"Stern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... furled, and they cast anchor about a hundred fathoms from the little harbor. The gig was already lowered, and in it were four oarsmen and a coxswain. The traveller descended, and instead of sitting down at the stern of the boat, which had been decorated with a blue carpet for his accommodation, stood up with his arms crossed. The rowers waited, their oars half lifted out of the water, like birds drying ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into the wind and backed her jib and staysail the whaleboat was swung out. Into it leaped six breech-clouted Santa Cruz boys, each armed with a rifle. Denby, carrying the lanterns, dropped into the stern-sheets. Grief, following, paused on ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... a glance. The plain little face was lit up by animation, and he smiled. Then he turned to the men. 'Very good, lads; you hear what the young lady says. I promised her her way, and she shall have it.' Here his face grew stern. 'But it's to her I've given way, not to my men, remember that. What Mark Clay does is done, and won't be undone; and there's no parleying between master and man in Clay's Mills; so the next time the men want to come up to see me, tell ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... unmoved from her stern purpose, had, after her father's departure, let bring poisonous herbs and roots and distilled and reduced them in water, so she might have it at hand, an that she feared should come to pass. The serving-man coming to her with the prince's present and message, she took the cup with a steadfast countenance ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... among the visitors at the watering-place of Gustafsberg, which lay near to Uddevalla, a Norwegian Colonel and his lady. He was lame from a paralytic stroke, and had lost the use of his speech and of his hands. He was a large man, of a fierce, stern exterior; and although he seemed to endure nobody near him but his wife, and perpetually demanded her care, still it was evidently not out of love. And although his wife devoted herself unweariedly and self-denyingly to his service, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... ninety-nine out of every hundred culprits were incorrigible, caused him to maintain that the gallows-tree was the most efficacious as well as the cheapest instrument that could be invented for protecting society against malefactors. Another of his stern dicta was, that previous good character was a reason for increasing rather than a reason for lessening a culprit's punishment; "For," he argued, "the longer a prisoner has enjoyed the good opinion of the world, the less are the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... through the mountain gorges and passes the destruction of Pickett he thought his time for action had come. The battle-scarred war horses snuffed the blood and smoke of battle from afar, and champed their bits in anxious impatience. The troopers looked down the line and met the stern faces of their comrades adjusting themselves to their saddles and awaiting the signal for the charge. Farnsworth awaits no orders, and when he saw the wave of Pickett's recede he gave the command to "Charge," and his five ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... herd around; his arms folded, his brow knit, his eyes fixed, his lip slightly curled in defiance and disdain. The last bearing, on a brow worn and furrowed, the majesty of an equal command—the features stern, yet frank—the aspect bold, yet open—the quiet dignity of the whole form impressed with an ineffable earnestness, hushed, as it were, in a solemn sympathy with the awe he himself had created. His left hand pointing to the corpse—his right ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... students that they meant it in real earnest. He was told to prepare for immediate death. The trembling janitor looked all around in the vain hope of seeing some indication that nothing was really meant, but stern looks met him everywhere. He was blindfolded, and made to kneel before the block. The executioner's axe was raised, but, instead of the sharp edge, a wet towel was brought sharply down on the back of the neck. The ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ebullient ComOff, slept late the following morning, they all had brunch instead of breakfast and lunch. All during the meal Garlock was preoccupied and stern. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... I should lie. And I don't think I should have any fear of the slate of the recording angel either. I am afraid you will be shocked at these unorthodox opinions, and consider me a dangerous acquaintance, but I can assure you that I am generally considered a truthful person Fortunately these stern tests to my veracity ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... "Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... The stern but gifted Suzanne had found lamps and had lighted them, and like a capable soldier she was already looking ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Dean in a stern voice, "that is not the way to deliver a message here. Just step inside and make believe that you are Dean Swift. I will go out and make believe that I am bringing him a present. I will show you how a messenger ought ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... stern, and the Hawk's ship was bathed in a streak of color. But the bolt caromed harmlessly off the side of the arcing Star Devil! and the next instant the pirate's lean bulk swayed, lifted a little and zoomed up ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... American's despatch-boat Abbas Hilmi," or "The Chicago Tribune's special steamer General Gordon," and never dreamed that the young men in sun-helmets and white linen who were writing those despatches were comfortably seated under the awnings of the same decrepit stern-wheeler, which they had chartered jointly, but on which, in order to lend importance and dignity to his despatches, each correspondent had bestowed a ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... deserted. Sommers shivered. After he had reached the end of the lane, he turned back, and walked swiftly to the cottage. At the corner he looked into the room where they had been sitting. She was still in the same place where he had left her, by the lamp, her white, almost stern face, with its large, severe lines, staring fiercely into space. It made him uneasy, this long, tense look that betrayed a mind fixed upon one idea, and that idea! He crept away into the lane to flee from it, and walked swiftly down the cross street ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... among them which can claim to rank with the Pic du Midi or the Maledetta. No one can pooh-pooh the stern old Canigou, standing high and solitary, solemn and grand, between the two roads which run from Perpignan into Spain, the one by Prades and the other by Le Boulon. Under the Canigou, towards the west, lie the hot baths of Vernet, in a close secluded valley, which, as I have said before, is, as ...
— La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Newton's drawn, livid face, and the stern, set expression of the men who gathered about in knots here and there discussing the accident in whispers, or arranging the best means of getting back to town. A doctor, who happened to be near at hand, had sprung forward at the first moment of alarm, and he and a strange, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... of the hearers might have been discomposed by this remark, but for the stern looks ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... than a sentiment—even more than an epic. It is the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls. In it I see flung before me all the stern world-old struggle become materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire, the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered spirit, the sobbing ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... hands—bright tears standing in her passionate eyes. But the tall, masked man loomed up like a dark, stern ghost. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... fixedly. His eye was stern. "My people, sir," he said slowly, in very measured words, unaware that one must not argue with a clergyman, "acknowledge and investigate every reality they can find in the universe—and admit no phantoms. ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... interest has failed. And it is just here that there must be no failure, else we shall be mere creatures of circumstance, drifting with every eddy in the tide of our life, and never able to breast the current. Interest is not to supplant the necessity for stern and strenuous endeavor but rather to call forth the largest measure of endeavor of which the self is capable. It is to put at work a larger amount of power than can be secured in any other way; in place of supplanting the will, it is to give it its point of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... prisoner for a moment in grim silence, then, throwing into his voice and manner all the impressiveness of his office and his stern personality he said: "And why did you start from your seat and tremble nervously and wait nine and four fifths seconds before you were able to answer ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... if it can be any comfort to thee, be assured that the very moment we met my heart was drawn towards thee. Now listen! Let us exchange a few quiet words. Tell me: is it the stern, the settled purpose of thy father to take ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... which was variously decorated, and on the front of it hung a large piece of scarlet cloth, ornamented with bits of gold lace stitched on different parts of it. In the bow of the canoe were three or four little boys of equal size, who were clad with neatness and propriety; and in the stern sat a number of comely looking musicians, consisting of several drummers and a trumpeter, whilst the young men, who had the management of the boat, were not inferior to their companions either in decency of apparel or ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... entreaties, suffered me to remain beneath the great eagle which stood in the centre of the aisle, to support the book from which the clergyman read the lessons of the day; and nothing could keep me away, even in the coldest seasons, but the stern looks of an old man, whom I named Black John from the colour of his beard and complexion, and whose occupations within the sacred precincts were those of a ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... become uplifted by his conquests, made such demands that the messengers remonstrated. He answered, "Men who are good for anything should either conquer or submit to their betters;" and he sent them rudely away, like a stern old ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... She is withered; she is faded; the drapery that enfolds her has in its dignity an angularity, too, that tells of age, of sorrow, of a stern resignation to the must. But her eye, that torch of the soul, is untamed, and, in the intensity of her reading, we see a soul invincibly young in faith and hope. Her age is her charm, for it is the night of the past that gives this beacon-fire leave ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Attend you here the doore of our stern daughter Will she not forth? Clot. I haue assayl'd her with Musickes, but ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... load seemed rolled away from us; we rejoiced in the prospect of life again. But soon there prevailed a feeling of condemnation, as though we had sold our Master. And that first day was one of the bitterest I ever experienced. It was a time of stern conflict of soul. The voice that seemed to say, "Follow me," as I sought guidance the night before, kept pleading with me, convincing of sin, till I knew of a truth my feet had strayed from His path. The Scriptures, which the day before I ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... name of the young woman in whose room you wrote your theme?" asked Miss Duncan, her stern ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... a bit stiff. A crowd had gathered before the store to see us off. It was not such a company as the soldier-men at the fort. The outlaw, the loafer, the drunkard, the ruffian, the gambler, and the trickster far outnumbered the stern-faced men of affairs. When the balance turns the other way the frontier disappears. Mingling with these was a pale-faced invalid now and then, with the well-appointed ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... Buddha, even when stern, yet ... as full of pity as the words of a father to his ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... Stern being boath upon oath their wittnes was judged legall testimony ore evidence only som in the jury because Sternes first words upon his oath were, I saw these women and as I take it goody Seger was there though ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it! But it is hard walking, and I can see my own share in the missteps, and can bow my head to the result, like an old, stern, unhappy devil of a Norseman, as my ultimate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems rather a mythological personage. However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face! The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read come back to me. Don't you know them, Tess?—'And she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall not find him; then shall she say, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;— Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... At length, in some engagement with a Dutch ship, the particulars of which I forget, Lieutenant Campbell was mortally wounded: his last words were—'Walsingham, comfort my father.' That was no easy task. Stern as Captain Campbell seemed, the loss of his son was irreparable. He never shed a tear when he was told it was all over, but said, 'God's will be done;' and turning into his cabin, desired to be left alone. Half an hour ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... be tilled, seed to be sown, and all such things that must be done at once. Their view was—and they got quite friendly over it—that Ivan should be more than delighted to bear this pleasurable burden of reading prayers over his father's grave. Indeed, nothing but the stern call of immediate duty would prevail upon them to ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... thy daughter. She hath seen me. Ay, to-night. And how runs the prophecy? Let her beware. I have looked on her beforetime. Looked on her! ay, until these glowing orbs have become dim, dazzled with excess of brightness. I have looked on her till this stern bosom hath become softer than the bubbling wax to her impression; but I was concealed, and the maiden passed unharmed by the curse. To-night I have saved her life. A resistless impulse! And she hath looked on me." He smote his brow, groaning aloud ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a fool for a skipper," grumbled a voice. But almost at the moment the wind took her right aback—or would have done so had the crew not been preparing for it. Her stern swung slowly around into view, and within two minutes she was fetching away from them on the port tack, her sails hauled closer and closer as she went. Already the schooner was preparing ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Scotland five years. He was titled "Lord Protector", but in reality was a Dictator. The government was centered more than ever in one man. Many strange qualities blended in this austere autocrat, some of which command our admiration. He was stern and painfully severe, yet much sagacity and justice characterized his administration. During his sway of power the Reformed Churches in his own realms and on the Continent were by him heroically defended. He became, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... on an atrocity of a hat that looked as though someone had plumped down on her head a flimsy crate of refuse blossoms and vegetables. It was a riot of colour and disorder. And her short, protuberant bosom rested on the table's edge while the face above it was marked with stern lines of dissatisfaction. Little folds of flesh hung down below ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... aneath its shade a chuffie-cheekit bairn, Unkennin' o', uncarin' for, cauld care or crosses stern, And ran around it at the ba' when we frae schule wan free; Then wha daur say we sudna lo'e ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said Honor, too true to let him think that he could stand beside Owen in her affections, but with intense pleasure at such unwonted warmth from one so stern and reserved; it was as if he was investing her with some of the tenderness that the loss of Lucilla had left vacant, and bestowing on her the confidences to which new relations might render Phoebe less open. It was no slight preferment to be Robert Fulmort's motherly ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blooms and odors, how vast their trees, how strange the painted savages, had seemed to us, storm-tossed adventurers, who thought we had found a very paradise, the Fortunate Isles at least. How quickly were we undeceived! As I lay back in the stern with half-shut eyes and tiller idle in my hand, our many tribulations and our few joys passed in review before me. Indian attacks; dissension and strife amongst our rulers; true men persecuted, false knaves elevated; the weary ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... 1811 I was on board a French corvette which fought an action with an English vessel, the "Lively." We passed three times under her stern, and raked her each time. We ought to have cleared her decks. Not a shot touched her. The other day at Cherbourg I saw a broadside fired at a floating mark three cables off, the usual distance at ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... revolt were always breaking against it. The tower rising from this square fortress has at once grace and strength and presents a complete contrast to Giotto's campanile; for Giotto's campanile is so light and delicate and reasonable and this tower of the Signoria so stern and noble. There is a difference as between a beautiful woman and a powerful man. In the functions of the two towers—the dominating towers of Florence—is a wide difference also, for the campanile calls to prayer, while for years the sombre ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Falmouth all the ships save one, and that was the Admiral's own. They had crossed the Atlantic through an awful storm, and the last seen of the Admiral was on the ix of September, Mdlxxxiii [1583], by them in the Hind: and when they saw him he was sat of the stern of his vessel, with his Bible open of his knees: and he was plainly heard to say,—"Courage, my men! Heaven is as near by water as by land." Then the mist closed again o'er the fleet, and they saw him no more. On the xxii of September the fleet ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... thought of Mr. Conne. But this was his time off and he had the right to think about anything he pleased. He could not be reprimanded for just thinking. Nothing would tempt him to run the risk of another encounter with one of those stern, brisk-speaking officers, ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... predatory Glory paid Napoleon ransom knew. Her nature's many strings hot gusts did jar Against the note of reason uttered low, Ere passionate with duty she might wed, Compel the bride's embrace of her stern groom, Joined at an altar liker to the tomb, Nest of the Furies their first nuptial bed, They not the less were mated and proclaimed The rational their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to her, and his manner was that of a judge coolly courteous to one whom he professed to believe possibly innocent of complicity in sin: "You have been brought here because I did not wish to deliver you to the stern justice of the law. Your offence is grave, but the fault lies with your accomplice, and his ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... fantastic ruffles, scalloped and fluted after an unheard-of fashion! Looking down a long line of decrepit stone wall, in the trimming of which the wind had fairly run riot, I saw, as for the first time, what a severe yet master artist old Winter is. Ah, a severe artist! How stern the woods look, dark and cold and as rigid against the horizon ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... to the Centurion in this maner, two lay on one side and two on another, and the Admirall lay full in the stern, which galled and battered the Centurion so sore, that her maine Maste was greatly weakened, her sailes filled with many holes, and the Mizzen and sterne ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... would seem that the species of anger are unsuitably assigned by the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) where he says that some angry persons are "choleric," some "sullen," and some "ill-tempered" or "stern." According to him, a person is said to be "sullen" whose anger "is appeased with difficulty and endures a long time." But this apparently pertains to the circumstance of time. Therefore it seems that anger can be differentiated specifically in respect also ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... without it before conversion) that the blood of that man Christ Jesus that was crucified on Mount Calvary, did at that same time, when it was there shed, wash thee from all thy sins, and be not so stout, and so stern against the truth, because it suits not with thy beguiled conscience. (bear with me in patience) and seriously inquire into the truth of things according to the scriptures. "For they are they that testify of Christ, and how ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... snowdrifts, no reminders of winter hardships in the vicinity. There can be no glad surprise at finding dainty spring flowers in a land of perpetual summer. Little wonder that the Pilgrim Fathers, after the first awful winter on the "stern New England coast," loved this early messenger of hope and gladness above the frozen ground at Plymouth. In an introductory note to his poem "The Mayflowers," Whittier states that the name was familiar in England, as the application of it ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... out of the gold and silver doors in great numbers, and marched up a winding stairs and into the throne room, led by a stern featured Nome who was their captain. When they had nearly filled the throne room they formed ranks in the big underground cavern below, and then stood still until they were told what ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... but seeing how pale and stern he looked, rose and went into the house. The woman looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... America agree that it is not as easy to make a living to-day as it was twenty years ago, and the dollar does not go so far now as it did then. The conflict for subsistence on the part of the wage-earner is growing more stern as we increase in numbers and industrial life becomes more complicated, and the fact must be faced that the vast army of workers must live more economically if peace and ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... to have their deeds commemorated by a "veray parfit, gentle knight"—of the quill, not of the sword, albeit the letters which he writes after his name would once have indicated the possession of military rank and distinction. Sir Arthur Helps is not a man of few words or of a very stern or passionate temperament. It is the graces of chivalry, not its fiery ardor, that he cultivates and reflects, and though "arms and the man" have often been his theme, the soft and delicate strain was ever more suggestive of the pastoral pipe than of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... coat?" obtains the satisfactory answer "From something of duration. I believe to you that." After requesting to have his garment "The rather that be possible," he overwhelms the procrastinating man of cloth with the stern remark "You have me done to expect too," evidently a bold version of "Vous m' avez fait trop attendre," which draws forth the natural excuse "I did can't to come rather." Passing by a number of good things which one would like to analyse ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... to his guests on the poop; "see that little devil! See him show his teeth! That is Mr. Sinful Peck. I've had him in irons with a broken head five times, and the log is full of him. I towed him over the stern running down the trades to take the cussedness out of him, and if he had not been born for higher things, he'd have drowned. He was absolutely unconquerable until I found him telling his beads one time in irons and took them away from him. Now to get ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... when I used to think more of the love of Jesus Christ than of God the Father. I used to think of God as a stern judge on the throne, from whose wrath Jesus Christ had saved me. It seems to me ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... bandy legs lead to pressing, any eccentricity sufficient to ensure the attention of the press-gang, used by trustees to keep heirs from their money, and by parents to rid them of incorrigible sons, used for purposes of retaliation, used by strikers to get rid of a "blackleg." used by stern parent to part his daughter and her lover, a drunken cleric's revenge by means of, by pressing a sailor, causes his late bedfellow to be hanged as his murderer, and women, of women and sailors in general, lack of sentiment in gangsmen, women impressed by, women masquerading as men to go to ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... their holds; coal barges discharging from Nanaimo; busy little tugs coughing and nuzzling at the flanks of the deep-sea tramps, while hay barges and Italian whitehalls came and went at every turn. A Stockton River boat went by, her stern wheel churning along behind, like a huge net-reel; a tiny maelstrom of activity centred about an Alaska Commercial Company's steamboat that would clear for Dawson ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... her married!" cried the Irishman, suddenly, and it was a new voice, a voice Ste. Marie did not know. It shook a little with an emotion that sat uncouthly upon this grim, stern man. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... side of the jetty where some small boats were beached. A man from the Tobermory came in answer to his call, a boat was launched, and began to make its way into the channel. Gresson sat in the stern, placidly ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... and in the bow stood a man with a long lash to whip the slaves into subjection. With all these matters did Christopher Columbus become acquainted in the course of time, for they were everyday matters in the maritime life of the fifteenth century; but stern though such experiences were, they must have developed great personal courage in Christopher, a quality he could have none too much of if he was to lead unwilling, frightened sailors ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... and symbols, he has already passed the limits assigned to man, and yet in his 'Divine Names' he ventures even a step further, and then he raises himself into the super-essence of metaphysics at once calm and stern. ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... yacht rested on perfectly calm waters, shining like polished steel,—and the warm stillness of the summer night was deliciously soothing and restful. Our captain and one or two of the sailors were about on duty, and I sat in the stern of the vessel looking up into the glorious heavens. The tapering bow-sprit of the 'Diana' pointed aloft as it were into a woven web of stars, and I lost myself in imaginary flight among those glittering unknown worlds, oblivious of my material surroundings, and forgetting that despite the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... plants appear capable of substituting soda for potash under some circumstances, but it would not be prudent for the cultivator to assume that the cheaper alkali might take the place of the more costly one as a mineral agent, for Nature is stern and constant in her ways, and it can hardly be supposed that a plant in which potash normally predominates can attain to perfection in a soil deficient in potash, however well supplied it may be with soda. The cheaper ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... supplies had somehow been obtained. According to his biographer, never man had finer sense of sarcasm, or used that weapon with greater effect—loving to find expression for its scorn and merriment in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; and thus in some degree relieving the stern fervour of Puritan piety with the more easy graces ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... though we felt the urgent call to remain. So "Heigho for the southward bar" and a visit to St. John's to try and arouse interest in the new-discovered problems, before we should once more let go our stern lines and be bowling homeward before the fall ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... door. At last he gained his point apparently, for the men, with half-angry, half-quizzing looks at each other, allowed him to come in, and he found a seat. Flaxman was greatly struck by the face—by its ascetic beauty, the stern and yet delicate whiteness and emaciation of it. He sat with both hands resting on the stick he held in front of him, intently listening, the perspiration of physical weakness on his brow and round his finely curved mouth. Clearly ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!" The old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along the east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and gathered mysteriously in the stern, whispering and casting glances alternately at ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the country, carrying in large letters the two words, "It satisfies." It is the expensive advertising propaganda of cigarette manufacturers, and the "satisfaction" they are offering you is that brief and fleeting sensation of being doped, so that "stern realities are changed to pleasant seemings." It matters not to them that your health and morals and money and life pay the cost, just so they sell their product. They tell you cigarettes "satisfy." It is a preposterous fake. They ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... morning, however, her fate was more clearly ascertained; not that a vestige of her was to be seen out at sea, but the whole shore for two or three miles was covered with pieces of wreck. The stern-post of a small, French-built vessel, and also a boat considerably damaged in the bow, and turned keel upwards, came on shore as Harry Sherbrooke and his servant were themselves examining the scene. The boat bore, painted in white letters, "La ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Brougham's proposition for reform, which stood for the day on which this announcement was made. But if the civil list question had not been deemed important enough to justify a resignation, the majority that decided it showed a settled and stern system of opposition, which must have convinced ministers that they could no longer rule the country. At the request of his friends, Mr. Brougham postponed his motion for reform till the 25th of November, professing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... but toward them, as though to charge them. The stern courage of the Davenant blood burned in his cheeks and eyes. Then, with a harsh and bitter laugh, he turned and pushed his horse close up beside that ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... and weaker, driving him finally into a suicidal artistic frenzy, during which he put on his full suit of evening clothes, a black pearl shirt stud, a tall silk hat, in the dead of night, and flung himself from the stern of a P. & O. boat into the sea. He had no knowledge of swimming and expected to drown at once. But he was not built for drowning. The laws of buoyancy and displacement caused him to float upon his back, high out of the water, like an empty barrel. Nor was the water into which ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and when they had directed him thereto he entered and found the Prince in privacy; so he kissed hands and gave him the writ which he took and opened and read. But when he had comprehended its object and purport, he turned and re-turned it with stern regards until he had well nigh torn it to tatters. Then he threw it to Ibn Ibrahim who said to him, "O lord of the Time and the Tide, 'tis not on this wise that the sons of the Kings cast away an address without returning aught of reply." Quoth he, "There is no ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... hand on the receiver, but before she took it down, Lady Sellingworth thought of the Paris railway station, of what had happened there, of the stern resolution she had come to that day, of the tears of blood that had sealed it, of the will that had enabled her to stick to it during ten years. And she thought, too, of that phrase of Caroline Briggs's concerning the lust ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... unmolested, speedy, except only the new Berline. Huge leathern vehicle;—huge Argosy, let us say, or Acapulco-ship; with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and-pair; with its three yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rocking aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide! It lumbers along, lurchingly with stress, at a snail's pace; noted of all the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... meet a body On the Queen's highway, And a body kiss a body, Won't a body pay? Mony a lassie has a temper. Mony a beak is stern; At six weeks' quod, and fourteen bob, The lesson's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... resisted. The old United States Bank managers were politicians, and active ones. They perverted the trust reposed in their hands to such an extent that the indignation of the people was aroused, and under the lead of a stern old patriot the bank was swept out of existence. Shall we restrain corporation management within proper limits and make corporations serve the public welfare, or shall we let the abuses go on until the ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Darcy." On the other hand, Mary Darcy, as arbitress at stations, wakes, and weddings, had a wide influence in the parish, and I fear used to speak contemptuously sometimes of my housekeeper. But now there was what the newspapers call a Dual Alliance against the newcomers, and a stern determination that any attempt at superiority should be repressed with a firm hand, and to Mrs. Darcy's lot it fell to bear the martyrdom of high principle and to fire the first shot, that should be also the final one. And so it ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... key turn in the lock as they left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pictures, cost five guineas. Peter Oliver, who was crazy, used to fight with these family pictures in the old Mansion House; and the face and breast of one lady bear cuts and stabs inflicted by him. Miniatures in oil, with the paint peeling off, of stern, old, yellow faces. Oliver Cromwell, apparently an old picture, half length, or one third, in an oval frame, probably painted for some New England partisan. Some pictures that had been partly obliterated by ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you've been reading novels. When Billy's father married me, I was a school teacher, and he was a clerk. We didn't have any money, but we were awfully in love—we still rather like each other. Now just for the sake of argument, suppose we should have acted like stern parents, what would be the use? Billy's in business for himself, he's making his own money, he can marry when he wants to and as he wants to, and if you want my real opinion, I don't mind confessing that I think he's ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... his lips, and went on with his proper business. All the women would side with him if he left them the use of their own minds, and the sound of his wife's voice last; while all the men in their hearts felt wisdom. But the young man, loath to be left behind, came doubtfully down to the stern of the boat, which was pushed off for the Rosalie. And he looked at the place where he generally sat, and then at his father and the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... queer how Jimsy's conversation seemed to bristle with verbal shocks. Aunt Judith gasped. Mr. Sawyer fixed a stern eye ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... then obtaining in the West The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best; Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone, So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone— A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard, And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared; He said that Julius Caesar had been billed a week or so, And would have to have some armies by the time he reached ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... by his polluted courtiers; led on with all the pomp and splendour which royalty could display. The king and his ministers well knew that the most formidable enemies to tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment, were the piety and stern morality of the Puritans, Nonconformists, and the small classes of virtuous citizens of other denominations; and therefore every effort was made by allurements and intimidation to debauch and demoralize their minds. Well does Bunyan say that 'wickedness like a flood is like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... boosted herself upon the roof of the house, and clawed aft. This auto-shifting of cargo lifted the bow of the little schooner. Her jibs, swashing soggily about her bow, were hoisted out of the water, and a gust bellied them. On the pivot of her buried stern the Dobson swung like a top just as twin ledges threatened her broadside, and she danced gayly between them, the wind tugging her along by ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... step. Caroline, paralyzed with fear and embarrassment, for she thought he was merely teasing her a little before he punished her—his pleasant, low voice and whimsical manners brought her back suddenly to the ordinary world and the stern facts of her escapade—shivered slightly, but did ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... stake, and the design must be executed resolutely. For the success of the enterprise it was absolutely necessary to know, almost to a minute, the precise time at which the collision would occur, and Captain Servadac undertook the task, by gentle means or by stern, of extracting ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and sure enough there was a ship in the middle of his field, but such a ship as no man had seen on the water for three hundred years, let alone in the middle of a turnip-field. It was all painted black and covered with carvings, and there was a great bay window in the stern for all the world like the Squire's drawing-room. There was a crowd of little black cannon on deck and looking out of her port-holes, and she was anchored at each end to the hard ground. I have seen the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... little town the stream passes into the shadow of great rocks. I looked at these with something of the regret that one feels when awaking from a long dream of wonderland. I knew that they were almost the last vestiges towards the west, in the watershed of the Gironde, of the stern jurassic desert, gashed and seamed with lovely valleys, and deep gorges full of the poet's 'religious awe,' where I had spent the greater part of three long summers. And now, on the outskirts of the broad ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... may make so delicate a distinction. Intelligence of the first order was stamped upon it, yet the characteristic expression was pride which sat enthroned on his prominent brow; still, hours of care had left their impress, and the face was very grave, though by no means stern. His eye was fixed on the door as the pupils came in, one by one, for prayers, and when Florence and Mary entered, it sunk upon his book, In a few moments he rose, and, standing with one arm folded across his bosom, read in a deep, distinct tone, that ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... hope! Hear, hear ye rocks! that Balder Ventures to hope!—stern fate is now contented! Blunted is Surtur's spear, and Nanna wavers! Oh virtue! which, when blood rag'd high didst triumph, How sure, how nobly thou reward'st thy lover! Ye rocks which so lately gave ear to my groans, Now hear ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart,—as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... said Jane, suddenly stern. A pause, then she laughed—rather hollowly. "Davy, I guess I'm almost as big a fraud as you are. What fakirs we human beings are?—always posing as doing for others and always doing for ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... one lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and proclaim, and that he, as President, was bound to execute their will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he did four years ago, "I wait the voice of the people." The stern logic of the events of today would guide him, not those of yesterday. Therefore let us not be thrown off our watch by any of these appeals to our reverence for the opinions and plans of our departed President. If his freed spirit is permitted today to hover over each and all of the vast gatherings ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... pleasanter memories. Foremost must be the memory of its founder, Guildford's greatest citizen, the stern, kindly old Archbishop Abbot, son of a poor clothworker of the town, scholar of Balliol College, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, and predecessor to Laud in the See of Canterbury. It was a great career, and, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... his handsome, lazy face. It grew and grew until at last a distinct chuckle penetrated to the dusky corner where the Indian chair leaned back against dull Oriental draperies. Its occupant attempted to rise, her face stern, her mouth unrelenting. He was ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... heedless of the shadow of the mountains looming between the newly built cabin and that western land where they and their kind were to write the fame of the Ulster Scot in a shining script that time cannot dull, there might sit a group of stern-faced men, all deep in discussion of some point of spiritual doctrine or of the temporal rights of men. Yet, in every cabin, whatever the national differences, the setting was the same The spirit of the frontier ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... indeed! How stern his looks! I will not be repuls'd, I am your child, The child of that dear mother you ador'd; You shall not throw me off, I will grow here, And, like the ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... clenched, his face was hard and stern, and the girls felt thrilled, stirred, as they had never been before. But suddenly he jumped to his feet, went over to the window and stood there looking out for a moment. And when he came back he was smiling so naturally that the girls caught themselves wondering if they had not ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... He had been very stern. She had laid bare to him her whole heart, and he had answered her love by never a word. He had made no reply in any shape,—given her no thanks for her heart's treasure. He had responded to her affection by no tenderness. He had not even said that this might have been ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of these persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired, stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry fifty. The other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is nearer thirty. Candor, kindliness, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Storrs, and when Scott, Wordsworth, and Southey were of the company; and he liked almost as well steering the packet-boat from Waterhead to Bowness, till the steamer drove out the old-fashioned conveyance. He sat at the stern, immovable, with his hand on the rudder, looking beyond the company of journeymen-carpenters, fish- and butter-women, and tourists, with a gaze on the water-and-sky-line which never shifted. Sometimes a learned professor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... photograph, expecting to see a woman with a stern, ill-tempered, forbidding countenance. To my surprise, the face showed the remains of great beauty; the expression, though remarkably firm, was yet winning, tender, and kind. The gray hair was arranged ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... caused 7,532,810 huge drums to be unheaded on one side, and set that open side so that it faced the end of the streamers and pendants; and having fastened them to good tacklings and our ship's head to the stern of theirs, with cables fastened to the bits abaft the manger in the ship's loof, they towed us off ground at one pull so easily and pleasantly that you'd have wondered at it had you been there. For the dub-a-dub rattling of the drums, with the soft noise of the gravel which murmuring disputed us ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... her lovely blue eyes, to see whether the countenance of the prince harmonised with his discourse; but although he was not actually ugly, his features wore an expression too stern and hypocritical to invite her confidence. She therefore walked silently forward, and when near the cottage felt so uneasy, that, for the first time, she invented a lie in order to get rid of him. "You seem to compassionate my sorrows," said she; "meanwhile you ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... and became interpreter to a foot regiment. Quick and clever, he was soon promoted, till he attained an officer's rank. He is now a general in the service. Entertaining—perhaps naturally—a mortal hatred of the Arabs, he has generally been selected to enforce those stern acts of reprisal against the native population, which, though perhaps justified by necessity, still bear the impress of great severity, and are unpalatable to officers of French birth and education. These measures he has always carried ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... flesh. He stood there dazed for the moment, with the little cross clutched in his hand. He sat down again and tried to force his spirit back to the other scene, but in vain. He felt that he had been thrilled through and through. The oppression, however, unlike the stern-faced monk, did not vanish, it deepened. A throbbing headache came on, which refused to be shaken off, and eventually sent O'Hagan to the "Bell Inn" to drink still deeper of ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... imperiously to the men, and then, speaking a stern word of command, he strides away, followed by the conquered and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... then, in the progress of its administration there have been departures from the terms and intent of the compact, it is and will ever be proper to refer back to the fixed standard which our fathers left us and to make a stern effort to conform our action to it. It would seem that the fact of a principle having been resisted from the first by many of the wisest and most patriotic men of the Republic, and a policy having provoked constant strife without arriving ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was there always charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildest winter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of these communities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... above the level of the flood. Still, by a kind of seaman's instinct, Captain Arms made his way, until he felt that he ought to venture no farther. He had just turned to Cosmo Versal with the intention of voicing his protest when the Ark careened slightly, shivered from stem to stern, and then began a bumping movement that nearly threw the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... to that," replied Randy, as he stepped into the Water Sprite and tied its stern to the bow ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... he said, smiling down at her with a very kindly look in his stern dark eyes. "Do you know you have given me a great deal of pleasure to-day? You have trusted me to do a commission for you—a delicate bit of work too—and that shows that you don't ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... ride, the little girl—as indeed she ought—gives up the toy, and peace is restored for the time. But presently a shrill cry is heard: "Johnnie's rubbing all the paint off my dolly's cheeks. He won't give her to me. O, he has broken her arm." The mother's reply to this cry is stern and sharp. "Don't be so cross with your little brother." Then to John. "O, John, you ought not to have broken sister's pretty dolly; it wasn't half so nice as your own little carriage and ponies. Why didn't you play with them? Boys should be gentlemen. Emma is only a little girl;" with ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... Giorgias, with the forces of Ptolemy, upwards of forty thousand men, are combining to crush him by their overwhelming numbers! What can the devotion of our patriots avail but to swell the band of martyrs who have already laid down their lives in defence of our faith and our laws! Alas! theirs will be a stern keeping of the holy feast; other blood will flow besides that of the Paschal lamb! And a sad keeping of the feast will be mine; I shall see scarce a familiar face, that of no relative save Abishai; and I owe ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... hills. The road grew rougher and the mountains towered above them in jagged peaks of seemingly solid rock. The day was nearly ended and Wellesly remembered enough of the distances along the Las Plumas road to be sure that they ought to be approaching Muletown. But in this stern wilderness of rock and sand, human habitation did not seem possible. He looked back across the desert at the Fernandez mountains, standing out sharply against the red sunset clouds, and it suddenly flashed across his mind that if the sun were setting there they must ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... Stern is the stock of the Granite State. Self-denial is the essence of their religion; and economy, to give it a favorable name, is for ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... plenty of money, my majority, and no ties at home, sent me away from college to roam, and so one spring morning in sixty-seven found me sitting lazily in the stern of a little pleasure boat off Fort Point in the Golden Gate, listlessly watching a steam whaler come in from the Pacific. My boatman called my attention to her, remarking that she was spick-and-span new, and the biggest one he ever saw, but I took very little notice of the ship until in tacking ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... find them. On we went, and suddenly, With oarage poised, like wings upon the sea, An Argive ship we saw, her fifty men All benched, and on the shore, with every chain Cast off, our strangers, standing by the stern! The prow was held by stay-poles: turn by turn The anchor-cable rose; some men had strung Long ropes into a ladder, which they swung Over the side for those two ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... words exercised a magnetic power over her, she raised herself up slowly from the floor, and now stood there before her father, stern and cold as a ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... disgusted with the proceedings of the Portuguese that he resigned his command, and the Earl of Galway was appointed in his place. The next year he crossed the frontier, captured several towns, without much fighting, and invested Badajos. Here, however, a stern resistance was met with. Galway's hand was carried off by a shot, and the French general (Tesse) coming up in force to the relief of the town, and the Portuguese not arriving at all, the allies were obliged to fall back upon Portugal. But Philip was threatened ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... the most welcome soft roar of muted rockets. A huge shape swept over the high wall, soared directly over the Gorm, and nestled down in little jets of flame until the stern rested on the solid rock, and the bow swung ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... stagey in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than a secondary ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... interest went around the group. Every glass was raised; every eye strained toward her stern to read the name as she veered into the wind again. About she came. A sharp sigh of excited disappointment exhaled from the spectators. The name had ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which one bore her affection. Her method of dealing with her native tongue came among the latter. It was reprehensible of her too, seeing the money her grandmother had spent in giving her a chance to be a lady—that is, the type of lady who affects a blindness concerning the stern, plain facts of existence, and who considers that to speak so that she cannot be heard distinctly is an outward sign of innate refinement. She had made poor use of her opportunities in this respect, but if to be honest, healthy, and wholesome is lady-like, then Dawn was one of the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... St. Croix, and at a very early period of life had been placed by his friends in New York. Possessing an ardent temper, he caught fire from the concussions of the moment, and, with all the enthusiasm of youth, engaged first his pen, and afterwards his sword in the stern contest between the American Colonies and their parent State. Among the first troops raised by New York was a corps of artillery, in which he was appointed a captain. Soon after the war was transferred to the Hudson, his superior ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... [239]. He saw a great witch-wife standing on an isle of the Sulen, with a fork in one hand and a trough in the other [240]. He saw her pass over the whole fleet;—by each of the three hundred ships he saw her; and a fowl sat on the stern of each ship, and that fowl was a raven; and he heard the witch-wife sing ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drunkenly, and some tons of black water rolled over the bulwarks; she reeled consumedly to larboard, and rose squarely and ponderously to the height of the surge that was now abaft the beam. In a few moments she was dead before it, the helm amidships, the wind blowing sheer over the stern with half its weight seemingly gone through the vessel running, the tall seas chasing her high stern and floating it upwards, till looking forward was like gazing down the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the boathouse had carefully scrambled down into the boat and sat quietly on the stern seat. There was a strong breeze blowing, and as the boat swayed up and down on the rippling water, its keel grating against the post to which it was tied, and the doors and windows being tightly shut, they did not hear Carter's voice. They really had no ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... by physical force is not government. It is a most pitiful sight to see a child fear and tremble before a parent's stern looks and cross words. There is a way, though but few have found it, of mingling tenderness with firmness that demands obedience in respect and love. It brings a joy to the parents' hearts to behold their child obeying willingly. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... child, Gladys Graham found herself face to face with its grimmest reality, certain of only one thing, that somewhere and somehow she must earn her bread. She was thinking of it at that moment, with her white brows perplexedly knitted, her mouth made stern by doubt and apprehension and despair; conning in her mind her few meagre accomplishments, asking herself how much they were likely to bring in the world's great mart. She could read and write and add a ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... matter up well as they can, but it is many days before Florence or her husband, or any of their guests, forget the dreadful hour in which they discovered the unsightly remains of him who had been overtaken by a just and stern retribution. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... man made no answer to either speaker; he remained with his head bent down over the Bible, and a face almost stern in its gravity. Mrs. Dallas ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... he looked so stern and angry that the little girl felt frightened, and dropping the jug, scrambled off the chair, seized her flowers, and ran out of his sight ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... history, as much more interesting than a romance as truth is stranger than fiction, which Mr. Smiles's biography of the projector has given in so attractive a form to the world, I then heard from his own lips. He was a rather stern-featured man, with a dark and deeply marked countenance; his speech was strongly inflected with his native Northumbrian accent, but the fascination of that story told by himself, while his tame dragon flew panting along his iron pathway with us, passed the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... soon prevailed upon him to stop, for the sake of observing a canoe or boat, with several natives of the country in it. He could not, at a distance, forbear admiring the form of this little vessel, which seemed inclining to a semicircle, the stern and prow standing up, and the body sinking inward; but much greater was his wonder, when, upon a nearer inspection, he found it made only of the barks of trees, sewed together with thongs of sealskin, so artificially, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Into the stern weather of their need had stolen a summer-day to keep hope alive. Cosmo gave up his writing, and spent all the time he had at home in waiting with mind and body upon his father. He read to him—sometimes his own poetry,—and that his father liked best of all, because ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... of the American mind. It lacks, we contend, the fine perceptive power which belongs to the poet. It can imitate, but cannot make. It does not seize hold upon the distinctive fact of what it looks at, and appropriate that. Our countrymen once could do it. The stern Puritan of New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement "Springfield." But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... consideration by its captain. We were three months upon the homeward voyage and the captain called it smooth sailing. We fell in with many vessels en route and, to quote our skipper, we found them "like human beings, some very friendly and others stern and curt." When in mid-ocean we passed an American vessel, the Anna Decatur, which seemed like a welcome from home as it was named after a former New York friend of mine, Anna Pine Decatur, a niece of Commodore Stephen Decatur, who married Captain William ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... accept the gift and carry it within—presents were constantly arriving. A sign from the dumb giant makes the soldier stand back—the present is for Caesar and can be delivered only in person. "Lead and I will follow," were the words done in stern pantomime. The officer laughs, sends in the note, and the messenger soon returning, signifies that the present is acceptable and the slave bearing it shall be shown in. Appolidorus shifts his burden to the other shoulder, and follows the soldier through the ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... and hell consented To hear the poet's prayer; Stern Proserpine relented, And gave ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... said Uncle Andy, his voice suddenly growing very stern as a bee crawled over his collar and jabbed him with great earnestness in the neck. He sat up. Several other bees were creeping over him, seeking an effective spot to administer their fiery admonitions. But he paid them no heed. They stung him where they would—while he was quickly looking ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... crowds stand and gaze in the street. A dozen on the patriots' side knew the house from which the marmite fell, and marked it; and half as many saw at the small window whence it came the grey locks and stern wrinkled face of an aged woman. The effect on the burghers was magical. As if the act symbolised not only the loved ones for whom they fought, but the dire distress to which they were come, they rushed ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... came like a stern order, and Philostratus seemed to have some hopes of the emperor's clemency, for his love's sake, and the philosopher's own eloquence. The moment Melissa ceased, he seized her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as we are all aware, respectable authorities hold that this part of the world was originally peopled by Carthaginians, Israelites, Egyptians, Hindoos, and Africans. Columbus, in his second voyage to the West Indies, found the stern-post of a vessel lying on the shore of one of the Leeward isles, which was strongly presumptive evidence that a European ship had been in these waters before him. The fact that at this writing, as already described, there lies in the harbor of Santiago the wreck of the old St. Paul, which must ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the position to which the pope had driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry, like Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the moments of danger, and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to those who crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to trifle further was to be lost. The suspended act of parliament was made law on the day (it would seem) of the arrival of the sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude |
