"Stern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his old instructor, presented herself before him, wearing a stern and serious visage. "Is this, then," she said, "the fruit of all my labors? Is it for this that I fed you on the marrow of bears and lions, that I taught you to subdue dragons, and, like Hercules, strangle serpents in your youthful ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... juvenile books, "it will be found as interesting to the young as to the old." Though the dullest of dramas, it is so brightened by brilliant legs that it dazzles every beholder. Why, then, should the stern advocate of the legitimate drama refuse to acknowledge that the Twelve Temptations has its redeeming legs? How runs the ancient proverb, "Singed milk is better than it looks;" or that equally ancient philosophical maxim, "There is no use in crying over spilt cats"? The stupid story of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... than was he; and now that the time had come, though they could not bring themselves to go back from their demand, almost felt that they were treating the squire with cruelty. When their decision had been made,—while it had been making,—he had been stern and hard to them. Since that he had been softened by Lily's misfortune, and softened also by the anticipated loneliness which would come upon him when they should be gone from his side. It was hard upon ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Roman Catholic world, the convent stood out pre-eminent for a stern discipline which nothing had changed; the purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women from the furthest parts of Europe, women deprived of all human ties, sighing after the long suicide accomplished in the breast of God. No convent, indeed, was so well fitted for that complete ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... stopped short, a spasm of suffering passing over his face. The thought had been a terrible one to him. Yet he had been bred up in the somewhat stern Puritan tenets, and it was not in his creed to speak so much of the everlasting mercy as ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... eyebrows,—a nose finely moulded, and a small mouth. His features are distinguished from those of his race by a peculiar fairness of complexion and delicacy of skin: the elegant form of his hands and feet is not less remarkable. The apparent stiffness of his arms, when he walks, is a sign of his stern and impenetrable character. His address is thoroughly noble and dignified. Of himself he is completely master; and he exerts a tacit supremacy over all who approach him. An immovable stony calmness, which never forsakes ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... now be enjoying these results or these prospects. Because we are not now physically at war, some people are disposed to forget that our war debt still remains. The Nation must make financial sacrifices, accompanied by a stern self-denial in public expenditures, until we have conquered the disabilities of our public finance. While our obligation to veterans and dependents is large and continuing, the heavier burden of the national debt is being steadily eliminated. At the end of this fiscal year ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... in any other country. Little wonder that the continued dizziness and lack of ability to stretch the limbs bring about a complete nervous prostration and reduce the strongest man to a physical wreck within a very short time. And if the hapless prisoner declines to answer the stern command "Pace!" then bayonet prodding, clubbing and head-cuffing are brought ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Hawthorne character were stern probity and truthfulness. Hawthorne's mother had many characteristics in common with her distinguished son, she also being a reserved and thoughtful person. Those who knew the family describe the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... attire;—nothing could be more natural than his foot-fall, or the quiet glance of his cheery gray eye. He walked up to the captain, who held the helm, and lightly raised his hand to his cap. The captain, taking one hand from the wheel, did the same, and then the stranger, turning his back to the stern of the vessel, and fronting down the river with his face, continued to whistle slowly, clearly, and in excellent time. Grand as were his clothes they were no burden ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... time, the money would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is saying a good deal for any man. His constitutional timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to overreach when there was the remotest chance of opposition or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern expression were a great protection to him against being overreached. He never talked of money, and invariably changed the subject whenever money was introduced. His expression of unutterable horror at all kinds of meanness was a sufficient guarantee that he was not mean himself. Besides ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... window and was looking at the polling place so intently that he took no notice of me as I stood beside him. I know now why he was absorbed and why his face was stern and sad. I can shut my eyes and see that court-house yard, the long line of men going up to vote, single file, each man calling out his name as he handed in his ballot, and Tom Weedon—who shot an escaping prisoner when he ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... with wonderful strength. In this instance the men were more successful; the boat's head dropped down close to him, and Peter, stretching out his arm, grasped the young man by the shoulder, and hauled him in over the bows, and passed him on into the stern-sheets. Though faint at first, the Spaniard instantly recovered himself, and stood upright in the boat, gazing eagerly around. As the boat rose on a sea, he caught sight of the object of his search. He pointed towards the floating form of the young lady. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... stern—nothing commanding in the father's voice; but its great, its almost irresistible power, lay in its expression of the father's belief that his son would instantly leave the place. And it was this power that ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... irresolute thought. Jim had some advantages and some drawbacks; Evelyn saw the drawbacks plainly. He attracted her; it would be exciting to let him carry her away and embark with him on a romantic adventure. She knew he had recently used a stern control, but he was hot-blooded and his reserve might be undermined. Yet there was a risk; she must give up much. She was drawn in different ways by romance and worldly caution and it looked as if ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... impressions in my mind, I returned to the divannaia. As soon as every one had reassembled, the priest rose and prepared to read the prayer before confession. The instant that the silence was broken by the stern, expressive voice of the monk as he recited the prayer—and more especially when he addressed to us the words: "Reveal thou all thy sins without shame, concealment, or extenuation, and let thy soul be cleansed before God: for if thou concealest aught, then great will be thy sin"—the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... front, at some distance from the mouth, are connected by a swivel-joint. To this the dragging rope is bent, which must be three times as long, in dredging, as the depth of the water. This is fastened to the stern of a boat under sail, and thus the bottom is raked of all sorts of objects; among which, on emptying the net, many living creatures for the aquarium are found. These may be placed temporarily in jars; though plants, mollusks, Crustacea and Actiniae ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... pacha of Janina, is too little known; he needs an historian. It is only in the East one meets with such iron souls, who can nurse a vengeance twenty years and accomplish it some fine morning. He had the most magnificent white beard that was ever seen, and a hard, stern face—" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... The stern blackness of her eyes seemed to annihilate all the rest of her face. Was rock itself stable under-foot? Why should one care to prolong life, when life only proved how cruel and worthless are the people ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... merry speed until we reached the village. A long, deeply laden canoe with miners from the interior provinces passed us here. It was manned by ten Indians, who propelled the boat by poles; the men, five on each side, trotting one after the other along a plank arranged for the purpose from stem to stern. It took us two nights to double Point Cururu, where, as already mentioned, the river bends from its northerly course beyond Altar do Chao. A confused pile of rocks, on which many a vessel heavily ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... trying to gain his forgiveness, she and her husband emigrated to Australia, and for some years nothing was heard of them. Then Lydia wrote to her father, telling him that she was a widow, and begging him to send her money that she might come home. The stern old man burnt the letter without answering it and without showing it to his daughter Lucy, and the next news came in a letter written ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... in former days, was the wife of a respectable merchant, and the mother of an affectionate family. But evil fortune had followed her with a steadiness that seemed like the stern decree of some adverse fate rather than the ordinary dealings of a merciful Providence. First came a heavy run of losses in business; then long and expensive sickness in the family, and the death of children. Then there was the selling of the large house ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that gallant youth, Victor Woodville, with whom he had fought so good a fight, stood in the room. He was still pale and he carried his left arm in a sling, but it was evident that his recovery from his wound had been rapid. Dick saw the stern face of the old colonel brighten a bit, while the tender smile curved again about the thin lips of ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... entrance. The doors were very soon battered in. Gretchen, who expected every instant to be led forth to execution, was on her knees in her cell. She heard the noise, little suspecting the cause. At that moment the door opened, and a monk appeared. She looked up, and beheld the stern features of Father Quixada. There was a glance in his eye ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... accompanied the skipper and a friend in the boat up the inlet to a small village to procure a supply of fruit. On our return my companions expressed their determination to bathe; but as I did not feel inclined to do so, I seated myself in the stern, and taking out of my pocket one of Scott's novels, amused myself with reading until they should have ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... monthly visits to the father-house at Paulerspury the new man in him could not be hid. His sister gives us a vivid sketch of the lad, whose going over to the dissenters was resented by the formal and stern clerk, and whose evangelicalism was a ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... ready to return you will know that I am waiting to receive you. I will leave your mother and sisters to give you all domestic news. Tell Annette I have been looking for her in every stage since her letter last fall, and that I hope for her arrival daily. Nipper is well, and endeavors, by stern gravity, to repress the frivolity of Baxter. All unite in much love, and I ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... of tense silence Nesta and Pratt looked at each other across the letter which he held in his outstretched hand—looked steadily and with a certain amount of stern inquiry. And it was Nesta's eyes which first gave way—beaten by the certainty in Pratt's. She looked aside; her cheeks flamed; she felt as if something were rising ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... this silence that Shelton turned. His future father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton's resolution. It was not forbidding, stern, discouraging—not in the least; it had merely for the moment ceased to look satirical. This was so startling that Shelton lost his chance of speaking. There seemed a heart to Mr. Dennant's gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because he felt so. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with any friend. It shows that although he was now well-nigh convinced of the truth of Catholicity, yet that he still felt a lingering indecision, produced, perhaps, by a haunting memory of the stern front of "discipline" he had encountered in Bishop Hughes. This seemed like a phantom of terror to the young social reformer, whose love of liberty, though rational, was then and ever afterwards one of the passions of his soul. Yet we rarely find now in these pages any statement of specific ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... a farewell letter, but another followed in the leisure, while waiting for the Bishop to embark, with some strong (not to say fiery) opinions on the stern ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... does not wake at dawn to see Dread figures throng his room, The shivering Chaplain robed in white, The Sheriff stern with gloom, And the Governor all in shiny black, With the yellow ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... repulsed his struggles to do him any injury; but, before he and the other sailors could secure the madman, he sprang to his feet and, shouting out something which we could not distinguish, jumped right down among the group of sharks that were still swimming about under the stern. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... think it was nearly an hour-and-a-half before those infernal women left. Araminta conducted them to the gate, said a lingering good-bye, and wafted them down the road with wavings and smiles. When they were safely off the premises I slithered down and confronted her, looking dignified and stern, still holding the ball in one hand and the wooden club in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... nature—red with blood, and shrouded once more in barbaric ignorance. But you greatly err, if you suppose, because we rely on force in the last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only, but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is acknowledged. You say, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... To testify the arms of chastity? Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, And noble grace that dashed ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... stern, his sov'reign might, Hath made me learn love's character aright; And, bringing with him, in his gloomy train, The speechless eloquence of bitter pain, Hath caused the unbelieving one to know What words of love were impotent to show. Time made my heart, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Mitchel." How many, like him, have thought they were preaching a new gospel, when they were only reaffirming the principles which underlie the Magna Charta of humanity, and are common to the noblest utterances of all the nobler creeds! But spoken by those solemn lips to those stern, simpleminded hearers, the words I have cited seem to me to have a fragrance like the precious ointment of spikenard with which Mary anointed her Master's feet. I can see the little bare meeting-house, with the godly deacons, and the grave matrons, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of these persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired, stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry fifty. The other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young fellow, who looks about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at those words; she looked at him with an aspect of stern reproach. "No more of it," she interposed; "I have not waited all these miserable years for such a horrible end as that." Her face suddenly brightened; a radiant effusion of tenderness and triumph flowed over it, and made it young and happy again. "Amelius!" ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... in order to kiss her in secret. In his daily intercourse with Constance, in showing apparent fidelity to the former mistress of the works, he now simply yielded to fear, like the poor weak being he was, one whom Constance had ever bent beneath her stern hand. The pact between them was an old one, it dated from that monstrous thing which they alone knew, that complicity of which they never spoke, but which bound ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... when they struck the rock, on that eventful day, months before, the boat had apparently been broken in two, and they saw only the stern of the boat held within a saddle of the rock; and how, at the next great wave, even that portion had disappeared. Here was the battered and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and ventured to reckon with the possibility of a less satisfactory termination of the war, the obstacles then encountered were not easily surmounted. We all of us remember those speeches in which constant reference was always made to a "stern peace," a "German peace," a "victorious peace." For us, then, the possibility of a more favourable peace—I mean a peace based on mutual understanding—I have never believed in the possibility of a victorious peace—would only have been acute in the case of Poland and the Austro-Polish ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... and the severest brunt of the battle. But as they who demolished the bridge called upon them to retire, he obliged them also to withdraw to a place of safety on a small portion of the bridge still left. Then casting his stern eyes round all the officers of the Etrurians in a threatening manner, he sometimes challenged them singly, sometimes reproached them all: "the slaves of haughty tyrants, who, regardless of their own freedom, came to oppress the liberty of others." They hesitated for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... that write grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the Right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless." Let the stern Psalm of the Puritans still further answer from the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Blake, however, seemed quite at ease, and she was growing interested in him. He reminded her of the Challoner portraits in the dark oak gallery at Sandymere, but she thought him lighter, more brilliant, and, in a sense, more human than those stern soldiers. Then she remembered that his ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... fullest extent his zeal and cruelty, not only in the provinces of Thrace and Asia, which acknowledged his immediate jurisdiction, but in those of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, where Maximin gratified his own inclination, by yielding a rigorous obedience to the stern commands of his benefactor. The frequent disappointments of his ambitious views, the experience of six years of persecution, and the salutary reflections which a lingering and painful distemper suggested to the mind of Galerius, at ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... is removed from the stern influences of his pagan institutions he goes the way of all flesh, as may be observed by a study of conditions in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... there was great confusion. In the midst of it, Captain Maryon was heard hailing from the beach. He had been carried down in his hammock, and looked very bad; but he insisted on being stood there on his feet; and I saw him, myself, come off in the boat, sitting upright in the stern-sheets, as if nothing ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Michell seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... this one suggested a change of programme, for it would be much easier to float down the stream, than to walk the thirty miles. This was a point which needed no argument; and unfastening the painter of the boat, he jumped in, and pushed off. Seating himself in the stern, with the paddle in his hand, he kept her head with the current, and swept down the rapid stream like a dreamy youth just starting upon ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... help her dear sisters, she gave the flower to one and the bird to the other, keeping only the beautiful apple for herself. So they waited for the arrival of the emperor, who was very stern ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... difficult to say whether anger at her daughter's deceit, indignation with the treacherous Baron, or a stern pleasure in finding her worst prognostications in a fair way to being proved, was the uppermost emotion in Lady Grillyer's mind when she had listened to this relation. Certainly poor Alicia could not but think that sympathy for her troubles formed ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... rid of the personal suffering of shyness, but also of most of those faults of manner which consciousness produces; and acquired at once an easy and natural manner—careless, indeed, in the extreme, from its originating in a stern defiance of opinion, which I had convinced myself must be ever against me; rough and awkward, for smoothness and grace are quite out of my way, and, of course, tutorially pedantic; but unconscious, and therefore giving expression to that goodwill towards men which I ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... seemed the ever-changing and richly-colored procession—Moltke, Bismarck, and Roon side by side, all statuesque figures, their eyes with stately indifference glancing at the rejoicing people. They seemed in the midst of this stormy wave of excitement like stern, immovable rocks, standing firm and high above the breaking surf at their feet. Many people had at the sight of them an intuitive feeling that they were not mortal men, but rather mystical embodiments of the power of nature, just as the gods of the sun, the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... consisted of two barge-like vessels placed side by side, a platform being laid on the top, for the engine, passengers, and steersman; the latter, as in all American steam-vessels, of whatever size, being perched in an elevated round-house on deck. The stem and stern of this vessel were alike, the necessity of turning being thus altogether obviated, as in some of ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... that had been made by that youthful passion that swayed his very being in other days. She had frequently recaptured him from the subtle blandishments of an agency that was ever on his track, and then his devotion became more rapturous than ever. Fouche was frequently rebuked with stern severity for his pertinacious advocacy of the separation. At another time we hear of him falling into Josephine's arms, shedding copious tears, and, choking with grief, he sobs out, "My poor Josephine! I can never leave you," "I still love you," and ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... reply for a moment, and when he did, Elsie was startled by the change in his tone; it was so exceedingly stern ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... pure before appearing in the sight of the All-Holy God, still I know that He is infinitely just, and this very Justice which terrifies so many souls is the source of all my confidence and joy. Justice is not only stern severity towards the guilty; it takes account of the good intention, and gives to virtue its reward. Indeed I hope as much from the Justice of God as from His Mercy. It is because He is just, that "He is compassionate and merciful, longsuffering, and plenteous ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... are stern and few indeed; His youthful aims he finds despised, For in a world of strife and greed Ideals must be sacrificed; Alas, there is so little ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the Confederate-held side of the river, trying to knock together a raft on which to reach their prize. When that broke apart Drew and Boyd saw one man seize upon a piece of the wreckage and kick his way vigorously into the current heading for the stern of the grounded steamer. He came back in the Mazeppa's yawl with a line, and she was warped back into the hands ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... Ching once said that if you could make your soldiers afraid of you, they would not be afraid of the enemy. Tu Mu recalls an instance of stern military discipline which occurred in 219 A.D., when Lu Meng was occupying the town of Chiang-ling. He had given stringent orders to his army not to molest the inhabitants nor take anything from them by force. ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... It's not the Boolooroo's place to mix nectar," was the stern reply. "But you may inquire of the palace servants, and perhaps the Royal Chef or the Major-domo will condescend to tell you. Take him to the servants' quarters, Captain Ultramarine, and give him a suit of the ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... of the boat; then with moulds made of palmetto bark, cut timber and knees from mangrove trees which spread so much as to make the boat four feet wide at the top, placed them exactly the distance apart of an Havana sugar box.—Her stern was square and the bows tapered to a peak, making her form resemble a flat-iron. We proceeded thus far and returned to rest for the night—but Mr. Bracket was too unwell ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... grasp. So had it been with me in my efforts to define the grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is he the stern Judge who frowns upon the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can he be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical pain, of too many mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the second, or the Jesus ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... what it was,—a little carved prau like a child's toy boat, perhaps four feet long, with red fiber sails and red and gilt flags from stem to stern. It was rocking there in our swell, innocently, but the crew were pulling for ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... The men seemed stern and altered, With looks cast on the ground; With anxious faces, one by one, The women gathered round; All talk of flax, or spinning, Or work, was put away; The very children seemed afraid To ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... General Synod. A storm of indignation burst against the perpetrators of this attack on the venerable Augustana. Many men who were before numbered with 'American Lutheranism,' and whose full sympathy with the movement was confidently expected, had nothing but stern rebuke for it." (1, 360.) Howbeit, the Platform was not in lack of ardent defenders. To some of the ministers it was not radical enough. Dr. Morris remarks: "Extremely un-Lutheran, un-churchly, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... wealth—on Saturday night. She counted the coppers as anxiously and nervously as a thirsty dead-beat does. And her house was "falling down on her" and her troubles, and she couldn't get the landlord to do a "han'stern" to it. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... half-heartedly to give the time, and opened his mouth; but his arm remained fixed and his mouth open, while his eyes stared at the retreating boat of the German man-of-war. In the stern sheets of this boat, the stout German captain was struggling unsteadily to his feet; he raised his arm and waved it to some one on the great man-of-war, as though giving an order. The natives looked from Stedman ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Eddring, "I can't argue about it. You must go." He turned upon her the stern face of one who, having assumed all responsibility, exacts in ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... left alone at the door of the teepee. The stern warrior's looks expressed superstitious terror, while the maiden's face was calm and fearless. "Do you not fear the power of the woman who sits in the north, Wenona? she shows those flashes of light to tell ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... bobbed up in the stern-sheets, divided itself into exact halves with one flashing grin, and bobbed down again. The man of the tattered breeches, clad only in a Norfolk jacket and a gray flannel shirt, went on with his clumsy sewing, while Dick chuckled over ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of a piece of tightly woven bamboo matting three feet long and two feet wide at right angles to which was fastened a six-foot handle. With these the men nonchalantly raked the water toward them from the bow and stern when they had poled the raft well into the current. The invested capital was not extensive, for when the ferry or "propellers" needed repairs a few hours' work in the jungle sufficed to build ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... This stern rebuke at once silenced the faction, and checked all further movement in the direction of king-making. How brightly did the patriotism of Washington shine out in this affair! At the head of a victorious army; beloved and venerated by it and by the people; ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... suffering forgetfulness of local rivalries, was rushing together in a mighty wave that would sweep French feet for ever from their hold on German soil. Ulrich, for whom the love of woman seemed not, would at least be the lover of his country. He, too, would march among those brave stern hearts that, stealing like a thousand rivulets from every German valley, were flowing north and west ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... the dream, and deep with all derision— Fate is stern and hard—fair and false and vain— But what would life be worth without the vision, Dark with sordid passion, pale with wringing pain? What I dream is mine, mine beyond all cavil, Pure and fair and sweet, and mine for evermore, And when I will my life I may unravel, And find my passion ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... a pin fall, as Basil, stern of eye and tight of lip, stands fast and waits his man. The knowing ones look anxiously to where the solid Culver squares, and take cheer; for he is flushed and eager, and his lips are open as he walks into the fray. And Heathcote calls loud upon his hero, and Birket bids him straight ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... tempted to laugh at his apparition), but turned to James and bade him see to the rest and find beds somewhere. Then I went after Dolly and her father into the Great Chamber, still with my hat on my head and looking very stern. He was talking very swiftly in a low voice to Dolly; but he stopped when I ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... two of the Titanic's seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout man, the men at the wheel of the liner might have swerved the great ship sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether. At the worst the vessel would probably have struck the mass of ice with her stern. ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... placed under the care of the doctor, who attended to them assiduously. Just as sail was made, Roger, who was on deck, observed the bow of the craft from which the people had been rescued rise slightly in the water, then down she went, stern first, and nothing was seen on the spot where she had floated, her hull being the coffin of the rest of ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... her own eyes. Her lively young imagination pictured vividly the desolation of the young hill girl betrayed so cruelly, the swift decline of her stern, broken-hearted father. The thought of the half-grown boy following the betrayers of his sister across the continent, his life dedicated for years to vengeance, was a dreadful thing to contemplate. It shocked her sense of all that was ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... of everyone was focused on the approaching vehicle. It was Judith's little blue car, skimming down the avenue with the usual speed exacted of it by its stern young mistress, who seemed bent on getting at least thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four. No one could have said she did not have style in her manner of turning a curve and neatly ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... was justified by a specious and reasonable motive. The widow of Valentinian, Eudoxia, whom he had led captive from Rome to Carthage, was the sole heiress of the Theodosian house; her elder daughter, Eudocia, became the reluctant wife of Hunneric, his eldest son; and the stern father, asserting a legal claim, which could not easily be refuted or satisfied, demanded a just proportion of the Imperial patrimony. An adequate, or at least a valuable, compensation, was offered by the Eastern emperor, to purchase a necessary peace. Eudoxia and her younger daughter, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... read giving a schedule of the propositions on which the advice of the Senate was asked. Maclay relates that he called for the reading of the treaties and other documents referred to in the statement. "I cast an eye at the President of the United States. I saw he wore an aspect of stern displeasure." There was a manifest reluctance of the Senate to proceed with the matter in the President's presence, and finally a motion was made to refer the business to a committee of five. A sharp debate followed in which "the President of the United States started up in a violent ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... her breath. "I thought you might find some way of getting it to him. Father and mother are so prejudiced. They have never liked him, and now they believe the very worst. They would lock me up if they knew I was speaking to you about him. Mother is very stern and says that all this nonsense between Arthur and myself must stop. That we must never—no matter whether he is cleared or—or—" Silence, then a little gasp, after which she added with an emphasis which bespoke the death of every hope: "She is ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... observed only in places where one makes a stay of several days, or towards fellow travellers: in passing rapidly through Arab encampments, it is better for the traveller not to be too talkative in the tents where he alights, but to put on a stern countenance. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... stately tow'r, or palace fair, Or ruins pendent in the air, Bold stems of heroes, here and there, I could discern; Some seem'd to muse, some seem'd to dare, With feature stern. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Their beads, and make long prayers, and cross themselves, And call themselves most miserable sinners, That so they might be deem'd most pious saints; And go all filth, and never let a smile Bend their stern muscles, gloomy, sullen men, Barren of all affection, and all this To please their God, forsooth! and therefore SCORN Grinn'd at his patients, making them repeat Their solemn farce, with keenest raillery Tormenting; but if earnest in their prayer, They pour'd the silent sorrows of the soul To ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... read the letter. I clearly derived from it—and that was much then—that I had not been abandoned by my mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood, discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead, had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I hold my place in this world that until within ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... hauling round the South end of Portland we fell into Shoal Water and broken ground, which we, however, soon got clear of. At this time 4 Canoes came off to us full of People, and keept for sometime under our stern threatning of us all the while. As I did not know but what I might be obliged to send our Boats ahead to sound, I thought these Gentry would be as well out of the way. I order'd a Musquet shott to be fir'd ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... central Europe, and they begrudged the exorbitant prices which they were compelled to pay to Italian merchants. Moreover, their centuries-long crusades against Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula and in northern Africa had bred in them a stern and zealous Christianity which urged them on to undertake missionary enterprises in distant pagan lands. This missionary spirit reenforced the desire they already entertained of finding new trade-routes to Asia untrammeled ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... rope, were attached, the name pennant of white with the word "Cibola" resplendent in blue, "turquoise blue," explained Ned—was unfurled on its little staff just abaft the big propeller, and a new silk American flag was laid out it the stern of the car to be run up on its halyards as soon as ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... reached London at four or five in the morning, and have been very uncomfortable. The following day was Sunday, and of course he promised to stay till Monday. Of course he had said nothing in the train of those stern things which he had resolved to say. Of course he was not saying them when Roger Carbury came upon him; but was indulging in some poetical nonsense, some probably very trite raptures as to the expanse of the ocean, and the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... poets. The exuberance of immaturity, the want of measure, the "not knowing where to stop," are certainly even more conspicuous in the poems of 1796 than they are in most productions of the same stage of poetic development; and these qualities, it is needless to say, require very stern chastening from him who would succeed in the style which Coleridge attempted for the first time in ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... my father did, ran away from his house to as far as our house. There my brother and I secreted him in a clothes-closet for the nearly three hours of freedom that he enjoyed in half-smothered state. Then the stern father came over, discovered him and haled him away to proper discipline. I shall never forget the howls of the captured fugitive, nor the triumphant and accusing remark to us, shouted by the terrible capturer as he dragged off his victim: "Now ye see what liars ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Jose, tightly clutching his father's hand, threaded the narrow Sierpes and crossed the Prado de San Sebastian, once the Quemador, where the Holy Inquisition was wont to purge heresy from human souls with fire. The father shuddered, and his stern face grew dark, as he thought of the revolting scenes once enacted in that place in the name of Christ; and he inwardly voiced a prayer of gratitude that the Holy Office had ceased to exist. Yet he knew that, had he lived in that day, he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... having a crew of thirty or forty, some of the Dyak war canoes holding as many as eighty men. The latter are used only on expeditions against the enemy. The ordinary travelling boat is roofed over from stem to stern with "kadjangs," or dried palm-leaf awnings, having a space in the centre some 8 feet long or more, according to the size of the boat, walled in on each side with the same material, the better to exclude the fierce rays of the sun. Herein sits, or rather lies, the traveller, ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... Marah of the streams of Wisdom, the soul of the man whom we have made the hero of these pages, had also, and not lightly, quaffed. The properties of a mind, more calm and stern than belonged to the visionaries of the Hartz and the Danube, might indeed have preserved him from that thirst after the impossibilities of knowledge, which gives so peculiar a romance, not only to the poetry, but the philosophy of the German people. But if he rejected ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which tows the captive balloon at the end of a very light but strong steel wire. This balloon-towing destroyer really forms the point of the wedge formation. Behind it are placed the two diverging lines of merchant ships, which follow one another, not bow to stern, but in a sort of echelon position. Down through the centre of the wedge is a line of armed trawlers, while armed vessels steam outside the V. Somewhat astern of the convoy is another destroyer, which tows another captive balloon. As a final means of protection, destroyers ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... said that San Francisco will be willing to accept this relief only so long as stern necessity demands it. At this writing only two weeks have passed since the dread calamity, and already active steps are being taken to provide for themselves. As an example of their enterprise, it may be said that their newspapers ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... arms among the patriots of Virginia, and fell, as Roland had said, at Norfolk, leaving each an orphan child—Roland, then a youth of fifteen, and Edith, a child of ten, to the mercy of the elder brother. Their death effected what perhaps their prayers never would have done. The stern loyalist took the orphans to his bosom, cherished and loved them, or at least appeared to do so, and often avowed his intention to make them his heirs. But it was Roland's ill fate to provoke his ire, as Roland's ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... and I took our places in the stern of the boat. The master went to the tiller; his four companions leaned on their oars, the painter was cast off, and we ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... through the still water and the stiller night. Then a sail came ghostily out of the shadow astern, and stole on them as they drew away and waited for it. By and by the boat crept up, dropped away a little from the light wind, and passed close to leeward. There was one man in her sitting in the stern, and the whole made hardly a sound. They knew the man at the tiller: it was the long fellow again. He took them in, and they talked as they drifted on. The lights behind the locusts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... peace; but Regulus, who had become uplifted by his conquests, made such demands that the messengers remonstrated. He answered, "Men who are good for anything should either conquer or submit to their betters;" and he sent them rudely away, like a stern old Roman as ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... be greatly exaggerated? The fit of organism to its environment is not after all so very close—a proposition unwelcome perhaps, but one which could be illustrated by very copious evidence. Natural Selection is stern, but she ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Ere yet stern Azrael[10] cut the thread of life, While Death and Nature wag'd unequal strife, Spoke the expiring hero:—"Hither stand, Receive your dying sovereign's last command. When that the spirit from my frame ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... hand and pressed it and led her into the little sitting room. His face was very stern, but his eyes, which had flung fire at Mr. Dodd, looked at her with a vast compassion. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dressed in the old uniform of a military officer, and standing up in the stern of his boat, and taking off his cocked hat, with the requisite punctilio, he made a low formal bow, with all the dignity and grace of a general ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... through the dark heather (soon to be purple), startling the heath-poults, or black game, till at last the Channel opens, and the far-distant Flat and Steep Holms lie, as it looks, afloat on the dim sea. This is labour enough; stern indeed must be the mind that could work at summer's noon in Somerset, when the apple vineyards slumber; when the tall foxgloves stand in the heavy heat and the soft air warms the deepest day-shadow so that nothing is cool to the touch but ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of the Thames steamboats (so we are informed by an eye-witness) met with a somewhat ludicrous mishap yesterday evening. It appears that he had with him a small portmanteau, or large hand-bag, which he was supporting on the rail of the stern bulwark. Just as the vessel was opposite the Savoy Hotel he incautiously raised his hand to the brim of his hat, thereby releasing hold of the bag, which overbalanced itself and fell into the deepest part of the river, where it instantly sank. The owner (whose ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... heavily, with the steam-pumps constantly in requisition, as we could tell by the streams of water poured from her sides. Bravely she fought on unsupported, and her upper deck and top guns were served until she sank. At length her bows were completely engulfed; the stern rose high out of water, disclosing the whirling propellers, and bit by bit she disappeared. We could hear distinctly the yelling sounds of triumph that rose from the Japanese ships as she went down. The Chen-Yuen and Ting-Yuen, which seemed to fight together during the action, tried ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... "pink" was a form of vessel now obsolete, and had a very narrow stern. The "Blackmoor" was a sixth-rate of twelve guns, built at Chatham by ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Doria, dark eyed, without a tinge of colour in the strange ivory of her cheek, looked more elfin than ever beneath the white veil. Jaffery, who was best man, vast in a loose frock coat, loomed like a monstrous effigy by the altar-rails. Susan, at the head of the bridesmaids, kept the stern set face of one at grapple with awful responsibility. She told her mother afterwards that a pin was running into her all the time. . . . Well, I, for one, signed the register and I kissed the bride and shook hands with Adrian, who adopted the poor nonchalant attitude of one accustomed to get ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... my arm, and caught sight of his face, steady and stern, with a flash in his eyes as he looked ahead. He was right. It was the Misericorde's last plunge; for, instead of righting herself, she seemed entangled in the water, and, like one who writhes to get free, heeled half over on her side. Then, before she could recover, up came ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... steady downpour. For the moment all the winsome devilry of a smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel. For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern. While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized, gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow planks from the inky lighters ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... end of the boat, and the children in the stern, or rear, where he could watch them as they moved about on the broad seat, Tom rowed the boat toward camp. They reached it just in time for supper, and just as Mr. Brown got home from his trip ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope
... guards, and soldiers thou mayest employ against the enemy—-with thy subjects goodwill is sufficient. By citizens, of course, I mean those who love the existing order; for those who daily desire change are rebels and traitors, and against such a stern justice ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... I know by a divine revelation that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold: why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose of fitting him for manhood, when ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... basket over there is full of my letters returned to me because I tried to 'find out'. The first time I asked, they answered me with just a teasing, snubbing telegram, but ever since then they've simply sent back my questions with a stern printed slip announcing, "Your letter of —— is hereby returned to you. Kindly allow us to call your attention to the fact that we are not running a correspondence bureau. Our ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... great audience of citizens who were present at the hearing which was had in the hall of the House of Representatives. "Freemen we came," retorted Goodell, "and as freemen we shall go away." Scarcely had these words died upon the ears when there rose sharply from the auditory, the stern protest "Let us go quickly, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... the town. Shortly afterwards the queen came forth from the town, seated on a palanquin or litter, which was borne by the principal men. Coming to the water side, the queen entered a canoe, over the stern of which was stretched an awning to shelter ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... recognize it! He beheld a war-worn and weather-beaten countenance, full of energy, and expressive of an iron will; but the gentle wisdom, the deep, broad, tender sympathies, were altogether wanting in Old Blood-and-Thunder's visage; and even if the Great Stone Face had assumed his look of stern command, the milder traits ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been caricatured? For one, I envy not the head or the heart of him who can think the name of Puritan a badge of shame or reproach, and who has no sympathy nor admiration for the stern resolution, the wondrous fortitude, the deep enthusiasm for freedom, the unwavering faith, and the high religious devotion of those men and women who first lit a torch in the wilderness, soon to become the beacon light ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from printers, librarians, booksellers, and others who seldom read books, from indexers, dictionary makers, and such harmless drudges of literature. To men of such close and restricted horizons the breath of the Romany Rye is as that of "the wind on the heath, brother." Hence the stern and unbending jealousy of their cult. Real literary enthusiasts of advanced years are almost as rare in our streets as elderly naval men of the peculiar type discovered by Mr. Gilbert. Yet a chance ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... in times that are wonderfully meek and mild; and Fear, the stern old schoolmaster, is looked upon with suspicion. It is curious how we reverse the fashions of our ancestors. We flaunt in shameless abandon what they veiled in blushing modesty; but we make up for it by hiding what they had no hesitation in ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... down stairs and is ready to take her place by his side, and drive him across the hills as if it were the best fun in the world, with the frightened country-boy clattering behind on his bare-backed steed. The moon rises late and they come home just before daybreak, and though the doctor tries to be stern as he says he cannot have such a piece of mischief happen again, he wonders how the girl knew that he had dreaded for once in his life the drive in the dark, and had felt a little less ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... nestled in the long reeds. A few moments later they slid silently up stream, the aged crone kneeling in the bow, a red shawl enveloping head and shoulders, her thin and bony arms wielding a narrow paddle with smooth agility. In the stern squatted Shingwauk, his dark eyes ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan |
