"Mettle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deficiency; for we were to sail in three days' time for Plymouth, there to form part of the escort of a large fleet of merchantmen and transports bound to the West Indies under convoy. But now it was that our new second and third lieutenants showed their mettle, for on the very night of my arrival on board they organised two formidable pressgangs, which they led ashore, one party landing at Portsmouth and the other at Gosport; and between them they managed to make a clean sweep of pretty ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... but the bag which is taking George." To prevent him arguing I told Geraldine that you can tell a real K.M. by his Silver Greyhound badge, which he'll show you if you doubt him, just as you can tell a stockbroker by his pearl tie-pin, which you can see for yourself. This put George on his mettle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... machinery of diplomacy is sometimes apt to move a trifle slowly, and ere it had moved far enough to bring about the satisfaction of the Consul's demands it was stated that Rius had died suddenly in prison. This put General Fitzhugh Lee upon his mettle: he very strongly suspected that there was more in this man's death than met the eye, and he insisted upon having the body medically examined, with the result that Rius was found to have been killed by a blow on the back of the head; while, scratched by a nail ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... and numbers were turned away. Its beauty and completeness when it is lighted up are most brilliant to behold, and for a reading it is simply perfect. You remember that a Liverpool audience is usually dull, but they put me on my mettle last night, for I never saw such an audience—no, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... behind, sat on the fence with his legs drawn up to his chin, looking at Elise, till she turned and caught the provoking light of his eye. She flushed, then was cool again, for she was put upon her mettle by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Antar became possessed of the noble horse Abjer, whose equal no prince or emperor could boast of. His mettle was soon tried in an affray with the tribe of Maan, headed by the warrior Nakid, who was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... little Belgium. Whatever brief we may hold for her though, we ought not to picture even her peasant people as a mild, meek and inoffensive lot. That isn't the sort of stuff out of which her dogged and continuing resistance was wrought. That isn't the mettle which for two weeks stopped up the German tide before the Liege forts, giving the allies two weeks to mobilize, and all they had asked the Belgians for was two or three days of grace. But before the German avalanche hurled itself on Liege ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... faculty for getting at the bottom of things. His brain did not seem to be thrown out of gear by local magnetic influences,—by beauty, for instance. He did not lose his head, as did some others she knew, at the approach of feminine charms. Here was a grand subject, then, to try the mettle of any woman. One with less mettle would have given it up. But Virginia thought it would be delightful to bring this particular Yankee to his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the heel and hand admonished She ventured forward on the light; And wow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillion brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels Put life and mettle in their heels. At winnock-bunker[74] in the east, There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;— A towzie tyke,[75] black, grim, and large; To gi'e them music was his charge: He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl,[76] Till roof and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lad of thy mettle. Indeed, whether you take my service or no, you shall keep that purse, provided you tell me where a certain maiden, ward to the Lady Cantire and daughter to the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... lake, looking well for his land-range, to escape the hole where Baker was drowned; and coming on the breeding-ground of the countless birds, his pony's hoof with a reckless smash goes crunching through a dozen eggs or callow young. He fairly puts his pony to her mettle to escape the cloud of angry birds which, arising in countless numbers, dent his weather-beaten tarpaulin with their sharp bills, and snap his pony's ears, and confuse him with their sharp, shrill cries. Ten minutes more, and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... gambler, and some suspicions of his fair play had been noised abroad; but, as has been recently seen in the instance of a man of rank equal to Lilburne's, though, perhaps, of less acute if more cultivated intellect, it is long before the pigeon will turn round upon a falcon of breed and mettle. The rumours, indeed, were so vague as to carry with them no weight. During the middle of his career, when in the full flush of health and fortune, he had renounced the gaming-table. Of late years, as advancing age made time more heavy, he had resumed the resource, and with ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her mettle, began to feel unmistakable signs that she was inherently the weaker vessel. She strove miserably against this femininity which would insist upon supplying unbidden emotions in stronger and stronger current. She had tried ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... vigorous thrust he sent his weapon deep into the chest of his dusky opponent, placing him at once and forever hors de combat. Imitating the dashing conduct of their youthful leader the Dragoons fought as British Soldiers can fight when their mettle is up, and roused by the gallant bravery of their pet officers, in less than twenty minutes from the striking of the first blow every one of the Seik horse were either cut to pieces or taken prisoners. The report of the encounter was spread far and wide, and not ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... "sort of mettle" for our business; and at last one day I stepped up to him, reached out my hand, and said: "Well, landlord, I guess we'll have to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... their fighting spirit. It was rumored that Gage was preparing an aggressive movement from Boston, which might mean pillage and massacre in the surrounding country, and it was decided to draw in closer to Boston to give Gage a diversion and prove the mettle of the patriot army. So, on the evening of June 16, 1775, there was a stir of preparation in the American camp at Cambridge, and late at night the men fell in near ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... much opportunity to observe the German cavalry, either on the march or in battle. The only time I saw any of it engaged was in the unfortunate charge at Gravelotte. That proved its mettle good and discipline fair, but answered no other purpose. Such of it as was not attached to the infantry was organized in divisions, and operated in accordance with the old idea of covering the front and flanks of the army, a duty which it thoroughly performed. But thus directed ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... it, and reflected for a short time, as if, having been put upon his mettle, he was resolved to be particular to the very minutest hair's breadth of a shade. At length, after wheeling his toothpick slowly round and round in the air, as if it were a carrier pigeon just thrown up, he suddenly made a dart at ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... good mettle to run up first," M. Etienne said. "And it is no disgrace to fall to your sword, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... subtle is the expression in music of the subjective mood. There is revealed not the feeling the poet is conscious of, but, below this, his present self, and in the whole series of his works, his own personal mettle. What the poet tries to say is very different from what he does say. In a symphony, as in many a frolic, the tinge of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... very nearly equally matched in strength and endurance and courage. Finally, however, the half-clad, disowned nephew of Charlemagne stood triumphant. The quarrel was indeed settled; for Oliver, being a lad of mettle, and loving and admiring valor wherever he found it, arose from his honorable defeat the sworn friend and admirer of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... in charge of the affair by the parties wronged. Drusilla described the sinking of her own heart as these bits of information were given her, though she had not failed to reprimand Collins for the repetition of foolish gossip. This, it seemed, had put Collins on her mettle in defense of her own order, and she had replied that, if it came to that, m'm, the contents of the waste-paper baskets at Tory Hill, though slightly damaged, had borne ample testimony to the truth of the tale as Miss Maggie Murphy told it. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... who came to the plate did their best, but Jack was on his mettle, and though his swollen hand hurt him not a little, he played with all the coolness, strength and ingenuity which he possessed. As a consequence, although he allowed two single hits, none of the Longley boys got ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... inevitably, by mere weight of population and wealth, be the victor, though this could not conceivably result in any real reunion, rather in a conquest requiring permanent military occupation. Southern leaders were mad: "to rouse by gratuitous insult the mettle of a nation three times as numerous and far more than three times as powerful, to force them by aggressive steps into a struggle in which the sympathy of every free and civilized nation will be with the North, seems like the madness of men whose eyes are blinded and hearts hardened ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... such was the cause of the horseman's haste threw the young Kentuckian at once on his mettle. Inasmuch as he was putting forth every effort to rejoin his companion, there was good reason for fearing a collision with the red men. He had been in several desperate affrays with them, and, like a sensible person, he spared no exertion to ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the fool that heads him?' Hold hard, and let him pass! He's out among the oziers He's clear upon the grass. You grip his flanks and settle, For the horse is stretched and straining, Here's a game to test your mettle, And a sport to try your training, When the Chiddingfolds are ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friend had often heard Randal talk, for he was an accomplished raconteur, but that night he exerted himself, and was unusually brilliant and entertaining, as if upon his mettle. The Bassets were charmed. They sat late and were very merry, for Aunt Plumy got up a little supper for them, and her cider was as exhilarating as champagne. When they parted for the night and Sophie kissed her aunt, Emily did the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... intently upon the signature affixed. Of all the years he had known the Governor he had never known him to shrink or show cowardice in any form whatever, although he'd passed through such crises as would tend to test the mettle of any man, it matters not how brave. "Surely the situation must be terrible!" finally observed Mr. Wingate, throwing the letter upon the desk and whirling around in his chair. "I will call a meeting and put the matter before the committee. When that man says back down then surely ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... into the car with victory and renown in her hands. Then heaven-nurtured Iolaus called terribly to the horses, and at his cry they swiftly whirled the fleet chariot along, raising dust from the plain; for the goddess bright-eyed Athene put mettle into them by shaking her aegis. And the earth groaned all ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... as I had half expected. It was ourselves whom he was after. Maybe his only chance of regaining favour with the king being through Quendritha, he was trying his best to pleasure her. Or else she had threatened him. Either would be enough to set him on his mettle, for none with whom I had spoken thought that the forced retirement of the queen would last long. She would soon be as ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... as yet no proof that any will be made," the major remarked, and in fact Graham had underrated his acquaintance with the game. He was quite equal to his aunt in proficiency, and with Miss St. John for his partner he was on his mettle. He found her skilful indeed, quick, penetrating, and possessed of an excellent memory. They held their own so well that the major's spirits rose hourly. He forgot his wound in the complete ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... no compromise. If no resistance is offered to the insult, the person insulted is thenceforth a disgraced wretch, a dog, and universally despised. Do-ran-to forthwith demanded satisfaction of the young Sioux, who, by the way, was only too anxious to give it, being full of game and mettle, as well as sanguine as to the victory he would gain over the hated young Pawnee. They agreed to settle their difficulty by single combat, and the weapons to be used were war-clubs and short knives. A suitable place ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Devonshire: he was a man of good family too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said I to myself, Wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this man comes up to our country, there's one or other of the Trelyons will try his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George—you remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his own son there?—'George,' I said, 'if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these parts, mind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... slayer—for there was little doubt that the innkeeper would infer the true state of affairs on the discovery of the body. The dead man's people would be clamorous for justice and the officers would be on their mettle. Even if I might otherwise tarry in Montoire unsuspected, my insinuating myself into the acquaintance of one of Monsieur de Merri's friends would in itself be a suspicious move. The more I considered the whole affair, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in the least disconcerted by her plain speech. The cutting words merely served to put him on his mettle. "Probably we departed from the hotel somewhat earlier than the minister anticipated," he explained, quietly, his old ease of manner returning in face of such open opposition. "I greatly regret your evident prejudice, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... an arm to seize her by the waist. The girl saw his intention, and a wild fear dilated her eyes. But she did not lose her head. She suddenly spurred her broncho with a little vicious stab. The animal, already on his mettle, charged forward desperately, taking the pony of the Indian facing it in the chest and throwing it back upon its haunches. But the chief was round like lightning. He saw nothing, heeded nothing but the possible ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... hand, Theodore! Here's a hearty shake, and a hearty congratulation at the same time! Run off with that purse—proud old curmudgeon's daughter Ha! ha! I like you for that! You're a man of mettle. But, halloo! What's the matter? You look as grave as a barn-door, on the shady side. Not ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... this way," he explained. "From to-day I'm on this business myself. You see, Mrs. Bunting, the Yard's nettled—that's what it is, and we're all on our mettle—that we are. I was right down sorry for the poor chap who was on point duty in the street where ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... lot of that able and popular officer, Superintendent (Major) G. E. Sanders, to show on two special occasions, with small detachments against large odds, the mettle of the North-West Mounted Police. Near Middleburg, when Sanders with 125 men was guarding the railway, he was attacked by a considerable force of the enemy with artillery. A hurry call for reinforcements was issued, but before they came the Canadians had beaten the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... themselves, nor in the tone in which they were spoken, nor in the look which accompanied them, it was in all; it implied a doubt of Lady Harriet's right to question him as she did; and there was something of defiance in it as well. But this touch of insolence put Lady Harriet's mettle up; and she was not one to check herself, in any course, for the opinion of ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... singular absence of systematic discussion. No one supposes that its English advocates are deficient in talent or in zeal. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Bryce—to name no others—are as competent apologists for any opinion they entertain as can well be found. They have been put upon their mettle; they have addressed the nation in Parliament and out of Parliament; they have produced a certain number of reasons, which deserve respectful consideration, in support of their favourite innovation. But ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... other side; the deepest part of the dhow being, as you see, under the foremast, it forms a pivot round which the shallow stern, obeying the helm, rapidly turns. Clumsy as they look, I hear that these craft are wonderfully fast, and, with the wind free, will put us on our mettle ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... mechanic on his mettle," objected the veteran engineer. "He's going to call all hands on the carpet. Had me in yesterday afternoon. He showed me your conductor's report wired from Bridgeport. It throws all the blame on Adams, the new station man ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... Esther, and Esther looked at Peggy. They did not say a word, but a flash of understanding passed from the brown eyes to the grey, which meant that they were on their mettle. They were not going to defend themselves, but henceforth it was a case of die or produce a good photograph, and so oblige Oswald to alter his tone ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... enkindled her mind that she herself at times had seemed the heroine in many a stirring scene. It was largely due to these impressions that she relished the life in the wilderness, and looked upon the King's courier as a hero of more than ordinary mettle. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... uneasily that the reference to the servants had not bolstered the Colonel as it usually did, and the old darky groaned inwardly as he added wood to the fire. From the corner of his eye he saw that the Colonel had drawn himself up to military rigidity, an evidence that the old soldier was on his mettle ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... sails yet," muttered St. George, and he put his boat to the shore. "There, Murray, try your lazy mettle, and take my oar. As for me, I'm off,"—and he sprang upon the bank, sending the boat spinning off into the current again from his foot. In ten minutes a horseman went galloping by on the high-road skirting the shore, with a pace like that of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... lad of mettle!" shouted another of the laborers. "He dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam's loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference then between the ermine cloak and the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rewarded this retort. It put the quick-witted Neapolitan on his mettle, to produce a prompt ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... hard anigh nor is much space between, as he speedeth far over the plain—by so much was Menelaos behind high-born Antilochos, howbeit at first he was a whole disk-cast behind, but quickly he was catching Antilochos up, for the high mettle of Agamemnon's mare, sleek-coated Aithe, was rising in her. And if yet further both had had to run he would have passed his rival nor left it even a dead heat. But Meriones, stout squire of Idomeneus, came in a spear-throw behind ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... that where a dog could go he could follow. Silvermane's blood was heated; the desert was an old story to him; it had only tired him and parched his throat; this canyon of downward steps and falls, with ever-deepening drops, was new to him, and roused his mettle; and from his long training in the wilds he ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... in the ranks of crime. But between the two, Cummings was the coward, psychologically at least. His shrewdness told him that it was useless for him to endeavor to control Gibson by threats of physical harm or death and he exercised his tact. He realized also that a man of Gibson's mettle was more to be trusted than a ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his own expression, he floated upon corpses. A man of less vigorous mettle, moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a two hours' immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning. Leroy clung on, and hoped. I have said that he was tenacious of hope. And soon after ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed, Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed, The winged courser, like a generous horse, [86] Shows most true mettle when you check ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... best in Joab, Fierce and truculent as he often was, he had a hero's mettle in him, and in that dark hour he flamed like a pillar of light. His ringing words to his brother as they parted, not knowing if they would ever meet again, are like a clarion call. They extract encouragement out of the separation of forces, which might have depressed, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with ladders. While my gardener is getting the ladders, cake and pie will be served. That is my proposition. If you care to take me up, all right. If not, we part friends. A man's house is his castle; I dare say you've heard that. If you are so wild and adventurous, show your mettle." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a major's commission in the King's army. The period of his death is uncertain, but he is known to have been dead in 1691. Downes relates that an eminent poet [Lee] seeing him act Mithridates "vented suddenly this saying: 'Oh, Mohun, Mohun, thou little man of mettle, if I should write a 100, I'd write a part for thy mouth.'" —Roscius Anglicanus, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... have done a fault, be always pert and insolent, and behave yourself as if you were the injured person; this will immediately put your master or lady off their mettle. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... preferred an audience worthy his mettle; but Willie was better than no one, yet when he turned to note the effect of his remarks on his son, Willie was no where to be seen. If Jeb had but known it his young hopeless was already in the loft of the hay barn deep in a small, red-covered ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cascade tunnel; he told me he was about to be married and go to the Wenatchee country to conduct a paper of his own. It's too bad there wasn't another reporter up there to tell about him. He worked like a Trojan, and it was a place to try a man's mettle. Afterwards, before he left, he came to me and introduced himself. He had been aboard the yacht that day I told the story. He had taken it down in his notebook behind an awning. He told me one of the ladies on board—he did ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... runs like water down hill, Bigot! but, par Dieu! I would not have believed that New France contained two women of such mettle as the one to contrive, the other to execute, a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... or curiosity as to a possible love-affair for Pamela in that direction might have been lurking in it. And that being so, she promptly, and without arriere pensee of any sort, allowed herself the pleasant recollection of half an hour's conversation which had put her intellectually on her mettle, and quickened those infant ambitions of a practical and patriotic kind which were beginning to rise ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lovely disposition, a pure heart and a finely cultivated mind. The German painter, Peter Cornelius, said of her that any one who spoke with her felt elevated and ennobled. The family was of the right mettle. The Countess Blanka Teleki, who was condemned to death for complicity in the Hungarian uprising of 1848, but whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment—she finally was released in 1858,—was Therese's niece, ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... order, to reduce a vessel, which had mutinied in China, which he accomplished also so well, that the factor, who was going with the warrants, confesses that without him he could have done nothing, because of the mettle of the Portuguese, and the daring with which those of the vessel had closed with them. In this case there would surely have been many disorders and deaths, if the said father, by his care and prudence, and the authority ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... pieces, six iron bullets for the service of the aforesaid, twenty-six brasse-pieces weighing only three lbs. each, thirty or forty lbs. of gunpowder all belonging to M. de Caen, of Dieppe; about thirty lbs. of mettle belonging to the French King; thirteen whole and one broken musket, a harquebush, two large harquebueses five or six foote longe, a piece belonging to the Kinge; five or six thousand leaden bulletts, plate and bars of lead belonging, sixty corselletts whereof ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... catching, as she passed to it through the throng, more than one sour look from the men and more than one exclamation of surprise, real or affected, on the lips of the ladies of her acquaintance. These manifestations, however, put her upon her mettle. So determining that at least she would not look sullen or ridiculous, she began to enter into the spirit of the adventure, and smiled graciously while the Captain Montalvo wrapped a magnificent apron of wolf ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... I were Francois Villon and Francois Villon I, To yonder gloomy boulevard at midnight I would hie; "Stop, stranger! and deliver your possessions, ere you feel The mettle of my bludgeon or the temper of my steel!" He should give me gold and diamonds, his snuffbox and his cane— "Now back, my boon companions, to our brothel with our gain!" And, back within that brothel, how the bottles they would ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... high outrageous mettle Of Knight began to cool and settle. 1105 He lik'd the Squire's advice, and soon Resolv'd to see the business done And therefore charg'd him first to bind CROWDERO'S hands on rump behind, And to its former place and use, 1110 The wooden member to reduce But force it take an oath before, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... in the doorway of Ann's room and the girl rose at her suggestion of dinner, Katie's courage had gone up. Ann's whole bearing told that she was on her mettle. And what Katie found most reassuring was less the results of the effort Ann was making than her unmistakable sense of the necessity for making it. There ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... hand, helped Montgomery to storm the heights of Quebec, and nearly reached the upper citadel when his commander was shot dead and the Americans retreated. In all this confusion Burr showed himself a man of mettle. The slain Montgomery was six feet high, but Burr carried his body away with wonderful strength amid a shower ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... jury of mountain men, he well knew, could be found who would convict a Tolliver, for there were no twelve men in the mountains who would dare. And so the Tollivers decided to await the outcome of the trial and rest easy. But they did not count on the mettle and intelligence of the grim young "furriners" who were a flying wedge of civilization at the Gap. Straightway, they gave up the practice of law and banking and trading and store-keeping and cut port-holes in the brick walls of the Court House and guarded town and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... to be upon my mettle. I didn't much care about the paper, but I had a definite antipathy to being done by Evans—by a mad Welshman in a stubborn fit. I knew what was going to happen; knew that Evans would feign inconceivable stupidity, the sort of black stupidity ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... difficult to think,' he said, 'that you will always struggle on in such an existence as this. To every man of mettle there does come an opportunity, and it surely is time for yours to present itself. I have a superstitious faith in "Mr Bailey." If he leads you to triumph, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... present author would have known instantly that it was rot that about cleaving chines, but the man who wanted to let the Disenchanteried House and the man who wanted to have it let to him were of other mettle. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... 1812 is almost beneath criticism."[391] Instructed American opinion must sorrowfully admit the truth of the comment. That of 1813 was not much better, although some younger men—Brown, Scott, Gaines, Macomb, Ripley—were beginning to show their mettle, and there had by then been placed at the head of the War Department a secretary who at least possessed a reasoned understanding of the principles of warfare. With every material military advantage, save the vital one of adequate preparation, it was found too ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Hseh, "you do have the happy knack of putting her on her mettle; but though she has often got things ready for you, you've, after all, not eaten very much ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... now resided in a more 'respectable' quarter of the city, in such sober, yet distinctive fashion as became one who was a friend of the King's, and who was likely to be a Minister some day, when he had further proved his political mettle. So that Sholto had no longer any need to try and eke out a scanty subsistence by letting rooms to revolutionists and 'suspects' generally,—and Thord himself had helped him to make a change for the better, as ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... down, and his only daughter Elspie had firmly asserted her determination to remain and die with him, Fergus McKay and Daniel Davidson felt themselves to be put upon their mettle—called on to face a difficulty of the most appalling nature. To remain on the snow-clad prairie without food or shelter would be death to all, for there was no living creature there to be shot or trapped. On the other hand, to travel a hundred miles or so on foot—and without ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... burying itself in the ground at a few yards' distance, covered him with the earth which it drove up. There was no need to bid the party trudge. In fact, every man, acting upon the impulse of the moment, soon brought Mr. Jinker's steeds to show their mettle, and the cavaliers, retreating with more speed than regularity, never took to a trot, as the lieutenant afterwards observed, until an intervening eminence had secured them from any repetition of so undesirable a compliment on the part of Stirling Castle. I must do Balmawhapple, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cried the jovial chief. "Little John's mettle will be the more up: on with you, sir; he who breaks into a ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am now going to see, deserves no meaner a title, for she usually in her flight endangers herself, like the son of Daedalus, to have her wings scorched by the sun's heat, she flies so near it, but her mettle makes her careless of danger; for she then heeds nothing, but makes her nimble pinions cut the fluid air, and so makes her highway over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and in her glorious career looks with contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces which we adore ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... rhetoric would have fallen flat but for the fervid zeal of Lucien, who at the close stood in his place and rendered the ambassador's speech in Italian to an enthralled audience. This event among others showed the younger brother's mettle; the intimacy thus inaugurated ripened quickly and endured for long. The ambassador was recalled to the mainland on February second, 1793, and took his new-found friend with him as secretary or useful man. Both were firm Jacobins, and the master having failed in making any impression on Paoli during ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... disconcerted. The matter seemed suddenly quite plain to me: it was the nature of his errands to the Exchange. The first time he had been ordering the cake for his own wedding, and to-day it was something about the wedding again. Evidently the high mettle of his delicacy and breeding made him painfully conscious of the view which others must take of the part that Miss Rieppe was playing in all this—a view from which it was out of his power to shield her; and it was this consciousness ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... galloping along upon their horses, thrusting to the right and left with long pikes, whose steel points are eighteen inches long. That is a charge of lancers. I beg you to believe that I had shown before this the mettle there was in me, but I will not conceal from you that at this moment I shared with the crowd the impression which the coming of these gentlemen made. I had only time to jump over the sidewalk and to dart up a staircase ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... settlement is at times the scene of these youthful collisions When a new boy appears in the village, or at the country school, how the other boys crowd around him and take his measure, or pick at him and insult him to try his mettle! ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... you had the funds you wouldn't need a benefit—unless, indeed, you needed them to take a pleasure trip to Europe or to buy an automobile. But the man who can pull off a venture of that kind I regard as a financier; a man to be respected; a man of mettle—I mean the kind of mettle that's next door to genius, so to speak. By the way, old man, how do you spell that ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... wild beasts. The unfortunate ploughman wonders that strong oxen fall down at their work, and lie stretched in the middle of the furrow. {And} while the wool-bearing flocks utter weakly bleatings, both their wool falls off spontaneously, and their bodies pine away. The horse, once of high mettle, and of great fame on the course, degenerates for the {purposes of} victory; and, forgetting his ancient honors, he groans at the manger, doomed to perish by an inglorious distemper. The boar remembers not to be ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... although he has given a few. One of the most striking was certainly his guiding a Garibaldian column en reconnaissance across the bed of the river Ternin, on a bitterly cold day, mounted on his spirited little Cocote, who showed quite a martial mettle, and may well have felt proud of leading a number of great cavalry horses. She took no harm from her cold bath, but her master, whose legs had been in the icy water (on account of her small height) up to the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... wisdom of Solomon nor the modesty of Godolphin. The capture of Fort Sumter, with its garrison of less than a hundred men, was hardly Gibraltar; yet it would put the grandiloquent hidalgoes of Spain on their mettle to make more clatter over the downfall of the cross of St. George from that historic rock. McClellan was the young Napoleon, the very god of war in his latest avatar. While this was absurd, and in the end ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... of it Johnny Whitelamb had risen and was holding his drawing aslant, in some hope, perhaps, that the angle might correct the perspective of old Mettle's portrait. Certainly it was a villainous portrait, as he acknowledged to himself with a sigh. Parts of it must be rubbed out, and his right hand rummaged in his pocket and found a crust. But Johnny, among other ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thus commanded against his will by king Dhritarashtra, set out, with the help of horses of high mettle and endued with great speed and strength, and quiet and patient, for the abode of the wise sons of Pandu. Possessed of great intelligence, Vidura proceeded by the way leading to the capital of the Pandavas. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... flashed away in the direction of the kitchen. The girls were on their mettle, and meant business. Whoever the intruder was, he should be run to earth and made to give an account of himself. They felt perfectly capable of taking him prisoner and binding his hands behind him with a rope. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... their complaints and wants—as constituting the worthy baron's chief excellance. We are old friends; and for my sake I am sure he will receive you well, and afford you all the assistance and information in his power. He will put you on your mettle; and you must be no lie-a-bed if you would profit by his instruction. At six in the morning you will find him daily at his post in the hospital; and, whilst sluggards are turning in their beds, he has prescribed for a hundred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... had been proposed he knew would only be a pretense in order to murder him. He knew he had walked right into a trap, but he determined to die game. Yes, even at that moment he did not wholly despair. These men did not know his mettle, and could he once get a weapon in his hands he would make a desperate fight. He was armed, but thought that possibly the men might go through the farce of a duel. This would give him a chance. He had his club and he knew he must take them by a grand dash, a magnificent surprise. He had encountered ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... your mind that you are done with poverty forever; that you will have nothing more to do with it; that you are going to erase every trace of it from your dress, your personal appearance, your manner, your talk, your actions, your home; that you are going to show the world your real mettle; that you are no longer going to pass for a failure; that you have set your face persistently toward better things—a competence, an independence—and that nothing on earth can turn you from your resolution, you will be amazed to find what a reenforcing ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... on too fast. When the good ship crashed upon the rock and split in twain, it seemed like that all aboard must perish. Fortunately OLIVER was made of stern mettle. Hastily constructing a raft and placing the now unconscious JILL upon it, he launched it into the seething maelstrom of waters and pushed off. Tossed like a cockle-shell upon the mountainous waves, the tiny craft with its precious freight was in imminent danger of foundering. But OLIVER was ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... primrose-glove adventurers—were a very different order of men from the present-day fellows, who take a turn in Circassia or China, or a campaign with Garibaldi; and who, with all their defects, are men of mettle and pluck and daring. Of these latter I found my new ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Clerk to stand my friend if necessary. He has mettle in him, and thinks of my honour as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the soldier. 'This lady is of a reticent, independent, complicated disposition, and any sudden proceeding would put her on her mettle. You don't dream what my impatience is, my boy. It is a thing transcending your utmost conceptions! But I proceed slowly; I know better than to do otherwise. Thank God there is plenty of time. As long as there is no risk of Somerset's return my ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... not know us, me boy," O'Grady said. "I tell ye, the men were splendid. I expect if we had been with the others we should have behaved just as badly; but being chosen for the rear-guard put our boys all on their mettle, and every man felt that the honour of the regiment depended on his good conduct. Then, too, we were lucky in lighting on a big store of tobacco, and tobacco is as good as food and drink. The men gave a lot away to the other regiments, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... thing arose from admirers of Alleyn's among the theatre-frequenting gentry offering wagers to friends who championed Peele in order to provide after-dinner entertainment for themselves, by putting the poet and the player on their mettle in "expressing a passion"—the one in action and the other in phrases. Alleyn refused the contest "for fear of hurting Peele's credit," but gossip of the proposed wager got abroad and was distorted ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... coupling it with the assertion that he could produce songs and ballads as good as those sold at fairs, so much admired by his father. Parker Clare again shook his head in a doubting mood, expressing a strong disbelief of his offspring's abilities in writing poetry. Thus put upon his mettle, John resolved to do his best to change the scepticism of his father, and having written some verses which he liked, and corrected them over and over again into desirable smoothness, he one evening read them to his astonished parents. But the result was thoroughly ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... that in our age there was neuer seene in stone and mettle such a peece of woorke embost, chased, and engrauen. For it was a woonder to see, that stones of such extreame hardnesse, as that which was the steale to hould vppe the Vessell, should be cut and wrought to that purpose, as if it had beene as soft as wax. A woorke raither ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... tired of my boasting, and determined to put my courage to the proof. One autumn evening, when it was very dark, he gave me the church key, and told me to go and fetch a Bible he had left in the pulpit. To put me on my mettle he said something which made it impossible ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... nestled between her brow and the rim of its precious covering. She smiled as she began her speech, but not enough to spoil what she honestly believed to be a very business-like air and manner. John had quietly dropped out of the negotiations, and she felt herself put upon her mettle as his agent. "And my husband tells me the price of this front room is ten dollars ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... set and determined, but there was no look of fear upon it, nor did his heart sink when a cry of triumph went up from the crowd on the banks. The white man knew by old experience in the cricket-field and in many a boat-race that it is well not to halloo till you are out of the woods. His mettle was up, he was not the Reverend William Rufus Holly, missionary, but Billy Rufus, the champion cricketer, the sportsman playing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Don John, going on board of a light frigate, passed rapidly through that part of the armada lying on his right, while he commanded Requesens to do the same with the vessels on his left. His object was to feel the temper of his men, and rouse their mettle by a few words of encouragement. The Venetians he reminded of their recent injuries. The hour for vengeance, he told them, had arrived. To the Spaniards, and other confederates, he said, "You have come to fight the battle of the Cross,—to conquer or die. But whether you die or conquer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Darnians), empties itself into the Tigris; and this river, passing by the city Opis, discharges its waters into the Red Sea.[13] When Cyrus attempted to pass this river Gyndes, which could only be done by boats, one of the white horses called sacred, full of mettle, plunged into the stream and endeavored to reach the opposite bank; but, being submerged in the current, it was carried away. Cyrus, enraged at the river for this injury, threatened to reduce it so low that in future women should ford ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... had a very pleasant conversation; but we took perhaps a glass more than that fine fellow of a Prince has been accustomed to," said the Governor; "and I observe this morning that he seems a little off his mettle. We'll get him mellow again ere bedtime. This is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... favours are easily won because they look on dalliance as the best pastime offered them, and are eager for such opportunities of it as you fleering coxcombs will afford them. But this Mademoiselle de Lavedan is of a vastly different mettle. She is a woman; not a doll. She is flesh and blood; not sawdust, powder, and vermilion. She has a heart and a will; not a spirit ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and put on his mettle, Moses would keep a keen look-out on his hopeful family for the next day, and the seed which the grandmother had sown came up in black and blue bruises or, the family anatomy, especially on that portion of it which belonged to Solomon. For Moses's crumbling trousers were buckled ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... under the command of Sir John French, the chief stumbling block in the path of the Germans as they advanced on Paris, were proving their mettle every day. Despite their numerical inferiority to the enemy, they stood bravely to their herculean task, until now the whole world realized that they were the real fighting strength of ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... slashed and scarred, I scarce had thought to fight again, But love of the old game dies hard, So to't, my lady, if you're fain! I'm scarce the mettle to refrain, I'll ask no quarter from your art— But what if we should both be slain! I fight ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... crash'd a low binder, and then close behind her The sward to the strokes of the favourite shook; His rush roused her mettle, yet ever so little She shortened her stride as we raced ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... situation was not altogether comfortable. Yet the boys made the most of it, with the hope that by daylight they would have an opportunity of meeting the Fenians and proving the quality of their mettle. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... Assistant had not long to wait for an opportunity to show his mettle. Dermot had not been gone a fortnight before one or two raids were attempted on British villages by lawless mountaineers from across the Bhutan frontier. Wargrave soon proved that the mantle of Colonel ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... put upon his mettle immediately. He would show them that even as outspoken and independent a young lady as Miss Christina Lindsay was not likely to continue her opposition long. He felt a keen delight in the ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... 'This is a laborious, troublesome, hopeless occupation, in which there is not reward enough to make it worth my while,' I tell him but 'Attack it: rejoice to see something so near to challenge your mettle, and if you meet the battle boldly so, and ennoble yourself, you will immediately understand how to think of the ennoblement of your people and your country as glorious.' 'Altius tendimus! We move towards a higher!'—The country ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... plainly appear, he gained a hearing from persons in high places, and induced the admiralty to adopt his scheme. A frigate was given him, and he sailed for the West Indies; whence, after a long search, he returned unsuccessful, though not without adventures which proved his mettle. It was the epoch of the buccaneers; and his crew, tired of a vain and toilsome search, came to the quarterdeck, armed with cutlasses, and demanded of their captain that he should turn pirate with them. Phips, a tall and powerful man, instantly fell upon ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... certainly one of the most extraordinary examples on record of the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties; but there have been many striking examples among slaves of lads showing this mettle. My ex-slave friend, to whom reference has been made, is certainly to be reckoned as one of these. It is probable that his mother may have passed as a woman of education, seeing that she knew the English alphabet ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... cried Archie hastily. "She just fancies the life—thinks it offers me a good chance to prove my mettle. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... for ten pounds a year have for generations turned out better educated men than in our public schools for two hundred pounds, and of late the school boards have shown how efficiency can be combined with low prices. This last development has put the great educational establishments upon their mettle, and induced them to consider whether a smattering of Greek obtained in twenty years, and forgotten in the twenty-first, is, after all, the highest form of intellectual culture. The head-masters of Harrow, Winchester and Marlbro' have ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... the morning you wake, have your row with old Em'ly, she kicks you out, we meet—we'll meet at the Rings!" He danced up and down the carriage. Some one in the next carriage punched at the partition, and when this happens, all lads with mettle know that they must ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... of the 266, applying and releasing the brakes, and running as far ahead as he dared upon the loosened timbers of the culvert, for which the section gang's slowflag was out. Carter, the engineer on the passenger-train, jumped; but his fireman was of better mettle and stayed with the machine, sliding the wheels with the driver-jams, and pumping sand on the rails up to the moment when the shuddering mass of iron and steel thrust its pilot under the trucks of Lidgerwood's car, lifted them, dropped them, and ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... auld city, street by street, An' winter fu' o' snaw an' sleet, Awhile shut in my gangrel feet An' goavin' mettle; Noo is the soopit ingle sweet, ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were least respectful, or where the resistance of inertia was longest, we differ altogether from M. Brouwer in his belief, that the suitors fancied Apollo to have gone distracted. If they ever said so, this must have been merely by way of putting the Oracle on its mettle, and calling forth some plainer—not any essentially different—answer from the enigmatic god; for there it was that the doubts of the clients settled, and on that it was the practical demurs hinged. Not because even Battus, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... not therefore surprise us in the least that when Dick Little came across the bridge he was greeted by Andra Kissock with the information that he was in the clutches of The Avenger of Blood, who, mounted upon a mettle steed with remarkably dirty feet, curveted across the road and held the pass. He was required to give up a "soda scone or his life." The bold Dick, who had caught the infection, stoutly refused to yield either. His life was dear to him, but a soda scone considerably dearer. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett |
