"Hard put" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another look through the glass. Burton's face was livid and ghastly, and it was plain that he was hard put to it for breath. With feeble, faltering strokes he was coming to the surface. Hill was following him ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... is very general and many dog-owners have been hard put to it to comply with the regulation. From these, however, must be excepted those who possess wire-haired terriers, from whose coats an admirable muzzle can be extracted in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... could have cried out; I was indeed hard put to it to refrain from crying out—from warning him. But his injunctions had been explicit, and I restrained myself by a great effort, preserving silence and crouching there at the window, but with every muscle tensed and a desire for ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... he. "Your man has not come on quite as well as you had expected in his training, and you are hard put to it to invent an excuse. Still, I should have thought that you might have found a more probable one, and one which would entail less ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Henry so amiable. In fact he seemed hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... 'in the general line. Also a—a little money on account of rent. A very little, sir. It oughtn't to be owing, I know, but we have been hard put to it, indeed!' ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... "Nay, let him go to Brittany with the others," said he harshly. "I wonder, John, that you should bring back to my memory this youth whose pertness is too fresh that I should forget it. But some one must go to Brittany in your stead, for the matter presses and our people are hard put to it to hold their own." He cast his eyes over the assembly, and they rested upon the stern ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... great hall at Harby a motley fellowship were assembled. If a stranger from a strange land, wafted thither on some winged Arabian carpet or flying horse of ebony, could have beheld the place and the company, he would have been hard put to it to find any reasonable explanation of what his eyes witnessed. In the middle of the hall some five singular figures stood on line: two tall, powerful lads with foolish faces, flagrant farm-hands; an old, bowed man with the snow of many winters on his hair; an impish lad ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... said the justice of the peace, "we should be hard put to it about post-mortems; he found poison in poor Pigeron's stomach so cleverly that the chemists of Paris testified in the court at Auxerre that they ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... been rather hard put to it in the matter of having baths, but the disability had been overcome by means of sawing a cask in two; an expedient which answered very well. The bath was also used as a wash-tub, each man taking ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... "She'd been hard put to it to keep going in London, while John did the courting," said I to myself, "and that's what caused her to change her name. If she doesn't catch him, we're another twenty-five down, and Moss will ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... couple came into sight, pacing the decks of the Mirabelle. Soon the watchers were given a better look, for the two men came down the gangplank to examine cases that had been brought to the dock for loading, and Chris and Amos were hard put to it not to laugh out loud at the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... difficulty in harmonizing this view with their theory of physical premotion, the few Molinists who espoused it were hard put in trying to square it with the scientia media.(669) On the whole these Molinists endorse the third and mildest of the above-quoted opinions, which differs only theoretically from the rigoristic view described ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... you then," said the skipper; "only don't get within shot. I don't want to have to turn amateur doctor again on your behalf. I am clever enough at cuts and bruises, and I dare say if I were hard put to it I could manage to mend a broken leg or arm, but I wouldn't undertake to be hunting you all over to find where a rifle-bullet had gone. Accidents are my line, not wounds received in war; and, by the way, while we are talking of such subjects, if ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... because he can't do it the natural way. The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber—if very hard put upon making a show—but he could no more come the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... painful. So much so, that Mr. Samuel Plowman, Solicitor and Commissioner for Oaths, whose nerves were less subordinate than those of the two ex-officers, was hard put to it ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in his hands, like any humblest mortal hard put to it. It has been brought home to him sharply enough that the thing is not to be done, on the accomplishment of which he had so fondly built. It is not that an angry wife has interfered; it is that her argument has been sound, and that for the sake of his world a god cannot trespass ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Humiliation, poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way, before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... on the first day of next November will effectually cut off Mr. John Smith's source of income. There is no provision in the will for Mr. John Smith. Smith would have to go to work. I don't think he'd like that. By the way, I wonder: do you suppose John Smith could earn—his salt, if he was hard put to it? Very plainly, then, something has got to be done about getting John Smith to fade away, and Stanley G. Fulton to ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... this district of which so much has been said, and which is still far in excess of what it ought to be, I found many people hard put to it to explain why the restriction of hours which has worked so conspicuously well in other districts has had comparatively little effect here. Is it defects of administration, or a certain "cussedness" in the Scotch character, which resents any tightening of law? One large ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sleeve on the body of a dead man, the rattle of a loose strand of barbed wire, the movement of a sorely wounded soldier lying out in the open, might draw the German fire. And if the moving picture boys were caught in that they would be hard put ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... but the bad name that he had earned dogged him to London. The Royal Society struck him off its rolls, and in revenge he is said to have threatened to publish a travesty of their transactions. He was doubtless often hard put to it for a living, but the variety of his attainments served him in good stead. He possessed or gained some reputation as a mining expert, and making his way down into Cornwall, he seems for some years subsequent to 1782 to have been assay-master and storekeeper of some mines at Dolcoath. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... followed. Not a word had passed between them, since they were at all times in contact with monitor stations spaced across the world below. The first time they had enjoyed this irregular horseplay, on the second trip, Logan had made the mistake of saying, "Race you to the air lock!", and was hard put to explain those words. Nor could Logan switch to "intercom only," since a sudden radio silence would create anxiety below. Only their heavy breathing would indicate unusual ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... the Hotel de Ville, where the colonels read their telegrams and got off a report to London. One of their telegrams brought the unwelcome news that Ferguson was also recalled to England. They are evidently hard put to it to find enough officers to handle the volunteer forces. He will have to stay on for a few days, but Colonel DuCane came back with us and left the next morning for England by ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... better obey them now, citizen sergeant," was Rouget's dry comment on the other man's surly explanation, "for you seem to have properly blundered from first to last, and will be hard put to it to redeem your character. The Republic, remember, has ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the way the two horses had come, and it led off to the left, toward where the monuments were thickest, and where the great sections of wall stood, broken and battlemented. Lucy was hard put to it to hold Sage King, but the horses behind plodded along. The black horse struck Lucy as being an ugly, but a faithful and wonderful animal. He understood everything. Presently she tied the bridle she was leading him by to the end of her own ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... necessarily rapid movements of the cavalry, and the batteries had not come up. Nor was there any supporting infantry. Indeed, the retreat of the Prussians had been so sudden and so rapid that Grouchy's horse had been hard put to it to ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... But Diana's loyalty was hard put to it to fight the newly awakened jealousy that was stirring in her heart, and it seemed as though just now everything and everybody combined to add fuel to the fire, for, only a few days later, when Miss Lermontof came to Lilac Lodge to practise with ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Caligula's delights, and the execrable sordidness of those of Tiberius. Would one think that Augustus himself, the highest and most fortunate of mankind, a person endowed too with many excellent parts of nature, should be so hard put to it sometimes for want of recreations, as to be found playing at nuts and bounding-stones with little Syrian and Moorish boys, whose company he took delight in, for their prating and ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... it as some miracle of health that has been attained. Any man—I do not care who he is—who was the sort of a drinker I was, who will stop drinking long enough to get cooled out will feel so much better in every way that he will be hard put to it to give a reason for ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... men were hard put to check the fury of the mob. Men and women, bent on vengeance, made the night hideous with their curses, howls and shrieks. In their senseless fury they prepared to kill. They had heard the stories ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... to have sent you word," said he, as he kissed her with more than usual tenderness of manner. "It was wrong in me. But I've been very hard put to it to take up my notes, and didn't succeed until near the closing of bank hours. I loaned Ellis some money, which he was to return to me to-day; but his failing to do so put me to ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... testify to a genuine power of observation. But don't talk to me about the windows. Is it common sense, I ask you, to leave up windows which shut out all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by throwing patches of colour, to which I should be hard put to it to give a name, on a floor in which there are not two slabs on the same level? And yet they refuse to renew the floor for me because, if you please, those are the tombstones of the Abbots ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... guilty persons concerned in the concealment of the birth, and in the desertion of the infant, my nobly-born, highly-bred, irreproachable aunt now stood revealed before me as one! An older woman than I might have been hard put to it to preserve her presence of mind, in such a position as mine. Instinct, not reason, served me in my sore need. Instinct, not reason, kept me passively and stupidly silent when I got back to the house. "We will talk about it to-morrow," was ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... visits of Mary Magdalene, and subsequently of Peter and John to the tomb, which are given in the fourth Gospel, are from a Johannean source, if we were asked our reasons for this belief, we should be very hard put to it to give them. ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... of Humiliation, poor Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back or to stand his ground: But he considered again that he had no armor ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... disconnected. It is a kind of aftermath, in which the historian gathers up scattered records, but does not preserve the dramatic character of the history. He had apparently here to fall back on his own feeble constructive power, and was hard put to it to eke out his material to the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... we were once more under way. Under cover of darkness the Arabs had pillaged the abandoned supplies, in some cases killing the wounded Turks. The transport animals of the enemy and their cavalry horses were in very bad shape. They had evidently been hard put to it to bring through sufficient fodder during the wet winter months when the roads were so deep in mud as to be all but impassable. Instead of being distant from Ana the eight miles that we had measured on the map, we found that ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... tommy-rot, young man! It isn't so at all!" stormed Obadiah Jones. "After his father ran away, to join some revolutionists in Mexico, his mother was hard put to it to support herself, and when she took sick and died, he was placed in the Lumberville poorhouse by some neighbors. As soon as I heard of it I sent for him to come to Montpelier, where I was then doing business. ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... the empire builder tightened as his eyes gleamed over the soft luxury of his daughter's boudoir. James would have been hard put to it to conceive any contrast greater than the one between this modern berserk and the pampered daughter of his wealth. A Hun or a Vandal gazing down with barbaric scorn on some decadent paramour of captured Rome was the most analogous ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... intellectual power. And the ordinary girl is not made to realise woman's intrinsically inferior money-earning capacity. She is not made to realise that the woman who cannot work with her hands is generally hard put to earn enough to keep herself alive in the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... Lady Arthur, "since you seem to have been so hard put to it, as single men, what's to be done with the married man who ruins an innocent body?—What punishment, Lady Towers, shall we find out for such an one; and what reparation to the injured?" This was said with a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... I said huskily, her rapt face and intent manner, her utterly lovely ivory body, glittering everywhere with the shining powder which she used, the subtle penetrative scent of her—I was hard put ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... nests of April and May are destroyed; their enemies have been many months without eggs and their appetites are keen for them. It is a time, too, when other food is scarce, and the crows and squirrels are hard put. But the second nests of June, and still more the nests of July and August, are seldom molested. It is rarely that the nest of the goldfinch ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... as unworthy. At the end of half-an-hour his mind was still working fruitlessly. He knew that the longer he waited the more brilliant he would have to be, and he told himself that even Bernard Shaw or one of those clever writing fellows would have been hard put to it now. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... growing wetter, thicker, and hotter. The pleasant warmth and tickling changed to a burning sensation. Ken found himself bathed in a heavy sweat. Then he began to smart in different places, and he was hard put to it to keep rubbing them. The steam grew hotter; his body was afire; his breath labored in great heaves. Ken felt that he must cry out. He heard exclamations, then yells, from some of the other boxed-up players, and he glanced quickly around. Reddy ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... those who fancy that their more well-to-do neighbors, if they do not belong to the category of millionaires, are living beyond their means. Every man whose own means are small, or even moderate, finds himself rather hard put to it to make both ends meet, and is constantly harassed by desires which he is unable to gratify. When he sees others gratifying them, his self-love drives him often unconsciously into ascribing it to recklessness and improvidence. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... exaggerate. This ideal was imperfectly defined, still more imperfectly executed or realized. It would be absurd to suppose that it was held by all Greeks; it was indeed advocated by and for a minority only. Those who now find in it the impulse and guide of Greek history might be hard put to it if they were obliged to produce evidence of their faith, and they would be forced to confess that there was much to be said against their interpretation. There is to be acknowledged first the apparent want of internal unity in the Greek world, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... gentleman had treated their Mother as a person superior to them, and given her all honour. They in Okoyong must now treat her as befitted her rank and station, and must build her a proper house to live in, Mary was hard put to it to preserve her gravity. Soon afterwards a young slave, for whom she had often pled, began to wash his hands in some dirty water in a dish outside: his master ran at him with a whip, and it was all she could do to prevent him being lashed. Opening ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition, who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... to his benefactor with the obsequious politeness which was usual to him; but he appeared a great deal less afflicted than he might have been in this grevions extremity. As a matter of fact, he was hard put to it to conceal, under a long face, his joyous feelings and his lively satisfaction. The parchment of his dry, humble, yellow eyelids ill concealed the light of joy which shone from his ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... past, and from there, too, came the terrified flying-fish, which went winging away out to the beam, glittering in the bright sun. The rumbling of the ship's engines filled the air with a sleepy monotone; and Mac was hard put to keep awake. From his cool perch he looked down on snowy awnings stretching fore and aft, though here and there through openings he caught glimpses of mens' bare bodies as they lay sleeping on deck, and of horses' ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... investments in those countries to pay for the war. These and other considerations all suggest that we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain our position as one of the main suppliers of the manufactured goods of the world. In such circumstances we shall be hard put to it to maintain, far less raise, the ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the squadron to which Hal, Chester and Alexis were attached was soon in the midst of the foe. Not unused to such encounters, the lads nevertheless found themselves hard put to keep their seats and ward off the blows ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... not very large," said he; "I have two horses and two dogs, a Parsee servant, and a Cape baboon. I should like to take the latter with us as well as my servant. My servant, because he is a good cook; and my monkey, because, if we are hard put to it, she will show us what we may eat and what we may not; there is no taster like a monkey. Besides, she is young and full of tricks, and I like something to ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of internal credit that shall ensure the correct balance of the bubble—for just as long as the militarist policy of Germany can endure the strain of war. But money alone is not sufficient for victory; the peasant hard put to it to suppress his laugh, and the crowned Germania that built up the paper pedestal of the bubble, needed many other things to make that pedestal secure; there was needed integrity, and the respect of neighbouring nations, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... was to notice such versatility of invention, such readiness of resource, such familiarity with divers nooks and crannies in the practical experience of life, in a man now so hard put to it for a livelihood. There are persons, however, who might have a good stock of talent, if they did not turn it all into small change. And you, reader, know as well as I do, that when a sovereign or a shilling is once broken into, the change scatters and dispends ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vigour, an autumnal green. In one photograph Lady Burton, devoted as ever to her husband, is seen nestling at his side and leaning her head against his shoulder. She had grown uncomfortably stout and her tight-fitting dress was hard put to it to bear the strain. Her glorious hair was now grown gray and thin, and it was generally hidden by a not very becoming big yellowish wig with curls, which made her look like a magnified ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... better," said Gregory as he welcomed him. "I don't know what your usual self may be like, but you certainly have more the appearance of a man, and less that of a skeleton than when we first brought you in. You must have been pretty hard put ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... house, declaring that such an addition would make the old mansion ever so much more valuable, and as to the cost, he would arrange that so that they would never feel the payment of it. But this suggestion met with no encouragement, and poor Burke was so hard put to it for something to occupy his mind that one day he asked Mrs. Cliff if she had entirely given up her idea of employing some of her fortune for the benefit of the native Peruvians, stating that if she wanted an agent to go down there and to attend to that sort of thing, he believed he would ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... of my adversary was suddenly thrown into faint light by a narrow window in the wall. I staked all upon one swift thrust. It caught him full in the belly, and ran how far up his body I know not. With a cry he fell forward, and I was hard put to it to save my sword and avoid going down with him. But I got myself and my sword free, and went on up the stairs as fast as ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a good idea," agreed the young camera operator. "Those International people must be pretty hard put to it to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... trying to catch her glance, and listening to Belding's talk with the cowboys, Dick was hard put to it to dictate any kind of a creditable letter. Nell met his gaze once, then no more. The color came and went in her cheeks, and sometimes, when he told her to write so and so, there was a demure smile on her lips. She was laughing at him. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... was so remarkable. One would have said that he was conscious of having committed the murder himself. In all my experience I never saw a man so hard put to it to tell a ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... and his crew, whom we took on board. Very glad I was to have them, as they were of the greatest assistance during the gale, though I fear Captain Hake must have been hard put to it ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... affected him, unless to make his temper more violently critical. By seven o'clock the sun was beating down on him and dazzling his eyes from over the boma wall. The dust rose off the square. The words of command came bellowing in swift succession from a throat that ought to have been hard put to it to whisper. If anything, he grew more active and exacting as the askaris wearied, and by the time the two hours were up they were ready to a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... to unite with the other squadrons before Brest or Cadiz, according as I make my way to one or other of those ports. I am far from being in a position, in leaving this place with twenty-nine vessels, to be able to fight against a similar number; I do not fear to tell you that I should be hard put to it to ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... guarding the china nurseries has been understood. We have in this country broadcast and in abundance every type of material needed for the finest china ware, and for the finer glasses and enamels. The royal manufactories in Europe were hard put to it sometimes for want of discovering kaolin beds in their dominions, but the resources of the United States in these particulars needed something more than to be brought to light. The manipulation and washing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... coffee, and with pipe and tobacco!" Thus would the statement run in the report to the Department. What if the bread be uneatable, the coffee undrinkable, and the tobacco unsmokable? The mere idea of such things is something; besides, prisoners do contrive, being hard put to it, to consume them. We ourselves at least tried all three; if it proved easier to be abstinent than self-indulgent, that was our own affair. Meanwhile, our mental appetites were appeased by a little gray pamphlet, containing the rules ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... for two weeks. The hardest part of my job is to keep her from subscribing for a set of Dickens. She has been on the point of signing the contract at least a half dozen times, and I've been fearfully hard put to head her off. Conley's house is not far from ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... were challenged to adduce a satisfactory reason why he has not written thoroughness into his course of study he might be hard put to it to justify the omission. He hopes, of course, that the quality of thoroughness will issue somehow from the study of arithmetic and science, but he lacks the courage, apparently, to proclaim ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... different tinted icings, pale green flavored with pistachio, pale pink with rose, yellow with orange, white with almond. Little domino cakes are also pretty. Ice the cakes on top and sides with white icing, then when hard put on a second layer of chocolate, using Walter Baker & Co.'s Unsweetened Chocolate and made as for layer cake, dipping the brush in the melted chocolate to make ...
— Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes and Home Made Candy Recipes • Miss Parloa
... head. "I cannot think. A wandering Indian most likely.... Hard put to it, I expect. He has taken a sack of beans ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... scandalous not to have thanked you sooner for the annual cask of cider, which has given us even more than the customary pleasure. This has been an autumn when I have been hard put to it to keep up with my own thoughts, and I've written no letters at all. Like everyone else I am thinking constantly of this new peace that has marvellously come upon us. I trust we may have statesmen who will be able to turn it to the benefit of humanity. I wish ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... is not particularly easy for one to climb up out of the working-class—especially if he is handicapped by the possession of ideals and illusions. I lived on a ranch in California, and was hard put to find the ladder whereby to climb. I early inquired the rate of interest on invested money, and worried my child's brain into an understanding of the virtues and excellences of that remarkable invention of man, compound interest. Further, I ascertained the current rates of wages for workers ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... vexed, nervous and embarrassed, was hard put to it to keep back the tears. Old Grannis stood for a moment with averted eyes, murmuring: "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I—I really—I beg ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... skin was a color to match in with the rest of him. It was not pale, nor was it pasty. People with a taste for comparisons were hard put to it to describe just what it was the hue of his face did remind them of, until one day a man brought in from the woods the abandoned nest of a brood of black hornets, still clinging to the pendent twig from which the insect artificers had swung it. Darkies used ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... universal a repute for rancour, that he was branded with the name of the Wicked. Nor did he even refrain from wrongdoing to foreigners, but, after foully harrying his own land, went on to assault Saxony. The Saxon general Syfrid, when his men were hard put to it in the battle, entreated peace. Toste declared that he should have what he asked, but only if he would promise to become his ally in a war against Hadding. Syfrid demurred, dreading to fulfill the condition, but by sharp menaces Toste induced him to promise what he asked. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the clarified gelatine; also let the juice of 2 oranges and 1 lemon run through filtering paper and add it to the jelly; then make a trial to see if firm enough; place jelly form in cracked ice, pour a few spoonfuls of jelly into the form and when hard put in a layer of pineapple; cover them with jelly and when firm put in another layer of pineapple; continue until all is used up; then cover the form, put some ice on top of form and let it remain till jelly is firm; ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... Young found himself hard put to meet the church obligations in 1856, notwithstanding the economy of the hand-cart system; and the Millennial Star of December 27 announced that no assisted emigrants would be sent out during the following year. Saints proposing to go through ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... animals, their useless suffering and death, formed [238] the main point of interest. People watched their destruction, batch after batch, in a not particularly inventive fashion; though it was expected that the animals themselves, as living creatures are apt to do when hard put to it, would become inventive, and make up, by the fantastic accidents of their agony, for the deficiencies of an age fallen behind in this matter of manly amusement. It was as a Deity of Slaughter—the Taurian goddess who demands the sacrifice of the shipwrecked sailors thrown on her ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... a very early age, had to learn things less pleasant than drawing. That tiny house in Riverton represented all that was left of the once-great Champneys holdings, and the little widow was hard put to it to keep even that. Before he was seven Peter knew all those pitiful subterfuges wherewith genteel poverty tries to save its face; he had to watch his mother, who wasn't robust, fight that bitter and losing fight which women of her sort wage with evil circumstances. Peter ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... daily custom, most of the Ardans were gathered at the natatorium. Hilton and Temple were wrestling in the water—she was trying to duck him and he was hard put to it to keep her from doing it. The platinum-haired twins were—oh, ever so surreptitiously and indetectably!—studying the ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the large advertisement about him, but he suddenly realized the poison that lies in printer's ink. Almost overnight, it seemed, he had been added to ten thousand mailing lists. Little Miss Whippet, although she was fast at typewriting, was hard put to it to keep up with his correspondence. She quivered eagerly over her machine, her small paws flying. New pink ribbons gleamed through her translucent summery georgette blouse. They were her flag of exultation at her surprising ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... go upstairs and pack his own trunk before the workmen got to asking questions. He carried his set of Dickens upstairs, not without interrogation, and stored the volumes away at the bottom of his trunk. So few were his individual belongings that he was hard put to fill the trays compactly enough to prevent the shifting of the contents. When the job was done he locked the trunk, tied a rope around it and then sat down upon it to think. Had he left anything out? He remembered something. He untied ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... just as was being done now precisely in accordance with the Pug's original intentions, she had thought of the Adventurer. It had seemed the only way then; it seemed the only way now—despite the fact that she would be hard put to it to answer the Adventurer if he thought to ask her how, or by what means, she was in possession of the information that enabled her to communicate with him. But she must risk that—put him off, if necessary, through the plea of haste, and on ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... you so. You and I may meet her in London. If we do, I should think she'll be hard put to it to recognize me. Now put on your things and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with much difficulty, began now the necessary preparations; for as to Susan, she was utterly rejected, and with such disdain, that the poor wench was as hard put to it to restrain her hands from violence as her mistress had been to hold her tongue. This indeed Susan did not entirely; for, though she literally kept it within her teeth, yet there it muttered many "marry-come-ups, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... were I to leave her the subject of new insult and atrocity?—or how could she bear to be removed from these scenes, where the remembrance of her wrongs is aye sweetened by the recollection of her revenge?—I was once so hard put at by my Great enemy, as I may well ca' him, that I was forced e'en to gie way to the tide, and removed myself and my people and family from our dwellings in our native land, and to withdraw for a time into MacCallum More's country—and Helen made a Lament on our departure, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... waits for the dog to catch up with him, and leads him on in a merry chase. I feel sure that unless badly cornered or confused by a number of dogs or wolves, the deer does not often develop great fear, nor is he hard put to it in these episodes. Quite likely there is an element of sport in ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... guess not how, for she should be hard put to it to commit mortal sin, when mewed for eight years in one chamber. Howbeit, if so be, what then? Is not Father Jordan a priest? One priest is full as ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... as had been agreed, Marouin was on the Champs de Mars, then covered with Marshal Brune's field-artillery. No one had arrived yet. He walked up and down between the gun-carriages until a functionary came to ask what he was doing. He was hard put to it to find an answer: a man is hardly likely to be wandering about in an artillery park at ten o'clock at night for the mere pleasure of the thing. He asked to see the commanding officer. The officer came up: M. Marouin informed him that he was an avocat, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thirty again: and as he felt thirty he wanted to be thirty.... She never discussed her private affairs with him, but he knew that she lived alone. She baffled him, bewildered him, until he was often hard put to it not to burst into tears. So quick she was and she understood so well, had so keen an insight into character and the intrigue that went on all around her, that he marvelled at her innocence and sometimes almost hated her for it, and for ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... time in my life I have met with a man with whom it is possible to live. In general, not many of the type exist in Russia, and, though clever, good-humoured, well-educated men abound, one would be hard put to it to find an individual of equable temperament with whom one could share a roof for centuries without a quarrel arising. Anyway, Chichikov is the first of his sort ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all its red thumps unfaded, lying beside my dream book; but I am not going to inflict it on my readers. I am not so proud of it as I once was. I was really puffed up with earthly vanity over it at that time. Felix, I thought, would be hard put to it to beat it. As for Peter, I did not consider him a rival to be feared. It was unsupposable that a hired boy, with little education and less experience of church-going, should be able to preach better than could I, in whose family there was a ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... few antelope, wolves, and abundance of rattlesnakes, were nearly the only living things we saw. The Indians were mainly fishers of the Shoshone - or Great Snake River - tribe, feeding mostly on salmon, which they speared with marvellous dexterity; and Root-diggers, who live upon wild roots. When hard put to it, however, in winter, the latter miserable creatures certainly, if not the former, devoured their own children. There was no map of the country. It was entirely unexplored; in fact, Bancroft the American historian, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... should have been hard put to it to explain. Probably, if pressed, I would have burst into tears simply. I ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... returned their swords to the scabbards, and were for trusting to their fists alone. I contrived to give one of them a smart tap on the crown before they came to close quarters; but ere I could recover myself they were upon me, the staff was wrenched from my grasp, and I was as hard put to it as a stag bayed by hounds. I made what play I could with my fists, and got home at least one blow for two; but the odds were too heavy against me, and when at length a fellow as big as myself slipped round to my back and gripped me hard by the neck, all my struggles did not avail to prevent ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... threat might portend, I could not see, but it chimed in with the delirious cruelty of the dead sergeant. Threats for the future mattered not, the present being so unendurable. A man in Brocton's position must be hard put to it to turn traitor in this strange fashion. He had "rescued" me with his own men, and, lord or no lord, he would hang for it were it once known to a lover of the gibbet like the Duke's Grace of Cumberland. What on earth was the letter about? ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to help the relations in the arrangements for the defence. Go to her this morning—tell her that the case has my sympathy—that, as she knows, I am a barrister, and, if she wishes it, I will defend Hurd. I shall be hard put to it to get up the case with the election coming on, but I will do it—for the sake of the public interest involved. You understand? Her father is a Tory—and she is just about to marry Mr. Raeburn. Her position, therefore, is difficult. Nevertheless, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fleet's fire, and ran great risk of being taken. Dampier's ship held to the westward, till she was about a mile to windward of the other ships. She then tacked, and ran down to assist her consort, "who was hard put to it." As she ran down, she opened fire on the Toro, "who fell off, and shook her ears," edging in to the shore, to escape, with her fleet after her. They made no fight of it, but tacked and hauled to the wind "and stood away ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... several additions afterwards made brought the building account to about L3,000. Originally it was built to accommodate 600 poor persons, but in progress of time it was found necessary to house a much larger number, and the Overseers and Guardians were often hard put to for room; which perhaps accounts for their occasionally discussing the advisability of letting some of their poor people out on hire to certain would-be taskmasters as desired such a class of employees. In the months of January, February, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the room, sending with me the impression that inside the frock-coat, behind the bland gold-rimmed spectacles, there was yet something left of manhood and that vague quality called fight, which is surely hard put to live ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... reiteration, he strove to build up in their minds a crude conception of numbers. As the quantities increased, he had the boys holding different magnitudes in each of their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the symbols on the log of driftwood; and for symbols he was hard put, being compelled to use the teeth from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for billions. It was here that he stopped, for the boys were showing signs ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... disbelief, so, with mere literary fashions, you must suspend disagreement. We should not call By-ends By-ends now: and whether we should do better or worse nobody, as Plato says, knows but the Deity. But the best of us would be hard put to it to make By-ends reveal his By-endishness more perfectly than he does by his conversation, and without any ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... short relief to the Confederates. The enemy was not yet done with. Fresh regiments passed to the attack. The 33rd was driven back, and the thin line upon the plateau was hard put to it to retain its ground. The Southerners had lost heavily. Bee and Bartow had been killed, and Hampton wounded. Few reinforcements had reached the Henry Hill. Stragglers and skulkers were streaming to the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... took in the less than imposing figure of Josip Pekic. Josip felt an urge to nibble at his fingernails, and repressed it. He had recently broken himself of the smoking habit and was hard put to find occupation ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... meadow and Lydia laughed up at him mischievously, "I've always thought I overpaid for those school books. They were fearfully used up. Oh, the speeches have begun," and Billy was hard put to it to keep close to her as she rushed toward the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... and most of my father's staff had been present, which explained the mysterious noises during the night. As a result of this fight, some three hundred prisoners were taken, and Lord Strathnairn, then Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, was very hard put to it to find sufficient men (who, of course, would have to be detached from his force) to escort the prisoners into Dublin. Lord Strathnairn suddenly got an inspiration. He had every single button, brace buttons and all, cut off the prisoners' trousers. Then the men had perforce, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... so oddly found in the drawer of his inkstand at Mrs. Craddock's, Royal Crescent, Bath, offered another instance of Boz's ingenious methods of introducing episodical tales into his narrative. He was often hard put to it to find an occasion: they were highly useful to fill a space when he was pressed for matter. He had the strongest penchant for this sort of thing, and it clung to him through his life. Those in "Pickwick" are exceedingly good, full of spirit and "go," ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... back word for them to sit down, which they gladly did, whilst the relievers, as they passed along, chucked them bits of tobacco, ready cut up, from their small store, small because they themselves were also hard put ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... I am hard put for an answer. I look round me, and watch my interlocutor preparing to make bread. There is a mammoth pan on the bench beside me containing a coast-line of flour with a lake of water in the middle. Cook is opening the yeast-jar, an expression ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Janet to him," Saunders urged, "an' him to her? She's that hard put to it for a man that wi' a bit steering she'll consent ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... a plain-clothes man waiting at the station all the week. Wherever the High Gable folk go he will keep them in sight. But he must have been hard put to it when Miss Burnet broke away. However, your man picked her up, and it all ends well. We can't arrest without her evidence, that is clear, so the sooner we get ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... national ideas concerning the laws of hospitality, and are generous in their entertainment of each other, even although it means that their monthly supply of grain will run short, and that they will be hard put to it, and have to live on short commons during the last days of the month. People holiday-making, or out of work, will forage about in search of free meals, and will drop in here and there just ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... rain came down in buckets, drenching them to the skin; see what sort of enthusiasm would show up when perhaps their supply of food gave out, and they were hard put to get enough to appease their savage appetites; given a week away from the loved ones at home, and how many of these bold spirits would still be able to declare with all their hearts that the life in the open was ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... forty and as light and active as a young girl. Her smooth cheek glowed with the happiness and thrill of the sport, and he was hard put to hold his own against her, even though she insisted that he play ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... luminous, and her voice had a new dove-like note. To tell the truth, at the sight of him striding along, pipe in mouth, with an interested eye for all that showed; so cool and strong; so honest and clean and young; after what she had just been through, Natalie was hard put to it to forbear casting herself on his breast forthwith, and letting her heart ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... into a large kettle or pot of boiling water. When the water boils very hard put in the lobster, having first brushed it and tied the claws together with a bit of twine. Keep it boiling from twenty minutes to half an hour, in proportion to its size. If boiled too long the meat will be hard and stringy. When it is done take it out, lay it on its claws to drain, ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... half-inch forehead, you would make an outcry about my ugliness! Why the bit of a dwarf can hardly peer out of its pulpit when it is hubbubbing there, and is so gossamer-shankt it durst not walk across the great square if the wind chance to be blowing strong; the congregation are hard put to find him out when he is grimacing and gesticulating before the altar, and need all their christian faith and hope to believe him actually corporeally present; and such a hop-o'-my-thumb, such a ghostly ne'er-to-be-seen, would take the tone of a Goliah here. With thy leave, thou most ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... belly yearned. Fifteen or twenty minutes later (it seemed like twenty hours, sahib!) hot corn was brought to us and we on guard began to be new men. Nevertheless, food made the guard more sleepy, and I was hard put to it walking from one ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... queer sentiments in regard to the mulatto, and every time I found him behind my chair I was hard put to repress a shudder. In this fashion the strange evening passed; and to the accompaniment of distant, muttering thunder, we two guests retired to our chambers in Cragmire Tower. Smith had contrived to ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Mexican led the way toward the rear, followed by the Kid. The lay-out of the place was a great deal like that of the ordinary cattle ranch. Indeed, if one were not wholly familiar with the types of dwellings which dot the Texas border, he would be hard put to show the difference between a cattle and a sheep ranch. The corral of the cattle ranch would be built of stronger boards, and on the sheep ranch, or "farm," there would be huge vats for "dipping" the sheep, to cure them of any disease they might ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... to a spirited attack by the Gloucesters, the line that he had been holding for three weeks was broken, and his retreat became fast and general. After relieving the Gloucesters our companies were hard put to it to advance rapidly enough to keep touch. At last we stood upon the Aubers Ridge itself. Lille was almost in view; but at this point the Division was relieved by the 59th and sent southwards to join our armies before Cambrai, where the final issue between ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove. He looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is sometimes, when we are very hard put to it, let behind the counter with a corkscrew; but never when it can be helped, his demeanor towards the public being disgusting servile. How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as to marry him, I ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... race with Nature in another part of the village. Elia had been prostrated with a nervous attack which ended in a terrible fit, and Eve, all unaware of what had gone before between her brother and Will, had been hard put to it, in her ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the police, and then, caught red-handed at last, had changed his occupation for a more useful one during a somewhat prolonged sojourn in Sing Sing. Affairs after that had not prospered with Melinoff. His wife, honest if her husband was not, and already an old woman, had been hard put to it with the shabby shop and the meagre business she was able to transact; so hard put to it, indeed, that the wonder had been that she had managed to keep the roof over her head. She had died a few months after her husband's ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... powerless to interfere, and the doctor was satisfied. Once she had put her hand to the plough Enid's quick brain saw her through. But she would have been hard put to it to deceive Henson under his very nose without the help of the bloodhound. Now she could see her way still farther. She waited nervously for a ring from the lodge-gates to the house, and about four o'clock it came. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... "His whole company has absolute confidence in him. You can't imagine the calm and prestige that kid possesses in the face of danger. He's the real type of leader, he is! And let me tell you, he's pretty hard put sometimes." ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... ain't gettin' me any further along with my yarn. As I say, the winter was a bitter one, and the wild things, panthers an' wolves an' sech, were pretty hard put to it to rastle enough grub to keep them alive. Natchally, this made 'em plumb ferocious, and they used to come right into the clearin' around the camp, hopin', I suppose, to pick up somethin'. The cook had to watch ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... his sense of humor spurted a moment to the fore. He found himself struggling to keep back a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gown simulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair. He was hard put to make his voice sound ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... presented 50,000 to the King, 10,000 to the Duke of York, and 5000 to the Duke of Gloucester. A deputation from the City attended at the same time, to tender their loyalty to the King, and to make an offering of 10,000. It was little wonder that the King, who a few weeks before was hard put to it to borrow a few pistoles, and was deep in debt for the maintenance of his household, should receive such messengers with overflowing welcome. The citizens of London were sent home rejoicing in the honour of knighthood—in abeyance for ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... and dragged it hurriedly aft, while one heavy sea after another swept over him. Once the Fram buried her bows and shipped a sea over the forecastle. There was one fellow clinging to the anchor-davits over the frothing water. It was poor Juell again. We were hard put to it to secure our goods and chattels. We had to throw all our good paraffin casks overboard, and one prime timber balk after another went the same way, while I stood and watched them sadly as they floated ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... voices inside, followed by sudden silence. Anazeh made a sign to Mahommed ben Hamza and me. We all three laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard. Evidently that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were hard put to it to keep our feet. The man who had opened the door lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air, and Anazeh laughed at him—the bitterest sign of disrespect one Arab ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... wished to marry him, it is true, for his wealth and position; for both she and her mother were very poor, and often hard put to it to make both ends meet and keep up a decent appearance before the world; and he had singled her out and paid her marked attention from the first, and given her every reason to believe that his attentions were ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... strife, nor tongues for swords, He that sees clear is gentlest of his words, And that's not truth that hath the heart to kill." There are usually pleasant enough things that one CAN say - though one may be hard put to it; and if the truth must be told, it may often be sugarcoated. President Hadley, when a young man, was receiving instructions for a delicate negotiation. "If the issue is forced upon us," he interrupted, "there is, I think, nothing to do ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Ramiro to repair the error into which I had tricked him. Slowly, says the proverb, one journeys far and safely. Slowly, then, did I consider! The escort was, no doubt, on its way back to Rome, and if I could but rid myself of that cumbrous litter, Ser Ramiro would find himself mightily hard put to it to again pick up the trail. I remembered a ravine a little way behind, and I rode my mule back to that as fast as it would travel with the litter and the other mule attached to it. Arrived there, I unharnessed the beasts ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... intended to do, it had settled them very comfortably with husbands. But with Henrietta, the condition which was meant to be temporary, seemed spreading itself out to be permanent, and with the parties taken away, she was hard put to it to fill up her days. She longed inexpressibly for school, for its restrictions, its monotony and variety. And to think that when she had the luck to be there, she had counted the days to being a young lady. When she remembered how she had ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor |
