in a stiff semi-flexed position; then suddenly bends her body forwards, sways rapidly to and fro, draws her fingers through her hair, clutches at her neck, and tries to tear off her clothes. The sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles (which serve to bend the head on the chest) stand out prominently, as if swollen, and the skin in front of them is much wrinkled. Her hair, which is cut short at the back of her head, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... men. She had got into her present predicament in escaping, and they were waiting for the morning flood tide to float her off. Two or three junks, we were told, had struck torpedoes in leaving the harbour and been blown in pieces, and many others had fallen into the clutches of the enemy. Those on board, besides her usual crew, were chiefly soldiers. With the profound deference paid to rank by the Orientals, the chief cabin was at once given up to the mandarin, who insisted on my sharing it with him. He and Chung ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... in a state of intense fright the moment she was wounded—had commenced to run before, in fact, having escaped from the clutches of her murderer, for the skirt of her dress was torn from the gathers. It was proved that the prisoner had bought the pistol on the Saturday night, that he was unused to firearms, for he had to ask the man who sold it to explain the mode of using it. He was heard practising ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... comprehend what was passing around him. It seemed like a dream to him to be told that Colonel Miranda had got clear away; a more horrid one to hear that she whom he designed for a victim had escaped from his clutches. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... his sleep and he clutches his spear, And the echoes roll backward in wonder, For a shouting strikes into the hollow woods near, Like the sound of a gathering thunder. He clambers the ridge, with his face to the light, The foes of Wahibbi come full in his sight— The waters of Mooki will ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... palaces, and when greedy hands had gathered up all that could be taken away, fire consumed the rest, and the miserable captives were tortured into promising fabulous ransoms for life and limb. Abbots, priors and heads of religious orders were treated with like barbarity, and the few who escaped the clutches of the bloodthirsty Spanish soldiers fell into the reeking hands of the brutal German adventurers. The enormous sum of six million ducats was gathered together in value of gold and silver bullion and of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and resigned; her defeat had told upon her. She no longer spoke of the future, but was glad that they had escaped from the clutches of the money-lender; the thought of it filled her with a quiet but not altogether unspoiled happiness. She no longer dreamed of anything better, but was grateful for what she possessed; and it seemed to Pelle that something had died within ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... round! But it's horrible—the waste of effort in the world! It's worse than horrible. It's insane.' She looked up suddenly into his face. 'You are wise. Tell me what you think the story of the world means, with its successive clutches at civilization—all those histories of slow and painful building—by Ganges and by Nile and in the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... examine them before sending them on, and one can imagine his feelings upon finding the solution of the mystery which had troubled him so much. I have no sympathy for Mr Victor Druce; I am only profoundly thankful that Ruth escaped his clutches. Don't let us talk of him any more. We want only pleasant subjects on this great ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of Mordent, just come of age. Impulsive, generous, hot-blooded. He resolves to be a rake, but scorns to be a villain. However, he accidentally meets with Joanna "the deserted daughter," and falls in love with her. He rescues her from the clutches of Mrs. Enfield the crimp, and marries her.—Holcroft, The Deserted Daughter (altered into ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... unimportant, under the sole control of Chia She; but that, whenever anything turned up, involving any receipts or payments, she extorted an unusual percentage, the moment the money passed through her clutches, giving out as a pretence: 'Well Chia She is so extravagant that I have to interfere and effect sufficient economies to enable us to make up our deficits.' And that she would not trust any one, whether son, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... means passive or indifferent to the attacks made upon their authority and prestige in the New World. The hostility of the mariners from the north they repaid with interest, and woe to the foreign interloper or privateer who fell into their clutches. When Henry II. of France in 1557 issued an order that Spanish prisoners be condemned to the galleys, the Spanish government retaliated by commanding its sea-captains to mete out the same treatment to their French captives, ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... this amiable young gentleman is more or less in the clutches of our siren friend at Braster Grange. I think that you and I had better go and ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strayed or been beguiled into this neighborhood, drugged and robbed. Others, whose business or chance brought them within the reach of this set of desperadoes, have fared similarly. Sad has been the fate of many an individual unfortunately falling into the clutches of these murderous villains. A stealthy step, an arm thrown under the chin of the unsuspecting victim, a bear-like clasp, and total unconsciousness. To rifle the pockets of the unlucky man—sometimes stripping him and throwing him off the dock—and escape ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... There is, however, one disadvantage incident to this method, which is worthy of consideration. The victims of the dram-seller die, and he must make more drunkards or his business will be gone. He may get his clutches on your boy. He will, if he can. This would be very unpleasant. However, if such a thing should occur, you can drive your son away, banish him from your sight. Then, if you should hear some time that he has ended the struggle ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... signs of weakness. No sooner is the possibility of a wrong admitted than it becomes actual, and clutches you by the throat, however you may then try to shake off all belief in it. What I should like to be able to tell Nikhil frankly is, that happenings such as these must be looked in the face—as great Realities—and that which is the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles. An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate, or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had been gracious to her, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... which Dr. Stewart-Walker held—in the name of an obliging friend and solicitor—a preponderating number of shares. At this period of the spring he always became anxious to clear up, not to say clear out, his southern clienetle lest any left-over members of it should fall into the clutches of one of his numerous local rivals. And, in this connection, it may be noted as remarkable to how many of the said clientele a "cure" at Cotteret-les-Bains offered assurance of permanent restoration ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... thigh, each determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself—fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... children were rich? Then Mrs. Mugford came forward with her explanation, which was, that the Corporal, as had already been suspected, was undoubtedly in league with the witch, and had led the children into her clutches. It might be that the witch could not hurt them; but certain it was that, when all the country was out searching for them, she had led them straight back to the Corporal. As to the Corporal being thrown from his horse, Mrs. Mugford had heard such stories ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... Pocket, I assure you; I had an Uncle who defray'd that Charge, but for some litte Wildnesses of Youth, tho' he made me his Heir, left Dad my Guardian till I came to Years of Discretion, which I presume the old Gentleman will never think I am; and now he has got the Estate into his Clutches, it does me no more good, than if it ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... unharmed from the clutches of Buckingham and Monmouth. The former had caught him hastening from the monastery and seizing compelled him to give the information he sought and to give up all papers on his person; which he did cheerfully. Finding him a cowardly knave, the Duke ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... he expostulated. "Really, one might think that you actually enjoyed this sort of thing! One of these fine days, if you're not careful, you'll be caught napping, and it'll take all Dollops's and my ingenuity to get you out of the clutches. I do beg of you to be careful—for Ailsa's ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... bishops,' the 'pampered parsons,' 'old mother church,' etc. I remember your strictures on all who differ from you, your sweeping condemnation of classes and individuals, without the slightest allowance made for circumstances or temptations; and then, Mr. Yorke, doubt clutches my inmost heart as to whether men exist clement, reasonable, and just enough to be entrusted with the task of reform. I don't believe you ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... minute Carline joined in, but he had told the truth. He hated the river, and he was cowed by it; yet he could not escape its clutches. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... entirely unlike any portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait-gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head; but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a' Combe, who lies yonder in the corner. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... you will find my fine cut tobacco in the other pocket." This startled him so that he wheeled about and wildly dashed into the arms of a wax policeman near the door. When he discovered that he was in the clutches of a suit of second-hand clothes filled with wax, he seemed to be greatly annoyed ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... men-at-arms exchanged glances, at first pitying, and then sterner, as the longest-booted man said, 'Beware, noble my lord; the urchin doth but feign madness to escape from our clutches. Shall we not ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... but at nobody else of the family. Well, what I mean is, that that old woman is enough to spoil any young girl she takes in hand. She dries 'em up, and poisons 'em, sir; and I was never more glad than when I heard that Kew had got out of her old clutches. Frank is a fellow that will always be led by some woman or another; and I'm only glad it should be a good one. They say his mother's serious, and that; but why shouldn't she bet?" continues honest Crackthorpe, puffing his cigar with great ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tale. This fellow is madly, insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... leaping up consuming the wrecked remains of the royal seat of the powerful Arab ruler, a woman's scream, louder than the rest, caused me to look suddenly round at the latest victim of the Dagombas' thirst for vengeance, and I beheld in the clutches of half-a-dozen savages, a young woman, dragged as the others had been by her fair, unbound hair towards the spot where each had, in turn, been murdered. She was dressed in a rich, beautiful robe of bright yellow silk, embroidered with pale pink flowers, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... of drums, carrying springs, and arranged so that they can be brought into use singly or in pairs. Each spring or section has sufficient capacity to run the car, and thus as one spring is used another is applied. There is a series of clutches by which the drums to which the springs are attached are connected, with a master wheel, which transmits through a train of wheels the power of the springs to the axles, of the truck wheels. The motor will be so constructed that it may be placed on a truck ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various |
