"Posture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beasts, most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextricable knots, wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unaccustomed warmth, and dryness, and the firelight affected us with drowsiness, and I had probably been nodding for some time; but starting at last and opening my eyes, I missed Rima. The old man appeared to be asleep, although still in a sitting posture close to the fire. I rose and hurried out, drawing my cloak close around me to protect me from the rain; but what was my surprise on emerging from the cave to feel a dry, bracing wind in my face and to see the desert spread out for leagues before me in the brilliant ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... skill by which they were excited. The lofty bard hurried them along with the rapidity of his conceptions, and left them no time for hesitation, and left them no time for reflection. He ceased, and the melodious sounds still hung upon their ear, and they still sat in the posture of eager attention. At length they recollected themselves; and it was no longer the low and increasing murmur of applause: it was the exclamation of rapture; it was the unpremeditated shout ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... despite his previous Union utterances, to do the fell bidding of the most rampant Disunionists. And thus, in due time, it befell, as we shall see, that this "saving clause" in his "Union speech," brought him at the end, not to that posture of patriotic heroism to which he aspired when he adjured his Georgian auditors to "let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck (of the Republic), with the Constitution of the United States waving over our heads," ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... to smaller matters—The month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... struggling for self-control, her streaked and grotesque countenance contorted with emotion. Then I saw her eyes widen, and, glancing around, I saw that Rogers had dragged himself to a sitting posture, and was staring at her, ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... bent his limbs so as to give himself the firmest posture at the expected rush of the lion, with his small and shining weapon raised on high, in the faint hope that one well-directed thrust (for he knew that he should have time but for one) might penetrate through the eye to the brain of his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... changes its position during the earlier months of pregnancy, generally by the beginning of the tenth lunar month it has assumed a permanent posture. It has then reached such a size that it can best be accommodated in the cavity of the uterus if its various parts are folded together so as to give the fetus an ovoid shape. To secure this form its back is arched forward, and its head bent so that its ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... tree-tops and the August sky. The door was shut upon tales of injury and revenge. Between boy and man, he lay in a yearning stillness, colors and sounds and dim poetic strains his ministers of grace. This lasted for a time, then he rose, first to a sitting posture, then to his feet. Crows flew through the wood; he had a glimpse of yellow fields and purple heath. He set forth upon one of the long rambles which were a prized part ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... half an hour, but she was still in the drawing-room when Nanda came back. The girl found her, on the sofa, in a posture that might have represented restful oblivion, but that, after a glance, our young lady appeared to interpret as mere intensity of thought. It was a condition from which at all events Mrs. Brook was quickly roused by her daughter's ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... an instinctive shrinking when she saw that the women, also, were to recline, after the manner of the dissolute Greeks, instead of sitting, as she had been taught to consider the only decent posture for a Roman maid or matron. Then the thought of her mission brought the blush surging to her cheeks, whence it receded, leaving them pale with a sterner resolve. Was not love of country the greatest virtue? It was time to school herself, to shrink at nothing in that cause. As she ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... fingers, she started to peer under the bed to ascertain if there was any dust there, when, hearing a noise, supposing that the minister had come, she turned and closed the closet door, and reseated herself, wiping her mouth with her apron as she did so. This change of posture brought her into full view of the stairs leading to the loft above, which humble place, under the roof, the clergyman used for a study when he wished to be very much retired. On the stairs, descending with solemn step and slow, was Bub, with ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Rowley, raising himself up into a sitting posture by the help of his hands. "Monkeys—apes—by Jove! We've been fighting with monkeys, and it's they who have mauled us in this way. Well, Jonathan Rowley, think of your coming from old Virginny to Mexico to be whipped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... prisoner!" cried von Mitter, tumbling out of the carriage. He tried to stand up, but a numbness seized his legs, and he sank to a sitting posture. ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... thither, I assembled the companies at Bethlehem, the chief establishment of those people. I was surprised to find it in so good a posture of defense; the destruction of Gnadenhut had made them apprehend danger. The principal buildings were defended by a stockade; they had purchased a quantity of arms and ammunition from New York, and had even plac'd quantities of small ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... looked him full in the face. He was sitting, but she had not sat down. She was standing before him, faultless in demeanour, in posture, and in dress. If it had been his aim to confound her, he certainly had so far missed ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... heathen world have always burned their dead. In Japan, recently, an American traveller witnessed this singular disposal of the lifeless remains. A priest was placed in a sitting posture in his coffin, and a fire built behind it, consuming to ashes the body. These relics were carefully gathered up, and put in a safe and sacred place for all ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... bound together with a real cord, so as it could hardly be taken off without cutting. Some afflicted have been found with their arms tied and hanged upon a hook, from whence others have been forced to take them down, that they might not expire in that posture. Some afflicted have been drawn under tables and beds by undiscerned force, so as they could hardly be pulled out. And one was drawn half way over the side of a well, and with much difficulty recovered back again. When they ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... that injury had come to those he loved; and when the white boy saw it now, bent upon himself, he knew that he, too, had become more than a friend to this savage pathfinder of the wilderness. Minnetaki's caressing hand and the fearful anxiety in the crouching posture of the old hunter thrilled him, and two words fell from his lips before they knew that he had ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... observation and enjoyment to such a one, more prolific of individual suggestions than this so-called limited art? From the soulful glow of expression in the inspired countenance of the Apollo, to the womanly contours, so exquisite, in the armless figure of the Venus de Milo,—from the aerial posture of John of Bologna's Mercury, to the inimitable and firm dignity in the attitude of Aristides in the Museum of Naples,—from the delicate lines which teach how grace can chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... goody-goody ways, that they were so damned pious they made her sick. Then rage and lust seemed to possess her and she would talk about men in a shocking way, using unspeakable words, while the expression of her face and the posture of her body became those ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... inflammation begins, and no advice can be at once procured, the steam of water should be applied to it at first, and then a poultice of bread and milk, with a few drops of peruvian balsam. It is absolutely necessary that the injured part should be kept in the easiest posture, and as still as possible. If this does not soon succeed, good advice must be obtained without delay, as an accident of this kind neglected, or improperly treated, may be the occasion of losing a limb. In this and all cases of inflammation, a forbearance from animal food, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... they were to come down to Matavai in a day or two. Some other circumstances which he mentioned, with the foregoing ones, gave the story so much the air of truth, that I dispatched Lieutenant Williamson in a boat, to look into Oheitepeha bay; and, in the mean time, I put the ships into a proper posture of defence. For, though England and Spain were in peace when I left Europe, for aught I knew, a different scene might, by this time, have opened. However, on farther enquiry, we had reason to think that the fellow who brought the intelligence ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... servants was wounded and lay helpless upon the floor, his head falling against some object that held him in a semi-upright posture. Cantemir turned with the torch he had taken from the floor, and looked about him, stumbling over the prostrate bodies of the monks as they lay wounded. Noting his injured servant's position, he ran to him, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... my head and felt the crackle of twigs at my cheek. I was lying in a mass of ivy and lemon verbena bushes, and at one side of me rose the great face of a wall. The memory of what had happened returned. I scrambled to a sitting posture. My head was so dizzy that I had to catch at the bushes to hold myself upright, and my body felt sore and shaken, but the impulse to get away from the house, whose windows overlooking the convent wall still spied upon me, carried ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... her hair seemed light in contrast. It was evident that she had studied grace so thoroughly that her manner and carriage appeared unstudied and natural. She never seemed self-conscious, and yet no one had ever seen her in an ungainly posture or had known her to make an awkward gesture. This grace, however, like a finished style in writing, was tinged so strongly with her own individuality that it appeared original as compared with the fashionable monotony ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... thus to discriminate between a nationality which is a mere posture and that which is a plain expression of positive organic life. When we measure the force of the latter we are compelled to a finer analysis, and its illustrations are to be sought in subtler manifestations. Webster well exemplifies, by the very rudeness ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... with great energy, was, O sire, engaged in his evening prayers. Decked with black locks and adorned with ear-rings, that head of Jayadratha was thrown upon Vriddhakshatra's lap, as the latter was saying his prayers in a sitting posture. Thus thrown on his lap, that head decked with car-rings, O chastiser of foes, was not seen by king Vriddhakshatra. As the latter, however, stood up after finishing his prayers it suddenly fell down on the earth. And as the head of Jayadratha fell down on the earth, the head of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... opening of this chapter we come to quite a different theme. Like a fever-tossed patient, Ecclesiastes has turned from side to side for relief and rest; but each new change of posture has only brought him face to face with some other evil "under the sun" that has again and again pressed from him the bitter groan of "Vanity." But now, for a moment, he takes his eyes from the disappointments, the evil workings, and the sorrows, that everywhere prevail in that scene, ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... herself to a sitting posture, and, lifting both hands to her face, pushed back the hair from her forehead and temples, with a gesture which Ellen knew meant that she was making up her mind to some disagreeable or painful effort. Then taking both Ellen's ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a moment, facing toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture. Then she turned back ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... injunction might have been barked from the muzzle of a pistol. It brought the man to a sitting posture, his hands off the ground. He stopped swaying to and fro and appeared to be startled into an attempt to master his faculties of ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... because they had not put straw enough upon it. "No," said Harry, "I think that cannot be the reason; I rather imagine that it must be owing to our roof lying so flat; for I have observed that all houses that I have ever seen have their roofs in a shelving posture, by which means the wet continually runs off from them and falls to the ground; whereas ours, being quite flat, detained almost all the rain that fell upon it, which must necessarily soak deeper and deeper into the straw, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... de Villeroy almost slipped off his chair. As soon, at least, as he heard the Words, "Superintendence of the King's education," he rested his forehead upon his stick, and remained several moments in that posture. He appeared even to understand nothing of the rest of the speech. Villars and D'Effiat bent their backs like people who had received the last blow. I could see nobody on my own side except the Duc de Guiche, who approved through all ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... have petrified a modern Chamberlain. In one place, Trygaeus is riding to heaven on a dung-beetle, and of course a large fund of amusement is obtained from the literal and metaphorical manipulation of its food. Socrates' disciples are discovered in a kneeling posture, with their heads on the ground. "What are they doing?" inquires the visitor. "They are in search of things below the earth." "And why are their backs up in the air?" "With ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... beam of light which majestically moved across the heavens, stalking like an apparition in the midst of the auroral pageant, of whose general movements it seemed to be independent, maintaining always its upright posture, and following a magnetic parallel from east to west. This mysterious beam was seen by no less than twenty-six observers in different parts of the country, and a comparison of their observations led to a curious calculation indicating that the apparition was about ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... counsel. He had already volunteered to go to Flood's Creek to ascertain if water was still to be procured in it, but I had not felt justified in availing myself of his offer. My mind, however, dwelling on the critical posture of our affairs, and knowing and feeling as I did the value of time, and that the burning sun would lick up any shallow pool that might be left exposed, and that three or four days might determine our captivity or our release, I sent for Mr. Browne, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... various species of Gibbon readily take to the erect posture. Mr. George Bennett,* a very excellent observer, in describing the habits of a male 'Hylobates syndactylus' which remained for some time in his possession, says: "He invariably walks in the erect posture when on a level surface; and then the arms either hang down, enabling him ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... his thoughts reverted to Mabyn. What would he have been plotting all this time? he wondered; what stand would he take in this new posture of affairs? It was too much to hope, he decided, that one so selfish and so jealous could be persuaded to sink his animosity against Garth, for the purpose of serving Natalie while she lay injured. Garth's business had made him more or less familiar with the workings of the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... was the body of the late Mr. Baskerville, who by his will ordered that he should be buried in his own house, and he was accordingly interred there. A stone closet was erected in it, where he was deposited in a standing posture. The house was afterwards sold with this express condition, that it should remain there."—Account of the Birmingham riots in 1791, from the Historical Magazine, vol. iii., where it is said the house was burned on Friday ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... listening to the minister pray for those of unclean lips. And the minister prayed especially for one among them that he might cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord. He knew this to mean himself, for his mother glared over at him where he knelt; he was grateful for the kneeling posture at that moment; he would not have cared to sit. But all he had learned was that if you are going to use words freely it had much better be when you are alone; this, and that the minister had enormous feet, kneeling there with the toes ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... a half-sitting posture,—but what use? Why not lie down flat and get it over quickly? Yet he must hold on as long as possible, for the men might come back,—he began to think what they would do—but, he was sure they would not miss him until too late to ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... draped with sable hangings, his own heart seemed dead, like dry wood from which only a miracle could lure green leafage again. With the only real pity which was at his command, compassion on himself, he rose from the kneeling posture ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but in that posture my sickness came back with double violence, so that I tumbled again to the floor, and vowed he might use every rope in the ship to me, but up I could ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the young huntsman kindled with rapture. He essayed to speak, but the words died upon his tongue. Falling on his knees, he seized the count's hand, and pressed it to his lips and heart. Tekeli raised him from his humble posture. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... sort—at once ugly and beautiful—than like anything else; only that they were a thousand and a million times as big. And with all this there was something partly human about them, too. Luckily for Perseus, their faces were completely hidden from him by the posture in which they lay, for had he but looked one instant at them, he would have fallen heavily out of the air, an image of ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... lengthening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances is very partial, but that we take this partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent similarity may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... instantly the dogs stopped, straightway beginning to soothe their trail-worn pads and to strip the ice-pellets from between their toes. But the "wheelers" were too tired to make the effort, so Emerson went forward and performed the task for them, while Fraser floundered back and sank to a sitting posture ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... brain in startlingly perfect detail still—that and one other thing. The memory of John Anderson's pitifully wasted form huddled slack upon the high stool, arms outstretched and silvered head bowed in a posture of utter weariness, remained with him, too, clinging in spite of every effort ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... which I made diggings I regularly found the following arrangement. Under a stratum of earth two feet deep lay the body, in a state of good preservation, and generally, but not always, in a sitting posture. On clearing away another stratum of earth equally deep there is found a variety of household vessels for cooking, together with water-pots of clay, gourds, hunting and fishing implements, &c. There is frequently a third layer of earth, beneath which the gold and silver ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... vulgar, and long exploded practice, which has proved in almost every instance fatal. I expostulated, but in vain; I pitied the agonised feelings of the youth, while I struggled to release his father by force from the fatal posture in which he had, although with the best intention, unguardedly and obstinately placed him. He, however, resisted my efforts with personal violence, in spite of the expostulations of the guard. Seeing that I was likely to have my humane intentions ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... discovered to the westward, near Cape Malaga, going free. The allied fleet accordingly bore after them in a line of battle. On the morning of the 13th of August they were within three leagues of the French, and then brought to, with their heads to the south, the wind being east, and lay in a posture to receive them. In the English line, Sir George Rooke, with Rear-Admirals Byng and Dilkes, were in the centre. Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Sir John Leake led the van, and Vice-Admiral Calemburg and Rear-Admiral Vanderdosen commanded the ships ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... by Young's 'Night Thoughts,' which has continued its hold upon him through life. He carries it always about him; and it is no uncommon thing for him to be seen, in the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning against a side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury posture, turning over a pocket-edition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... made an expedition into France, under the command of Hastings [d]; and, except by a short incursion of Danes, who sailed up the Thames, and landed at Fulham, but suddenly retreated to their ships on finding the country in a posture of defence, Alfred was not for some years infested by the inroads of those barbarians [e]. [FN [d] W. Malm. lib. 2. c. 4. Ingulph. p. 26. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... sprang into a posture of defense, which was lost as quickly as it was taken, one great arm shot out like a piston-rod; there was the sound of bare fists beating on naked flesh; there was an exultant indrawn gasp of savage pleasure and relief from the crowd, and the ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... knack of dexterously turning my shoulder to maintain my advantage, had the mortification to find myself stuck up, as it were, in a pillory, and the weight of three or four people bearing on each side of my neck, so that I was in danger of strangulation. While I remained in this defenceless posture, one of the sick men, rendered peevish by his distemper, was so enraged at the smell I had occasioned and the rude shock he had received from me in my elevation, that, with many bitter reproaches, he seized me by the nose, which he tweaked ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... accouterments of a native of the woods, the other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and nearly savage equipments, the brighter, though sun-burned and long-faced complexion of one who might claim descent from a European parentage. The former was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a posture that permitted him to heighten the effect of his earnest language, by the calm but expressive gestures of an Indian engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colors of white and black. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... other strong races, their old home being among the Alleghanies, and they conquered their way from Florida to Brazil. Their tribe, they say, grew up from stones that their remote ancestors had sowed in the soil. They buried their dead in a sitting posture that they might be ready to leap up when the spirit came for them, and they faced the sunrise that they might see the day of resurrection ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... kneel beside him and gaze anxiously into his face. He smiled, roused himself to a sitting posture, well concealing the effort the exertion ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... on observing the change of posture in the Portuguese ships, Malek Azz conceived that they meant to retreat; he immediately came out therefore from the place where he had taken shelter, and boldly charged them, undismayed at the havock which was made among his small vessels by the Portuguese ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... only conversing, but his eyes dwelt on her with loving admiration all the time. Her posture was favorable to this furtive inspection, for she leaned her fair head over her work with a pretty, modest, demure air, that seemed to say, "I suspect I am being admired: I will not look to see: I might ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... in the conversation around the stove. Two or three of the men, after a civil enough greeting, hitched themselves into a more comfortable posture in their chairs, and it was singular, though Keith did not recall it until afterwards, that each of them showed by the movement a pistol on his ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... stroll, and when the sun shows itself I reenter and go to bed again, where I remain a longer or shorter time, according as the day promises to turn out. If it is bad, and I feel irritation and uneasiness, I have recourse to the method I have just mentioned. I change my posture, pass from my bed to the sofa, from the sofa to the bed, seek and find a degree of freshness. I do not describe to you my morning costume; it has nothing to do with the sufferings I endure, and besides, I do not wish to deprive you of the pleasure of your surprise when you see ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... being in the recumbent posture, the shoulders should be well raised, and the head held back so as to extend the windpipe, and thus bring it as near as possible to the surface. A pillow, or the arm of an assistant, behind the neck will be ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... endeavoring to stand erect, and of adopting this habit constantly from generation to generation, there is no doubt that their feet would gradually and imperceptibly assume a conformation adapted for an erect posture, that their legs would develop calves, and that these creatures would not afterwards walk as they do now, painfully on ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... in self-seeking or class selfishness regardless of the common welfare. This is a question we have to ask separately of each great nation, and of the Central Powers as a whole, and of the Allies as a whole, before we can begin to estimate the posture of the peoples of the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... admired his own generosity, and though he had felt the injustice of others, he had not accused himself of any. He turned away from the little boy, and sitting down at one end of the table, hid his face in his hands. He continued immovable in this posture for ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... recover from his brief unconsciousness: he could not understand at first what had happened to him, why he was lying on the floor, why his head ached so much, or why his blood-shot eyes saw everything through a mist. He gradually struggled into a sitting posture and looked around ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... who moved first. With white face he climbed to the roof of the cabin and idly seizing the great limb that lay there tried to move it. Xavier, who lay on his face on the bank, rose to a sitting posture and crossed himself. Beyond me crowded the four members of the crew, unhurt. Then we heard Xavier's voice, in French, thanking the Blessed Virgin ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel animal grunt with savage pleasure over the horrid ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of John at the Last Supper, leaning on Jesus' breast, shows him to us in the posture in which we think of him most. It is the place of confidence; the bosom is only for those who have a right to closest intimacy. It is the place of love, near the heart. It is the place of safety, for he is in the clasp of the everlasting arms, and none can snatch him out of the impregnable ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... moved our position a little higher up the river, to the Falls, over which the men, gliding down the shallow rapids above, in a sitting posture, allowed themselves to be carried. It looked a pleasant and easy feat, and was afterwards performed by many of the natives in all sorts of ways. Two or three of them would hold each other's shoulders, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... you, you find the punka immovable. The bahi still holds the cord that pulls it, but it is because he has tied it to his hand. He has gently slid to the floor in a squatting posture. He is asleep and you are burning. A vigorous exclamation brings him to his feet all standing, and he begins to pull the punka with all his might, and you have a feeling of ease and coolness. It is like ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... of sight as we rounded the shoulder of the gorge. The afternoon sunlight dazzled me. Lifting my eyes just then I saw a strange vision. What I had thought to be only a piece of brown rock, above and beyond me, slowly rose to almost a sitting posture before my blinking eyes, and a man, no, two men, seemed to gaze a moment after our retreating line of blue-coats. It was but an instant, yet I caught sight of two faces. Stillwell was glancing backward at that moment and did not see ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... cut a funnier monkey shine than the up-and-down high-jump dance and floor-slapping act of our Boma chimpanzee (1921). Boma offers this whenever he becomes especially desirous of entertaining a party of distinguished visitors. In stiff dancing posture, he leaps high in the air, precisely like a great black jumping-jack straight from Dante's Inferno. Orangs love to turn somersaults, and some individuals are so persistent about it as to wear the hair off their backs, disfigure their beauty, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful. The Queen's dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy, I incline to think your affairs in better posture ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... started back, and, stooping his head on his breast, with his hands over his eyes, as if to save them from being dazzled by an expected burst of light, awaited the answer to his summons. The Anglo-Dane, desirous to obey his leader, imitating him as near as he could, stood side by side in the posture of Oriental humiliation. The little portal opened inwards, when no burst of light was seen, but four of the Varangians were made visible in the entrance, holding each his battle-axe, as if about to strike ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... our vicar and schoolmaster, who in his preaching to his auditors, stretches his jaws so wide, that instead of instructing youth, it rather frightens them: likewise in reading prayers, he has such a careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture; besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures. Another evil faculty he has, in making the bowling-green his daily residence, instead of his church, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Surrey remained gazing at the figure in mute astonishment, during which it maintained the same motionless posture. At length he was able to murmur forth the interrogation, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in danger, they entirely changed their plan with regard to the French nation. I believe that the chiefs of the Revolution (those who led the constituting Assembly) have contrived, as far as they can do it, to give the Emperor satisfaction on this head. He keeps a continual tone and posture of menace to secure this his only point. But it must be observed, that he all along grounds his departure from the engagement at Pilnitz to the princes on the will and actions of the king and the majority of the people, without any regard to the natural and constitutional orders of the state, or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... she did not at once rise from her kneeling posture; it was so sweet to linger there at the Master's feet; she remembered and trusted His promise, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," and almost she could hear His dear voice saying in tenderest tones, "Daughter, thy sins, which ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... as follows:—The men sit on the left hand, squatting on the floor, with their knees up, and their hands clasped round them. Opposite, in the same posture, sit the women, whose appearance is most cadaverous and sepulchral, dressed in the Quaker costume. After sitting for some time in this hatching position, they all rise and sing a canting sort of hymn, during which the women keep time by elevating ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... discovering a person in this unfortunate situation, whatever be the cause, the windows and doors ought to be opened; the body undressed, covered with blankets, removed to the open air, and supported in a leaning posture on a chair. The patient's face should be sprinkled with vinegar, the pit of the stomach with water, and the legs plunged into a cold bath; at the same time rubbing the skin with flannel, or a soft brush. Clysters of vinegar and water will ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... If such astonishment as this can seize Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern Th' advantage, and, descending, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... if you don't happen to get stuck in a drift,—no home, no peace, no continuous meals, no unbroken sleep, no Sunday, no holiday, no social intercourse, but one eternal jog, jog, jog, in a sulky, until you feel like the mummy of an Indian who had been buried in the sitting posture, and was dug up a hundred years afterwards! "Why didn't I warn him about love and all that nonsense?" Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do with it, yet awhile? Why didn't I hold up to him those awful examples I could have cited, where poor young fellows that could just keep themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... handsome, tranquil, youngish man, with a redoubtable square chin, delicately rounded at the corners, he strikingly resembled his own figure on the stage; and moreover, he seemed to regard silence as a natural and proper condition. He simply stood, in a graceful posture, with his muscles at ease, and waited. Mr. Bryany, behind, seemed to be reduced in stature, and to have become apologetic for himself ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... meantime Eustacia, left alone in her cottage at Alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the posture of affairs. The consequences which might result from Clym's discovery that his mother had been turned from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable, and this was a quality in events which she hated as much ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... lads swiftly passed. In all but one they found ghastly occupants, some stretched out in the posture of sleep, some sitting at table like the first seen, but all showing that death had come ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... light. Obstacles to the introduction of the gospel into benighted regions are fast giving way. The kingdoms spread beneath the sun, from north to south, from China to the farthest verge of the west, are seemingly in the posture of waiting for evangelical instruction. The Macedonian cry is coming up from the four winds. It is made to the church, the sacramental host of God's elect; and ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... take, in the Royals,' growled Corporal Sam. He nodded, as well as his posture allowed, towards San Sebastian. 'And you ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... interest than the upper and lower planes. And in New York the enormity of it becomes spectacular. As I passed in Elevated trains across the end of street after street, and street after street, and saw so many of them just alike, and saw so many similar faces mysteriously peering in the same posture between the same curtains through the same windows of the same great houses; and saw canaries in cages, and enfeebled plants in pots, and bows of ribbon, and glints of picture-frames; and saw crowd after dense crowd ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Mrs. Nash, the elder, gazed for a moment speechless at the spot where her son had sunk, and then fell upon her knees, the whole family following her example, and prayed fervently to Almighty God for deliverance from their awful danger. Then rising from her kneeling posture, she bade her other son make one more trial ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... consequence to my Lord, the House being mighty vehement in it. We could say little but advise that his friends should labour to get it put off, till he comes. We did here talk many things over, in lamentation of the present posture of affairs, and the ill condition of all people that have had anything to do under the King, wishing ourselves a great way off: Here they tell me how Sir Thomas Allen hath taken the Englishmen out of "La Roche," and taken from ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is closely akin to the Carabisi; yet the Macusi buries his dead in a sitting posture without coffins, and with but few ceremonies. Now the sitting posture is common to the Peruvians, the Oregon Indians, and numerous tribes of Brazil; indeed, Morton considers it to be one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Red ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... went through the airlock out to the grey plain. The thin air, still scarcely warmed by the rising sun, bit flesh and lung like needles, and they gasped with a sense of suffocation. They dropped to a sitting posture, waiting for their bodies, trained by months in acclimatization chambers back on earth, to accommodate themselves to the tenuous air. Leroy's face, as always, turned a smothered blue, and Jarvis heard his own breath rasping and rattling in his throat. ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... eighteen inches from the ground, and consisted of a solid frame of wood, suspended from a pole with two iron stanchions, and covered on each side by a cloth flung over the pole, to serve as a curtain. In this I was placed, in a half sitting, half recumbent posture, which I need scarcely observe was not very agreeable. When I got out to call at a gentleman's house, before I reached my ultimate destination, I found that the cramp in the calves of my legs had so disabled me, that I could scarcely stand, and it was a considerable time before I ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... horse to walk to the other side of the gully, had his foot so tightly lodged in the pasty mud that, in his straining to withdraw it, the foot slipped out of the shoe, which remained as firmly imbedded as before. His posture and predicament were naturally a good deal more amusing for his companions than for himself. Yet some of these roads in dry weather are excellent dirt roads. On a road in the Cibao I made a trip ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... while in the fifth and sixth, the duties of a magistrate were explained, and the best means of preventing changes and revolutions in the constitution itself. In the latter part of the treatise, allusion was made to the actual posture of affairs in Rome, when the conversation was supposed to have occurred, and the commotions excited by ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... very good discourse. It was in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government, and so it was no wonder that the balance of property was in one hand and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war; but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government, though it is true by the voices it had been carried before that it was an unsteady government: so to-morrow it is to be proved by ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... not a human creature is seen and no food can be obtained. The highest point is 1200 feet above the sea-level, and the path leading up to it is in many parts only one foot wide. The traveller is generally carried, bound to a chair in a sitting posture, on the back of a native, as a porter ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... manifestations of an internal feeling that there was in his attitude something picturesquely heroic. Not since walking down the California campus one morning after the big game won three minutes before blowing of the final whistle, by his fifty-yard run-in of a punt, had he been in that posture—at once pleasant and difficult—in which one's vital concern is to wear an humility sufficiently convincing to obtain from friends forgiveness for ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... are feeding. Steadily La Salle drives the prow gently against the ice, then drops his oar, and grasps his heavy gun. He hazards a glance: the birds, scarce thirty yards away, are unsuspectingly feeding in a close body; he rises to a sitting posture, raises his gun, and whistles shrilly and long. Instantly the birds raise their heads, gathering around their leader. Bang! The thunder-roll of the report, reverberating amid the ice, is the death-sentence of the flock. Not one escaped; the distance was too short, the aim too sure, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Polly remembered afterwards with pride and amazement that he felt neither faint nor rigid. He glanced round him, seized a bottle of beer by the neck as an improvised club, and went out by the garden door. Uncle Jim stopped amazed. His brain did not instantly rise to the new posture of things. "You!" he cried, and stopped for ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... of the small figures of his latter pictures, Claude had many a time already taken the hint of a head, the pose of an arm, the attitude of a body from Christine. He threw a cloak over her shoulders, and caught her in the posture he wanted, shouting to her not to stir. These were little services which she showed herself only too pleased to render him, but she had not hitherto cared to go further, for she was hurt by the idea of being a model now ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... its mouth. Manabozho gazed at the child for a long while, and said he, 'I have never seen anyone before who could lie with his toe in his mouth. But I can do it, to be sure.' Whereupon he lay down in much the same posture as the child, and took his right foot in his hand. But it would not reach by a long way. 'How stupid I am,' cried Manabozho, 'when it was the left foot all the time!' So he tried the left foot, but this also would not reach. He rolled on his back, and twisted and bent himself, and ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... out his money in fine glasses, and having displayed his stock to the best advantage in a large basket, he took his stand in the market-place, with his back against the wall, waiting for customers. In this posture he indulged in a reverie, talking ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the old German students. Like them, he wore, instead of the sandals of our monks, short tight boots; and over the collar of his shirt, which fell on his shoulders, and was as white as snow, hung, in rich golden curls, the most beautiful hair I ever saw. He was tall, and his elegant posture seemed to reveal to me that he was in the habit of commanding. With much respect, and yet uncertain, I half saluted him. He did not return my salute; but he smiled on me with so benevolent an air, and at the same time, his eyes severe ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was impervious to a joke; she screamed once, and then dropped in a sitting posture on a divan. Nearly all the rest of the party laughed heartily. At this point the head of Felix dropped down a foot through the skylight over the centre of the room. He had made his way to the upper deck, and stationed himself where ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... the knees, separating them from his thighs, as he suddenly sank down, shortened, as he believed, to the extent of about a foot in measurement, the trunk of the body falling backwards on the ground, and the senses being completely paralysed by the shock. In this posture he lay motionless during the remainder of the night, not daring to move a muscle for fear of fatal consequences. He experienced no severe suffering; but this immunity from pain he attributed to the stunning effect ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... issuing from behind the fine painted doors on each side of the cabin happily ceased. Long before sunrise, I had the good fortune to discover that it was no longer necessary to maintain the horizontal posture, and, the very instant this truth was apparent, came on deck, at two o'clock in the morning, to see a noble full moon sinking westward, and millions of the most brilliant stars shining overhead. The night was so serenely ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had heard of, upon finding himself at the mercy of a tiger, being utterly unarmed, was inspired to throw himself over, so that he stood upon his hands, waving both feet in the air, and in this posture advancing, finally dropping upon all fours, and still running toward the beast. Unable to understand what manner of creature this was ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... sound asleep by this time. Tommy lay there staring into the darkness until her eyelids grew heavy. They drooped and drooped, finally closing over her eyes altogether. But she had no more than dropped into a doze when she came to a sitting posture wide awake. Something had disturbed her. Something was moving in the tent and she could almost ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... and from business. But that is not sufficient. Indeed, we do not consider that walking exercise, exclusive of any other, is sufficient to keep the body in health; but in the instance we are imagining it is especially insufficient. The body ill brooks being kept in one posture for any length of time; and during sedentary occupation some of the muscles are maintained in a state of extension, whilst others are as unduly kept in a state of relaxation. These relative conditions, kept up as they ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... the gates of the camp, reconcile yourself, tyro, to a new fashion of meal, to what in camp dialect we call prandium." This "prandium," this essentially military meal, was taken standing, by way of symbolizing the necessity of being always ready for the enemy. Hence the posture in which it was taken at Rome, the very counter-pole to the luxurious posture of dinner. A writer of the third century, a period from which the Romans naturally looked back upon everything connected with their own early habits, and with the same kind of interest ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... hour about this surprising sensation, and insisted so much on our seeing the trial made, that we were at last forced to comply. We all three felt his pulse first—it was distinct, though small and thready, and his heart had its usual beating. He composed himself on his back, and lay in a still posture for some time: while I held his right hand, Dr. Baynard laid his hand on his heart, and Mr. Skrine held a clean looking-glass to his mouth. I found his pulse sink gradually, till at last I could not find any by the most exact and nice touch. Dr. Baynard could not feel the least ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... but she will bolt," said the knight, unable longer to rein in his wrath. He plucked his sheathed rapier from his side, struck the soldier a severe blow with it, and instantly drawing it, and throwing the scabbard over the trees, placed himself in a posture of defence, with his sword's point within half a yard of the steward's body. The latter stepped back with activity, threw his long cloak from his shoulders, and drawing his long tuck, stood upon his guard. The swords clashed smartly together, while Alice, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... suddenly, and otherwhence, I looked on your magnificence. I saw the stillness and the light, And you, august, immortal, white, Holy and strange; and every glint Posture and jest and thought and tint Freed from the mask of transiency, Triumphant ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... not without design. I had meant only to arouse a feeling of compassion for a young girl half-orphaned; but something more than was in my mind had been suggested to hers. She quickly raised herself from a reclining posture, threw off the concealing handkerchief, and gazed intently in my face, while saying slowly, as if to herself: "Not only motherless, but ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... a little when he told his kinsman of the posture of affairs, as more loudly did Guillaume's gross son, Sire Philibert. But Madona Biatritz did not laugh. She was the widow of Guillaume's dead brother—Prince Conrat, whom Guillaume succeeded—and it was in her honor that Raimbaut ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... her face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went forth on my customary walk a trifle daunted, her idol-like impassivity haunting me; and when I returned, although she was still in much the same posture, I was half surprised to see that she had moved as far as the next pillar, following the sunshine. This time, however, she addressed me with some trivial salutation, civilly enough conceived, and uttered in the same ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her kneeling posture when Dalrymple began to put off his trappings. She had not seen what he was doing as plainly as Mrs Broughton had done, having her attention naturally drawn towards her Sisera; and, besides this, she understood that she was to remain as she was placed ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... itself into a ball, tucking its long snout between its forelegs, and packing its barely perceptible tail close between the hind ones, presenting an array of menacing prickles whencesoever attacked. While in this ball-like posture, the animal, as chance affords, digs with its short strong legs and steel-like claws, tearing asunder roots, and casting aside stones, and the ease and rapidity with which it disappears in soft soil are astonishing. The horrific array of prickles presented as ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... come to a stand, and was leaning on the wall, looking idly into the fosse. The posture would have been the most natural in the world on a warm day. On that day it caught Claude's attention; and—was he mistaken, or were the hands that, under cover of Grio's cloak, rested on ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... bone of the sperm whale's jaw. Aye, he was dismasted off Japan, said the old Gay-Head Indian once; but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without coming home for it. he has a quiver of 'em. I was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... handling infants is very rough: as soon as the child is born, they plunge it over head and ears in cold water, and they bind it naked to a board, making a hole in the proper place for evacuation. Between the child and the board they put some cotton, wool, or fur, and let it lie in this posture till the bones begin to harden, the joints to knit, and the limbs to grow strong; they then loosen it from the board, and let it crawl about where it pleases. From this custom, it is said, the Indians ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... upon me by your Highness. It depends on you alone to take away or not to take away the country out of my hands. In case my honor is not left to me, how shall I be equal to the business of the government? Whoever, with his hands in a supplicating posture, is ready with his life and property, what necessity can there be for him to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "and I will set you free." He then gave orders what further he would have him do; and away went Ariel, first to where he had left Ferdinand, and found him still sitting on the grass in the same melancholy posture. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb |
