"Strapping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Michael Cassidy, a strapping Irish bhoy. Who up and joined the Irish guards as Kitchener's pride and joy; When on the march you'll hear them shout, 'Who's going to win the war?' And this is what the khaki lads all ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... and besides, I can't keep from showing that I love her, and no matter how cool she might be toward me it couldn't help but pain him. And there are people in this neighborhood mean enough to talk about it: No longer ago than yesterday that strapping Alf Joyner threw out a hint of this sort, and although he meant it in fun, maybe, I snatched him off the fence where he was sitting, and walloped him in the road. No, I can't keep from showing how much I think of her; there ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... for Jock," said Heriot; "for, if I remember weel, it saved him from a strapping up at Dumfries, which he had weel deserved for ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and one of his partners were hotly arguing with Maria at the bows, and offering him money; whereat Maria only shook his head, under its wide-brimmed braided straw hat, and scarcely paused in his work of thatching the canopy. Francisco stood looking on and listening. He was a strapping big fellow, not very black, wearing loose cotton pantaloons. In his ears were brass rings, for earrings. Just as Charley and his father arrived, the long-nosed man roughly seized Maria by the shoulder, as if to jerk him from his work and force him to take the money. At that, Francisco sprang ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... a strapping lad of seven spinning through school at a rate that would have given brain fever to a less-gifted youngster, when, one day, Farmer Stebbins came to the Emporium with a four-year-old chub of a son who ran in ahead of his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... at him in surprise. "Why, isn't he big and strong and hasn't he a brain and a pair of hands? What more can a man require in this little old age? A big, strapping fellow doesn't have to sit down and say 'What in heaven's name am I to do with these things that God has given me?' Doesn't a blacksmith earn enough for ten sometimes, and how about the carpenter, the joiner and the man who brings the ice? Didn't I ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... Vandewater Street appear to be compositors. Fine, strapping, romantic people, compositors, smeared with ink! Though there are other interests in this street besides printing. There is a big schoolhouse with every window in it broken; grand, desolate look to it! There is a delightful ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... caked with mud and the long unkempt hair and soiled uniforms of the men gave them a very ferocious appearance. Many of us have thought of most Frenchmen as little fellows but these men were great strapping, brawny giants. As to size and strength they compared equally if not favorably ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... not the only one," cried a big, strapping lad, Frank Haley, by name, throwing himself upon the steps, and looking up at the girls triumphantly. "Just because he can run faster than we can, he gets ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... always answered the call to arms; and as time went on, in addition to Morgan and the black, he had two great strapping fellows in Pomp and me—both young and loose-jointed, but able ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... paused as she was strapping on an old pair of skates that once belonged to Philander ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... but you make a fine, strapping grisette," he cried, proud of me as if I were a picture, he the painter. "Felix, you've no notion how handsome you look. Dame! you defrauded the world when you contrived ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... discipline. The press-gang was not very choice in making up its contributions of recruits for the fleet. No great pains were taken with a view to obtain certificates as to character and conduct. Those who formed the recruiting expedition were only too ready to seize any strapping young men whom they found loitering about the streets and lanes of the lower quarters in a seaport town. These strapping young men often turned out to be rising young men of the criminal classes, but their limbs ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... very young to be a doctor of sociology, only twenty- seven, and he looked younger. In appearance and atmosphere he was a strapping big college man, smooth-faced and easy-mannered, clean and simple and wholesome, with a known record of being a splendid athlete and an implied vast possession of cold culture of the inhibited sort. He never talked shop out of class and committee rooms, except ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... and on the fourth morning it seemed scarcely possible to face the somewhat lighter wind and break a trail through the fresh snow. They, however, dare risk no further delay, and strapping on their packs struggled up the range. At nightfall they were high among the rocks, and it was piercingly cold, but they got a few hours' sleep in a clump of junipers and struck the valley late next day. Finding shelter, they ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... at the entrance of my tent, Jack had just finished strapping on his Mexican saddle; and seeing me, up he ran to assist in serving my breakfast. This was hastily despatched, and our party took the route in silence through the sleeping camp. Shortly after, we were joined by the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... ladyship, and her amiable daughters?' No, not a bit of it! 'How's Mrs. S. and the gals?' This was quite natural, all as it had been. But how unlike what it was only the day before! The very servants—who, when amidst the strapping, stall-fed, gold-laced lackeys of the Mansion House, and transferred, with the chairs and tables, from one Lord Mayor to another, dared not speak, nor look, nor say their lives were their own—strutted about the house, and banged the doors, and spoke of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... now. The crime that you committed was the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there—a strapping young chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but this afternoon was when I ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... fun, and he cried and said please Mr. Burglar, take all I have got, but spare a poor old man's life, who never did any harm! Then I told him to lay down on his stomach and pull the clothes over his head, and stick his feet over the foot board, and he did it, and I took a shawl strap and was strapping his feet together, and he was scared, I tell you. It would have been all right if Ma hadn't woke up. Pa trembled so Ma woke up and thought he had the ager, and my chum turned up the light to see how much there was in Ma's purse, and Ma see me, and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... of the strapping, thick-ribbed pioneers of Kentucky the strollers bent their course—a country where towns and hamlets were rapidly springing up in the smiling valleys or on the fertile hillsides; where new families dropping in, and old ones obeying the injunction ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was never free from the intrusion of Uncle Joe's wife and children. Their house stood about a stone's-throw from the hut we occupied, in the same meadow, and they seemed to look upon it still as their own, although we had literally paid for it twice over. Fine strapping girls they were, from five years old to fourteen, but rude and unnurtured as so many bears. They would come in without the least ceremony, and, young as they were, ask me a thousand impertinent questions; and when I civilly requested them to leave the room, they ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... our procession: my friend Mr. Donat—Donat-Rimarau: 'Donat the much-handed'—acting Vice-Resident, present ruler of the archipelago, by far the man of chief importance on the scene, but known besides for one of an unshakable good temper; and a certain comely, strapping young Paumotuan woman, the comeliest on the isle, not (let us hope) the bravest or the most polite. Of a sudden, ere yet the grave silence of the funeral was broken, she made a leap at the Resident, with pointed finger, shrieked a few words, and fell back again with a laughter, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hear to our seeing him off. I remember him that last night after supper strapping his bag onto his bike and starting off down our quiet old street on ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... strapping brave bestrode a horse, while his squaw trudged beside him, sharing with a black slave the burden of household goods. But for the most part ceremony had given way to necessity and the warriors went afoot, leaving the horses and mules to carry the old men, aged squaws, and young children, who ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... who was just then strapping his books together for school. "Thank you for the story, grandmother. If it is fine this afternoon," he added, "may I stay out later? I want to go a walk into ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... lower part of the building, Hugh had his long-eared Belgian hares. There was now quite a family of them, what with the old ones, and seven strapping youngsters. Hugh took great pleasure in watching his pets, and figuring out how he could improve on their quarters, so as to make them more ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Already a dark sailor was drawing a dirk. Everything promised broken heads, and perhaps blood, when Leonidas and his friend,—by laying about them with their staves,—won their way to the front. The king dashed his staff upon the shoulder of a strapping Laconian who was just ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... words. Quickly strapping on his climbers, he began shinning up the pole, which he took much faster than Teddy had done, for the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... snow-drifts they came into the dreary disordered back room which had so troubled Penhallow. It was cold with that indoor cold which is so unpleasant. Joe Grace came in—a big strapping young fellow. "I came from the farm and found father in bed and no wood in the stack. Some one has just fetched a load." He began to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... asked the Ranger, throwing the saddle from his own pony, strapping the cased rifle to his shoulder and carrying the hatchet in ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... convenient, said, Yours, my shell; she replied, I was yours before, sweet oyster. I reckon, said Carpalin, she hath gutted his oyster. Another long-shanked ugly rogue, mounted on a pair of high-heeled wooden slippers, meeting a strapping, fusty, squabbed dowdy, says he to her, How is't my top? She was short upon him, and arrogantly replied, Never the better for you, my whip. By St. Antony's hog, said Xenomanes, I believe so; for how can this whip be sufficient to lash ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of us accompanied them on shore, where we were entertained with a play, called Mididij Harramy, which signifies the Child is coming. It concluded with the representation of a woman in labour, acted by a set of great brawny fellows, one of whom at last brought forth a strapping boy, about six feet high, who ran about the stage, dragging after him a large wisp of straw which hung by a string from his middle. I had an opportunity of seeing this acted another time, when I observed, that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... story of Poitiers over again, in one respect; for the Black Prince owed his victory to a panic that befell a body of sixteen thousand French, who scattered and fled without having struck a blow. Agincourt was fought on St. Crispin's day, and a precious strapping the French got. The English found that there was "nothing like leather." It was the last battle in which the oriflamme was displayed; and well it might be; for, red as it was, it must have blushed a deeper red over the folly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... evening at one of these houses, not far from Drury Lane, he found some strapping fellows engaged in conversation, interlarded with much flash and low slang; but decently dressed, he mingled in a sort of general dialogue with them on the state of the weather, politics, &c. After sitting some time in their company, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... you mean by strapping me in this thing and running all over town to find a pole to push me up in the air? Do you s'pose I want you to pole me like a raft? You hold up that end of the thing ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the restraint and the jocose matter-of-factness that exist between men who love each other. He kissed his mother a little hungrily, just as he had when he was a small boy back from his first homesick term at Eton, and fluttered the heart of that frail, austere lady, who had borne this big, strapping boy—a feat of which she was ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... had begun, and behind it the scanty furniture of the place had not been disturbed. At the back, in one corner stood an old drum, with dust and droppings of leaf-mould in the wrinkles of its sagged parchment, and dust upon the drumsticks thrust within its frayed strapping; in the corner opposite an old military chest which held the bunting for the flagstaff—a Union flag, a couple of ensigns, and half a dozen odd square-signals and pennants. I stooped over this, and as I did so I observed that there were finger-marks on the dust at the edge of the lid; ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... bull . . . . Once three robbers attacked me and what do you think? I gave one such a dressing that. . . that he gave up his soul to God, you understand, and the other two were sent to penal servitude in Siberia. And where I got the strength I can't say. . . . One grips a strapping fellow of your sort with one hand and . . . ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... course became a man of power in the capital. This fact would have raised him a host of enemies had it not been for the kindness of his disposition and the urbanity of his manners. When a strapping powerful young fellow treats every one with respectful deference, keeps in the background, and neither by word nor look asserts himself, but, on the contrary, seems to entertain kindly thoughts about every one, it argues such ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... A strapping young fellow jumped up like a shot and darted into the station to take the place of the exhausted worker. Wiping his forehead and breathing hard, the latter came out to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... board the Lilly—to-morrow, or next day; and ask for Mr Barker, the first lieutenant, to whom he can present this card. Now good-bye, Mrs Sunnyside, and I hope, when the ship is paid off three or four years hence, you will see Bill grown into a fine, big, strapping young seaman." ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... ideals are inverted and who is also affected by boot-fetichism, the idea of fetters is very attractive. In this case self-excitement was produced at a very early age, without the use of the hands, by strapping the legs together. We can, however, scarcely explain away the idea of fetters in this case as merely the result of an early association, for it may well be argued that the idea led to this method of self-excitement. "The mere idea of fetters," ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the size of fourpenny pieces at the points; a once-round blue silk tie, with white spots and flying ends. His coat was a light, jackety sort of thing, with little pockets behind, something in the style of Mr. Sponge's (a docked dressing-gown), but wanting the outside seaming, back strapping, and general strength that characterized Mr. Sponge's. His waistcoat, of course, was a worked one—heart's-ease mingled with foxes' heads, on a true blue ground, the gift of—we'll not say who—his leathers were ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Where's the practice? This business out here is the best chance for doctors in a lifetime, and I have to strip strapping girls ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... strapping on our packs, marched down to the lake, prepared to commence our voyage. Before starting, Jup and I again ascended a tree overlooking the lake, that I might ascertain whether there were any islands in our course, or whether, as is often ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... cold and the fore part of the jam seemed frozen into a solid mass. He determined to risk a crossing. Strapping everything tightly on the sleigh, he called to the dogs. They were frightened and he had to lick them to get them started. Four or five times on the way across he thought they were lost, but they finally got to ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... Just then a strapping, wide-shouldered huckster, pushed her heavy body between the queen and the door, and barring the entrance with her great brown arms, cried out vociferously: "You to not pass until you promise! We love you and love the king we will none of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that after much use the shape is this V—the attenuated edge all worn off and gone. By George I knew that was the explanation. And I knew that a freshly honed and freshly strapped razor won't cut, but after strapping on the hand as a final operation, it will cut.—So I sent out for an oil-stone; none to be had, but messenger brought back a little piece of rock the size of a Safety-match box—(it was bought in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strapping Hercules of an Indian, sat scowling at them with his blanket drawn up to his chin, and his face between his hands, while his elbows ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... while the four life savers made frequent plunges into the surf so as to become accustomed to swimming with the aid of the buoy. One after another the lads operated the pulmotor upon a supposed victim until each had learned the proper method of adjusting and strapping fast the mouthpiece, and which screws to turn to start and stop the oxygen pump. An hour of this practice work was quite sufficient, and when it was finished Bruce and Jiminy and Bud and Romper, turn about, took ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... grew dark I descended the mountain, and cautiously approached a humble dwelling. Seeing no one but a woman and some children, I entered and asked for supper. While my supper was being prepared, no little to my disappointment, the husband, a strapping, manly-looking fellow, with his rifle on his shoulder, walked in. I had already assumed a character, and that was as agent to purchase horses for the Federal Government. I had come down that evening on the train from Knoxville, and was anxious to get a canoe and some one to paddle ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... a strapping wench! tall and broad-shouldered, and full-breasted, with a handsome head that she carries unco high, and big, bold blue eyes, and a heap o' long, red hair. That's Rosy ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... arm-pit. It may take eight strips for an adult. After you have the strips on, place a piece at each end, part on the flesh and part on the plasters, to keep them from giving any. The patient should have his arms over his head when you are putting on the strips. This strapping will hold that side of the chest quieter. The breathing will be less full and consequently ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Egyptian ruler, King Ptush the Third was referring to in many of his State papers as a "Meticulous Mollycoddle." To begin with, Aunt Jerusha was a strong believer in the New Thought School of Infantile Development, and when I was barely six weeks old she began strapping me on a board like an Eskimo baby, and suspending me thus restrained to a peg in the wall, where, helpless, I was required to hang and stare while she implanted the germs of strength in my soul by reading aloud ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... large photograph of Fairfield, the Southern home of his mother's people, and the boy remembered it always hanging there, opposite his bed, the first sight to meet his eyes every morning since his babyhood. So he was certain there was no figure in it, more than all one so remarkable as this strapping little chap in his queer clothes; his dress of conspicuous plaid with large black velvet squares sewed on it, who stood now in front of the old manor-house. Could it be only a dream? Could it be that a little ghost, wandering childlike in dim, heavenly fields, had joined the gay troop of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... races. The Steyne, under the ingenious direction of Colonel Hanger, the Earl of Barrymore, and their associates, became an arena for curious contests. Officers and gentlemen, ridden by other officers and gentlemen, competed in races with octogenarians. Strapping young women were induced to run against each other for a new smock or hat. Every kind of race was devised, even to walking backwards; while a tame stag was occasionally liberated and hunted ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Abeba and present him to Menelek. A few moments later Mugambi and Werper were marched away under guard, and the Belgian learned for the first time, that he too was a prisoner rather than a guest. In vain he protested against such treatment, until a strapping soldier struck him across the mouth and threatened to shoot him if ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lady to a tavern at this time of night. Mr. Ranter, pray do the doctor's base-mains to the lady, and squire her hither." The player immediately staggered out, and returned, leading in with much ceremony, a tall strapping wench, whose appearance proclaimed her occupation. We received her with the utmost solemnity, and with a good deal of entreaty she was persuaded to sit, when a profound silence ensued, during which she fixed her eyes, with a disconsolate ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... first," replied Helwyse; and forthwith a cushion was insinuated beneath his head, and his feet were elevated upon a rest. He heard the preparation of the warm lather, and anon the knowing strapping of a razor. He put up his hand and stroked his beard for the last time, wondering how he ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... at the construction works, and a strapping Irishman met us. "Is this Professor Kennedy?" he ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the accompaniment of a dozen, tagging at his heels and holding on to his hands and the skirts of his long coat. There's Dick there, six feet if he's an inch and gone twenty last month. Well, many and many a time have I seen the strapping fellow when he was a little chap sitting astride the old vagabond's neck, with his little feet crooked in under his armpits, laughing and screaming uproariously as his human horse underneath him pranced and curvetted along the pavement, and charged through the flock of childish ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... her mother's form. Physically, she was like her mother. Her grit, her ability to turn off work that was such an amazement to others, were her mother's. Just so had her mother been an amazement to her generation—her mother, the toy-like creature, the smallest and the youngest of the strapping pioneer brood, who nevertheless had mothered the brood. Always it had been her wisdom that was sought, even by the brothers and sisters a dozen years her senior. Daisy, it was, who had put her tiny foot down and commanded ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... for she had put off the Monday's washing until I came home, as I was sure to bring a pile of soiled clothes. And I have; but, my dear grandmother, your poor old twisted hands will not touch them. What is a great strapping girl like me for, I'd like to know, if it is not to wash her own clothes, and yours, too?' and Jerrie nodded resolutely at the fresh young face in the mirror, which nodded back with a smile of approbation of the tout ensemble ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the Norwegian mate was raised for'ard, and half a dozen strapping Rapa Islanders ceased their ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... I see; only the dejected groups of prisoners, and among them the one I had marked before, still fiercely striding, and still, at the wall, returning upon his track. I hurried out to the gate, and there, to my amazement, found Billy in the clutches of a strapping impudent wench and surrounded by a ring of turnkeys, who were splitting ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... next morning a strapping big Indian knocked at the door of the house where Mrs. Godfrey was lodging, and inquired if "woman lived there who wanted go in canoe and see sick ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... wreathed in smiles, turned to a great strapping Kentuckian, and said: "Now Brother Harvey, let us ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... barge." Then again to the little folk; "Tho' you seem laughably Small, I don't mind, if your coppers be large." Oh, dear, what a rushing, what pushing, what crushing (The watermen making vain efforts at hushing The hubbub the while), there followed these words. What clapping of boards, What strapping of cords, What stowing away of children and wives, And platters and mugs, and spoons and knives, Till all had safely got into the boat, And the ferryman, clad in his tip-top coat, And his wee little fairies were ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Saint Joseph, ma'am—our coat of arms is two heads upon one pillow, and our motty, 'Who's afraid?—Hurroo!'" shouted the savage, and he twirled his stick and cut another caper. Then coming up to Andy, he addressed him as "young woman," and said there was a fine strapping fellow whose heart was breaking till he "rowled her in ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Often, since then, as I think of it, and recall it from the bygone, there I can see Mother Bantem—though why we called her mother, I don't know, unless it was because she was like a mother to us—with her great strapping form; and think of ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... sir," he said, "to the lodge, and I took the liberty of strapping it to your handle-bar. You will find everything all right, sir, and the—other clothes will be properly ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... the great strapping fellow six feet high. "Everything has changed, and I don't like the people who ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... remember, at the Morrisey ranch. A number of young people had gathered there from the nearer ranches. Besides, the oldsters had been there, drinking since early dawn, and, some of them, since the night before. The Morriseys were a huge breed, and there were many strapping great sons and uncles, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... an overflowing abundance of distress and agony. And those wretched remains of strength and youth, those bruised and battered men, looked with pity, yes, with pity, at our train. Am I really sick because those glances of warm compassion from bleeding cripples to sound, strapping young fellows burn in my soul with a fire never to be extinguished? An apprehension sent a chill through our whole train, the foreboding of a hell that one would rather run away from wrapped in bloody bandages than go to meet whole and strong. And when ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... said gravely, unbuckling his weapon-filled holster and quietly strapping it around her shoulder with its pocketed belt ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... instantly better; that the heroine cannot open her mouth but what, all in a moment, the fine phrases of preparation fall from round her like the robes from Cinderella, and she stands before us, self-betrayed, as a poor, ugly, sickly wench, or perhaps a strapping market-woman. Authors, at least, know it well; a heroine will too often start the trick of "getting ugly"; and no disease is more difficult to cure. I said authors; but indeed I had a side eye to one author in particular, with whose works I am very well acquainted, though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was strapping up his suit-case when he made this rather startling announcement, and the effect seemed to send the blood to his head. Mrs. Burke did not seem to notice his confusion ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... I did was to buy a strong leathern knapsack, and inside of this I fastened my little machine, with a screw so arranged that it could be worked from the outside. Strapping this firmly to my shoulders, my wife gently turned the screw at the back until the upward tendency of the knapsack began to lift and sustain me. When I felt myself so gently supported and upheld that I seemed to weigh about thirty or forty pounds, I would set out for a walk. The knapsack did ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... I am only thirty-six years old, and I am not far enough into years to be the grandmother of a great strapping boy like you." ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... merrily, it is due to the boy who turned the grindstone. Oh, it was nothing to do, just turn the grindstone a few minutes for this and that one before breakfast; any "hired man" was authorized to order the boy to turn the grindstone. How they did bear on, those great strapping fellows! Turn, turn, turn, what a weary go it was. For my part, I used to like a grindstone that "wabbled" a good deal on its axis, for when I turned it fast, it put the grinder on a lively lookout for cutting his hands, and entirely satisfied his desire ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with soap and excitement, and his manner was a series of embarrassed convulsions; for Kirsty John, the cruel object of his hopeless love, was there. A fine, big, strapping young woman she was, with a strong face, and a pair of fearless, black eyes. She sat bolt upright against the log wall, talking to Mary Lauchie, a sweet, pale-faced girl; and occasionally casting a withering glance ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... housekeeper for him and her two unmarried brothers, Jock and Peter. Like many of his fellows who might have to support a widowed mother or other helpless relatives, he had not married until rather late in life. Consequently, Maggie Jean, the youngest of the family, was a strapping lass of thirty, and Jock, the eldest, a "lad" of thirty-six; for an unmarried man in our neighborhood, be it known, is a lad till ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... great, strapping fellow near by. "'Tis sinful shame to waste good bad-eggs on rogue as knoweth not when 'e do be hit! He be a mark as babe couldn't miss—a proper big 'un!" So saying, the fellow let fly an egg at me, the which, striking the board within an ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the state because he was expected to die "back east," (in Iowa) of tuberculosis. "I weighed just one hundred and nineteen pounds when I landed out here," he explained, and then as he stood erect and threw back his powerful shoulders his young companions laughed. It did not seem possible that the strapping young giant, who now weighed at least two hundred pounds, ever had been reduced to such a condition as ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... meet," said the Baroness; all the usual crowd were there, especially Constance Broddle. Constance is one of those strapping florid girls that go so well with autumn scenery or Christmas decorations in church. 'I feel a presentiment that something dreadful is going to happen,' she said to me; 'am ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... hospitality of his host, but could not reconcile it to his conscience to go away without making some recompense. There were honest Simon's two daughters, two strapping, red-haired girls. He opened his packs and displayed riches before them of which they had no conception; for in those days there were no country stores in those parts, with their artificial finery and trinketry; and this was the first peddler that had wandered ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... have any motive but public good must be referred to those who can decide whether a missionary chooses his pursuit solely to convert the heathen. I shall certainly be thought to have a little of the spirit of Col. Quagg, who delighted in strapping the Grace-walking Brethren. I must quote this myself: if I do not, some one else will, and then where am I? The Colonel's principle is ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... satisfaction would. When he considered this prospect his mind ran back along old grooves to the humiliating beating he had suffered in front of the Henry Street school so long before and of a most painful strapping that followed; these being coupled always with a later memory scar of a grievous insult endured in the line of duty and all the more hateful because it had ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Balonda country, and received a visit from a chieftainess, Manenko, a tall strapping woman covered with ornaments and smeared over with fat and red ochre as a protection against the weather. She invited them to visit her uncle Shinti, ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Honey. They reject me with disdain, declare that I should only render them commonplace, and that "rich and rare were the gems she wore" would never have got across Ireland safe if she had a great strapping brother to hamper her. And really, as Charles says, I don't suppose any damage can ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crowd was breaking into the street; citizens marched with their hands on the shoulders of the soldiers; old gentlemen toddled along beside strapping sons; brothers passed arms around brothers; here and there a mother hung to the chevroned sleeve of son or husband who was striving to see ahead through blurring eyes; here and there some fair young girl, badged with the national colours, stretched out ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to Neale O'Neil just as he had finished strapping on the cobbler's old skates that had been lent him. Carrie Poole was a big girl—nearly seventeen. She was too wise to attack Neale directly with the request ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... driver of the stage had finished strapping on the trunk, and had opened the door and was waiting for Stuyvesant to get in. Beechnut handed Stuyvesant a small note. He said that the Traveling Rule was inside of it, but that Stuyvesant must not open the note until he got into the car on the railroad. So Stuyvesant took the note and ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... tall, strapping girl, with hair red enough to set her bonnets on fire, and graceful enough to be mistaken for a heavy dragoon in female disguise. He had often had long talks with her when she came to fetch some ready-made dish, or to buy some beer, of which she was ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... She beheld him once more. And the sight of his condition, moral and physical, terrified her. His great strapping son and Amy helped him upstairs. "Will he ever come down those stairs again?" This thought lanced Constance's heart. The pain was come and gone in a moment, but it had surprised her tranquil commonsense, which was naturally ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that a bunch of moonshine can handle a big woman such as you say Throckmartin's Thora was, nor a two-fisted man such as you say Throckmartin was, nor Huldricksson's wife—and I'll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women too—you'll never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could handle them and take them waltzing off along a moonbeam back to wherever it goes. No, Doc, not on your life, even Tennessee moonshine couldn't ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... was George Vyell. George had lately been promoted to "pink" and made a gallant figure on his strapping grey hunter. For the first time Taffy felt ashamed of his working-suit, and would have slipped back to the church. But George had ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... daughter (Thora) to anyone who will slay them. The hero (Ragnar) devises a dress of a peculiar kind (by help of his nurse, apparently), in this case, woolly mantle and hairy breeches all frozen and ice-covered to resist the venom, then strapping his spear to his hand, he encounters them boldly alone. The courtiers hide "like frightened little girls", and the king betakes him to a "narrow shelter", an euphemism evidently of Saxo's, for the scene is comic. The king comes forth when the hero is victorious, and laughing ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... a little, as he bowled along the gentle descents or rounded the base of some lofty hill, and pulling up at Lydden took a glass of soda-water and brandy, while four strapping greys, with highly-polished, richly-plated harness, and hollyhocks at their heads, were put to, to trot the last few miles into Dover. Paying-time being near, the guard began to do the amiable—hoped Mrs. Sprat had ridden ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the crew, he is not oblivious of my comfort. By his few expressions of regret it appears that he cannot forgive himself for his careless acceptance of the erroneous diagnosis of my affliction. Yes; Captain West is a real human man. Is he not the father of the slender-faced, strapping-bodied ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... our host, who was rather a fine-looking Spanish Mestizo, as to our plans, &c., he most good-naturedly set off to seek a huntsman whom he recommended as a guide, leaving us in the meantime to the society of his wife—a strapping native beauty, although somewhat swarthy, full of good nature and the gossip of the place. From her, Adam soon learned all about his former acquaintances, and among others of the Capitan Tomas, his buxom wife, and pretty daughter, who we were ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... captain's crew were thus engaged, Saunders, the second mate, observing from the ship the accident to the first mate's boat, sent off a party of men to the rescue, thus setting free the third boat, which was steered by a strapping fellow named Peter Grim, to follow up the chase. Peter Grim was the ship's carpenter, and he took after his name. He was, as the sailors expressed it, a "grim customer", being burnt by the sun to a deep rich brown colour, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... him down the hallway, to meet Everts coming toward them. There were still three minutes left when they reached the airlock, with its inner door already open. The spacesuited man climbed into it and began strapping down so that the rush of air would not sweep him outward when ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... in soft snow, whereas the second party found no difficulty in pulling the sledge that had been given to them. 'So the sledge is the cause of the trouble, and taking it out, I found that all is due to want of care. The runners ran excellently, but the structure has been distorted by bad strapping, bad loading, &c. The party are not done, and I have told them plainly that they must wrestle with the trouble and get it ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... cast down. Put a good face upon it. What though? My first sweetheart was Bet Butterfield, but what of that? What must be must be; grief will never fill the belly. She was a fine strapping wench, that is the truth of it! five foot ten inches, and as stout as a trooper. Oh, she would do a power of work! Up early and down late; milked ten cows with her own hands; on with her cardinal, rode to market between her panniers, fair weather and foul, hail, blow, or snow. It would ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... was glowing rosy-red, and the boys lost no time in slipping into their outer clothes and strapping on their pistol belts, which ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... beauty of his mind grow with him. When he was about fifteen they used to call him Beauty about the College, and me they nicknamed the Beast. Beauty and the Beast was what they called us when we went out walking together, as we used to do every day. Once Leo attacked a great strapping butcher's man, twice his size, because he sang it out after us, and thrashed him, too—thrashed him fairly. I walked on and pretended not to see, till the combat got too exciting, when I turned round ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... is unimportant. The proprietors of this neat little place were a father and son, to the latter of whom was consigned, for reasons which will appear presently, the sole management of the farm. Of him we will merely say, that, at the period of which we treat, he was a fine, strapping, dark curly-haired, white-teethed, red-lipped, broad-shouldered, and altogether comely and gentle tempered youth, of about twenty, who had, although unconsciously, monopolized the affections of almost every well favoured maiden of his class, for miles around him—advantages of nature, from which ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... streets of Salem, Boston, New York, and Baltimore, crowds trooped after the fifes and drums with a strapping recruiting officer to enroll "all gentlemen seamen and able-bodied landsmen who had a mind to distinguish themselves in the glorious cause of their country and make their fortunes." Many a ship's company was mustered ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... he was sent to another school at Boonshill, near Rye, where the master took 'infinite delight' in strapping him. 'It keeps me warm and makes you grow,' he used to say. And the stripes were not altogether wasted, for the dunce, though still very 'raw,' made progress with his studies. It was known, moreover, that ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strapping figure of a bucolic guard who hailed from Humboldt County. He was a simple-minded, good-natured dolt and not above earning an honest dollar by smuggling in tobacco for the convicts. On that night, returning ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... upstairs to the floor occupied by the servants, and then was attracted to the room where Agathe slept, partly by seeing a light below the door, and partly by the murmur of voices. She stood still in dismay on recognizing the voice of her husband, who, a victim to Agathe's charms, to vanquish this strapping wench's not disinterested resistance, went to the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of a very ordinary sort and of a pink color, but all seem to thrive upon it. The meal over, the men smoke their pipes, and the wife washes her cooking utensils with water drawn from the muddy river, and then, strapping her infant to her back, overhauls the scanty wardrobe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of the first problem presented itself to Parkinson. What was to prevent his strapping this being into the high-backed chair to which he had been secured some time before? Quickly he crossed the circular room to the door he had first passed through ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the license of the law or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity of their birth operate in the least to their disparagement. On the contrary, they grew up a long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whalers, wood-cutters, fishermen, and pedlars, and strapping corn-fed wenches, who, by their united efforts, tended marvelously toward peopling those notable tracts of country called Nantucket, Piscataway, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... heaviest load, or whose horse could out-trot all others. When the surveying was done, Roger accepted the invitation of the committeemen to keep the winter school. Never before had there been a master who could keep the big boys in order without using the ferule, but somehow the great strapping fellows, who might have put the master on his back in a twinkling, could not find it in their hearts to do anything that would trouble him. Other masters were content if they went through the regular daily stint of reading, writing, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... with me? Tell it not to Malthes, nor whisper it to Harriet Martineau. There is no prospect of advertising for the next of kin, i.e. if five strapping boys and a couple of the fair sex may be considered a ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... on that very last day but one Mr Bickers had received by the post a certain letter, he might have felt tempted to delay till to-morrow the final strapping-up of his portmanteau. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... a fine, strapping fellow of five and twenty. His grave looks, his habitually passive expression, had from childhood been noticed among his comrades in the mine. His regular features, his deep blue eyes, his curly hair, rather chestnut than fair, the natural ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... of their speculations had done due honour to the house by calling for some drink, which was promptly supplied by the landlord's son Joe, a broad-shouldered strapping young fellow of twenty, whom it pleased his father still to consider a little boy, and to treat accordingly. Stretching out his hands to warm them by the blazing fire, the man turned his head towards the company, and after running his eye sharply over them, said in a voice ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... baby—a round-faced, large-eyed, fat-legged baby, as unlike to the bronzed, whiskered, strapping seaman who went by the name of "Fighting Bill" as a jackdaw is to a marlinespike—when Bill was a baby, his father used to say he was just cut out for a sailor; and he was right, for the urchin was overflowing with vigour and muscular energy. He ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... trousers, and was offering the cowboy and Hance money to recover them. When they told him this was impossible he tried to get them to sell or hire a pair, but they didn't like the idea of riding into camp minus those essentials any better than he did. While I waited they settled the difficulty by strapping a blanket round him, and by splitting it up the middle and using plenty of cord they rigged him out after a fashion; but I think if he could have seen himself and been given an option he would have preferred to wait till it was dark enough to creep ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... feet, his red face glistening with perspiration, and began strapping his leather case, the others rode up, and Bristoe, explaining the situation, set the men to making preparations for pushing on to the water-hole. Blankets were swung between ponies, and the bodies of the dead and wounded deposited therein, firm hands on the ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... a full surreptitious view of her back; and George Cannon, farther within the room, also saw her. They watched her disappear on her way to find the basement and the formidable Sarah Gailey. Hilda was touched by the spectacle of this child disguised as a strapping woman, far removed from her family and her companions and her familiar haunts, and driven or drawn into exile at Brighton, where she would only see the sea once a week, except through windows, and where she would have to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a living, and sleep ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... grinning in unabashed complacency. "Don't you be after believing a word of it, Miss Pixie dear. It would be a cold bed that would keep Jock Magee from driving ye home this night. And the size of ye too. You've grown out of knowledge! It's a fine strapping lass you will be one of these days." And Jock gazed with simulated amazement at the elf-like figure as it stepped forward into the lamplight. "My Molly was biddin' me give you her duty, and say her eyes are longing for the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sometimes acts very favorably at the beginning of the attack. Salicylate of sodium is a useful remedy in many cases, the patient taking ten grains three times daily, in tablets after eating, for a number of days. In rheumatism of the chest, securing immobility by strapping the chest, as recommended for broken rib (Vol. I, p. 84), gives more comfort than any other form of treatment. Many other measures may be employed by the physician, and are applicable in persistent cases, as electricity and tonics. The hot bath, or Turkish ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... from all the sheeped-out and desolate Four Peaks country the cowboys drifted in to Hidden Water for the round-up, driving their extra mounts before them. Beneath the brush ramada of the ranch house they threw off their canvas-covered beds and turned their pack horses out to roll, strapping bells and hobbles on the bad ones, and in a day the deserted valley of Agua Escondida became alive with great preparations. A posse of men on fresh mounts rode out on Bronco Mesa, following with unerring instinct the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... her, Tom!" cried out the strapping fellow at his back. "A queen it is; and a right good smacking toll all round—I have not bussed a maid this ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... he remembered would be so ridiculous to him now. He would see again his poor little trembling wife—she must be gray by now—and he was sure that she would tremble more than ever she did when she heard the great sea oaths which he was accustomed to pour forth now. And his daughter, she must be a strapping wench by this time; he was sure she could stand a slap on the back ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... I did so love it! Oh, poor Cecil Tharp!" And with a queer little smile she pointed to a strapping red-faced youth dancing with her daughter. "He nearly trips Bee up every minute, and he hugs her so, as if he were afraid of falling on his head. Oh, dear, what a bump! It's lucky she's so nice and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was speaking the clock struck eight. As the last tone of the bell died away the lock of the door creaked as the key turned from the outside; and presently, without a sound of footsteps, thirteen strapping fellows, who had been liberated by Leontine, softly entered the room, carrying their shoes strapped to their belts, as ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... was little now to make remark upon, or cause it to be regarded with suspicion. Some rich haciendado, who had been at the laying of the foundation-stone, on return to his country house, taking a friend along with him. The strapping fellow on the box might be mayor-domo of the estate—they are usually tall men—who had taken a fancy to try his hand at driving, and the coachman had surrendered him the reins. All perfectly natural, and en regle, even to the rapid speed at which the horses were put. The driver not accustomed ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... deeply interested in what the old farmer had told their brother, and as soon as the strapping and wiring of the split axle was completed all of the boys went into the house to ask the farmer more about the ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... had little love for monks and friars, turning to them said: 'You are three big strapping fellows to be supported by charity. You should be working in the fields or else helping us fight for the church. Why they pay us to do their fighting instead of training you for that purpose I will never understand. Either one of you looks as strong as a bull and with that habit ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... into my head, I jumped up and began to walk about. What could I do? I certainly ought to be ready to do something when the time came. I thought of getting life-preservers, and strapping one on each of us, so that if the Water-devil turned over the vessel and shook us out, we shouldn't sink down to him, but would float ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... persons, a great number of maimed ones may be seen going about in Manchester; this one has lost an arm or a part of one, that one a foot, the third half a leg; it is like living in the midst of an army just returned from a campaign. But the most dangerous portion of the machinery is the strapping which conveys motive power from the shaft to the separate machines, especially if it contains buckles, which, however, are rarely used now. Whoever is seized by the strap is carried up with lightning speed, thrown against the ceiling above and floor below with such force that there ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... and seventy. Forty-five years he had lived here, and now supports himself and his old wife by the help of the steer tethered yonder and the charity of his black neighbors. He shows us the farm of the Hills just across the county line in Baker,—a widow and two strapping sons, who raised ten bales (one need not add "cotton" down here) last year. There are fences and pigs and cows, and the soft-voiced, velvet-skinned young Memnon, who sauntered half-bashfully over to greet the strangers, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is in the Kroo country in upper Guinea, just south of Liberia. They did all the heavy boat-work of the ship, thus lightening the work of the crew, and saving them as much as possible from exposure to the effects of the deadly climate. Great, strapping, muscular fellows, many of them, with forms that an Apollo might envy, they were trained from infancy to be as much at home in the water as upon the land, and could swim a dozen leagues at sea or pull at the oar all day long without seeming ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... that it was raining harder when the carriage drove up to the door. Jeanne was ready to step in when the baroness came downstairs, supported on one side by her husband and on the other by a tall housemaid, strong and strapping as a boy. She was a Norman woman of the country of Caux, who looked at least twenty, although she was but eighteen at the most. She was treated by the family as a second daughter, for she was Jeanne's foster sister. Her name was Rosalie, and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and smarter than the other three—Nellie's brothers, who were young fellows, little over twenty. They were good-looking, strapping fellows, but the sweet simplicity in her face was in theirs loutish stupidity, and their companion stood out beside them, though probably he was nearly twice their age, as cast in a very different mould. He was dressed as they were, in riding-breeches and shirt, but the shirt was clean, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... of patient labour, and considerable mechanical ability, the tools used being simply the incisor teeth of the Paca and Cutia. The two half tubes, when finished, are secured together by a very close and tight spirally-wound strapping, consisting of long flat strips of Jacitara, or the wood of the climbing palm-tree; and the whole is smeared afterwards with black wax, the production of a Melipona bee. The pipe tapers towards the muzzle, and a cup-shaped mouthpiece, made of wood, is ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... not quite meet over her full front. She brought together the ends of a black fur boa, she reached constantly for the back of her skirts, and gave them a firm tug which relaxed the next moment. Her decent black bonnet was askew, her large face was flushed. She had been a strapping, handsome country girl once; now she was almost indecent in her involuntary ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... grandmother, "and stick to your art. We shall manage the farm." She sewed up in his belt all the money she had saved, and started him off again, for he had then been studying only two months. Now he remained till he was twenty-three, a fine, strapping, broad-shouldered country fellow. He had long fair hair and piercing dark blue eyes. All the time he was with Delaroche he was dissatisfied with his work—and with his master's, which seemed to Millet artificial, untrue. ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... which, owing to most of the passengers being busy below with their preparations for landing, was almost deserted. Billy was at his side. In the black motor-boat two men stood with their hands up. Alongside was a speedy-looking launch full of strapping big men with firm jaws and the unmistakable stamp of detectives the world over. Some of them were hauling on board the police launch Jack's dripping figure, which clung fast to the life-preserver. Others kept the men in the black ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... as he thought of the strapping lad who had brought such sorrow to his mother. So strong and so handy on the wagon. Old 'Liza loved him like a brother and minded him even better than she did himself. If he only had him now, they could face the winter and the bad times, and pull through. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... a (German) reservist. What a tremendous figure! What can Latins, Slavs, Celts, Japs, Negroes, Hindus, Ghurkas, Turcos, and whatever they are called, do against such strapping giants of the true Germanic type? His features are superbly noble, and he seems pleased with his day's work. He does not regret that he has offered his ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... happened to notice the change of chauffeurs, while he avoided a prolonged scrutiny by the visitors already packed in chairs on both sides of the porch. He kept his face hidden during the luggage strapping process, and professed not to be aware of Cynthia's presence until she bade him ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... up in the face of the cheery, strapping youngster, and saw there was none better able to take care of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... business to attend to. I must get out of this as soon as you can patch me up so I can walk straight. I ought to have been in Denver a month ago. There's a man out there, who comes in from his ranch two hundred miles to see me. He is a fine fellow, strapping, big six-footer. He knows how to put in his time day and night, when he gets to town. I remember one time we were in Frisco together—ever been in Frisco? It's a great place for a good dinner, and all you want to drink. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Pullman from New York. 'Awfully bored, don't you know.' When we got to 'Frisco, he says to me: 'Thank God, old chappie, the worst part of the journey's over.' Then there's Romulus and Remus, the twins, strapping young fellows. Only way I know them apart is one laces his boots tight, the other slack. They think ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Roger was a strapping big lad at fourteen. He was as tall as his father, who was five feet ten, and was still growing rapidly. He was thin but hard-muscled, with good shoulders that were not as awkward as they looked. After a year of pleading, his father agreed to let him spend his vacation in the plow ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... incontestable; more than a match for; overpowering, overwhelming; all powerful, all sufficient; sovereign. able-bodied; athletic; Herculean, Cyclopean, Atlantean[obs3]; muscular, brawny, wiry, well-knit, broad-shouldered, sinewy, strapping, stalwart, gigantic. manly, man-like, manful; masculine, male, virile. unweakened[obs3], unallayed, unwithered[obs3], unshaken, unworn, unexhausted[obs3]; in full force, in full swing; in the plenitude of power. stubborn, thick-ribbed, made of iron, deep-rooted; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of 'em—two boys and two girls—and each had a name, of course. Southwind and Westwind were the girls, Eastwind and Northwind the boys, two strapping big fellows. ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... be taken a little aback when they hear that before the lord of the East gave her the name of Nourmahal, 'Light of the Harem,' or, in the later excess of his love, Nourdjihan, 'Light of the World,' she was known to her family and friends as Mher-ul-Nica, or, in equivalent Saxon, the 'Strapping Wench;' and that this 'tallest of women,' of whom it is said ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Galileo and Herschel are strapping fellows. They have survived their juvenile ambitions to be milkmen, policemen, lamp-lighters, butchers, grocerymen, etc., respectively. Both are now in the manual-training school. Fanny, Josephine and Erasmus—I have not mentioned them ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawed his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in another woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Tuscarora County, and appointed a commission to choose a county-seat. 'Then was the tug-of-war.' New Babylon coveted the award, pined for it, panted for it as the hart for the water brooks. But so did Etruria, our strapping rival." ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... have grown such a strapping fellow that I didn't recognise you," said Murray, putting out his hand. "You are welcome to Bercaldine, and we can easily stow you away in some odd corner or other, notwithstanding your inches. Will you come up to the house with us, or will ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the ear of Gaffer Whitecraft, who had entered the room, a strapping specimen of his robust trade, prepared to play the civil, or the surly host, as his company should be acceptable or otherwise. At Julian's invitation, he doffed his dusty bonnet—brushed from his sleeve ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... tone to one of boisterous joviality.] But I do be thinking, iver since the first look my eyes took at you, that it's a fool you are to be wasting yourself—a fine, handsome girl—on a stumpy runt of a man like that old Swede. There's too many strapping great lads on the sea would give their heart's blood for one ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... number of boys in the ship, but two of them were my special favourites. Jack Martin was a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered youth of eighteen, with a handsome, good-humoured, firm face. He had had a good education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild and quiet in disposition. Jack was a general favourite, and had a peculiar fondness for me. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... several strapping deer-stalkers, still possessed the farm, by virtue of a long lease, for a trifling rent. There was no chance of any one buying it with such an encumbrance, and a transaction was entered into by the MacLarens, who, being desirous to emigrate to America, agreed to sell their lease to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... be in the corridor one day when one of the guards, a tall, strapping fellow, was bringing downstairs a convict of stature much less than his own, a poor half demented youth, whose dementia was unfortunately wont to express itself in foul or abusive language, which came from him almost involuntarily, without any particular personal ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... a fine, strapping young fellow of twenty-three, and was doing as well on the Newanga as any. Since the day he had snatched Billjim (then a wee mite) from the jaws of an alligator, as Queensland folk will insist upon calling their crocodile, he had been l'ami de la maison ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... hymns and rot about peace eternal; we have taught it to admire gentleness and submissiveness; above all, to emulate those who have reached the highest degree of neutral toothlessness. Behold the country's youth, strapping and full-grown, six foot tall, sucking its bottle and growing fat and harmless. If some one smites it on one cheek it turns the other accommodatingly, and keeps its fists in ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... toilet, and, giving a most embarrassed yet charming bow; hurriedly disappeared. This vision completed the charm; it seemed to me that I had suddenly been transported into fairy-land. I had fancied when strapping my portmanteau that I should find my friend Oscar installed in one of those pretty, little, smart-looking houses, with green shutters and gilt lightning-conductor, dear to the countrified Parisian, and here I found myself amid an ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had thae been queans, A' plump and strapping in their teens! Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen-hunder linen! Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o' guid blue hair, I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdies, For ae blink o' the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum |
