"Stiffening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instant the two rifles came to a level, whether he would or not. He felt no symptoms of "buck ague" this time, for every nerve and muscle of his body was stiffening, while his tired horse stood as still as a stone. That was where he had a priceless advantage. The spirited animal ridden by his enemy was a trifle restive for some reason, and caused a shade of delay that was just enough to give Sile ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... rain was no great task, and they hurriedly concluded their preliminary packing. It was yet early in the day when they stood on the river-bank, looking at the great fleet of scows of the north-bound fur brigade as the boats now lay swinging in the stiffening current. ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... wine-red velvet and her glowing, gipsy beauty against the sober blacks and grays and faded cheeks of the gathering, looking like a Kentucky cardinal alighted in a henyard, felt her smile stiffening. Sudden and inexplicable panic and rebellion descended upon her; it seemed certain that if she heard Mrs. Wetherby say "proud of this dear girl of ours" once again she would scream. She disengaged her arm and declined tea and little ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... my lap again, I pulled her closely to me. "Kiss me, she's gone," I said. "Oh! what a boy," and she kissed me, saying, "let me go now—your mamma is coming." It came into my mind that I had had my hand up her clothes, and had felt hair between her legs. My prick stiffening in thinking of a women. I clutched her hard, put one hand on to her and did something I know not what. She said: "You are rude, Wattie." Then I pinched her and said: "Oh! what a big bosom you have." "Hish! hish!" said she. She was a tallish woman ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... at him in a flushed, bewildered sort of way, not resisting; but his eyes were so gay and mischievous, and his quick smile so engaging that a breathless, uncertain smile began to edge her lips; and it remained stamped there, stiffening even after he had jumped into his cutter and had driven away, jingling joyously out into the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... still dwelling in the past. "And when saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand—as she did to me—it was as if across a broad river. Trick of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... ago an article was discovered for the stiffening of corsets, which has revolutionized the corset industry of the world. This article is manufactured from the natural fibers of the Mexican Ixtle plant, and is known as Coraline. It consists of straight, stiff fibers like bristles bound together ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... matter now? Do you think you can walk back? You can't, you know." He addressed her in his best Castilian. "I am afraid you are hurt. Let me help——" but she held him off with a stiffening arm, while she wiped her face with her petticoat, and put herself into ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... was rising and enveloping everything in its deadening blanket. The fog penetrated into the doctor's lungs and an intolerable pain, as though hot irons were searing the tissues, tore him. He tried to cough, but the sound could not force its way through his stiffening lips. Darkness closed in on him and he swayed. He was dimly conscious that the Russians were swarming about Feodrovna, knives and clubs in their hands. Then through the night came an ear-splitting crack and a flash of orange flame. One of ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... he was no coward; there was nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to what he believed was his first real passion. But he could do nothing. He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was stiffening into a ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raising flaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks high and stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are too tight—but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect—he hangs aloft longer; but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big charnel bird. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... dark. Fresh from the yellow light of the inn, his eyes could barely descry the footpath or see the dim black line of the hedge. The atmosphere was damp. The moisture in the air gathered in great beads on his eyebrows and beard, stiffening them with frost. It was bitterly cold. The mist that rose from the river spread itself over the cold, open wastes of marshy ground that lay to the right and to the left. The gloomy road was ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... could do nothing for that lifeless clay, lying on the hearth by which he had sat on so many winter nights, for so many years of faithful unquestioning service. There was nothing to be done for that stiffening form, save the last offices for the dead; and Lord Hartfield left Mr. Horton to arrange with the weeping woman as to the doing of these. He was anxious to go to Lady Maulevrier, to break to her, as gently as might be, the news of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... now plying Father Orin with questions. There was a cry of alarmed amazement when the priest told of finding Ruth at Anvil Rock. Only William Pressley said nothing, and sat perfectly still, with a sudden stiffening of his bearing. It was not easy for the priest to make the whole story clear, for he did not understand it quite clearly himself. But he told as much as he knew of the night's events. And when he was done, the judge's voice stilled the clamor of ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... change your mind, but it mustn't be just on impulse. We're going to leave you now for thirty minutes. When the time is up I'll be back and if you want to begin dressing—all right." She paused a moment and then with a defiant stiffening of her slender figure she announced crisply. "And if you don't want to, I'll go downstairs and tell them that you've ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... a heightened color, when the sound of light, hurried footsteps, and the rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the hall. A swift recollection of her companion's infelicitous reputation now returned to her, and Grace Nevil, with a slight stiffening of her whole frame, became coldly herself again. Mr. Rushbrook betrayed neither surprise nor agitation. Begging her to wait a moment until he could arrange for her to pass to her carriage ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party. With Lady Isabel's regime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard by Evans, offering to ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... STIFFENING ORDER. A custom-house warrant for making a provision in the shipping of goods, before the whole inward cargo is discharged, to prevent the vessel ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... do we delay to let loose that fury, that is so terrible, when our nests are attacked? I feel my angry sting is stiffening, that sharp sting, with which we punish our enemies. Come, children, cast your cloaks to the winds, run, shout, tell Cleon what is happening, that he may march against this foe to our city, who deserves death, since he proposes to prevent the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... for the chance of getting ashore. The rain now fell in blinding torrents and a blackness as of night brooded over the sea. Greenleaf was utterly bewildered, but held on to the tiller with his aching, stiffening hand, and strove to inspire his companion with courage. The boat was "down by the head," on account of the wind's drawing the jib, and rolled and plunged furiously. Behind were threatening billows, and before were ragged, precipitous rocks, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... at last, cold; her arm was stiffening in the position in which he had left it; in a necessary forcible gentleness he composed her body. But he didn't hide her—not yet—with a sheet. That would follow soon enough. The blueness was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... near it that he could not stop. The boat was carried out, the poor Tin Soldier stiffening himself as much as he could, and no one could say that he moved an eyelid. The boat whirled round three or four times, and was full of water to the very edge—it must sink. The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water, and the boat sank deeper and deeper, and the paper was loosened ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... file, to give the least possible sign of their presence to the hostile sentinels, the French blasters advanced in a long line, at first with comparative rapidity, only stiffening into the grotesque rigidity of simulated death when the searchlights played upon them, and resuming progress when the beam shifted. Then as they approached the barrier they moved slowly and more slowly. When they arrived within forty yards the movement ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... between the combatants, as year after year they faced and fought each other. When the lesson was well learned our generals began to win battles, and our soldiers to fight with a confidence altogether new to them. In vain do we look for any other explanation of the sudden stiffening up of the backbone of the Revolutionary army, or of the equally sudden restoration of an apparently dead and buried cause after even its most devoted followers had given up all as lost. As with expiring breath that little band of ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... Friendship—gratitude—esteem—I have; but each moment he came near me, and that I could see his eyes fastened on me, my veins ran ice. Now that he is away, I feel far more gently towards him, it is only close by that I grow rigid, stiffening with a strange mixture of apprehension and anger, which nothing softens but his retreat, and a perfect subduing of his manner. I did not want to be proud, nor intend to be proud, but I was forced to be so. Most true it is, that we are over-ruled by One above us; that in His hands our ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... enjoy, Add new reproaches to thy fallen state, And make men scorn what they would only hate. "What pains, my brother, dost thou take to prove A taste for follies which thou canst not love! Why do thy stiffening limbs the steed bestride - That lads may laugh to see thou canst not ride? And why (I feel the crimson tinge my cheek) Dost thou by night in Diamond-Alley sneak? "Farewell! the parish will thy sister ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... and at some pains keeping step with his companion. Behind them trailed the Wilbur twin, resolving, as was his weekly rule, to keep himself neat through church and Sunday-school—yet knowing in his heart it could not be done. Already he could feel his hair stiffening as the coating of soap dried upon it. Pretty soon the shining surface would crack and disorder ensue. What was the use? As he walked carefully now he inhaled rich scent from the group—Winona's perfume combining but somehow not blending with a ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Madame," replied the captain, kneeling. He gently loosed the sword from the stiffening fingers. The master of twenty-five ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... old-timer saying the words now. And, as he listened to the grim warning again, he felt—as perhaps those two prospectors felt in the moment of their awakening down by the river—that fate had sadly swindled him. He was stiffening his trigger-finger for the pull, peering across the sights at the Indian who had climbed to within a few yards of the weapon's muzzle, when—the warrior on the summit of the next knoll waved his hand. The Apache halted at the gesture and Schiefflin ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... The stiffening of Jose's whole figure stopped Manuel short but not dissatisfied, for he saw there was no need that he should speak a single ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... absence. He said that his hands were soiled (I shuddered, for it might be with life-blood), and he would go and cleanse them; but some bitter jest turned his purpose, and he left the room with the other two—left it by the gallery door. Left me alone in the dark with the stiffening corpse! ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... for officers, soldiers and other uniformed members of the A.E.F. For the latter two classes, the cap will be of 20 ounce olive drab cloth, or perhaps a little heavier. There will be no show of coloring on the cap, and the stiffening of the flap will be the same color as the cap itself. When the cap is issued to a man, he will be expected to turn in his service hat ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... her wet eyes, and though he knew of nothing for which to be forgiven, he melted utterly. His hand went out impulsively to hers, but she avoided the clasp by a sort of bodily stiffening and chill, the while the eyes smiled ...
— The Game • Jack London
... I have seen. Charge him with the murder of the Dane. Tell him," said Fanny, her lips stiffening, "that if he dares to come again—if he does not go away—he shall be arrested for murder. I ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... no more attention than if he had not heard, but the slight stiffening of his face and raising of his eyebrows as he turned to Sir Samuel, made him look supremely proud and distinguished, incomparably more a gentleman in his dusty leather livery, than Bertie in his ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... her house were just before her, offering succor, stiffening courage. It would be but a dash from the door of the cab to her own door. There was no second course, once the cab stopped. She felt that to lurk in its gloom would mean robbery, perhaps death. She thought without ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... a sort of fear of living ladies," the scald said, "how much more, therefore, of their ghosts! I had rather meet Danes. For when one sees them there comes a stiffening of back and ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... thousand incoherences rushed to his lips—and stopped there. For another change came over her. Those lids, like curtains drawn by stealth over what must not be revealed, sank half-way over her eyes. An impalpable stiffening ran over her figure. She became as ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... a man on the pay roll we can't do without," Hawkins retorted, his neck stiffening with resentment. "It's a kinda rusty trick, though, Lone, quittin' without notice and ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... dress and mien, and all else that was connected with chivalry. Then came the ages which, when they have taken their due place in the depths of the past, will be, by a wise and clear-sighted futurity, perhaps well comprehended under a common name, as the ages of Starch; periods of general stiffening and bluish-whitening, with a prevailing washerwoman's taste in everything; involving a change of steel armour into cambric; of natural hair into peruke; of natural walking into that which will disarrange no wristbands; of plain language into quips and embroideries; ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... for a long time, it should be remembered, it must have seemed to the East merely that it died. The realms of Rome had disappeared in clouds of barbaric war, while the realms of Byzantium were still golden and gorgeous in the sun. The men of the East did not realise that their splendour was stiffening and growing sterile, and even the early successes of Islam may not have revealed to them that their rule was not only stiff but brittle. It was something else that was destined to reveal it. The Crusades meant many things; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... upon the platform and began pawing Kathlyn, and shortly after the younger sister followed. Neither of the girls noted the stiffening mustaches of the leopard. The animal rose, and his nostrils palpitated. He hated the dog with a hatred not unmixed with fear. Treachery is in the marrow of all cats. To breed them in captivity does not matter. Sooner or later they will strike. Never before had the leopard been so ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... love is a pain, yet it is a benison and a benediction. If we carry any possession from this world to another it is the memory of a great love. For even in the last hour, when the coldness of death shall creep into the stiffening limbs, and the brain shall be stunned and the thoughts stifled, there shall come to the tongue a name, a name not mentioned aloud for years—there shall come a name; and as the last flickering rays of life flare up to go out on earth forever, the tongue will speak this name ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... the reddening of the skin lasted longer, little by little the bluish tints began to go, little by little the stiffening which ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... we have come back to wide full skirts," said Miss Cynthia. "We're putting stiffening in to hold them out. And ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... see," retorted the man, suddenly stiffening his spine and almost succeeding in reaching a ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... meaningless, and his mother said nothing at the time, but a slight stiffening of her face warned him that his father's remark pointed in a direction not held desirable by her. And from that sign the boy ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... she read the letter—at first in expectancy, lips parted, colour brilliant, then with the smile still curving her cheeks—but less genuine now—almost mechanical—until the smile stamped on her stiffening lips faded, and the soft contours relaxed, and she lifted her eyes, staring into space with a wistful, questioning lift of the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... as if to add to his discomfort, while climbing down the trail from the cemetery, he saw Judith on Buster, accompanied by the leaping Wolf Cub, overtake Scott Parsons and saw them race toward the post-office. Twilight came on, with the mud of the trail stiffening in the frosty air. An overpowering sense of loneliness urged Douglas across the valley and brought him to pause beside the Rodman corral. He dismounted at the buck fence and stood for a moment in the shadow of the Moose, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... worried us to death; the sword-fish stabs us with his sword; and the thrasher whips us to death with his own slender, but strong and heavy body. Then, men harpoon us, shoot or entrap us; and make us into oil and candles and seats, and stiffening for gowns and umbrellas," said the bone, in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... already stiffening in death; the breath from her lips would scarcely have dimmed a mirror; the eyes only, wide-open, were fixed and brilliant, as though the whole remaining life of the body, dead before its time, were centred, there. Roland had heard of this strange state called ecstasy, which is nothing else than ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... moon above has witnessed. There they clung, those two, in the actual shadow of death experiencing the fullest and acutest joy that our life has to offer. Nay, death was present with them, for, beneath their very feet, half-hidden by the water, lay the stiffening corpse of the Zulu. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... glancing at the sunshine which streamed down the open companion-way. "Fair westerly breeze, with a promise of stiffening, if Louis ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... choked it off when he noted the angry stiffening of mademoiselle's figure. Somehow, her veiled countenance was impressive of lingering, bitter emotions. She was a Basque, and that was a primitive race. She was probably bold enough and hardy enough to fulfill her mission. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his stiffening hand. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... been the case during the earlier part of the Russian offensive. This was due to the fact that the armies of the Central Powers had received strong reenforcements and had apparently succeeded in strengthening their new positions and in stiffening their resistance. Powerful counterattacks were launched ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... the heart, and the warm blood, bubbling from his breast, dripped on the glistening grass. The surgeon who knelt beside him took the pistol from his clenched fingers, and gently pressed the lids over his glazing eyes. Not a word was uttered, but while the seconds sadly regarded the stiffening form, the surviving principal coolly drew out a cigar, lighted and placed it between his lips. The child's eyes had wandered to the latter from the pool of blood, and now in a shuddering cry she ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... same extraordinary antipathy to hanging continued to manifest itself, it occasioned remark, then ridicule. It would have been laughable had it not been so significant. The papers took it up, urging, exhorting, demanding that there be a stiffening of backbone; but to no effect. More than this, the Mafia had reigned so long and so autocratically, it had so shamefully abused the courts in the past, that a large proportion of honest men declared themselves unwilling to believe Sicilian testimony unless corroborated, and this ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... woman about him—save the tenderness; and partly to show that we acted at this crisis each after his manner. While Croisette turned pale and trembled, and hid his eyes, I stood dazed, looking from the desolate house to the face stiffening in the sunshine, and back again; wondering, though I had seen scores of dead faces since daybreak, and a plenitude of suffering in all dreadful shapes, how Providence could let this happen to us. To us! In his instincts man is as selfish as ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... pointed out. "There's an American stove in the deck-house, and while we can't find anything meant to burn in it there's an axe down forward, and we could cut out cabin floorings, or a beam or two, without taking too much stiffening out of her." ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... could seldom stand upright, nor see without a candle. Upon the attic floor a map was roughly drawn in chalks of different colors, with mountains, rivers, towns, bridges, and roads of two classes. Here we would play by the hour, with tingling fingers and stiffening knees, and an intentness, zest, and excitement that ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and fastened around ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... counting, and truly enough, upon the chivalry of the mob toward her burden, for obtaining an immediate seat. At West Fifty-third Street she alighted into a day gone two shades darker. A stiffening breeze blew in from the river, whipping up the odor of garbage from curbs. A group of dirty children were building a bonfire of some of these slops and bits of flying paper, lending a certain vicious ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... up. Well, he would do all the damage he could before the stiffening limb permitted Garman to catch him in that horrible gorilla grip. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... and the prairie. He was barely managing to stand up; she could easily see that he was on his last legs as well as his first ones. As she went to him he took a step or two as if to meet her, but his legs lacked stiffening and he fell on his nose. She ran and picked him up. As she took him in her arms he opened his mouth again ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... his feet, his face paling, his body stiffening. From Virginia! Who should be come from Virginia, save she to whom ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and with thy stiffening breath Clog their strain'd helms, distend their limbs indeath. Tho ancient enmity our realms divide, And oft thy chains arrest my laboring tide, Let strong necessity our cause combine, Thy own disgrace anticipate in mine; Even now their ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... grasp, and Muller stood in the light, but he saw an ominous glint in the pale blue eyes and the farmer's fingers tighten on the haft. There was also a suggestive raising of one shoulder; and his hands went up above his head. Muller advanced the points an inch or two, stiffening his right leg, and smiled grimly. The other man stared straight in front of him with dilated eyes, and a little grey patch ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... cordite rang out. The brute seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's feet before stiffening in death. Like the great automaton it was, it had scented the human beings just as the bull had scented them, "fussed" just as he had fussed, charged as he had charged, and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... over there?" inquired Hal, coming out of a brown study as he felt some reproach in the stiffening attitude of ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... down, backwards and forwards. No rest, not for a moment. I prayed, I tried to fight my way out of the buoy, between the bars, to throw myself into the sea. The sea was rising visibly, and the spray of the waves broke over me, drenching me; the salt dried upon my face, stiffening my skin. There were moments when I thought I could endure the rest, if I might have a respite from the movement; other moments, if I might have a respite from the sickness; and yet others, if I might have a respite ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... caught his Aunt by the umbrella hand. He saw her stiffening. He meant to prevent it if ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... doubt of it," replied the Chief, calmly, and yet with a stiffening of his figure, as though conscious of having already discovered a most promising clue, that could not but reflect credit on his astuteness as an officer ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... fault," he confessed. "I oughtn't to have taken the chance with Bruno alone. I should have had Jack along, too. With more than one dog, a man won't stand against 'em. He'll take to a tree." He shook off the depression that descended as he glanced down at the stiffening body of the beast. There was a forced cheerfulness in his tones when he continued: "But how did you get into the swamp? I take you to be from ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Cross makes the coward brave. It was no small piece of courage for Joseph to go to Pilate and avow his sympathy with a condemned criminal. The love must have been very true which was forced to speak by disaster and death. And to us the strongest motive for stiffening our vacillating timidity into an iron fortitude, and fortifying us strongly against the fear of what man can do to us, is to be found in gazing upon His dying love who met and conquered all evils and terrors for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... much shocked to speak. She stood holding the stiffening bird in her hands, and gazing ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... Scripture, wot he done for that young man as the last breath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening fast. 'Young man, arise,' he says. 'The Lord Almighty calls. You've got a young wife an' three children to take care of. Take up your bed an' walk.' Not as he wanted him to carry his bed anywheres, but it was a manner of speaking. An' up the young ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Sooner or later every transgressor must be humbled; he must fall—by judgment, or by penitence—before the sword of excision, or into the arms of mercy. Happy for us if external visitations produce internal prostration of spirit; if, instead of stiffening ourselves into resistance, we bend to the inflictions of parental chastisement; and if present and temporary sufferings excite a feeling which will supersede the necessity of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... unknown, astonish'd at the sight, My trembling sister strove to urge her flight; And first the pardon of the nymphs implored, And those offended sylvan powers adored: But when she backward would have fled, she found Her stiffening feet were rooted in the ground: 40 In vain to free her fasten'd feet she strove, And as she struggles only moves above; She feels th' encroaching bark around her grow By quick degrees, and cover all below: Surprised at this, her trembling hand she heaves To rend her hair; her hand is ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the details of Vaillant's execution left me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... despair. There was no sign of the sledge, no sound of the dogs, who might still be struggling in their traces. They were gone—everything—food, fire, life itself. He dug out his flint and steel from the bottom of a stiffening pocket and knelt beside the bark, striking them again and again, yet knowing that his efforts were futile. He continued to strike until his hands were purple and numb and his freezing clothes almost shackled him ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... this they remained silently in their exposed position, their limbs stiffening with cold, drenched continually with spray, and occasionally overwhelmed by the crest of a monstrous wave. Sometimes a rocket from the lightship shot athwart the dark sky, and at all times her lights gleamed like faint stars far away to windward. When the sea broke ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... we had crossed into Poland this sober, steel-gray stream had been mingling with and stiffening our lighter-hearted, more boyish, blue-gray stream of Austrians and Hungarians. Here were men who knew what they were doing, believed in it, and had the will to put it through. One thought of Emerson's "Earnest of the North Wind" ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... he did not see that sudden stiffening of her shoulders, or the sudden eagerness that seized her fingers as they adjusted the focus. But he did feel the wave of emotion that welled from her, impinging directly on his empathetic sense. "What is it?" he called to her, as if she had ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... for sale," said Bobby, stiffening; "but I might consider a proposition to buy your eight acres." He offered this suggestion with reluctance, for he had no mind to enter transactions of any sort with Silas Trimmer. Still, he recalled to himself ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... and chills throughout the stiffening regions, while by stronger charms Than Circe e'er or fell Medea brewed, Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, Nor moves the withered reeds. . . . The surges baited by the fierce Northeast, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... may yet be greatly prolonged is my wish for my own sake, and for the sake of the rest of your friends! What a transient business is life! Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er my frame. With all my follies of youth, and, I fear, a few vices of manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had in early days religion strongly impressed on my mind. I have nothing to say to any one as to ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... breath, Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat, Wrote variations of the seaside joke We all do know and always loved so well, And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves Anon Will in that self-same room, with tattered quilt Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands, All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts, Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more, So that we may expect it not in vain, The joke of how with curses deep and coarse Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove. So ye Who greet with tears this olden favorite, Drop one for him who, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... unusual a terror,—and by the death of this creature especially, with whom he felt a sympathy that did not exist with any other person now living. So long did he sit, holding her hand, that at last he was conscious that it was growing cold within his own, and that the stiffening fingers clutched him, as if they were disposed to keep their hold, and not forego the tie that had been ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Moise, smiling; "we'll fix heem easy." So saying, he took his ax and sauntered over to a half-dead cedar-tree, from which, without much difficulty, he cut some long splints. This they managed to lash inside the gunwale of the canoe, stiffening it considerably. The rent in the bottom they patched by means of their cement, and some waterproof material. They finished the patch with abundant spruce gum and tar, melted together and spread all over. When they were done their labors ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... "Before she leaves this place she'll just have to grasp things a bit better," and sitting down on a swag he talked rapidly for ten minutes, taking a queer delight in making everything sound as bad as possible, "knocking the stiffening out of the missus," as he phrased it, and certainly bringing the "commodious station home" about her ears, which was just ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... seer to predict that some time the little lady in white satin, brocade silk, and rich laces, would spend long hours knitting stockings for her husband's army, and that night after night would find her, in a long grey cloak, at the side of the wounded, hearing from stiffening lips the husky whisper, "God ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... her efforts. But to flounder along a dreadful chaos of snow-drifts, or snow-chasms, towards a point of rock, which, being turned, should expose only another interminable succession of the same character—might that be endured by ebbing spirits, by stiffening limbs, by the ghastly darkness that was now beginning to gather upon the inner eye? And, if once despair became triumphant, all the little arrear of physical strength would collapse ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... kisses The clay-cold stiffening hand; And, reading pleading efforts To make her understand, Answers, with solemn promise, In clear but trembling tone, To Dora's life henceforward ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... always a bad sign. It shows that the man has discovered that there is no one to care how he dresses—that is, that there is no longer any public opinion. It indicates something subtly worse—that the man has ceased looking at himself, that the I has ceased criticising, judging, stiffening up the me,—in other words, that there is no longer any conscience. That white suit, I tell you, is a wonderful moral force; the white suit, put on fresh every morning, heavily starched, buttoned up to the chin, is like an armor, ironcladding ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... "Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible. They've been bowing and scraping until there's a permanent kink ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... body was chilling and stiffening. He looked back at the face. There was almost a smile on the lips; and one hand hung as if fallen from the windlass handle. A suspicion flashed through Wayland's mind. He could hardly give it credence. It was preposterous, unbelievable, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... that when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492 (Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then a student at Cracow), beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibers of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... her, two or three of the rabble behind her were in the act of poising themselves with great stones in their hands, and their muscles were stiffening for a cast when, just in the nick of time, the obstinate snap yielded, and with a jerk the umbrella ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... hushed and trembling kiss, The mother weeping at her beauty's side, And Death's last look and stiffening clutch—is this, Is this the outcome of a nation's pride? There lie the clammy corpses far and wide, And locks bedabbled and the princely cheek, Son, father, brother, husband, side by side— Oh, such a tale of horror who can speak! ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... master-mechanic were getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through the whirling snow and stopped at the semaphore. So a liner shaken in the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by stiffening spray, rides at last, ice-bound, staggering, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... progress was possible. The women sat trembling in the hut, roasting before the fire, and shivering when a draught touched them. . . . Ruth wept for the poor little horse, and Marx sat as if utterly crushed beside his old friend's stiffening body, heeding nothing, least of all the snow, which was making him whiter than the miller, with whom he had expected to rest that evening. The doctor gazed in mute despair at his dumb wife, who, with clasped hands, was praying fervently; the smith pressed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... could bring their lips and their legs to the proper attitude. And in this I speak advisedly; having observed some thousand times that the manner a man has of spreading his legs, and bending his knees, or stiffening, and even the way he will set his heel, make all the difference in his tone, and time of casting his voice aright, and power of coming home ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... his handsome, weather-bronzed face bearing the impress of truth, his eyes shining with the clearest, highest honor. The child Jeanne felt the stiffening of every muscle, and it went through her with a thrill ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the war canoe should be named Nyoda, and Mr. Evans promised to take it to St. Pierre the next day to have the name painted on her bow. As soon as dinner was over they were out in her again with the sails up, until the ever-stiffening wind made the lake too rough for pleasure. They could hardly land when at last they reached the shore, the canoe plunged so, and Uncle Teddy jumped out and stood in the water up to his ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... that he might kiss the Christ, he made a frightful gesture, as if to seize it; and that last effort cost him his life. He called Eugenie, whom he did not see, though she was kneeling beside him bathing with tears his stiffening hand, which was ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... painful walk, for the excitement was now gone, and my companions' wounds were stiffening, and giving them as much pain as my chest did me; but no one murmured, and we kept on till we were at the mouth of the Gap, high up above where four boats were lying, while half a mile away we could see the lights and dimly make out the hull of ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... breakfast-room he faced a Lucy self-possessed, with guarded eyes, and, if he could have seen it, with implied reproach stiffening every line of her. Her generosity gratified him, but should have touched him keenly. She came to him at once, and put up her face. "I'm sorry I was so cross, James." His immediate feeling, I say, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... an enormous breath, stiffening every muscle in order to hold the air, thus depriving their muscles of ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 deg.—50 deg. centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kuehne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... some of whom had already begun to feel their joints stiffening with rheumatism, she said: "Fishing's a hard game, boys, for the best of us. And it doesn't get any easier as we get older. There's a lot of you who will have to go into dry-dock before long and get patched up. And there's some that can't afford to lay up. You've been ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... night's work! Several hundreds were lying between some sheets folded at the bottom of a drawer in which he looked. But he cannot stop for more thorough investigation; a dreadful haste pursues him like a thousand fiends. He drags Anethe's stiffening body into the house, and leaves it on the kitchen floor. If the thought crosses his mind to set fire to the house and burn up his two victims, he dares not do it: it will make a fatal bonfire to light his homeward way; besides, it is ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... not ill. I'm sick, though. The Pater says I want stiffening. This is my third trip in the stiffening process. Like a bally collar in a laundry! Oh, damn life! What's he know about it, anyway? Have you got ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... is stiffening the life out of you. Think you are tired! You are tired to death; but that is not all. ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell |
