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More "Straining" Quotes from Famous Books



... the government to shelve the IMF program, stop most debt payments, and suspend rescheduling negotiations. Aid from Gulf Arab states, worker remittances, and trade contracted; and refugees flooded the country, producing serious balance-of-payments problems, stunting GDP growth, and straining government resources. The economy rebounded in 1992, largely due to the influx of capital repatriated by workers returning from the Gulf, but recovery was uneven in 1994-97. The government is implementing the reform program adopted in 1992 and continues ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... ingwa, or innen,—meaning karma as inevitable retribution, —comes naturally to every lip as an interpretation, as a consolation, or as a reproach. The peasant toiling up some steep road, and feeling the weight of his handcart straining every muscle, murmurs patiently: "Since this is ingwa, it must be suffered." Servants disputing, ask each other, "By reason of what ingwa must I now dwell with such a one as you?" The incapable or vicious man ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... there then straining his eyes abstractedly in the direction of the rock until it disappeared behind them in the gathering twilight. He had been inspirited for the whole voyage; and the first thing he should do when they arrived ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... gap, straining my eyes into the gloom, and as I did so could just distinguish a dark figure receding quickly beneath the wall of ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... more enduring than my own presence, and had not they overwhelmed me by their regard, I should have felt afraid. As it was I pushed upward through their immovable host in some such catching of the breath as men have when they walk at night straining for a sound, and I felt myself to be ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... be placed in their summer quarters directly after potting. Stand them in rows in a sunny situation, the pots clear of one another, sufficient room being allowed between the rows for the cultivator to move freely among them. The main stakes are tied to rough trellis made by straining wire in two rows about 2 ft. apart between upright poles driven into the ground. Coarse coal ashes or coke breeze are the best materials to stand the pots on, there being little risk of worms working through into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... laughed to see Donald's awkward position—to see him hanging over the water, red-faced and straining. Donald laughed, too. At once he lost his balance and ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... IN ON THE GALLOP Always the guns must follow closely in the wake of the infantry to break up German counter attacks and hold the ground gained. Here a detachment of the Royal Horse Artillery storms through a deserted Flanders village, straining every nerve to save those few seconds that may mean the saving or the loss of the new ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... his officers. To the astonishment, if not of the men of his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... traitorous Papist and the crafty vagrant fox trapped at last; but between them, looking over their shoulders, was a woman's face in which Anthony saw the most intense struggle of emotions. The face was quite white, the lips parted, the eyes straining, and sorrow and compassion were in every line, as she watched the cheerful priest among his warders; and yet there rested on it, too, a strange light as of triumph. It was the face of one who sees ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... fog were stealing out through the trees, changing shape every instant, but always advancing: now presenting the appearance of an aligned regiment of huge, shadowy men, now nothing but a wall of semi-solid vapor. And still, with eyeballs straining in their sockets, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and crossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and march discipline told increasingly ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... his horse on a lava-crusted ridge, straining bloodshot eyes into the mesa that stretched dimly before him, when dawn came streaking the sky with blood orange and purple and crimson. The stars were quenched in that flood of light; and Pink, looking now with clearer vision, saw that there was no living thing in ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... you follow as soon as you can." Leaving her in the care of her maid, he hastened out of the room, and was soon at the door of his mother's chamber. He stood for a moment in the doorway, and his straining ears caught the gentle tones of his mother's voice, speaking in a low but cheerful tone. His knees trembled beneath him with joyful excitement. Fearful of trusting himself in her presence till he had become calmer, he noiselessly sank on the nearest chair, with beating heart and straining ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... you so vpon me? I am but sorry, not affear'd: delaid, But nothing altred: What I was, I am: More straining on, for plucking backe; ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... with sudden malignity; and the terror of Thunder Mountain held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where? Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... and catching sight of what was taking place at the drawbridge, fell back in a swoon on the carpet of the hall. The shepherd boy raised her in his arms and fled for the hills. Along the road was the wild stampede of the people, all straining for the hills, pouring in a mad rush from the valley and the town. Behind them were the still madder, swifter, more terrible waters, coming in sudden thuds, in furious drives, eddying and sculping and rearing in an orgy or remorseless and heartrending destruction. Down before that roaring avalanche ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... physical channels in a manner suitable to its own requirements, instead of trying to manipulate the mind by the unnatural forcing of its mechanical instrument. In all our studies on these lines we must remember that development is always by perfectly natural growth and is not brought about by unduly straining any portion ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... was sitting at work last night I heard a dog on the deck howling fearfully. I sprang up, and found it was one of the puppies that had touched an iron bolt with its tongue and was frozen fast to it. There the poor beast was, straining to get free, with its tongue stretched out so far that it looked like a thin rope proceeding out of its throat; and it was howling piteously. Bentzen, whose watch it was, had come up, but scarcely knew what to do. He took ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... the eastern fringe of the vast region which then went by the name of Louisiana. All the stalwart freemen who had made their rude clearings, and built their rude towns, on the hither side of the mighty Mississippi, were straining with eager desire against the forces which withheld them from seizing with strong hand the coveted province. They did not themselves know, and far less did the public men of the day realize, the full import ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... paint so much still life?—baskets of fruit, a hunter's game-bag, a divided melon, etc. I frankly own that they would thrill me more if I knew their market price, so that I might be imagining what delightful meals I could offer my family without straining the household purse, which is my excuse for the intimate details concerning food and ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... preface, shadowy of the truth They emblem: not that, in themselves, the things Are crude; but on thy part is the defect, For that thy views not yet aspire so high." Never did babe, that had outslept his wont, Rush, with such eager straining, to the milk, As I toward the water, bending me, To make the better mirrors of mine eyes In the refining wave; and, as the eaves Of mine eyelids did drink of it, forthwith Seem'd it unto me turn'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... the very babel of conflict; horses and mules neighing and screaming and straining at their ropes, dogs barking, men yelling, the clash of swords, the rattle and crash of musketry, the screams of the wounded and the groans of the dying. Was ever such a pandemonium? The Guides in small knots, though hard stricken, fought with determined courage; but they were ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... be done! This was the more difficult as it was by no means clear what had already been done. Even while I supported her drooping figure I was straining my eyes across her shoulder for succor of some kind. Suddenly the figure of a rapid rider appeared upon the road. It seemed familiar. I looked again—it was the blessed Enriquez! A sense of deep relief came over me. I loved Consuelo; but never before had ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... how will they manage to get clear away without the proper drovers finding which way they have gone?" asked Rupert, who had been straining his ears to discover the route taken by the men who had just ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... superficial confidence in the idea of progress is reliance upon social palliatives instead of radical cures for our public maladies. We are so predisposed to think that the world inherently wants to be better, is inwardly straining to be better, that we are easily fooled into supposing that some slight easement of external circumstance will at once release the progressive forces of mankind and save the race. When, for example, one compares the immense amount of optimistic expectancy about a warless ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... to roll gently in response to the ever-increasing swell. As the White Ensign fluttered happily from the stern, most of us took advantage of the still comparatively calm sea by parading along the deck in company with a British commodore, confidently straining our eyes to catch a first glimpse of the approaching escort; and it was, unfortunately, obvious that every one on board did not share our good spirits. As the disconcerting movements of the ship increased, the Anglo-German element, pale-faced and dejected, assembled amidships, and forming a small, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... straining for the sound of the knocker on the front door. Miss Nippett lay so that her weakening eyes could watch the door of the bedroom. Now and again, Mavis addressed one or two remarks to her, but the old woman ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... aft below hatches. We were soon engaged in the agreeable discussion of grog and small talk. Nothing interrupted our conversation. The heavy lashing and rush of the weltering sea on the quarters—the groaning and straining of the vessel—the regular strokes of the engines which boomed indistinctly yet surely on the ear, were alike unattended to. Impelled by that mighty power, we almost bid defiance to wind and weather. As the glass circulated, the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... one who meets a staggering blow, The stout old ship doth reel, And waters vast go seething past— But will it last, this fearful blast, On straining shroud and groaning mast, O sailor ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... brought for a debt of which there was no written evidence, the plaintiff, when asked what he had to show for it, always answered "good suit," and tendered his witnesses, who were sometimes examined by the court. /3/ I think it is not straining the evidence to infer that the "good suit" of the later reports was the descendant of the Saxon transaction witnesses, as it has been shown that ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... had stopped he could hear the far-off growling of guns; deep-voiced monsters which his imagination pictured straining on their leashes while snarling at each other across the space of miles—truly dogs of war! He drew farther back in the seat, dreading to get out; but the moment had come, the fellows and nurses were moving to the door, the great ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... stood so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamors of a nation which remembered only the lofty ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of the speakers now fell, and Cuthbert was straining his ear to listen, when he heard footsteps approaching the tent, and he glided away ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... it to his lips; then snatching off his bonnet, hid it there, and bent among the shrubbery and was gone, as swiftly and silently as a wolf. Frances flew to the house and up the stairs to her room. There she threw up the window and sat panting in it, straining, listening, for sounds ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... is, it is, hie hence be gone away: It is the Larke that sings so out of tune, Straining harsh Discords, and vnpleasing Sharpes. Some say the Larke makes sweete Diuision; This doth not so: for she diuideth vs. Some say, the Larke and loathed Toad change eyes, O now I would they had chang'd voyces ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... the officers in the room below became louder, and by straining his ears the lad could make out what ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... for her. She would go down with her dying world, proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I tasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken with tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into the shadow of the great ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... then that you expect?" said Allan; and straining his eyes until they almost started from their sockets, he fell with a convulsive shudder into the arms of Donald and his brother, who, knowing the nature of his fits, had come near to prevent his fall. They seated him upon a bench, and supported ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... can you suffer hell so to prevail? My breast I 'll burst with straining of my courage, And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder, But I will ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... day in New York City, after four years. The streets are crowded. Here are men and women, but I see only the horses,—you know, sir, how I love them. They go by with heavy truck and cab, steaming, straining', slipping in the deep snow. You hear the song of lashes, the whack of whips, and, now and then, the shout of some bedevilled voice. Horses fall, and struggle, and lie helpless, and their drivers—well, if I were to watch them long, I should ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... I crouched there, straining my ears for a repetition of this unearthly sound that was like nothing I had ever heard before,—a quick, light, tapping chink, now in rhythm, now out, now ceasing, now recommencing, so that I almost doubted but that this wood must be ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... From various psychic premonitions he knew quite well that the night would not pass without adventure; but he did not wish to force its arrival; and he wished to remain normal, and let the animals remain normal, so that, when it came, it would be unattended by excitement or by any straining of the attention. Many experiments had made him wise. And, for the rest, ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... gaze. The sails were now filling well, and there was an exhilarating sound of straining cordage in the air while the vessel glided on. The young journalist was not an impressionable man, but he felt all these things. The sense of open freedom, the gentle rise and fall of the vessel, the whirring breeze, and the distant line of ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... man, and his wrath had been long demanding expression. They closed with a jar that rocked the electric lamp on the desk. There was a second of straining and uncertainty. Then with a jerk Gard lifted his adversary clear off his feet, and shook him, shook him with the fury of a bulldog, and as relentlessly. Then, as if the temptation to murder was more than he could longer resist, he flung him ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... awoke, I saw Amante, half raised, resting on one hand, and eagerly gazing, with straining eyes, into the kitchen below. I looked too, and both heard and saw the miller and two of his men eagerly and loudly talking about the old woman, who had not appeared as usual to make the fire in the stove, and prepare her master's breakfast, and who now, late on in the morning, had been found ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... the wisdom and reasonableness of our course. My son is even straining his sense of military duty to escort us to a place of safety, where you will ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... still, with every sense on the alert, straining their ears intently for the faintest murmur. In the far distance it seemed to them that they could certainly catch the unmistakable rush of a stream flowing swiftly over a rough, stony bed. Guided by the sound, they stumbled on, till at length, after climbing over a number of rocks, they reached ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... to ponder, and is a subtle link of connection with what is to be written in the next volume, when the aspect of the Ascension as an end is subordinate, and its aspect as a beginning is prominent. So regarded, it filled the disciples with joy. Thus you see, I think, that without any illegitimate straining of the expressions of the text, we do come to the point of view from which, to begin with, this great event must be looked at. We have to take the same view, and to regard that Ascension not only ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... was cut in small pieces thicker and bigger than a domino, and steeped in fresh lime-juice for half a day. The sauce was made by pouring a cup of seawater over grated cocoanuts and after several hours' straining through the fiber of young cocoanut shoots. It was thick, like ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... have ever been applied to a man whose death had so stirred up the hearts of his contemporaries, if it had not been felt that something different from that nature which each man carried in his own breast was in his case requisite; and that a certain straining of mind was inseparable from the subject. Accordingly, an epitaph is adopted in which the Writer had turned from the genuine affections and their self-forgetting inspirations, to the end that his understanding, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the joyous irresponsibility of a free man. To Mr. Dorset, however, his wife's attitude was a subject of such evident concern that, when he was not scraping the sauce from his fish, or scooping the moist bread-crumbs from the interior of his roll, he sat straining his thin neck for a glimpse of her ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... let me tell you," said Tubby, straining his neck in an endeavor to watch the evolutions of the far-distant object sailing on the border of the cloud, and which looked so much like a great bird with ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... dress the part with such a strict regard for detail; but a strong disinclination urged her against it, and yet at the time she had wondered why such a small thing should be so against the grain when others so much more important were unconsidered. It was very like the proverbial "straining at a gnat to swallow a camel." Be this as it might, she had replaced the ring where she found it and ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... for a little time longer, then put away the letter, looked at the clock, and thence returned to the windows, straining her eyes over the landscape without, as she murmured, 'I wish Charlotte was ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... found the chalice, and brought it where the laird lay straining his ears, and waiting for it as a man at the point of death might await the ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... sunlight. In seven minutes or perhaps less, as the Transcontinental would be straining to make up lost time, the train would enter Rock Cut three miles and more west, and he would recapture the powerful throbbing of the locomotive as she emerged on the farther side, having conquered the worst of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... We listened with straining ears. He was right. The low, ominous murmur changed to a distant roar, grew louder yet, and yet louder, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... placed it before the smaller temple of lust; then, by a gentle uniform pressure, I gradually and almost imperceptibly glided in to the utmost extent. She pushed her bottom out, and, I could feel, was straining as if to void something, which is the real method to accelerate the entrance of a prick in that enchanting channel with the least difficulty and pain. We then commenced a slow movement—she wanted me to stoop forward ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... liberty. He would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him, carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... common-sense. All who wish to see it developed by a man of genius should read that golden little work, Bagehot's Physics and Politics, in which (it seems to me) the complete sense of the way in which concrete things grow and change is as livingly present as the straining after a pseudo-philosophy of evolution is livingly absent. But there are never wanting minds to whom such views seem personal and contracted, and allied to an anthropomorphism long exploded in other fields ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... Then, with straining ears, dilated pupils, every sense tense with this effort to hear, the need to breathe, the impossibility of seeing, he advanced slowly, a pistol in one hand, touching the wall with the other to guide himself. He walked thus for fifteen minutes. A ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... the bird in ecstasy. She felt an infinite longing for happiness, for some sudden demonstration of tenderness, for the revelation of super-human poetry, and she felt such a softening at her heart, and relaxation of her nerves, that she began to cry, without knowing why, and now the young man was straining her close to him, and she did not remove his arm; she did not think of it. Suddenly the nightingale stopped, and a voice called out in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness. But there was something else. Had it been fancy or ... This time there could be no mistake. He had not heard the lift stop, but some one was knocking softly at the door, softly but persistently. He turned his head. The room seemed filled with shadows. He had written ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were beside the brown horse, standing saddled and bridled, and already quivering and straining to be off. Delmonte lifted Rita in his arms,—no time now for courtly mounting,—then sprang to the saddle before her. He spoke to the horse, who stood trembling, but ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... mouth—caring more for the sword than the plough—good Catholics, though by nature barbarous—and placing their hopes of deliverance from English rule on foreign intervention. For this they were constantly straining their eyes towards France or Spain, and, no matter whence the ally came, were ever ready to rise in revolt. One virtue, however—intensest love of country—more or less redeemed these vices, for so they deserve to be called; but to establish anything like strict military discipline ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... up their feet very high behind, and drawing their hands along the soles. As they approached, they frequently eyed each other from head to foot, in a contemptuous manner, casting several arch looks at the spectators, straining their muscles, and using a variety of affected gestures. Being advanced within reach of each other, they stood with both arms held out straight before their faces, at which part all their blows were aimed. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... formation, and in his left the remnants of an apple, with which he occasionally relieved the duty of the before-mentioned cigar. He was standing, lost in the contemplation of a Hessian, who lay breathless before him. At a little distance were three or four of the guides, leaning on their muskets, and straining their eyes in the direction of the combatants, and at his elbow stood a man who, from the implements in his hand, seemed ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... quite steep; but the horse was fresh as yet, and clambered upward with good heart; and the rider was used to rough places, and felt no discomfort from her position. The fear of being followed had succeeded to the fear of being lost, for the time being; and instead of straining her ears on the track behind she was straining her eyes to the wilderness before. The growth of sage-brush was dense now, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... been given, because it ought to have been given, et alia talia. The States supposed, that, by their tenth amendment, they had secured themselves against constructive powers. They were not lessoned yet by Cohen's case, nor aware of the slipperiness of the eels of the law. I ask for no straining of words against the General Government nor yet against the States. I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore, to see maintained that wholesome distribution ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down over the ship's high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, and dimly saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight. Ropes were dropt over, and presently three huge antediluvian-looking tortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardly of the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five long months, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land wear a fabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... ambition, had no influence on his uncorrupted mind. It is said, that when he first engaged in the study of the law, his father exhorted him with great earnestness to shun the practice, too common in that profession, of straining every point in favor of prerogative, and perverting so useful a science to the oppression of liberty; and in the midst of these rational and virtuous counsels, which he reiterated, he was suddenly seized with an apoplexy, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... should feel that the colon has been evacuated thoroughly. Many who have regular bowel movements do not have this satisfying sensation afterwards. When the movement is satisfactory in every way little or no straining is necessary. The colon simply empties itself thoroughly, and the evacuation is then complete. However, few have movements of the bowels that are satisfactory to this extent. There should be at least one bowel movement of this kind each day. Two movements of this character would be better, ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... himself up beside Slavin who, in a few tense whispers, acquainted his superior with all details of the situation. Full well, both men realized what a perilous spot it was, for all concerned, on the eastern front of the shack. Straining their eyes in the gray, ghostly gloom they could just discern an open casement. Apparently it was from this well-sheltered embrasure that Gully had previously attempted to pick off Slavin. With the coming of daylight their position would be absolutely untenable in the ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... first of those who gathered round the well. He and others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him up again, while the snow beat upon them all—the straining men—the two dripping shapes emerging from the earth. A murmur of horror greeted the first sight of that marred face on Isaac's arm, as the lanterns fell upon it. For there was a gash above the eye, caused by a projection in the ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... she saw Goritz rise smiling, straining with his arms, hauling Renwick over the sill. Death! Hers, too, then! With a cry of despair she reached them, clinging with her arms around ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... learned that there was official dignity among us, and addressed the unworthy bearer of public honors as Eccellenza, and, at parting bequeathed his advantage to the conductor, commending us all in set terms to his courtesy. He hovered caressingly about us as long as we remained, straining politeness to do us some last little service; and when the diligence rolled away, he did all that one man could to give us a round ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... pushing forward Zeppelin design and straining every nerve in the improvement of rigid dirigible construction, until L.33 was evolved; she was generally known as a super-Zeppelin, and on September 24th, 1916, six weeks after her launching, she was damaged by gun-fire in a raid over London, being ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... With a bound like that of an angry tiger, he flung himself upon the ex-gardener, clinging to him with legs and arms in such a manner that Thomas felt as if a snake had hold of him. In vain he tried to shake the boy off. Julien gripped on him with all his might, straining every nerve to throw Thomas down. Hampered by the struggles of Estelle, the man could scarcely keep his feet; he could not ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... zest! It seems to be extinct nowadays; it is a charm that I have not discovered in any living Englishman. What a healthy outlook! Not a trace of straining anywhere. He took life with both hands. How he threw himself into his work, his amusements, his clothes and women and politics and food and theatres and pictures. Warm heart, cool head. So childlike, and yet so wise. There's only one thing that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... all his reserves into the wrong spot, and that the 53rd Division's stout resistance against superior numbers had pinned them down to the wrong end of the line. There was nothing, therefore, for the Turk to do but to try to hold another position, and he was straining every nerve to reach it. The East Anglian Division went up west of Gaza and held from Sheikh Redwan to the sea by seven o'clock, two squadrons of the Corps' cavalry rode along the seashore and had patrols on the wadi Hesi a little ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... seeing little green men flitting through the trees.... Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. I have a constant feeling of dreadful expectancy, of imminent disaster, mixed with a sense of pain and a lively—almost childlike—curiosity. To say that this ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone

... conjunction; his hands he kept passing round her body, and employed in toying with her enchanting breasts. As soon too as she felt him at home as he could reach, she lifted her head a little from the pillow, and turning her neck, without much straining, but her cheeks glowing with the deepest scarlet, and a smile of the tenderest satisfaction, met the kiss he pressed forward to give her as they were thus close joined together: when leaving him to pursue ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... F. Rhodes and the Hon. Hubert Howard. No doubt it may be said that the latter represents the New York Herald to which he is nominally accredited. We are, however, well aware that his dispatches are forwarded directly to the Times Office where it is not over-straining the question to say that they are there read and used. Under the rules, all telegraphic messages must be delivered in sections of 200 words, each correspondent being only permitted to send in rotation that number ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... used to this sort of tailoring, he had made rather too close a fit of it, and now that it was dried up at the edges and slightly shrunk, he found difficulty in removing it. Seeing, upon further effort, that he could not get it off without risk of straining the lamb's anatomy, he laid the problem across his knees again and searched his pockets for his knife. He had felt for it, not very thoroughly, before. The knife seemed ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... two of its rivals in sea power. While it has not quite succeeded in this, the United States and Germany pushing it closely, it is well in the lead as compared with any single Power, and to keep this lead it is straining every nerve and fiber ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... decoration first appeared. La Chinoiserie it was called, and it has daintiness and a curious fascination about it, but many inappropriate things were done in its name. The furniture of the time was firmly placed upon the ground, the arm-chairs had strong straining-rails, square or curved backs, scroll arms carved and partly upholstered and stuffed seats and backs. The legs of chairs were usually tapering in form and ornamented with gilding, or marquetry, or richly carved, and later the feet ended in a carved leaf design. Some of ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop

... would have been unsafe in the event of an extensive inundation taking place I judged it necessary at all events to reach a somewhat elevated outlying hill of sandstone which was distant about two miles. This point we succeeded at last in gaining, although not without severely injuring and straining some of the ponies in effecting it. This rising ground was however well situated for our camp under present circumstances: it was composed of porous sandstone, which in these climates dries almost immediately after rain. There was plenty ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... ran his fingers through his long wild hair. He panted softly like a hound straining at a leash. Then, with an obvious effort to throw off the magic of Minook, he turned suddenly about, and "Poor old Kaviak!" says he, looking round and speaking in quite an ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... fish Frozen fish Methods of cooking Recipes: Baked fish Broiled fish Meat soup Preparation of stock Selection of material for stock Quantity of materials needed Uses of scraps Extracting the juice Temperature of the water to be used Correct proportion of water Time required for cooking Straining the stock To remove the fat Simple Stock or broth Compound stock or double broth To clarify soup stock Recipes: Asparagus soup Barley rice sago or tapioca soup Caramel for coloring soup brown Julienne soup Tomato soup White soup Vermicelli ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... patient and careful census gives me nearly six hundred. And all this comes out of a purse no larger than a pea. By what miracle is there room for such a family? How do those thousands of legs manage to grow without straining themselves? ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... of their talk dried up again. They could make no headway in clearing up their dilemma. To Jim each passing moment was making things harder; with each passing moment their friendship was straining under the pressure. Suddenly a thought flashed through his brain. It was a light of hope, where, before, all had ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... evil intent, but it also was doomed to failure. There was a quick step from the deeper shadows and a figure loomed suddenly in front of Thad who, with uplifted crutch, was still glaring at Bill. Only two words were spoken, a "You, huh?" from the larger chap; then a quick tackle, a short straining scuffle, and Thad was thrown so violently sidewise and hurtled against the bench from which Bill had just risen, that it and Thad went over on the ground together. The bench and the lad seemed to lie there equally helpless. Gus picked up the crutch ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... Brownley, I know. Can you really feel what you write as you make us do? Your characters appeal to me so that I live with them, every nerve alert to the straining point (but with pleasure). You are certianly the idol of the American people. I've heard you discussed by rich poor, monopolist antimonopolist during the publication of "Frenzied Finance" the ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... very uneasy. She tried reading, but her thoughts came between her and the page. Writing was no more helpful. She went to the piano. Music at least, if it did not soothe her, would prevent her straining her ears in listening for ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... retreat. What—this was his thought—what if this was the mouth of a well? Or a mediaeval trap for fools? He had seen such things in French castles. In the pitch darkness he could not guess whether he hung above an abyss or had the ground within an inch of his straining toes. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... with a sick heart and a parched little throat, selling her flowers and straining her eyes through the tumult ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... have added a word of advice regarding the manner of reading this work, which is, that I should wish the reader at first to go over the whole of it, as he would a romance, without greatly straining his attention, or tarrying at the difficulties he may perhaps meet with in it, with the view simply of knowing in general the matters of which I treat; and that afterwards, if they seem to him to merit a more ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes

... our shores are starred with light, Burning across the briny floods through the black mirk of night, Forth-gleaming like the eyes of Hope, or like the fires of Home, Upon the eager eyes of men far-straining o'er the foam. Good! But how greatly less than good to fear, to think, to know That inland England's less alert against a whelming foe Than when bonfire and beacon flared mere flame of wood and pitch, From Surrey hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... respectfully to his side, greeted him as Illustrious, inquired how his Magnificence had passed the latter part of the night. Whilst replying, as ever courteously—for in the look and bearing of Maximus there was that senatorius decor which Pliny noted in a great Roman of another time—his straining eyes seemed to descry a sail in the quarter he continually watched. Was it only a fishing boat? Raised upon the couch, he gazed long and fixedly. Impossible as yet to be sure whether he saw the expected bark; but the sail seemed to draw ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... however, the most inconvenient form we could choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,—a double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... No! There is a Nessus' Shirt on this Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... is a tour-de-force of symbolism, under which are veiled the symptoms of senile decay followed by death. It is very likely that some of the symbols may be lost; but it is not difficult to see, without straining, a possible interpretation for each; and some of them have passed into traditional use. The poetic beauty ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... crept along! It was a true October night, raw and cold, with a white fog crawling over the wet, shining cobblestones, and blurring the dim oil-lamps. I could not see fifty paces in either direction, but my ears were straining, straining, to catch the rattle of hoofs or the rumble of wheels. It is not a cheering place, monsieur, that street of Harley, even upon a sunny day. The houses are solid and very respectable over yonder, but there is nothing of the feminine about them. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... taking up new positions, the engineers at work remaking the roads, building new bridges over the Somme, laying down new railways and repairing old ones—the hundred and one different organisations that were working and straining every muscle and nerve for the common cause. Only the favoured few have the remotest idea of the enormous amount of work to be done ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... Demosthenes, and would have died as Cato. But his inglorious and obscure destiny confined him, against his will, in speculative inaction,—he had wings to spread, and no surrounding air to bear them up. He died young, straining his gaze into the future, and ardently surveying the space over which ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... there never was a time in the history of the breed when this particular feature needed more thoughtful, systematic and scientific attention devoted to it than now. For the past few years breeders have been straining every nerve, and leaving no stone unturned, to produce small stock, toys, in fact, and everyone realizes, who has given the question thoughtful consideration, that this line of breeding has been at the expense of the vigor, and indirectly largely of a beautiful disposition, of the dog, to say ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell

... there's such a gulf between story books and real life. The story books that I used to read in my youth, always turned out just as a man of good will and good heart and kindly spirit would wish them to do; but you'd be straining civility to Providence and telling a lie if you pretended real life does. Therefore I say, hope it may happen; but don't bet ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... be true, the very objection is itself one of the highest merits of the advice thus criticized. For the only grave danger before capable young Americans, and, indeed, before our Nation, is that of hastening too much, of sweeping on too rapidly, of straining every nerve too tensely, of living our lives with an ardor all too fierce and hot. Don't hurry—the world will last several ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... truth when he said the friends of Mazie and Cio-Cio-San were on the bridge. Johnny and Hanada had rushed from the room and had been standing there straining their eyes for a trace of that strange light beneath the water, when the first shot rang out. But the Russian had not counted on the extraordinary speed with which Johnny could ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell

... to be, "they shall be possessed of comfort." Donne (i.e."mistresses ) is a rhyme-word, and affords an instance of a straining of the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... gold and gun, Little treasures, houses,—nay, Guerdons of our dearest fight, Now are fuel for his sun, And the dreams that lit the night Burn as candles in the day. Yet we made thee, Man of Right, As our being plead to rise; Of our straining arm thy might; Even as we prayed for sight, Lo, afar thou hadst thy ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan

... he squealed, straining and kicking like an old man kangaroo. Anderson stuck to him, though, and with Sal's assistance held his finger on the block till Dad carefully rested the chisel on it and brought the hammer down. It did n't sever the finger—it ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... and her heart sank as she examined them. The poor women had toiled so over this work, stooping over it, straining their tired eyes. "I think we can alter it to your satisfaction, but I must ask you to be indulgent, signora. I will bring it back the day after to-morrow, if that will suit you." She folded the bodice carefully and wrapped it in the piece of paper ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... Runnymede, June 15, 1215, by John, king of England. After the king had signed it and gone away to his room, he rolled in a mad fury on the floor, screaming curses, and gnawing sticks and straw in the impotence of his, wrath.[2] Perhaps it would be straining words to call a transaction in which the consent was so one-sided a "contract," but the idea of Magna Charta was derived from that of the town charters with which people were already familiar. Thus a charter came to mean "a grant made by ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... Opus minus. In the first and earliest of these occurs a description, taken from Ptolemy, of the construction of the (observing) armillary sphere. He says that this cannot be made to move naturally by any mathematical device, but "a faithful and magnificent experimentor is straining to make one out of such material, and by such a device, that it will revolve naturally with the diurnal heavenly rotation." He continues with the statement that this possibility is also suggested by the fact that the motions of comets, of tides, and of certain planets also follow that of the Sun ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... last new book on the subject, deserves a special note. The author here takes a liberal view, and does not hesitate to illustrate Vedic religion with the light cast by other forms of superstition. But this method has its dangers, and there is perhaps a little too much straining after original types, giant-gods as prototypes and totemism in proper names, where Vedic data should be separated from what may have preceded Vedic belief. Oldenberg, as a ritualist, finds in Varuna, Dawn, and the Burial Service the inevitable stumbling-blocks ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... without you, my darling?" he responded, straining her to his breast. "I don't know how I shall be able to stand it. You need not be surprised to see me again at any time, returning to claim my treasure; and in the meanwhile we will write to each other every day. I shall want to know ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley

... the straining and bumping at the door. Mrs. Rusk's voice subsided to a sort of wailing; the men were talking all together, and I suppose the door opened, for I heard some of the voices, on a sudden, as if in the room; ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... should have been so many times attempted, how much harder must it have been to gain the country from so powerful a sovereign as the King of Bijapur, Lord of so many armies, who is not likely to refrain from straining every nerve to recover the possession of it and striking a decisive blow at our prestige, if he could do so? And whenever any one of his captains shall come up against this city, are we to surrender it immediately without first of all measuring our forces against him? If this ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens

... Kusatsu." He ran an eye over the bundle. "Ah! A terrific bundle; one to cause fright. There is nothing else to do." He would have liked to measure strength with this truant servant; doubtless a terrific female. The confectioner puffed and blew, with straining, swelling neck. The furoshiki at last was on the shoulders of the unhappy Rokuzo. Fortunately the shops of Nippon have no doors. A most mountainous and monstrous wrestler, a very Daniel Lambert, can be carried forth feet first from such a ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... back, sighted carefully and fired; the white horse went to his knees and his rider leaped clear. Instantly the pursued man vaulted into his saddle and rode furiously away. A dozen shots whipped the sage around him; one of them notched the ear of his straining mount, but in the end the bullets dropped short, the sun set, and through the gathering gloom the outlaw jogged easily up the long sandy slope toward Johannesburg. It was quite dark when he rode around ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... afther him, the rale gintleman that he is, while there's a topsail of his ship to be seen, and then I'll send my blessin' afther him, and pray for his good fortune wherever he goes, for he's the right sort and nothin' else." And Barny kept his word, and when his straining eye could no longer trace a line of the ship, the captain certainly had the benefit of "a poor ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... manner suitable to its own requirements, instead of trying to manipulate the mind by the unnatural forcing of its mechanical instrument. In all our studies on these lines we must remember that development is always by perfectly natural growth and is not brought about by unduly straining any portion ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... storm had, indeed, diminished. It might be a respite before the wind hauled into another quarter and renewed its ferocious violence, but the air was no longer thick with the whirling smother of foam and spray and the straining topmasts had ceased to bend like whips. The ship was gallantly easing herself of the waves which broke aboard and the rearing billows astern were not threatening to stamp ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... off in composers' relatively easy-going moods, and an isolated figure or two of serious revolt, like Berlioz and Liszt—but they only serve to prove the rule. Now, this identification is far from holding good. More consciously than ever before, instrumental music is straining beyond its own special domain and asking for external spurs to creative activity. And it asks in various quarters. It may ask merely the hint of particular emotional moods conditioned by special circumstances; or it may vie with the poet and the novelist in analysis of character. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... holding-blocks was lost in the noise of the band. The great whistle on the fabricating-plant split the air. The moving-picture camera-men cranked their machines. The last inches of the timbers that held the ship ashore were gnawed through. The sawyers said they could feel the ship straining. She wanted to get to her sea. They loved her ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... draughts, we know, is peculiarly calculated to fix the attention, without straining it. There is a composure and gravity in draughts, which insensibly tranquillises the mind; and, accordingly, the Dutch are fond of it, as they are of smoking, of the sedative influence of which, though he himself (Dr. Johnson) never smoked, he had a high opinion.—Journal of a Tour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... thought I should get over it in the end, but that most likely I should have a long time, years perhaps, of being very careful. And when I asked if I should be able to go back to Eton, he said he hardly expected it; and that he believed it was kinder to let me know at once than let me be straining and hoping on." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... experience. To Mrs. Archer and her daughter, despite their longer years in the army, it was thrillingly new. In the utter silence on the line and throughout the garrison the rhythmic tramp of feet, muffled by distance, could not fail to catch their straining ears, and far over across the parade, behind the barracks, betrayed by the glint of the moonlight on sloping steel, a shadowy little detachment went striding away toward ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day life, whirled around in a tornado of events, and landed in a situation so grotesque and yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are groaning, and straining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is hysteria, and that no man worthy of the name ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Straining very hard to hatch, I disrupted there my yolk; And I felt my yellow streaming Through my white; And the dream that I was dreaming Of posterity was broke In a night. Then from the papyrus-patch By the ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... experience of it, and who are wont to be a little incredulous even then about their conqueror's ability to repeat his victory. As one of these philosophers remarked, "Montague means running in the hurdle race; there is always a possibility of his breaking or straining something in that, and so being hors de combat for the Cup." However, Mr. Montague had won that race without damage to himself, and was evidently perfectly fit to take part in the fray. There is some slight delay at the start, owing to the ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... undisturbed in the warm, quiet air; I know what the plain looks like from the seat under the oak, how beautiful, with its rolling green waves burning to gold under the afternoon sky; I know how the hawks circle over it, and how the larks sing above it, and I edge as near to the open window as I can, straining my ears to hear them, and forgetting the young men who are telling me of all the races their horses win as completely as though they did not exist. I want to be out there on that golden grass, and look up into that endless blue, and feel the ecstasy of that song through all my ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim

... the easy conviction that the mere impulse of so mighty a force would sweep Caesar off the earth. They were late in arriving. The thirty days had passed, and there were no signs of the coming deliverers. Eager eyes were straining from the heights of the plateau; but nothing was seen save the tents of the legions or the busy units of men at work on the walls and trenches. Anxious debates were held among the beleaguered chiefs. The faint-hearted ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... towering trees, began to loom up uncertainly in the darkness, and Henry knew that the boat was slipping into the harbor. Presently he became aware of a dark spot ahead of them on the water, then another, and another; and straining his eyes, he saw that before them lay a great company of motor-boats and sailing yachts. Very slowly his own craft drew nearer, for it had all but lost its headway, until it was close to the fleet of pleasure boats. Then there was a tiny splash and one of the secret service men began ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... everywhere. The men and women on the roofs of the houses were absolutely still. The cavalry, their line now drawn completely about the mission, were motionless. Ned, straining his eyes toward the Alamo, could see nothing there. Suddenly he put up his hand and wiped his forehead. His fingers came away wet. His blood prickled in his veins like salt. He became impatient, angry. If the mine was ready, why did they not set the match? Such waiting ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and drawing his chair to the window, stationed himself there beside her. The deep peacefulness of the night was instinct with the breathing of the multitude that lay lost in slumber there, but on it now rose other and louder sounds; the straining and creaking of the bridge, the hollow rumble of wheels; the artillery was crossing on the half-submerged structure. Horses reared and plunged in terror at sight of the swift-running stream, the wheel of a caisson ran over the guard-rail; ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... his carbine into the hollow of his arm and glided through the bushes, followed by his men. With a throbbing heart I awaited the result of our plan. I knew the exact locality where the musket was placed, for Bill had described it to me, and I kept my straining eyes fixed upon the spot. But no sound came, and I began to fear that either they had gone in another direction or that Bill had not fixed the string properly. Suddenly I heard a faint click, and observed ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... was yet more necessary he should gain what money he could. For the laird found that his neighbour, Lord Lick-my-loof, had been straining every means in his power to get his liabilities all into his own hands, and had in great part succeeded. The discovery sent a pang to the heart of the laird, for he could hardly doubt his lordship's desire ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... his energy into these details, and he brought to them a keen intelligence, due to the constant straining of the mind toward peace ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... of Antwerp. They said to each other: "That is Lizele, Wavre Ste. Catherine, Waelhem." One after the other the Belgian guns were silenced, first Wavre, then Waelhem ... and the vibrating boom of the German heavies was heard louder than ever. The listening Bruxellois grew paler, straining every nerve to catch the voice of Antwerp. It was as if their own life as a nation was slowly dying away, as if they were mourning their own agony. But still the valiant spirit of the first days prevailed. "They will be beaten for all ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... mingled persuasively with the soothing softness of the voice itself. Conscience felt herself perilously swept by a torrent of thoughts that were all of the senses; the stifled senses of which he had just spoken, straining hard for release from their curbing. His splendid physical fitness; the almost gladiatorial alertness of his body; the glowing eagerness of his face were all arguing for him with an urgency greater than his words. This was the man who should ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... can collect all the produce of the distillation). I pour into a measure the mixture which remains in the retort while liquid; while it is getting cool, the myricine and the cerine harden or solidify, and the ceroleine remains alone in solution in the alcohol. I separate this liquid by straining it through fine linen; and by a last operation, I filter it through a paper in a glass funnel, after having mixed with it the alcohol resulting the distillation. I keep in reserve this liquor in a stopper-bottle, and make use of it as I want it, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various

... was straining his ears to catch what Jean Forette was saying to the attendant who had drawn the frothing ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... Ruth liked the kitchen best, with its tiled floor and patch of afternoon sun; with its tall clock in the corner, its line of straining geraniums in the low window-shelf, and its high mantle-piece crowned by two china dogs with red lozenges on them, holding baskets ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... follows her with his every glance," she added roguishly. Susan was never averse to straining the truth a little when ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... simple but inviolable rule that where there is an obvious straining to produce an effect by the use of any training aid, then the effect of the training aid is lost and the speaker is proportionately enfeebled. A famous World War II commander said of all operations: "It is the chaps, not the charts, that get the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... not like it. But it was too late now. Mr Jarman stood ready with his pistol up, the noise of the field suddenly changed to silence, and the two athletes, with arms out, stood straining ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... and straining 'Neath burdens graver than mine; They are weary, yet uncomplaining,— I know it, yet I repine: I know it, how time will ravage, How time will level, and yet I long with a longing savage, I ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... lower regions which border on that kind of pole of cold towards which are straining the efforts of the many physicists who have of late years succeeded in getting a few degrees further forward, we may turn to a gas still more difficult to liquefy than hydrogen. Thus, thermometers have been ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... the great men. Under their very feet the little street boys play their games of pitching at tiny pyramids of dried lupins, unless they have filberts, and lupins are almost as good; and as the dandified hanger-on of Maecenas, straining his ear for the sound of his patron's voice from within the litter, heedlessly crushes the little yellow beans under his sandal, the particular small boy whose stake is smashed clenches his fist, and with flashing eyes curses the dandy's dead ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... proved very beneficial to Kate's health, but the never-ending surprises and expectations she was exposed to finished by so straining and sharpening her nerves that the stupors, the assuagements of drink, became, as it were, a necessary make-weight. Her love for Dick pressed upon and agonized her; it was like a dagger whose steel was being slowly reddened in the flames of brandy, and in this ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... valleys, and mysterious crevasses from which clouds of steam and yellow vapor curled. Still it seemed they must crash against one of those slender pinnacles. Nearer it came like a flash; a dizzying blur, now, that drove directly in their straining faces. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... proposed that they should make a "train;" that is, bind all the sleds together, and so go down: it would be more delightful than ever by moonlight. No sooner said than done. Only Pussy's sled was not tied to her brother's, for he feared lest the straining and shocks that often took place in this kind of coasting might prove dangerous to her. She followed, therefore, as usual; but Otto could not stop his sled if she was delayed, for he had to go on with the "train." Off they went, and the long chain ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... paused and looked down upon his unwilling interlocutor, who, with muscles straining against the cords that held him, and with eyes nearly starting out of their sockets in an access of fear and of rage, was indeed presenting a ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... now. They could hear the labouring of the horses, the wheezing of straining harness. Then the pole of the carriage became entangled with Stair's carefully angled lodge-gates. The coach stopped. The driver sprang from his seat and ran to keep his horses from plunging over into ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... matter. When the fine weather first broke up, it happened about midnight, and the change commenced with a stiff breeze from the eastward. The sea rose at once, and, long before daybreak, the Pharos was rolling heavily in the swell, and straining violently at the strong cable which ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... put his paper into his pocket, and threw himself into an attitude of command, while he glanced up at the straining canvas, and Mr Saunders shouted the necessary orders, which he did not ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... as pleasantly as he could, straining his coarse features into the unaccustomed position of a smile. "I didn't come to get money out of you. I know all about the will. What I came for was to help you and give you a tip. You and I can make a lot of easy money together. You've ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... suppose we are from the Nile?" asked Cochrane. He rode with his chin on his shoulder and his eyes straining wistfully to ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to the mental response to the external stimulus, there was a phantasy representing an imaginary wish-fulfilment: namely the desire to forsake the study of histology, with the eye-straining search through the microscope, in favor of the study ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... but for a short time that that form was visible to the earnest eye, that that voice at intervals reached the straining ear, of Adrian di Castello; but that time sufficed to produce all the effect which Adrian himself ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the seal-skin cover of the lunch-case, the supper arranged upon it, Guskof's sheepskin jacket, his face, and his small red hands which he used in lifting the patties from the pan. Everything around us was black; and only by straining the sight could be seen the dark battery, the dark form of the sentry moving along the breastwork, on all sides the watch-fires, and on high ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... serious and prolonged impediment could be thrown in the way of his liberty. He would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him, carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home on that fatal night, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... was on the Front. We had to carry the nets up from the water's edge to the seawall before our utmost straining could drag the Moondaisy up the bank of shingle. For more ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... I may see thee. Most of my evenings may possibly be devoted to thy company. A soul harassed by unwelcome toil, eyes dim with straining at tiresome or painful objects, shall I bring to thee. If now and then we are alone, how can I contribute to thy entertainment? The day's task will furnish me with nothing new. Instead of alleviating, by my cheerful talk, thy ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... then went on with his adventures. "My horse was so wild, that he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees. He was dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career. At last, altogether beyond my control, he took his course directly up a stony steep, when suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and threw himself athwart the way my mad steed was taking. At this apparition ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... In straining over the precipice she had drawn the knot that secured her to the rock so tight that she could not liberate herself until I came to her assistance and set her free. I then talked with her, and found that she had remarkable capacity, tenderness, and sweetness of nature, but was altogether uninstructed. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... it will be dry, hard, and expelled in small quantities. In other cases, perhaps, purging will be present from the beginning; the animal will be tormented with tenesmus, or frequent desire to void its excrement, and that act attended by straining and pain, by soreness about the anus, and protrusion of the rectum, and sometimes by severe colicky spasms. In many cases, however, and in those of a chronic form, few of these distressing symptoms are observed, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... Recipes: Baked fish Broiled fish Meat soup Preparation of stock Selection of material for stock Quantity of materials needed Uses of scraps Extracting the juice Temperature of the water to be used Correct proportion of water Time required for cooking Straining the stock To remove the fat Simple Stock or broth Compound stock or double broth To clarify soup stock Recipes: Asparagus soup Barley rice sago or tapioca soup Caramel for coloring soup brown Julienne soup Tomato soup White soup ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the fatal hour of midnight. As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near to twelve he asked to see his valet's watch, and was relieved to find that it marked the same time as his own. With beating heart and straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer. A minute more to go—half a minute. Now it pointed to the fateful twelve—and nothing happened. It crept slowly past. The crisis was over. He put down the watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... held her in its cold grip. But desperation called up her courage. She walked Tuesday in an ever-widening circle around the spot where she had lost the trail, with her heart almost still, and her eyes straining at every tree as it came within her vision. Where? Where? Would there be no more blazes, no more broken limbs, no more prints of hoofs on the mossy earth? Had she left the trail farther back than she had thought? And would she wander over all the vast bosom of the mountain ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... smoke the sun was still high, and in front and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who, straining himself, shrieks ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... will make the hair grow farther back straining it off your forehead that way, I can tell you that. You don't use common-sense, and as for your headache, I guess the hair didn't make it ache. It's the first I've heard of it. You look like a fright, I ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Christ's head, and had pointed to Him as the Lamb of God, felt that 'all his mind was clouded with a doubt.' It would have been wiser if commentators, instead of trying to save John's credit at the cost of straining the narrative, had recognised the psychological truth of the plain story of his wavering conviction and had learned its lessons of self-distrust. There is only one Man with whom it was always high-water; all others have ebbs ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... to the King's playhouse, my eyes being so bad since last night's straining of them, that I am hardly able to see, besides the pain which I have in them. The play was a new play; and infinitely full: the King and all the Court almost there. It is "The Storme," a play of Fletcher's;' which is but so-so, methinks; only there is a most admirable dance at the end, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... creek when I ran into a fine elk, and knocked him over with my Henry rifle. I cut off the choice pieces, and, packing them on my pony, once more set out to find the trail. I knew the command had not passed, and ascended the highest point on the bluff, straining my eyes to see if I could not discover it moving. I waited several hours, but not finding it, I concluded it had not marched by the old trail, but struck straight across the country. I now moved up the creek, determined to keep along its bank until I came to the old camp, and then ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud, That catches but the palest tinge of even, 95 And which the straining eye can hardly seize When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star That gems the glittering coronet of morn, Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 100 As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, Spread a purpureal halo ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... temples from the force of his exertions—a strand parted, another and another, and one hand was free. Then from the jungle came a low guttural, and the ape-man became suddenly a silent, rigid statue, with ears and nostrils straining to span the black void where his eyesight could ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... could be easily counted. They were seven, and all of different colors, and were fastened with long lines to the sledge, so that they were a great way in front of it, and they were running all abreast. They were straining and pressing into their collars, all the while crying impatiently, as they bounded over the snow at a rapid gallop. The man was encouraging them along all he could with a long whip, which he threw out with a lively snap, exclaiming, 'Ka-ka! ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... thing to witness was the last, straining, anxious look which the mother gave her daughter through the grating. She had seen her child pressed to the arms of strangers, and welcomed to her new home. She was no longer hers. All the sweet ties of nature had been rudely severed, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... climbed nimbly up the ridge to the left. The horses scrambled up the steep ground, dislodging stones and clods of earth. They struggled with straining hocks hard to get up, and seemed to challenge each other for a race to the top. Their riders, in extended order, showed as patches of red and blue against the grey stubble. Up they went, further and further, and then disappeared over the ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... voyaged Lake Bennett, Tagish, then Windy Arm, Sinister, savage and baleful, boding us hate and harm. Many a scow was shattered there on that iron shore; Many a heart was broken straining at sweep ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... up everything to go with the professor while he scoured the prairie to the north, east, and south, and burdened herself willingly with the lunch-bucket and his umbrella. From dawn till noon, for a whole fortnight, she trotted beside him, straining her eyes to catch sight of some plant he had not yet seen, and tearing here and there to pluck posies for his bouquet. When, however, there remained to be searched only a wide strip bordering the Vermillion, she ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges, They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... somewhere that the strongest man cannot hold on by his arms alone for more than five minutes. I am, unluckily, very weak in the arms, and was therefore quite unable to perform the gymnastic feat of raising myself till I could place a knee upon the ledge where my hands were straining. Here, then, I was, in an apparently hopeless predicament. I might cling to the rocks like a bat in a cave till exhaustion compelled me to let go; on a very liberal allowance, that might last for some twenty ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... for it, the mountain seeming to close over and swallow him as he entered the mysterious chamber of the sea. Cautiously he made his way back, not knowing what creatures he might encounter. Slowly and with straining eyes he advanced through the thick blackness, until he could hear the breathing and stirring of what he rightly conjectured to be seals. He sounded with his paddle and found it to be of insufficient length to show him the depth of water. Reaching a ledge of rock ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... she ran hurriedly down into the street, where a few startled women and old men had rushed at the first roll of the cannon. As she stood among them, straining her eyes from end to end of the little village, her heart beat in her throat and she could only quaver out an ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... tub, straining in every plate, rolled and pitched and tossed all ways at once, like an hysterical cat, and the discomfort in which they had started rose, or rather sank, to absolute misery. Like most strong men, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... most intense excitement prevailed in Richmond. The Confederates, supposing that their capital was my objective point, were straining every effort to put it in a state of defense, and had collected between four and five thousand irregular troops, under General Bragg, besides bringing up three brigades of infantry from the force confronting General ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... her breath came straining hot and heavy through her white teeth, and she smiled and ogled him archly. He felt her take hold of him, and it was as though a darkness fell ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... a condition in which there is an abnormal quantity of fluid in the tunica vaginalis. It is generally caused by traumatism, violent muscular efforts, or straining, and is much more frequent in tropic countries than elsewhere. It sometimes attains an enormous size. Leigh mentions a hydrocele weighing 120 pounds, and there are records of hydroceles weighing 40 and 60 pounds. Larrey speaks of a sarcocele ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... passed. It was replaced by something like horror and even terror as she listened. To her the words were dreadful, they spoke of the woman's straining brain, and her thoughts flew to the doctor's verdict. Was this the madness he had feared? Was this the final crash of a brain driven to breaking-point? The questions flew through her mind only to be ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... point by Experiments. The case of exchanging the bloud of Animals seems not like that of Graffing, where the Cyons turns the Sap of the Stock, graffed upon, into its nature; the Fibres of the Cyons so straining the juice, which passes from the stem to it, as thereby to change it into that of the Cyons, whereas in this transfusion there seems to be no such {358} Percolation of the bloud of Animals, whereby that of the one should be changed into the nature ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... communication from them in October, informing me that they had discovered a convenient situation for erecting the buildings. The materials being found on the spot, and the men aware of the approach of winter, and straining every nerve to secure themselves against its rigours, the buildings, such as they were, were raised ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... canoes; I knew that they would come. Take the glass and look yourself; my eye is quite dim from straining ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... she almost yielded to the temptation to denounce Mrs Basil to her husband or Maisie Maidan to hers. She desired then to cause the horrors and pains of public scandals. For, watching Edward more intently and with more straining of ears than that which a cat bestows upon a bird overhead, she was aware of the progress of his passion for each of these ladies. She was aware of it from the way in which his eyes returned to doors and gateways; she knew from his tranquillities ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... and, on straining his vision, for the room was fairly dark, Rod managed to discover what seemed to be the bent-over figure of a man. He guessed instinctively that it was no common thief who had managed to enter their chamber in this Calais inn at the dead of night, meaning to steal money, or any other valuable he ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... mixing some lemon-kali at the canal, and holding up the mug to tempt Weston over, who was on the other side with his proboscis among the water-plants collecting larvae. Rupert was batting, and a new fellow, who bowled much more swiftly than we were accustomed to, had the ball. I was straining my ears to catch what Weston was shouting to me between his hands, when I saw him start and point to the cricketers, and turning round I saw Rupert lying ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... still better. I caught him looking like that one morning. He came out before breakfast, very early, into the garden. I was out there, but he didn't see me, and he stood looking up like that for ever so long, his lips just parted and his eyes straining through the veil, as you see that. It may be all nonsense, but—fine, ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... like to record that Adelle developed a latent talent for making beautiful things in the art she had inadvertently chosen to practice. But that would be straining the truth. It requires imagination to produce original and pleasing objects in small jewelry, and of imagination Adelle had not betrayed a spark. Moreover, it takes patience, application, and a skillful hand to become a good craftsman in any art, and these virtues had no encouragement in the life ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... the chuckle-headedness of that overrated creature the ant, for his head never saves his heels. Watch a gang of boat-boys getting a surf boat down a sandy beach. They turn it broadside on to the direction in which they wish it to go, and then turn it bodily over and over, with structure-straining bumps to the boat, and any amount of advice and recriminatory observations to each other. Unless under white direction they will not make a slip, nor will they put rollers under her. Watch again a gang of natives trying to get a log of timber down into the river from the bank, and you will see ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... accordingly, having required silence, began to read the settlement aloud in a slow, steady, business-like tone. The group around, in whose eyes hope alternately awakened and faded, and who were straining their apprehensions to get at the drift of the testator's meaning through the mist of technical language in which the conveyance had involved it, might have ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears to catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village, waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... When this was done, and when he had secured his master's weapons and warlike equipments in their respective places, the youths ascended the chariot, and Laeg shook the ringing reins and called to the steeds to go, and they went, and soon they were on the hard highway straining forward to the north. The sound of the war-car behind them outroared the roaring of the flames. Cuculain was a pale red all over, for ere the last combat was at an end that pool of the Boyne was like one bath of blood. His eyes blazed terribly in his head, and his face was fearful to ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... we behold our principles, our sense of justice trodden underfoot. We see the wild straining of the felon arms that would drag our land into the abyss of ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... same colour. How joyously did the gig hold her course! What a thrilling sensation expanded the soul, as the steersman, a handsome little fellow with large black whiskers, gave the encouraging word, "Stroke! my good ones!" Then were exerted all the energies of the body—then was developed each straining muscle—then were the arms thrown back in sympathy, to give a long pull, and a strong pull—till the bark reeled beneath them, and shot ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... the river bed any more. Instead, it had gone into the air, which was so humid by now that Malone was willing to swear that it was splashing into his lungs at every inhalation. Resisting an impulse to try the breast-stroke, he stood in the full glare of the straining sun, just outside the Senate Office Building. He looked across at the Capitol, squinting his eyes manfully against the glare of its dome in ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... he said again, raising her from the floor, and straining her to his breast, his burning lips seeking the icy ones of the Tzigana. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... nonsense, no topsy-turvy straining after new effects, which is so wearisome to those who love the racy naturalism of Parson Adams and Edie Ochiltree. But let us have no pessimism also. The age is against the romance of colour, movement, passion, and jollity. But it is full of the romance of subtle and decorous psychology. It ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... people, and their unstudied and respectful devotion to their "tear young leddy," this spell deepened upon him. Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a mysterious and mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen straining at the heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and its people too heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... "Restless" was no longer especially noticeable. She was rolling and pitching in every direction, accompanied by a straining and creaking ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... mouths so full of peas that conversation was impossible and waited for the first victim. A low, heavily laden lumber wagon, drawn by straining horses, creaked down the street. They concentrated their fire upon the driver by tacit consent, for each of the marksmen had had an aversion to causing runaways drilled into him by the hair brush or corset ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... later on, while these things were agitating his mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for some time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had been the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, "There he is—and ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... the horse, I looked at the student and Ananyev for the last time, at the hysterical dog with the lustreless, tipsy-looking eyes, at the workmen flitting to and fro in the morning fog, at the embankment, at the little nag straining with ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... this turmoil and confusion was going on above on deck—with the ship labouring and straining through the heavy seas that raced after her as she ran before the wind, one every now and then outstripping its fellows and breaking over her quarter or stern-rail with a force that made her quiver from end to end, and "stagger like a drunken man," as the Psalmist has so aptly described ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... was but a little way, for the tide was low—there was the carriage waiting, and Rene, all grins, handed over our parcels to the footman. Then we got in, the wheels began slowly dragging across the sand to the road, the poor horses pulling and straining, for it was heavy work. And Rene stood watching us by his boat, his hand over his eyes, a black figure against the dazzling sunshine on the bay; but I could see his white teeth gleam in that broad smile of his from ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... and narrow alleys, festering, as it seemed, with a very plague of poverty-stricken and unwholesome humanity. Here the line runs parallel to the river—sullen to-day, blotted with black floats and lines of grimy barges, which straining, smoke-vomiting steam-tugs towed slowly against a strong flowing tide. On the opposite bank the heavy masses of the Abbey, the long decorated facade and towers of the Houses of Parliament, stood out ghostly and livid in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamors of a nation which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of treating this problem was sure to be as scientific as the vaulting of a Gothic arch. Indeed, one follows it most easily by translating his school-vocabulary into modern technical terms. With very slight straining of equivalents, Thomas might now ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... house disappeared from view Faith's straining eyes saw the two slowly mounting the steps together and turned in great content to say, "I'm glad that friendly lady is to be at Debby's. She has just helped the poor dear up the steps as kindly as possible. Poor Debby! ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... in succession; and thus their period of perfect elasticity could be successively extended, while the coefficient of elasticity did not appear to sustain any appreciable modification. This process of repeated straining, when there is an absence of a certain hammering effect, renders malleable bodies somewhat similar to those which are not malleable and brittle. There is an indication here of another argument against the testing of steam boilers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... succeeded by a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal. Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. I heard a gentle sound of movement, and then all was silent once more, though the smell grew stronger. For half an hour I sat with straining ears. Then suddenly another sound became audible—a very gentle, soothing sound, like that of a small jet of steam escaping continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it, Holmes sprang from the bed, struck ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... and say that this Basic Course of Reading provides a practicable formula for the everyday use of these vast resources. It will enable you to acquire the magical qualities and still more magical effects that spell success and happiness, without straining your will to the breaking point and making life a burden. It will give you a definite prescription like the physician's, "Take one before meals," and as easily compounded, which will enable you to be prosperous ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton

... when he awoke, and lay on the bed, motionless and trembling, his heart sinking in the knowledge that he should never have slept. For almost half a minute, eyes wide with fear, he lay in the silence of the gloomy room, straining to hear some sound, ...
— The Dark Door • Alan Edward Nourse

... her she would accompany him to his castle. But the resolute maiden had secretly vowed to die rather than submit to such degradation. Choosing her fleetest steed, she vaulted nimbly into the saddle and galloped away. Her persecutor pursued close behind, straining every nerve to come up with her. Shuddering at the very thought of becoming his bride, she chose death as the only alternative. So she spurred her horse onward to the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... presently he leaned over the taffrail and stared down at the whirling propeller; from the screws his gaze shifted to the whirling water above and about them, and thence to the tow in their wake. He put his head to one side, studied the spectacle of the straining hawser and the wallowing barge on the end of it, as if ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... he does not come?" inquired Nora, straining her eyes down the path for the thousandth ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... said, "can you see that space where the house stands? What a lonely place it looks! I wonder how I lived there for six years. I can see even the place where the canoe used to lie on the beach. There is one there now!" She stood straining her eyes to watch the scene once so familiar, until the steamer, drawing towards the landing-place, completely hid it from her. Then the lights on shore flashed out more brightly close at hand, and the figures of men ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... ashore, leaving the wherry to its fate. Then he raced like a hunted hare along the margin of the river, and before five minutes had passed he had scrambled up and leaped the wall of this lonely river-side house, and was crouching breathless and exhausted in a thick covert upon the farther side, straining his ears ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It was good to know that ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... me before I go,' cried Mr. Daffy, his short and awkward figure straining in every muscle for the dignity of righteous wrath. 'I don't know whether you are more a fool or a knave. Perhaps you really think that there's as much to be said for your way of earning a living as for any other. I hope you do, for it's ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... the bloodsick earth to have the truth, And getting what they lookt for, as in sooth A man will do. So then they all fell to't To hale with cords and lever foot by foot The portent; and as frenzy frenzy breeds, And what one has another thinks he needs, So to a straining twenty other score Lent hands, and ever from the concourse more Of them, who hauled as if Troy's life depended On hastening forward that wherein it ended. So came the Horse to Troy, so was filled up With retribution that ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... kiss, and a straining in each others arms, which left me tingling for long after we had lost sight of each other, we parted. I stood and watched her as her white figure, gliding through the deepening gloom, faded as the forest thickened. It surely was no optical delusion or a phantom of the mind that her shrouded arm ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... persisted to this day. The musicians play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Sebastian Bach, but not one plays God Himself. No one can play the eternal comfort and blessing of tone and sound, its magic correlation with the eager, straining ear; so that"—he continued in a lower voice and blushing with confusion—"so that the third tone forms a harmonic interval with the first, as does the fifth, and the leading tone rises like a fulfilled ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... her hands through the bars and held my face between them. She looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... 'O regenerate one, in very ancient times called the Brahma-kalpa, the high-souled Rishis of the regenerate order, when they assembled together, felt this very doubt about the creation of the universe. Re-straining speech, they remained immovable, engaged in (ascetic) contemplation. Having given up all food, they subsisted upon air alone, and remained thus for a thousand celestial years. At the end of that period, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... answer for them. The figure of St. Rocco, as well as its companion, St. Sebastian, is colored; they occupy the narrow intervals between the windows, and are of course invisible under ordinary circumstances. By a great deal of straining of the eyes, and sheltering them with the hand from the light, some little idea of the design may be obtained. The "St. Rocco" is a fine figure, though rather coarse, but, at all events, worth as much light as would enable ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... face of the man standing behind Cotter's chair was immovable, and Mark, placing himself behind a short man and straining his head forward, saw that Cotter scored four. The next time there was still no sign. Emerson showed a king and scored it, and then won every ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... glanced through the mass of soldiers to the little cottage under the trees opposite. The two there were straining to behold him, but the soldiers pushed them back, so that in the flare of the torches they could not see, nor in the tumult hear. He thanked ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... foolish words about the Hellenes, since they in no way deserve to be spoken of with slight; for by uttering slander against the Hellenes thou art stirring the king himself to make an expedition, and it is to this very end that I think thou art straining all thy endeavour. Let not this be so; for slander is a most grievous thing: in it the wrongdoers are two, and the person who suffers wrong is one. The slanderer does a wrong in that he speaks against one who is not present, the other in that he is persuaded ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... working its way upward, it dragged Mildmay along a wide alley-way between the ship's side and the casing of the companion-way until it reached the bulkhead between this space and the main hold. The straining of the ship, which had eventually resulted in her breaking in two, had also rent this bulkhead apart, leaving an aperture some ten feet wide, and through this in turn the octopus gradually worked its way, until it had passed into what—before ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... extraordinary industry, which I never practised before, and to which I hope never to be again reduced, I see the last part of my history growing apace under my hands." He was indeed, as he said, now straining for the goal which was at last reached "on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787. Between the hours of eleven and twelve I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... Distention, with the straining of the walls from peristaltic onrushes as described above, and the infection that this part of the alimentary canal is subjected to because of the decomposition of food that is going on to a greater or less extent in all victims of constipation, are the ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... a dramatic sense, which has guided her past details that are merely commonplace. The natural surroundings of a head station furnish materials for bright little sketches immediately associated with some romantic episode in the story; there is no vague straining to create 'atmosphere,' or anything that ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... business, and is also one of the Four Minute men in his country's service. I could give you many more instances of the splendid courage of these men and women who, though deprived of the most important of the special senses in adult life, are cheerfully doing their best, wasting no time in straining after the fruit just over "Fate's barbed ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... with waxy face and watery, yellow eyes, made paper pills, rolling them slowly between thumb and forefinger—his features as immobile as a death-mask. A blue-eyed, blond German officer, with a decoration on the lapel of his coat, nonchalantly twirled his mustache, his shoulders straining in tension. A Parisienne, with bleached hair and penciled eyebrows, leaned over her companion's arm. There was also a flashily dressed negro, evidently a Haytian, who sat motionless at the far end, ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was heard and the next moment Sancho burst into the room trembling with rage. He was followed by some of the servants in the kitchen. Round his neck was a straining cloth, and dirty lather was splashed in various places over his person. He presented an appearance that at once made the Duchess scream with laughter. He proceeded to tell how he had been set upon by the kitchen-boy, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... urge to push down, which she may do. But she should not work too hard at it because the baby will be brought down without her straining too hard. There will probably be more blood ...
— Emergency Childbirth - A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help - Training Course, Lesson No. 11 • U. S. Department of Defense

... starry skies, In war's long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... as we learn from Suetonius, competed for prizes in the public musical contests, and was never without a slave at his elbow to warn him against straining his voice. In his love of magnificence he resembled a Greek flute player, with unbounded means to gratify it. His palace, the "Golden House," had triple porticos a mile in length, and enclosed a lake surrounded by buildings which had the appearance of a city. ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... men. I hate to see a brute whip and spur a noble animal. The good people object to racing, because of the betting, but bad people, like myself, object to the cruelty. Men are not forced to bet. That is their own business, but the poor horse, straining every nerve, does not ask for the lash and iron. Abolish torture on the track and let the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... the others lay down, and the captain at last called out to him, "In the devil's name, do you want to be a target for the French?" making him seek shelter behind a little mound, which left him nearly as uncovered as he was before. And after hours of solid exertion, straining nerves and muscles to the utmost, when peace came with night, Wilhelm began a tiring piece of work with sticks and brushwood, out of pity ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... venting opulence upon the Fine Arts."—Ib., Vol. i, p. viii. "It is the giving different names to the same object."—Ib., ii, 19. "When we have in view the erecting a column."—Ib., ii, 56. "The straining an elevated subject beyond due bounds, is a vice not so frequent."—Ib., i, 206. "The cutting evergreens in the shape of animals is very ancient."—Ib., ii, 327. "The keeping juries, without meet, drink or fire, can be accounted for only ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... was almost illegible, but it could be seen that it was a United States postal. There was not a single word upon it that could be made out in its entirety, but up in the corner where the postmark had been they could see by straining their eyes the letters ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... magistrate Granius deferred the payment of a public debt, in expectation of his death, he sent for him to his house, and placing his attendants about him, caused him to be strangled; but through the straining of his voice and body, the imposthume breaking, he lost a great quantity of blood. Upon this, his strength failing him, after spending a troublesome night, he died, leaving behind him two young children by Metella. Valeria was afterwards delivered of a daughter, named Posthuma; for so the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... become grim. He offered no second protest, mainly because he, likewise, would not waste his breath, and if he would, he could not. Of breath in the ordinary sense breath, breathed automatically—he had none. He had only gasps to feed his straining lungs, and his half-trot, which had long since become a trot, was changed for a lope when Mr. Blakely reached his own best burst ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... England the teachers are more likely to succumb than the children. We do not commit suicide in America from any sense of shame at our intellectual shortcomings — what a decimating of the population there would be if we did! — it is more apt to be caused by ill health consequent upon a straining chase for dollars. In Prussia during the five years, 1902-1907, divorce increased from 17.7 to 20.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, and suicide from 20 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... failed—he had lost her by his folly! She was his—she was torn from him! She would come at his bidding—she would cower to her tyrants! The thought of her was life and death in his frame, bright heaven and the abyss. At one beat of the heart she swam to his arms, at another he was straining over darkness. And whose ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... after being hidden from view for nearly a week, rose above the tops of the trees, thinning the darkness that lay heavy on the river, the full light not yet having reached the Little Big Branch at that point. Hippy shaded his straining eyes and gazed upstream. All seemed peaceful in that direction, but he suddenly realized that the sound he had heard was increasing in volume. He could now hear a succession of hollow reports, the meaning of which he could not fathom. He asked his companion ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... to overcome the noise of the world, straining until the dark-corded veins of his throat stood out sharply and perspiration gleamed on his bald forehead. As though his life depended upon the delivery of his great message he was explaining to that close-packed crowd that there was ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... so,) was the answer of the piffero, as he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a motion of his hand, he set both the young men going, he himself joining in, straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his body into the little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a sliding finger, until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he gave the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... not have explained what she expected, hoped, or dreaded to hear as she crouched there, straining her ears, but it was characteristic of her ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a certain number of ourselves are to become arbitrators is briefly this: Are we to act on this occasion like partisans, straining every nerve for the advantage of our several parties? or are we to act like free men, exerting our united forces in one harmonious body for the immediate good of the whole country? The struggle may ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... Wulf ate, though not for hunger's sake, but of what they ate they remembered nothing who were watching Sinan and straining their ears to catch all he said without seeming to take note or listen. Although she strove to hide it and to appear indifferent, it was plain to them that Rosamund was much afraid. Again and again ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... hoped that Mr. Fotheringham understood what inexpressible gratitude was conveyed in those words, only to be appreciated after watching those six wakeful, straining days and nights. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little extraordinary, while the legislature and the judges are straining every nerve to suppress low gambling and punish its professors, they are the passive observers of a system pregnant with ten times more mischief in its consequences upon society, and infinitely more vicious, fraudulent, and base ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... While he was holding her back, and she straining every nerve to get to the fire, he began to show sudden symptoms of distress. He gasped loudly, and cried, "Oh! oh! I'm choking!" and then his clutch relaxed. She tore herself from it, and, plunging forward, rescued ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... The swaying of the veil of futurity, under the straining hands of our guardian angels? Is it the faint shadow, the solemn rustle of their hovering wings, as like mother birds they spread protecting plumes between blind fledglings, and descending ruin? Will theosophy ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... stems one hundred and fifty feet high probably, surmounted by crowns of drooping branches; palms with their graceful plumage; lianas hanging, looping, twisting—their orange fruitage hanging over our heads; great black snags; the lithe, wiry forms of our boat-men always straining to their utmost; and the motionless white turban of the Hadji,—all for a second relieved against the broad blue flame, to be again ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... little Frau, straining at the waist buckle and giving him a little pull here, a little tug there. "Rosa, come and look at ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... in a firstclass uproar as it is—like to see me in the frontlines right now, bursting with dulce et decorum. I don't believe it would bother the Old Man any if I sat out the duration in a C O camp, but it'd hurt his job like hell and the poor old boy is straining his guts to get into the trenches and twirl a theoretical saber. So I guess I'm slated to be your humble and obedient, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... oar to prevent her from striking against the foot of the cliff. Now she shoots out into the stream, and up as far as the line will permit, and then, wheeling, drives headlong against the rock, then out and back again, now straining on the line, now striking against the rock. As soon as the second line is brought, we pass it down to him; but his attention is all taken up with his own situation, and he does not see that we are passing the line to him. I stand on a projecting rock, waving my hat to gain his attention, for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... Pearle crushed his way through the snow, sobbing, straining, cursing his luck, Alaska, Nome, the cards, and the man who had felt his knife. The hot blood was freezing on his hands, and the scene yet bright in his eyes,—the man, clutching the table and sinking slowly to the floor; the rolling counters and the scattered deck; the swift shiver throughout ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... operate internally? A person in perfect health, having his nostrils only touched with a feather, cannot avoid his body being so convulsed as to produce what is commonly called sneezing. But if the number of muscles agitated, the force and straining of the body by sneezing, are considered; the slightness of the cause must excite no little astonishment; for this action is occasioned by the muscles of the scapula, abdomen, diaphragm, thorax, lungs, &c. and if the sneezing continues, an universal explosion of the liquids ensues: tears, mucus, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith

... with the butter. Moisten with 1/2 a pint of water, and simmer till the gravy begins to flow. Then add the 4 quarts of water and the remainder of the ingredients; simmer for 5 hours. After skimming and straining it carefully through a very fine hair sieve, it will be ready ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... careful training, all his studiously acquired skill, all his mastery of the mechanics of his craft, came to him, now, without conscious effort—obedient to his purpose. Here was no thoughtful straining to remember the laws of composition, and perspective, and harmony. Here was no skillful evading of the truth he saw. So freely, so surely, he worked, he scarcely knew he painted. Forgetting self, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... I roared. "You told him that I ran away? Damn your insolence! I'll break every bone in your body for this!" I cried, straining at the ropes. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... enemy have met with this year will probably support the hopes of a vindictive Court, and occasion the straining of every nerve for the accomplishment of its tyrannic views, we doubt not your most strenuous exertions to prevent Great Britain from obtaining Russian or German auxiliaries for the next campaign; and we think, with ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... voices of the officers in the room below became louder, and by straining his ears the lad could make out what they ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... crests of the pines were merely soft blots above. Yet as they stood straining their eyes upward, striving to discover the location of the great bird by its clamour, vaguely the branches began to take shape ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... muscle of the strong young arm and shoulder. As well she might have tried to beat down an iron door with her bare hands as to hope for escape from his strong grip. He made a motion to draw her closer. Joyce flung herself back and sank down beside the bunk, straining away. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was unconscious, he says. I left her straining for breath. She said "Victor"; she tried to smile:—I understood I was not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... consider in the course of these debates.... It is supposed to be the one certain result of the last General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty.... If you put the doctrine of invasion so high, and if you tell them that in any degree ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... personal attractions than by the sterling characteristics of her art. Each of her scenes bears the stamp of intelligence of an uncommon order, and perhaps not the least remarkable feature in her portraiture of Galatea is that her effects, one and all, are produced without a suspicion of straining. Those who were present in the crowded theater last night, and saw the actress in the role—said to be her finest—had, we are sure, no room to qualify the high ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... little figure and her face, which but for the stress of London, of labour, and of poverty, would have had a blunt fresh-coloured dairymaid's charm, became symbols of a divine and sacred helpfulness in the eyes of hundreds of straining ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... nothing more than common-sense. All who wish to see it developed by a man of genius should read that golden little work, Bagehot's Physics and Politics, in which (it seems to me) the complete sense of the way in which concrete things grow and change is as livingly present as the straining after a pseudo-philosophy of evolution is livingly absent. But there are never wanting minds to whom such views seem personal and contracted, and allied to an anthropomorphism long exploded in other fields of knowledge. "The individual withers, and the world is more and more," to these writers; ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... this earth is a barrel of beer, which you can understand better than anything else, and it is being shaken up by being hauled around on wagons and cars, and is straining to get out, then a bartender drives a spigot into the bung, turns the thumb piece, and the pent-up beer comes out foaming and squirting, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... and eighty feet, and, with a huge and desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly endless labor. But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side, caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached for the maul that was stuck ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... building was promptly hauled back into shape and fastened down with long timbers running from its sides to a convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus it remained for many years, bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and straining at its tethers like an ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... each, endeavouring to get round a small boat with a man and a flag in it, which, as the wind was about the worst they could have had for the purpose, seemed no easy matter. There was no great interest in straining one's eyes after them, so I found out the Phillipses, and having told Dawson, who was escorting Clara, that Hanmer was looking for him to make out the list of "the eleven," I was very sorry indeed when the sound of a gun announced that the Hon. H. Chouser's Firefly had won the cup, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... Tension will be caused, Austria will make enormous demands, Russia will remonstrate, and, before any one has time to breathe, the clouds will part to let the lightnings through. If anything, we are over-ready, straining ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... attractive to myself, and I very seldom have indulged in such wearisome shikar. There is no particular satisfaction in sitting for hours in a cramped position, with mosquitoes stinging you from all directions, while your eyes are straining through the darkness, transforming every shadow into the expected game. Even should it appear, unless the moon is bright you will scarcely define the animal. I have heard well-authenticated accounts of persons who have patiently ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... to appreciate her position, almost as unhappy in her refuge as she had been in the storm—Sally crept to the rail and peered down. But her straining senses detected nothing below more than shadows, solitude, and silence; which, however, failed to convey reassurance; the fact of the open scuttle would seem to indicate that she hadn't stumbled into ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... pull hardest!" Two peasants are squatting, And, feet to feet pressing, Are straining and groaning, And tugging away At a stick held between them. This soon fails to please them: "Let's try with our beards!" And each man then clutches 110 The jaw of the other, And tugs at his beard! Red, panting, and writhing, And gasping and yelping, But pulling and pulling! ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... in just one move. But when his bared arm felt the hot, bulging neck something terrible burst out of the depths of him. To kill this enemy of his father's was not enough! Physical contact had unleashed the savage soul of the Indian. Yet there was more, and as Jean gave the straining body a tremendous jerk backward, he felt the same strange thrill, the dark joy that he had known when his fist had smashed the face of Simm Bruce. Greaves had leered—he had corroborated Bruce's vile insinuation ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... the fast-running stream from the overcharged eaves trough; then the thunder of the wind sweeping over the house in a great gust; and the whistle of the elm branches as they swung through the air like tremendous lithe switches, beating and writhing and straining in the fury of the blast. Looking into the clear, glowing flames, Diana heard it all, with a certain sense of enjoyment; when in the midst of it she heard another sound, a little thing, but distinguishable from all the rest; the ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... the excavation squad went into straining action. Oxen, their eyes bulbous in their skulls from effort, set brute energy against yokes along with the men. The mud eventually gave grip, ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... minutes, till I should claim it myself, I sat straining my eyes in the dark for the first glimmer of lights in the old town, when my train pulled up at a station a dozen miles from home. The guard ran along and threw open the doors of the compartments. I heard voices and ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... load of snow was faintly visible before the brown horses (they were yoked tandem) came into view. This cart was driven down to the water-edge, and was there upturned, with much shouting and cracking of whips on the part of the men engaged, and with a good deal of straining, slipping, and stumbling on the side of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... bright-eyed, little children straining forward between their elders in the bull-fight frenzy—that same intoxication of the senses that held the Roman freemen spellbound at ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... length I saw something white fluttering in the breeze. It was so small that I should not have discerned it, if my very power of sight had not been sharpened by the anxiety I began to feel for these young people. By intently gazing—by straining my sight to the uttermost, I made out that the young lady was standing on a point of rock, lower down, and more conspicuous than that on which she had been seated. She had tied her handkerchief to her parasol, and was waving it, no doubt, as a signal to her brother. My heart turned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... in a fashion which not one of the three anticipated. Quite suddenly Olga's lips began to quiver. She raised her head with the agitated gesture of one straining for self-control; and then in a moment the tears were running down her cheeks, and she covered her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him something to drink in a cup. This he swallowed with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... the white shape behind it, but could not make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their fingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leapt to the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he had watched so often ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... blade strike him once and again, he felt his blood gushing warm from the wounds, he caught the arm uplifted to smite, with despair's fierce energy he endeavoured to wrench the murderous weapon away. The two men went wrestling, struggling, straining each sinew to the utmost, drawing nearer, inch by inch, to the brink of the steep descent. Abishai dropped his dagger in the struggle, and could not stoop to attempt to recover it in the darkness, but he grasped with his sinewy hand the gasping youth by the locks, and, with ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... gait of the gigantic, unwieldy man, who had grown gray stooping over his work, had gained a certain majestic dignity. His cheeks glowed, and the gray eyes, which had long since acquired a fixed look from straining over the gemcutting, now beamed with a blissful radiance. Something wonderful must have happened to him, and, without waiting to be questioned by the lady, he poured out to her the news that he would have been overjoyed to have shouted in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... water when I met a heavily-laden cart coming up. It must have been coming from one of the vessels, for it was full of strange-looking boxes and packages. A fine-looking nervous horse was drawing it, and he was straining every nerve to get it up the steep hill. His driver was a burly, hard-faced man, and instead of letting his horse stop a minute to rest he kept urging him forward. The poor horse kept looking at his ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... him, had missed him, had turned to him in her trouble, and it was not in his nature to resist her appeal. With a spring he was at her side, and lifting her in his arms seated himself upon her mother's grave; then straining her tightly to his bosom, he kissed her again and again. Hot, burning, passionate kisses they were, which took from Maddy all power of resistance, even had she wished it, which she did not. Too weak to reason, or see ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... cried Solling, and without another word dashed off full speed along the road he had just come. He kept in the middle of the causeway, straining his eyes to see into the darkness on either side of him, and wondering how it was he had not met the object of his search as he came to the village. He ran on, occasionally taking trees and fingerposts for men, and cursing his ill luck when he saw his mistake. The sweat poured down his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... more of her things," he said to himself; "I can't so much as look at 'em, somehow, without its making me—" he stopped to tie up the box; straining at the cords, as if the mere physical exertion of pulling hard at something were a relief to him at that moment. "I'll open it again and look it over in a day or two, when I'm away from the old place here," he ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... paces, as if at the word of command. Then they fall to work, plying their flails with the utmost rapidity and vehemence, till they come to the last bundle. Upon this they fling themselves with almost frantic fury, straining every nerve, and raining blows on it till the word "Halt!" rings out sharply from the leader. The man whose flail is the last to fall after the command to stop has been given is immediately surrounded by all the rest, crying out that "he has struck the Old Rye-woman dead." He has to expiate ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... tent and came out with his short-barrelled, evil-looking rifle on his arm. He fired both barrels in quick succession and waited, standing gravely on the edge of the Plateau. After a short silence two answering reports rose up through the mist to his straining ears. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... us here That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not. For there is none so mean or base That have not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining themselves to make the boat ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... therefore, were of opinion that if the several penal statutes already in force did not contain clear enactments against this offence, it was not proper for them to seek some meaning in the law, which would be construed by others into a straining of the provisions of the law, and make it doubtful whether they had not forced the meaning of an enactment, in order to procure a condemnation of the societies in question. Even if they could have discovered that, although the Orange societies had contrived to evade the law in some points, they had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... natural expansion, would either shatter the band or allow it to cut deep into its own stem. The growing consciousness of Humanity has long been encircled by a rigid and inadequate conception of God. The gradual secularisation of the West means that the soul of man is straining that particular conception of God to breaking-point: and it is infinitely better that it should be broken to pieces than that its iron should be allowed to sink deep ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... of the transition period we behold a lady who has got a certain footing in society, but who is straining every nerve, in season and out of season, by hook and by crook, to improve her position. Society within the Pale is divided into a great many "zones" or "sets." It is like a target, with outer, middle, inner, and innermost ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... the anguish of the blow she had struck, and which had recoiled upon herself. It was a fearful sight to see that old woman crying like a child over the ruin she had made, wringing her hands in despair, and with straining eyes and blanched cheeks, listening at the door of the room where the being, whom she had nursed as a child, and idolised as a man, whose passions she had fostered, whose life she had saved and embittered, to whom she had confided her child, and whom she had at last ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton









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