"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slipped in through a crack in his owld wore-out brogue, an' into his toe. "Och, Mary," says the poor man to his wife, "I have a terrible bad pain in me toe! What'll I do in the world?" says he; "I'll never be able to stir a fut to-morrow." "Whisht, sure it's maybe a bit of a cramp ye've got. Wait a bit," she says, "an' I'll fetch ye a sup o' the wather I'm afther bilin' the pitaties in, maybe that'll do ye good," she says. 'Well,' says the Gout, 'if the fellow didn't go an' put his fut, an' me in it, into an owld rusty bucket full ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... night, and after a long day of traveling, might I not naturally take a bath in the cool water before I went to bed? And, practiced as I was in the exercise of swimming, might it not nevertheless be my misfortune to be attacked by cramp? On the lonely shores of Greenwater Broad the cry of a drowning man would bring no help at night. The fatal accident would explain itself. There was literally but one difficulty in the way—the difficulty ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... singing nor prayers when they started out, and in these regards they have not apostatized from their first faith, for they are up to this time a praiseless and prayerless people, never praying unless it is when they have the cramp or some other disease. Their wants seem to be few and easily supplied. Health and hominy are the staples of spiritual food with them at the present. The time was when, as a society, they wished to wear some of the main elements of the Christian religion, such as belief in the existence ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... heard of the efficacy of the stone in the toad's head, alluded to by Shakspeare,[2] for curing the cramp, &c. by application to the afflicted part; but it was left for Dr. B—— to discover the virtues of a toad's leg. Apropos, an eccentric friend of mine, once gravely told me he intended to procure this precious Bufonian jewel; and as probably some reader ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... writer's cramp by the time he finished, but while the spending frenzy was on him he would take no rest; so he seized a pencil and, while Mr. Skinner called off the names of the deserving and the length of time each had spent in ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... cramp," said Cleggett, indulging the pleasant humor that was on him. He was really thinking that, with $500,000 of his own, he had written his last headline, edited his last piece of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Walter Cramp's translation of this little Italian classic will be highly appreciated. Ginn ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... being in contact with living vessels, need not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of consciousness beginning in the nervous system—a kind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... at it for wellnigh ten minutes. But t' shore were a lang way off, an' then, sudden-like, I began to think o' Abe Verity, an' t' fear o' death got howd on me an' clutched me same as if I'd bin taen wi' cramp. There were lads fishin' frae boats noan so far off, an' I hollaed to 'em; but they niver heerd. I tewed an' better tewed, but I got no forrarder; an' then I knew I were boun' ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... nothing but black night. Later I'll go down and see what that thing is. If it's a flatboat or a raft, I'll try to get across on that. If it isn't, I'll climb up the bank and get a log. Then I'll try swimming across holding to it. That'll keep me up if I get a cramp. Lord, I'm hungry! Guess I'd better not think about it. I'm talking to myself as though I'd reached my second childhood. Oh, well...." He paused and looked up toward the embankment. "You thought you'd get me, didn't ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... liberty, because, according to the laws of the realm, no person ought to be detained in custody above twenty-four hours without examination. This occasioned a considerable debate, and the Duc d'Orldans, provoked at this expression, said that the President's aim was to cramp the royal authority. Nevertheless the latter vigorously maintained his argument, and was unanimously seconded by all the deputies, for which they were next day applauded in Parliament. In short, the thing was pushed so far that the Queen ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... goodness it's over! I never want to write another word in my life. My hand's stiff with cramp!" exclaimed the girl with the red hair-ribbon to a sympathetic audience ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... a cramp, and he would have been drowned had not some of his people plunged into the water, and pulled him out. As it was, his imprudence brought on a serious illness, and for a short time Alexander's life was in ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Fever, colic, cramp, or stitch, Kitten-croup or beaver's-itch, Any kind of pain or ache Is cured by dear, old ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... holding to a veriest trifle with such a deathless cramp of the will, might naturally be regarded as a notable exception to a general rule; but his brethren who sit on church steps during services, who are dumb to those whom they should love, and will not enter familiar doors because of quarrels over matters of apparently ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... single week He oped his lips, and made attempt to speak; He fail'd indeed—but still his Friend confess'd The best have fail'd, and he had done his best: The first of swimmers, when at first he swims, Has little use or freedom in his limbs; Nay, when at length he strikes with manly force, The cramp may seize him, and impede his course. Encouraged thus, our Clerk again essay'd The daring act, though daunted and afraid: Succeeding now, though partial his success, And pertness mark'd his manner and address, Yet such improvement issued from his books, That all discern'd ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... when a sudden yell broke from the far point, as though twenty demons had cramp in the stomach. Gallant fellows are the Cingalese at making a noise, and a grand effect this had upon the elephants; up went tails and trunks, the whole herd closed together and made a simultaneous rush for their old thoroughfare. Away we skipped ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... had one of the company swim over and fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather; but none of the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with the cramp a few roods from the shore ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... patriarchal. "Ye've gotter 'low some for the breakin'-in. Sufferin' cracky! don't I recollect the first time I hit the trail! Stiff? I've seen the time it'd take me ten minutes to git my mouth from the water-hole an' come to my feet—every jint crackin' an' kickin' fit to kill. Cramp? In sech knots it'd take the camp half a day to untangle me. You're all right, for a cub, any ye've the true sperrit. Come this day year, you'll walk all us old bucks into the ground any time. An' best in your favor, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so,' was his fatherly remark; 'but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there—a mere trifle, Mr Jonas—but I prize it as a store ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... at last, and nearly the whole school mustered at Cramp Corner to see the sport. For the half-mile race, which was to come off first, there were only two fellows competing. Our man was Barlow—of paper-chase celebrity—while the sixth were very confident of winning with Chesney, a hero nearly six feet high. Certainly, as the two stood ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... games give the best form of exercise. Tennis, baseball, cricket, rowing, and swimming are sports which bring nearly all the muscles into use. Every boy and girl should learn to swim. It is dangerous to go swimming alone or to swim in deep water. Cramp may seize the muscles at any time, so that the limbs cannot be moved. Hundreds of persons are drowned every year by ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... Those upstanding arteries and that sorely tried heart would not enable him to gather strength in the intervals between the rounds. And he had not had sufficient strength in him to begin with. His legs were heavy under him and beginning to cramp. He should not have walked those two miles to the fight. And there was the steak which he had got up longing for that morning. A great and terrible hatred rose up in him for the butchers who had refused ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... any price to break this banker, but you can't bankrupt a feller unless you rip his coin loose; you can't ask him to please loosen. If we make a well of the Avenger we'll force him to shoot maybe a hundred thousand right away, and that may cramp him for a while; but suppose he makes the turn and hits it like we do? We've made him that much stronger, haven't we? Gray plans to keep him spending faster than he can get it in, and that's all right—if ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... niggle, or mill a bowzing Ken, Or nip a boung that has but a win, Or dup the giger of a Gentry cores ken, To the quier cuffing we bing; And then to the quier Ken, to scowre the Cramp-ring, And then to the Trin'de on the chates, in the light-mans, The Bube &. Ruffian cly ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... men, unquestionably brave, whose courage no man would have dared dispute; nevertheless, at that voice, that accent and those gestures, they felt a chill access of terror cramp their veins. As for Grimaud, his hair stood on end and drops of sweat ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... disputants says: "You say to me that the Church of Rome is corrupt. What then? to cut off a limb is a strange way of saving it from the influence of some constitutional ailment. Indigestion may cause cramp in the extremities; yet we spare our poor feet notwithstanding. Surely there is such a religious fact as the existence of a great Catholic body, union with which is a Christian privilege and duty. Now, we English are ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... equanimity, if not with satisfaction. Teachers are born, not made, it is said. Can pedagogy furnish better teachers than specialized scholarly training? it is asked. If we train definitely for teaching, we shall diminish scholarship, cramp and warp native teaching faculty, and mechanize our ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... "Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs, Sitting so long atop of my eggs! Never a minute for rest to snatch; I wonder when ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... danger; but I had not yet got to the end of my trouble. The effort I made gave me so severe a spasm that I became cramped and unable to use my limbs. However, I did not lose my head, but kept quiet till the pain had gone off, knowing by experience that keeping still is the best cure for the false cramp. It was a dreadful moment! In two minutes I made another effort, and had the good fortune to get my two knees on to the parapet, and as soon as I had taken breath I cautiously hoisted the ladder and pushed it half-way through the window. I then took my pike, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wife of Eben Tollman, the bigot whose narrowness would cramp her life into a dreary torture. His imagination eddied in bewildered wretchedness about that whirlpool of thought, bringing transient ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... convulsively with feet and hands to the trifling irregularities of surface which alone afforded him a hold, his blood curdling and his brain reeling at the thought of the horrible deadly danger which menaced him. A single slip of hand or foot, a momentary failure of a muscle, the slightest seizure of cramp or vertigo, and he would go whirling headlong downward at least five hundred feet sheer through the air before reaching the ground below. He was so unnerved that he was actually incapable of replying to the colonel's anxious hail as to ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... that the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a passage is begun in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and I have seen her obliged to grasp ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... faction many a wound, And libell'd all the junto round; Kept company with men of wit, Who often father'd what he writ: His works were hawk'd in ev'ry street, But seldom rose above a sheet: Of late, indeed, the paper-stamp Did very much his genius cramp; And, since he could not spend his fire, He now intended[4] to retire. Said Harley, "I desire to know From his own mouth, if this be so: Step to the doctor straight, and say, I'd have him dine with me to-day." Swift seem'd to wonder what he ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... rule, like the latter mode of travelling best, as the Corean sedan-chairs are somewhat too short for the long-legged foreigner, and a journey of six or seven hours in a huddled-up position is occasionally apt to give one the cramp, especially as Western bones and limbs do not in general possess the pliability which characterises those composing the skeleton of ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... once supposed to be a cure for many diseases. Lord Bacon says that in his time people afflicted with cramp wore bands of green periwinkle tied about their limbs. It had also its supposed moral influences. According to Culpepper the leaves of the flower if eaten by man and wife together would revive ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... in various forms, having equally various causes. One of these causes, giving rise to a comparatively simple form of the disease, is cramp of the ring-muscle of the windpipe, so contracting the windpipe that breathing is rendered difficult. A "wheeze" is heard in breathing, though there is no bronchitis or lung trouble present. The cause of this cramp is an irritation of the ring-muscle's nerve. It can be relieved by pressing cold ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... in his pockets?' 'Come, come, George,' said Wilks, 'banish melancholy, draw up your drama, and bring your sketch with you to-morrow, for I expect you to dine with me. But as an empty purse may cramp your genius, I desire you to accept my mite; here is twenty guineas.' Farquhar set to work, and brought the plot of his play to Wilks the next day; the later approved the design, and urged him to proceed without delay. Mostly written in bed, the whole was begun, finished, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... got your letter about Jim he ought to gone long ago, shirking I calls it. This hospital is very nice and when you come down from London youll see all the flowers and the gramophone which is a fair treat. My wounds is slow and I often gets cramp." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... his mouth to protest, then closed it. He reached inside the solar-powered lorry and fetched forth a Tommy-Noiseless and started for the rock outcropping at a trot. Having made his decision, he wasn't going to cramp Bey-ag-Akhamouk's ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of the patient is pitiful in the extreme. He is fully conscious of the gravity of the disease, and his mind remains clear to the end. The suffering induced by the cramp-like spasms of the muscles keeps him in a constant state of fearful apprehension of the next seizure, and he is unable to sleep until he ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... were on the other. There was no chance of fording the stream, and there was then no bridge. He did not care to swim back, for the excitement was out of him. He was trembling with cold, and afraid of cramp. "A mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a flood between him and his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did not occur to him to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he would have been ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... at this moment poor old Tuppy must have got a sudden touch of cramp. He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Khayyam ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... all at once across the lines, never to return, would shorten the war by a week, it would be his duty to send them. The pilots listened to him with pride. He had their confidence, as they had his. 'Don't cramp the pilots into never talking,' is one of his advices to commanders, and the system whereby the pilots and observers, returning dazed and exhausted from a raid or a fight in the air, were brought to the office of the aerodrome and encouraged by sympathetic questions to tell ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... I thank you, I know my condition," said the sick woman soothingly, "it is a cramp in my heart, which often comes and this time more terribly than usual, and so, my good Marianne, I wanted to tell you that if I am no longer here tomorrow, will you give this," (and she gave a small paper to ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... than a woman, and at last the eyes grew hazy, while every joint ached. There was a horrible cramp in her shoulder, and to lessen it she moved a trifle so that her arm rested on the pillow. That was easier, and while she struggled with her weariness her head followed it, until it sank down close by Alton's shoulder. Then for five minutes she fought with her weakness, and was vanquished, for her ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... system of instruction that may tend to perpetuate mannerism, to cramp originality, and fetter genius, has of late years led to considerable opposition to art-academies generally, whenever more is contemplated by them than the mere school-teaching of the pupil, and the affording him assistance at the outset of his professional life. Haydon was fond of declaring ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... with MR. CRAMP (Vol. vii., p. 569.) that "the undecided question of the authorship of Junius requires that every statement should be carefully examined, and (as far as possible) only well-authenticated facts be admitted as evidence." I take leave, therefore, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... opinions are of such weight, considered also 36 degrees as the inclination of a slope quite inaccessible, if the nature of the ground did not admit of forming steps with the foot.) We felt the want of cramp-irons, or sticks shod with iron. Short grass covered the rocks of gneiss, and it was equally impossible to hold by the grass, or to form steps as we might have done in softer ground. This ascent, which was attended with more fatigue than danger, discouraged those who accompanied us from the town, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... send forth with the bridle thrown up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on highways! But it is the lot of many such, in this dislocated time,—Heaven mend it! In a better time there will be other "professions" than those three extremely cramp, confused and indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible, that are true, and do not require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor. Human association,—which will mean ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... 14. Cramp is effectually prevented by placing the shoes with the toes just peeping from beneath the coverlet; the same is also prevented by tying the garter round the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... scarce can walk God's earth to breathe his air, Talk of the waste of time! Short-sighted men! God made the body just to fit the mind, Each part exact, no scrimping and no waste— Neglect the body and you cramp the soul. ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... lifted the other hand, that had been stretched beneath his head, and was also numb with cramp and cold, and it was full ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... these fair dames, and heroes round, I call my garret classic ground. For though confined, 't will well contain The ideal flights of Madam Brain. No dungeon's walls, no cell confined Can cramp the energies of mind! Thus, though my heart may seem so small, I've friends, and 't will contain them all; And should it e'er become so cold That these it will no longer hold, No more may Heaven her blessings give, I shall not then be ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... raise That hymn for which the whole world longs, A worthy hymn in woman's praise; A hymn bright-noted like a bird's, Arousing these song-sleepy times With rhapsodies of perfect words, Ruled by returning kiss of rhymes. But when I look on her and hope To tell with joy what I admire, My thoughts lie cramp'd in narrow scope, Or in the feeble birth expire; No mystery of well-woven speech, No simplest phrase of tenderest fall, No liken'd excellence can reach Her, thee most excellent of all, The best half of creation's best, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... suddenly and most unexpectedly. My father was away from home on a long trip to Alaska. I was at Vassar. My mother was with a congenial party of friends at a favorite seaside resort. One day while bathing, one lady of the party swam too far out, was taken with a cramp and shrieked for help. My mother, who was nearest, being an excellent swimmer, courageously went to her assistance. Unfortunately, the tide was running full and strong and was against my mother in her heroic struggle to save her friend. ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... of it on moist sugar for a dose, adding three drops of Kayu Puteh oil, extracted from a Borneon wood and called cajeput oil in England, a very strong aromatic medicine. This mixture proved itself very useful. If the patients applied in good time it invariably gave relief to the cramp and pain in the stomach; if the disease had gone on to sickness it was more difficult to administer. Sometimes we followed it up with laudanum ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... him and the rolling stones cracked. Suffering as I was by this time, with cramp in my legs, and torturing pain, I had to choose between holding my horse in or falling off; so I chose the former ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... constitution, since he continually suffers from pains in the head during slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges his stomach. While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn, because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons. At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the leather, like that of a sloughing snake. He was never stingy of cash, nor did he accumulate ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the road was bare as far as he could see. Then the cold began creeping, creeping, up his arm; first his wrist, then his arm to the elbow, then his arm to the shoulder; how cold it was! And soon it began to ache. Ugly little cramp-pains streamed up his finger, up his palm, up his arm, till they reached into his shoulder, and down the back of his neck. It seemed hours since the little brother went away. He felt very lonely, and the hurt in ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... maun see that lad again; and I maun gang back to Ellangowan too. The Laird's dead! aweel, death pays a' scores; he was a kind man ance. The Sheriff's flitted, and I can keep canny in the bush; so there's no muckle hazard o' scouring the cramp-ring. I would like to see bonny Ellangowan again or ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Canada of every man with the courage to do hard things in him, he did not stop to think that the scanty life-belts had all been taken, and that he was a very poor swimmer indeed: for, as a child, he had been subject to cramp, and so had made the Beau Cheval River less his friend than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... their not far distant Channel, or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by the Druids. Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman, generation after generation, each with its passing form of political faith: the England of traditional ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... at last——"I'm afraid he was taken with a cramp, for that's what you get by swimming too soon after a meal—so Johnnie Green says. . . . I'm glad now that we didn't let Mr. Frog teach our children to swim, because it's easy to see that he's ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... The moral cramp forsook his hand. He took the money with a hearty "Thank you, sir." As he put it in his pocket, he felt its corners carefully, lest there should be a hole. But his pockets had not had half the wear of the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... MENSTRUAL IRREGULARITIES: Extracts of cramp bark, forty grains; blue cohosh, ten grains; Squaw wine, forty grains; pokeberry, twenty grains; strychnine, one grain. Make forty pills. Dose: One pill four ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... ones! she waked not from her swound, And he was taken with the cramp, and in, the waves was drowned; But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their wo, And now they keep an ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Shakespear's, and several of the celebrated Tragedies of Antiquity, are cast in the same Form. I do not therefore dispute against this Way of writing Tragedies, but against the Criticism that would establish this as the only Method; and by that Means would very much cramp the English Tragedy, and perhaps give a wrong Bent to the Genius of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fit of the cramp,' Humphrey said, 'it will soon pass. Now, after you have had a good meal, take this letter which is tied and sealed, and put it into the hands of Mistress Gifford. It will tell her all I can yet tell her in answer to the letter you brought me. At least she will ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... intention of evil, she had taken off her clothes and plunged thus n-k-d into the cool waters of the lake. After she had swum around a little she began to realize the extent of her folly and was hurriedly swimming towards the shore when a terrific cramp had seized her lower limbs, rendering them powerless. Her first impulse, to scream for help, was quickly checked with a deep blush, as she realized the consequences if a man should hear her call, for nearby was an encampment of Union soldiers, none ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... by passing over all those points of theory which are so dear to Dr. Pym. I know how they are made. Perjury is a variety of aphasia, leading a man to say one thing instead of another. Forgery is a kind of writer's cramp, forcing a man to write his uncle's name instead of his own. Piracy on the high seas is probably a form of sea-sickness. But it is unnecessary for us to inquire into the causes of a fact which we deny. Innocent Smith never did ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... change his position, for his long ordeal was beginning to induce cramp. The faint creaking of the metal bunk seemed, in the dead stillness and to his highly-tensed senses, like the rattling ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... cautiously on my second ascent. It was late in the day, and this part of the mountain, like the other, was steep and rugged. I was on the top of the second peak by two o'clock, but got there with extreme difficulty; every twenty yards I had the cramp in the upper part of both thighs, so that I was afraid I should not have been able to have got down again. It was also necessary to return by another road, as it was out of the question to pass over the saddle-back. I was therefore obliged to give up the two higher ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... while conforming in the long run to the dictates of natural justice, no feeble scrupulosity impeded the nation's advance to power, by which alone its mission and the law of its being could be fulfilled. No artificial fetters were forged to cramp the action of the state, nor was it drugged with political narcotics ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Threadneedle Street, you— Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting till morning broke, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus^, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [U.S.], cinch [U.S.], lariat, legadero^, oxreim^; suspenders. pin, corking pin, nail, brad, tack, skewer, staple, corrugated fastener; clamp, U-clamp, C-clamp; cramp, cramp iron; ratchet, detent, larigo^, pawl; terret^, treenail, screw, button, buckle; clasp, hasp, hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet^, tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast^, padlock, rivet; anchor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... best—if the rarest—men had always a good share of the woman nature in themselves. Francis Newman was one of these men. He understood the woman's point of view without any telling. He knew instinctively, intuitively, the mental cramp, the moral inability to rise to her full stature, which is induced by man's perpetual effort to fit her into a measured mould prepared by himself. He knew that if "a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... set him to copying circular letters. We used to send out a raft of them to the trade. That was just before the general adoption of typewriters, when they were still in the experimental stage. But Jim hadn't been in the office plugging away at the letters for a month before he had the writer's cramp, and began nosing around again. The first thing I knew he was sicking the agents for the new typewriting machine on to me, and he kept them pounding away until they had made me give them a trial. Then ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways. These pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum—prodigious ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... May 28, was a dangerous one. The ferryboat bow was drawn under water by the surges and the boat swept clear of three wagons, with the attendant men and their luggage. One man was lost, Lorenzo W. Roundy, believed to have been taken with a cramp. His body never was found. L. John Nuttall and Hamblin swam to safety on the same oar. Lorenzo Hatch, Warren Johnson and another clung to a wagon from which they were taken off by a skiff just as they were going over ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... but we rested awhile to stretch our limbs after the cramp brought on by the steep and ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... spite of numerous haltings, the drinking of tea, coffee, and sherbet, and the eating of cakes and curious Egyptian sweetmeats, had in no way lessened the agony of her lower limbs, which she moved this way and that in the vain effort to relieve the terrible cramp that seemed to creep from her spine to her brain, and down again ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... was only one in the millions coming and going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have been hers, as John Appleton and Jim's father had said. She might ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air. "A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a great ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mist out of the horizons. And hour after hour he went on, eating a strip of pemmican when he grew hungry, and drinking in the spring coulees when he came to them, where the water was cold and clear. Not until a telltale cramp began to bite warningly in his leg did he stop for the rest which he knew he must take. It was one o'clock. Counting his journey to Tatpan's camp, he had been traveling almost ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing-space; I will take some savage woman, she shall rear ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... found and fetched along. I need him. I was on a jury once, in a murder case, and they had the tool that done the job and the lawyers tagged it Exhibit A. This is it! He's got a name, but if I tried to say it, it would cramp my jaws and hold my mouth open so long that I'd get assifixiated with this smoke. This is Bill the Bomber! Demeter, hold up the goods we ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... He (or she) has got to settle it. He must learn to manage himself in such a way that he ceases to be abnormally excitable, or he must arrange his life so that he avoids, as far as possible, the causes of excitement. He must not expect others to cramp their lives to fit him; he must not expect civilization to be perverted or arrested in order to avoid a difficulty which is ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... two devilish goats, which to our cost we found were not so feeble, after all; for getting one up in a corner, she raises herself up on her hind legs and brings her skull down with such a smack on my knee that I truly thought she had broke my cramp-bone, whilst t'other, taking Dawson in the ankles with her horns, as he was reaching forward to lay hold of her, lay him sprawling in our little stream of water. Nor do I think we should ever have captured them, but that, giving over our endeavours from sheer fatigue, they of their own accord ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... out, as I told you before," he exclaimed. "You will not sink, and it will keep them from getting the cramp. Kick, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... thirst, shook the cramp from her limbs, and said: "Some time we will have to see where this road leads. There may be more surprises beyond." She broke a flower from its stem and fastened it in Kirk's buttonhole, while he gazed down ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... catches are inserted in the ground so that their upper surface comes flush therewith. These catches consist of two cast iron sides bolted together, and of a bottom and ends formed of flat iron—the end pieces being bent so as to form cramp irons. Each of the sides is provided internally with a projecting piece, and an inclined plane as a wedge. In case the catch becomes filled with dirt, it can be easily cleaned out with a scraper. The iron upright terminates in a malleable cast iron shoe, which is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... woman hurried out of the room, but the door once closed, her manner changed. One might have supposed a sudden cramp had seized her, from her distorted face, and twitching and panting, and beating the air with her clinched fists, and her ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... but he lit up one of the cigars and found 'twas better than Abbie's brand. He asked Hannah what she thought the church folks would say, but she said she didn't care what they said; her travels had broadened her mind and she couldn't cramp herself to the ideas of a little narrow place ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the promise!'" Then he lifted up his face and mourned, "Mary—Mary—" and again, "Oh, Mary, we need—" The child's voice inside the house calling fretfully, "Mother! mother!" came to the two and brought a quick cramp to the older man's throat and tears to his eyes. Finally, Amos found voice ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... her lips were too stiff. A very curious feeling was creeping over her, a species of cramp that was mental as well as physical. She leaned back in her chair, staring straight before ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... had not really loved her. It was an idealized Ruth he had loved, an ethereal creature of his own creating, the bright and luminous spirit of his love-poems. The real bourgeois Ruth, with all the bourgeois failings and with the hopeless cramp of the bourgeois psychology in her ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... professional eye," said the girl, resuming her occupation, "you would have noticed the swelling, the result of writers' cramp." ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... would not yet depart. When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp 1055 Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart, Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp 1060 Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm, Upon her children's brow, dark Falsehood ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... likes to snooze, in the sun, and count her money-bags. France is too old to care about religion, or the future—she is thinking how best to be comfortable—here in this world, when she has rheumatism and a cramp in the stomach!" And the old priest wrapped his own soutane about his lean knees, suiting his gesture to his ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to believe that those large brown protuberant eyes in Silas Marner's pale face really saw nothing very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint that Silas Marner could cure folks' rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, still more ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... must have disabled him. Perhaps a cramp or a fainting spell of exhaustion. But it was necessarily only surmise, and one theory was as ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... all were giving attention to the rescued Andy, there occurred with Jack one of those events which people call a cramp. I do not know what to call it, but it is not a cramp. It is a kind of collapse—a sudden exhaustion that may come to the best of swimmers. The heart insists on resting, the consciousness grows dim, the will-power flags, ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... through with ease, but lost his hold in such a manner that his body slipped through so as to pinion his arms and leave him wholly powerless either to drop lower or return—the bend of the hole being such as to cramp his back and neck terribly and prevent him from breathing. He strove desperately, but each effort only wedged him more firmly in the awful vise. Hamilton sprang to his aid and did his utmost to ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... splendid banquet in a great house is an admirable thing, provided always its getting up did not cost the entertainer an inward conflict, nor its recollection a twinge of economical regret, nor its bills a cramp of anxiety. A simple evening party in the smallest village is just as admirable in its degree, when the parlor is cheerfully lighted, and the board prettily spread, and the guests are made to feel comfortable without being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... in the more acute cases, precede the induration. Pigmentation, of a yellowish or brownish color, is often a precursory and accompanying symptom. The skin feels tight and contracted, and in some instances numbness and cramp-like pains are ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... tree-root, suddenly appeared, and as suddenly vanished. Another half-hour went by, and yet another, but no further sign was given. My companion, unused to such a long vigil, shifted uneasily, and protested that he was tingling with cramp and longing for sleep; presently, unable to endure his discomfort, he arose, and stretched his limbs before settling down ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... but oh! how bitterly he felt the wrong she had done him. For her own indulgence, how she would curtail and cramp all his future college course! He had hitherto dressed well, and been able to buy easily all the books he needed. For the future he would have to rely upon his own exertions; for his first decision had been to pay back the money he had taken ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... their firmly and equally grasping both flexor and extensor muscles alike, they are steadied, and rendered much less likely to be affected with spasmodic action or cramp. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... called up the gloom, and shook her fist at the unseen soldier because he gave her no reply. Klussman stepped out on the turret floor and set down his load. Stretching himself from the cramp of the stairway, he stood looking over bay and forest and coast. The battlemented wall was quite as high as his shoulder. One small cannon, brought up with enormous labor, was here trained through an embrasure to command the ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... course, this wild and woolly Texan will be the star and get all the glory, but somebody must do the dirty work. Hook, you're a lobster. I didn't think you'd fall for taffy like that. You give me a cramp." He coughed behind a thin hand as he finished, his flat chest torn and his stooping shoulders shaken by ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... surely come when the vitality was low, and progress became imperceptible, and the long imprisonment almost unendurable. He knew of the fever that would lurk in the quickening blood, of the torturing cramp that would draw the unused muscles, of the depression that was its mental counterpart, of the black despair that would hang like a paralysing weight upon soul and body, of the ennui, of the weariness of life, of the piteous weakness that nothing ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Northwick's indebtedness to the company. Doubtless it was only an appearance; in the end the money his father left would come equally to himself and Louise; but in the meantime the restitution for Northwick did cramp Eben Hilary more for the moment than he let his son know. So he thought it well to allow Matt to go seriously to work on account of it, and to test his economic theories in the attempt to make his farm yield him a ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells |
