Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Clutches   Listen
noun
clutches  n.  
1.
The act of grasping.
Synonyms: clasp, clench, clutch, grasp, grip, hold.
2.
Control; power; used in the phrase in one's clutches. Same as clutch 2.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Clutches" Quotes from Famous Books



... peculiarly interesting from the fact of their age, and from the fact that they escaped the clutches of the despoilers at the time of the Dissolution. The truth of the matter seems to be that all the "Churche goods, money, juells, plate, vestments, ornaments, and bells" had been inventoried and handed over to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... begin the season by throwing a predominance of males, and the first eggs of the clutches also tend to produce males all along. In both cases, the male-producing eggs were found to be the ones with the smaller yolks. Family crosses also produce small yolks, which hatch out nearly all males. Some pairs of birds, however, have ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... shown that certain of the men at the head of these large corporations take but small note of the ethical distinction between honesty and dishonesty; they draw the line only this side of what may be called law-honesty, the kind of honesty necessary in order to avoid falling into the clutches of the law. Of course the only complete remedy for this condition must be found in an aroused public conscience, a higher sense of ethical conduct in the community at large, and especially among business men and in the great profession of the law, and in the growth ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... "Do you suppose, Phil, when I have got so far out of their clutches, I will give them one red cent? No! And do you suppose I would turn mother out of her home in her old age? That I would let her pay all those hard-earned dollars for me, and never to see me? For you know she will stay south as long as her other children are slaves. What a good ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... telling me things for my own good—In fine, my lads, my wife takes such a flattering interest in all my concerns that the one way out for any peace-loving magician was to contrive her rescue from my clutches," said Miramon, fretfully. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... resolved to tease Mr. Hawthorne into consenting to go to her ball. Just imagine him in the clutches of a lady of fashion! But he always behaves so superbly under the most trying circumstances, that I was exceedingly proud of him while I pitied him. . . . Finally she could not tell whether he would accept or not, and said she would leave the matter to ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a certain person who is running his head into danger, and wants carefully looking after, lest he get himself into mischief." Amos looked puzzled. "In other words," continued his brother, "I could not bear the thought of your getting again into the clutches of that horrid man; so I have come over, not to be a spy upon you, or any fetter on your movements, but just to be at hand, to give you a help ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... in these more fashionable quarters, gleaned with his usual tact, Randal turned to a source less elevated, but to which he attached more importance. Dick Avenel associated with the baron,—Dick Avenel must be in his clutches. Now Randal did justice to that gentleman's practical shrewdness. Moreover, Avenel was by profession a man of business. He must know more of Levy than these men of pleasure could; and as he was a plain-spoken person, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... practise it with their arrows, and for mere sport. Now that they have taken to guns, I suppose they combine instruction with amusement, as the books say. Carrambo! what cruel brutes they are! They have no more humanity than a grizzly bear. God help the poor wretch that falls into their clutches! Their captive women they treat with a barbarity unknown among other tribes. Even beauty, that would soften a savage of any other sort, is not regarded by these brutal Arapahoes. Only think of it! They were about to treat in this very fashion the beautiful Americana—the only difference ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-inspiring air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches hold of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his old father, in a green old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and dangling at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The old father ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... from this shelter. The low building was evidently the stable, and into this I crept, for the door was unlatched. The place was full of bullocks and sheep, gathered there, no doubt, to be out of the clutches of marauders. A ladder led to a loft, and up this I climbed, and concealed myself very snugly among some bales of hay upon the top. This loft had a small open window, and I was able to look down upon the front of the inn and also upon the road. There I crouched and waited ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... enough to deface all his former commendations. He will be very inward with a man to fish some bad out of him, and make his slanders hereafter more authentick, when it is said a friend reported it. He will inveigle you to naughtiness to get your good name into his clutches; he will be your pandar to have you on the hip for a whore-master, and make you drunk to shew you reeling. He passes the more plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humour, and it is thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a man, he will seem to speak ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... once more," replied Wilkin, "it is only the value which I and my comrades set upon our goods, that inclines us to defend them with our bodies; and, had we been obliged to leave our cloth to the plundering clutches of yonder vagabonds, I should have seen small policy in stopping here to give them the opportunity of adding murder to robbery. Gloucester should have been my ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... I thought to myself. "Couldn't he let a poor careworn wretch have a few hours' quiet sleep after knocking about for so many weeks at sea, and having been in the clutches of Yellow Jack?" ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... such unwonted length of speech. It was not simply that the Presbyterian blood carried with it reverence for the minister, but that he had a vivid remembrance of how, only a month ago, the minister had got him out of Mike Slavin's saloon and out of the clutches of Keefe and Slavin and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... war induces a brief panic in the marketplace, and during this momentary paralysis of private acquisitors the State makes a desperate attempt to subdue their activities to its own needs. By the mere instinct of self-preservation it clutches at some rudiment of Socialism, and makes a diffident gesture in the direction of nationalisation—(of the railways, for instance). But the capitalists of England can point with pride to the fact that they ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... muttered, "a mockery and a lie—that's what it is, as I told them. Once in their clutches, and there would be no pardon and no indemnity. I know enough for that. It's a trick to catch us, but, thank God, we ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... language of the country, just as in a Protestant church. For the mass of devout people, who believe without thinking, religions only differ in their exterior forms. It would be impossible to consign such a multitude to the bonfires, or that half Europe should again be in the clutches of the thirty years' war, or that the Popes should launch excommunication after excommunication, only to find in the end that the only difference between a Catholic or an evangelical church is a few images and a few wax tapers, but that the worship ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... and the ducats, dollars and diamonds bequeathed by Van Tromp to "my wife, Elizabeth," would instantly melt into air—into very thin air, so far as the Countess was concerned; provided, of course, they had not actually passed into her clutches. In fact, they were legally hers, for the will had been admitted to probate. Those of the family objecting could offer no valid opposition, and she had been put in possession, but, by a strange neglect ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew I didn't like it—his giving up college and flying off the handle, and getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said, 'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;—she was going to drag Eleanor abroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice: rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... might by any device be sewn up in them. To all this I submitted without murmuring. It might probably come to the same thing at last; and summary justice was sufficiently coincident with my views, my principal object being to get as soon as possible out of the clutches of the respectable persons who now had me ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous thing"—submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it. He would not suffer them to cease their efforts. The rubbing, the movements, the artificial respiration had to be kept up for another full hour. But death held his prey fast, and would not let them force it out of his clutches. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... from ruin; and his chief hopes were bent on Dick, as the least hackneyed in knavery. He had once given him a new pair of shoes, on his promising to go to school next Sunday; but no sooner had Rachel, the boy's mother, got the shoes into her clutches, than she pawned them for a bottle of gin, and ordered the boy to keep out of the parson's sight, and to be sure to play his marbles on Sunday, for the future, at the other end of the parish, and not near ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... voice, in a quietly gruff tone that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips. For an instant, in his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of Satan himself. ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... 1810: "This little collection of stall tracts and ballads was formed by me, when a boy, from the baskets of the travelling pedlars. Until put into its present decent binding, it had such charms for the servants, that it was repeatedly, and with difficulty, recovered from their clutches. It contains most of the pieces that were popular about thirty years since, and I dare say many that could not now be ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley

... their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact sufficient to cope with them. A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies must have his hands out of his pockets, "all his buttons on," "his head screwed upon the right place," and no fool, or he will be swamped before he leaves ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... exaggeration. At sight of the gipsy band, the child so recently taken from their clutches shrank and cowered against her ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham

... been murdered, is hard, it is nevertheless felicity itself compared to the fate of bachelor ghosts. In the first place there is a terrible being called the Great Woman, who lurks in a shady defile, ready to pounce out on him; and if he escapes her clutches it is only to fall in with a much worse monster, of the name of Nangganangga, from whom there is, humanly speaking, no escape. This ferocious goblin lays himself out to catch the souls of bachelors, and so ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... but he didn't believe that he should see any Christmas Eve garden. He thought the whole thing a snare which Robber Mother had, with great cunning, laid for Abbot Hans, that he might fall into her husband's clutches. ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... Therefore, even if the most moral of editors knew that these establishments were undermining our social conditions and invading our homes, I doubt if he could be induced to make a protest. It is a curious thing to see how many are the kinds of victims caught and held in the clutches of the money-devil-fish in our wonderful ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... live," croaked the dying man, and instantly his clutches were among the hundreds of coins, and his red mouth grinned with a ghastly joy. He ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... think I would have assisted had I known, but this is the first I have heard of the matter. You see I have been very busy and away from home much, and not in a way to hear. I'm very glad you were rescued from the clutches ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... in my place—how could I sleep—how could I dream of sleeping, in this blackness of remorse and despair? There was a friend at hand—so I ventured to think of you; it was instinctive: I fled to your side, as the drowning man clutches at a straw. These expressions are not exaggerated, they scarcely serve to express the agitation of my mind. And think, sir, how easily you can restore me to hope and, I may say, to reason. A small loan, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the infant girls are merely subjected to an "irrevocable betrothal" for the time being, while in others they fall at once into the clutches of their degraded husbands.[264] In either case they have absolutely no choice in the selection of a life-partner. As Dubois remarks ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... finding himself in the clutches and jaws of a crocodile, covered with wounds, and almost dead, began to invoke the most holy name of Jesus, which a little before he had heard in the sermon of a father; and our Lord was pleased that the savage beast should ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... was not a very promising one. The French army was sixty thousand strong. He had but little over twenty thousand men. While he felt hope the French felt assurance. They had their active foe now in their clutches, they deemed. With his handful of men he could not possibly stand before their onset. He had escaped them more than once before; this time they ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... which could materialize, could make itself very much seen, at a second's notice. There he would stop until he was carried off to his trial; he would come and go during that trial, the unseen power always holding him. And one day he would either go out of the power's clutches—free, or he would be carried off, not to this remand prison but a certain cell in another place in which he would sit, or lounge, or lie, with nothing to do, until a bustling, businesslike man came in one morning with a little group of officials and in his hand a bundle of leather straps. Held!—by ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... old d'Hauteserre, poised on his long thin legs like a heron, was standing beside the stout form of the mayor, in an attitude expressive of utter stupefaction. The mayor, though dressed as a bourgeois, always looked like a servant. Each gazed with a bewildered eye at the gendarmes, in whose clutches Gothard was still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... her Ladyship's children were rich? Then Mrs. Mugford came forward with her explanation, which was, that the Corporal, as had already been suspected, was undoubtedly in league with the witch, and had led the children into her clutches. It might be that the witch could not hurt them; but certain it was that, when all the country was out searching for them, she had led them straight back to the Corporal. As to the Corporal being thrown from his horse, Mrs. Mugford had heard such stories ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... all," ejaculated the clergyman. "Poor man—poor sinner! What is this unspeakable thing which has him in its clutches? What had he done to give himself ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... Jewish Council (Acts 22:24-23:10).—Paul, rescued from the clutches of the mob, would have been scourged by the Romans had he not declared himself a Roman. On the morrow, taken before the Sanhedrin, and seeing no hope of any justice being done him, he sets one party of it over against the other by declaring that he was a Pharisee and ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... especially the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits his upper crust, and says that it's like his blamed fat-headedness to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... has no respect of persons, and laughs at the admonitions of reason; like Death, he pursues his game both in the stately palaces of kings and the humble huts of shepherds. When he has got a soul fairly in his clutches, his first business is to deprive it of all ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little regard for the actuality of ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... the hands of this woman as a rabbit in the clutches of a lion. The beautiful Cyrene closed ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... without attracting his attention, but I understood him, for I had seen him on the back seat of an army ambulance in the clutches of the perennially youthful lady, starting for ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... animals after a hostile encounter with them; thus, a pet squirrel remembered the turtle which had bitten him after two years had elapsed, and a white mouse showed, very plainly, that he had not forgotten the pet crow from whose clutches he had been rescued, even after three years had passed by. I might enumerate quite a number of instances like these, but think it hardly necessary; any one who has paid any attention to natural history has seen evidences of this phase of memory in animals. I will, however, give one ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... did not fulfil the ideal of Deity—an ideal to which even savages attach the qualities of justice and mercy—left the masses ready and eager to grasp at a religion that gave them some other personified god, than the Mikado, much as a drowning man clutches at ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... courtship scene, with Mr. Collins's ponderous declaration and dexterous withdrawal from Mrs. Bennet's clutches? Contrary to Judith's fears, Mr. Collins's coat withstood the pressure of his windy eloquence and all the seams ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... clutches and wiggles to climb up, only to fall back, more helpless. Hen was making an effort to throw the rope to Alfred. Lin grabbed him. Snatching the rope from him, she shouted: "Clim' the tree, clim' the tree, loose ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... ALWAYS two! I've read the accounts of those garottings. And to think you not only got out of their clutches alive, but got your property back—Willis's watch! Oh, what WILL Willis say? But I know how proud of you he'll be. Oh, I wish I could scream it from the house-tops. Why didn't you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... saw the man hurrying along, nor had he troubled his mind about the man. That was the end of Lord Fawn's evidence-in-chief, which he would gladly have prolonged to the close of the day could he thereby have postponed the coming horrors of his cross-examination. But there he was,—in the clutches of the odious, dirty, little man, hating the little man, despising him because he was dirty, and nothing better than an Old Bailey barrister,—and yet fearing him with so ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... dining room filled with notables, if we only had the key. Jethro sits silent at the head of the table eating his crackers and milk, with Cynthia on his left and William Wetherell on his right. Poor William, greatly embarrassed by his sudden projection into the limelight, is helpless in the clutches of a lady-waitress who is demanding somewhat fiercely that he make an immediate choice from a list of dishes which she is shooting at him with astonishing rapidity. But who is this, sitting beside him, who comes to William's rescue, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the Native is generally regarded as Hardy's finest work. Certainly in this novel of passion and despair he has conjured up elements that speak to the heart of every reader. The hand of fate clutches hold of all the characters. When Eustacia fails to go to the door and admit her husband's mother she sets in motion events that bring swift ruin upon her as well as upon others. At every turn of the story the somber Egdon heath looms in ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... pessimist instinctively avoids pain, and fights against it with all his might. He clutches at every hope and expects relief through every change. There awoke within me such a desire to make them go to Gastein as if my very life depended upon it. To make them leave Ploszow! The thought did not give me ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... that brought about the destruction of the Maccabean state[12] after a century's existence (165-63 B. C. E.), the Pharisee tendency, which had proved itself the best in practice, won the upper hand. When Judea was held fast in the clutches of the Roman eagle, all hope of escape being cut off, the far-seeing leaders of the people gained the firm conviction that the only trustworthy support of the Jewish nation lay in its religion. They realized that the preservation of national unity ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... been in the cat's clutches once. It was hardly to his discredit. He had been with his wife at the time, had heard the sneaking footfall, and was in the act of pushing her into shelter when he felt himself ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... dollars which is in defiance of the minimum wage law of the state for women. Smith won the case. Also he collected hundreds of dollars in back wages for workers whom the companies had sought to defraud. Workers in the clutches of loan sharks were extricated by means of the bankruptcy laws, hitherto only used by their masters. An automobile firm was making a practice of replacing Ford engines with old ones when a machine was brought in for repairs. One of the victims brought his case to Smith. and a lawsuit followed. ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... intensest darkness, lightening gradually upwards right and left, between the two great jaws of the glen, into a chaos of grey mist, where the eye could discern no form of sea or cloud, but a perpetual shifting and quivering as if the whole atmosphere was writhing with agony in the clutches of the wind. ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... of Mordent, just come of age. Impulsive, generous, hot-blooded. He resolves to be a rake, but scorns to be a villain. However, he accidentally meets with Joanna "the deserted daughter," and falls in love with her. He rescues her from the clutches of Mrs. Enfield the crimp, and marries her.—Holcroft, The Deserted Daughter (altered ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... important or unimportant, under the sole control of Chia She; but that, whenever anything turned up, involving any receipts or payments, she extorted an unusual percentage, the moment the money passed through her clutches, giving out as a pretence: 'Well Chia She is so extravagant that I have to interfere and effect sufficient economies to enable us to make up our deficits.' And that she would not trust any one, whether ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... combination of the Wifely Woman with the heroic woman; but one cannot help thinking that probably she was not—that however strong her affection for Florestan, she would no sooner get him home than she would ask him how he came to be such a fool as to get into Pizarro's clutches. Anyhow, Ternina's conception of Leonora as a mixture of the contemptible will-less German haus-frau with the strong-willed woman of action, was to me a mixture of contradictions. Yet, despite ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... echoing from the dim recesses of the church, makes the prose version end on a note of perplexing irony, may be theatrically effective, but it can hardly be called logical. Gert has been disposed of. His sudden return out of the clutches of the soldiers is inexplicable and unwarranted. Worse still, he has only a short while previous been urging Olof to live on for his work. If Olof be a renegade, he is so upon the advice of Gert himself, and to call the concession made by Olof ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... thinking our baggage was unwatched, had crept near it with a knife, but was very cleverly fixed by one of the mastiffs. We released him, frightened nearly to death, but otherwise quite unhurt, out of the clutches of the powerful animal; and we were troubled by no further ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... you can sound the quail-pipe most daintily to wile wantons into his nets. I desire no such devil's preferment for Janet as you have brought many a poor maiden to. Dost thou laugh? I will keep one limb of my family, at least, from Satan's clutches, that thou mayest rely on. She shall ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... his eyes; and from the expression of his face Frobisher felt almost convinced that Ling meant what he said. If the fellow could be relied upon implicitly, he would be simply invaluable, and might be the means of getting Frobisher out of the clutches of the Koreans; whereas, without assistance, escape seemed almost beyond the bounds of possibility. It was therefore in a gentler voice that ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... protect him, to shelter and feed him, all the time. But now the pursuit was so hot and desperate that the old man, in his sober moments—rare enough, I admit—began to doubt if it would be possible to save this young man much longer from the clutches of the Agents. Indeed, it was only by the sweet persuasion of Carrie that he had this time been induced to go with her and Johnny up on the spur of the mountain, and there meet John Logan with some provisions. From there he was ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... it is. The roar, meanwhile, is horrible. You are stunned by it as by the roar of a great waterfall. You see a wave of unusual magnitude rolling in from far beyond the wild revelry of waters on 'The Rips.' It leaps into the arena as if fresh and eager for the fray, clutches another Bacchanal like itself, and the two towering floods rush swiftly toward the shore. Instinctively you run backward to escape what seems an impending destruction. Very likely a sheet of foam is dashed all around you, shoe-deep, but you are safe—only the foam ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... some deity other than Marduk; and the fight is there described as taking place, not before Creation, but at a time when men existed and cities had been built.(2) Men and gods were equally terrified at the monster's appearance, and it was to deliver the land from his clutches that one of the gods went out and slew him. Tradition delighted to dwell on the dragon's enormous size and terrible appearance. In this version he is described as fifty beru(3) in length and one in height; his mouth measured six cubits ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... took to their canoes, and recrossed Lake St. Louis in a body, giving ninety yells to show that they had ninety prisoners in their clutches. This was not all; for the whole number carried off was more than a hundred and twenty, besides about two hundred who had the good fortune to be killed on the spot. As the Iroquois passed the forts, they shouted, "Onontio, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... rash of you, young sir. A kid might as well try to save his mother from the tiger who has laid its paw upon her as for you to try to rescue any one from the clutches of the mob. Mon Dieu! To think that in the early days I was fool enough to go down to the Assembly and cheer the deputies; but I have seen my mistake. What has it brought us? A ruined trade, an empty cupboard, and to be ruled by the ruffians of ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... upon Owen's welfare, that save for a few moments in the garden at Greenriver her own had been forgotten; and although she had accepted Leonard Dowson's proposal with an almost startling readiness, she had done so in the manner of one who, drowning, clutches ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... (not, by the way, a very sound authority) she went straight from Warsaw and the clutches of the lustful Paskievich to St. Petersburg. Considering, however, that Poland was at that period under the domination of the Czar, it is highly improbable that, after her expulsion, she could have set foot in Russia without a passport. Had she been sufficiently daring to make the experiment, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... the advice of the hawk it was resolved that Choo Hoo, as the prime mover of the trouble, and as the only one capable of bringing matters to a crisis, should be forthwith despatched. But when the executioners proceeded to seize him he eluded their clutches with the greatest ease; for his followers (such was their infatuation) devoted their lives to his, and threw themselves in the way of Kapchack's emissaries, the hawks, submitting to be torn in pieces rather than see their beloved hero lose a feather. ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... we had given them, we paid for a few quarts of spirits. The Governor overlooked our law-breaking, for after dark firing is not allowed, and no doubt he envied us in his heart, for, poor man, he is in the clutches of the Band of Good Hope, much, we heard, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... go back without meeting the fierce brute in the teeth. There was no branch below within his reach, and none above, and he was fifty feet from the ground. To leap down appeared the only alternative to escape the clutches of the bear, and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... very much as if Horace Richmond's theory was correct. Certainly the colonel had fallen again into the clutches ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... his mind so painfully occupied by his efforts to keep out of his enemy's clutches, that he was not conscious ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Stone. "I'm no more of a coward than the next fellow. But if Morales and Von Arnheim by any chance gained the upper hand and got their clutches on me, ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... for twenty-five cents, ten cents, a drink of beer or a crust of free lunch, becoming the prey of the drunken bum, the low vicious foreigner, the negro, or else the ruination of every young boy who falls into their vulture-like clutches. ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann

... blanket of faith with the spike of the Church, let yourselves down to the turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of humility! So shall you come to the door of deliverance from the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old executioner ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... effects of tobacco on his land and sought to free himself from its clutches by turning to the production of wheat and flour for the West India market. Ultimately he was so prejudiced against the weed that in 1789 we find him in a contract with a tenant named Gray, to whom he leased ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth

... of Jefferson's promise to interest his father in their case and she clutched at the hope this promise held out as a drowning man clutches at a drifting straw. Jefferson would not forget his promise and he would come to Massapequa to tell her of what he had done. She was sure of that. Perhaps, after all, there was where their hope lay. Why had she not told her father at once? It ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... mother, that he might the more easily secure his sister Julia's retreat. The young soldier entered accordingly, and, posting, himself between Mrs. Pickle and the door, gave the signal to his friend, who, lifting up his sister in his arms, carried her safe without the clutches of this she-dragon, while Pipes, with his cudgel, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... "Won't they be hunting you? Well, keep out of their clutches, I say. That's absolutely necessary. You'll see why—if you let 'em get you! For—how'll you ever ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... to look after Sophia; whom the reader, if he loves her half so well as I do, will rejoice to find escaped from the clutches of her passionate father, and from those of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... takes place, and then bonds, government bonds, are issued. Unlike what happens too often at the present time, the price fixed is not greatly in excess of the value the people acquire—one of the means by which the capitalists fasten their clutches on the popular throat. The Socialist spirit enters into the business. Bonds are issued to all the shareholders in strict proportion to their holdings, and so the poor widow, concerning whose interests critics of Socialism are so solicitous, gets bonds for ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... does come off, so false is its sentiment that it will not inspire one great patriotic poem, nor even one of merit, and that the only thing you will accomplish will be to drag Cuba from the relaxing clutches of one tyrant and fling her to a horde of politicians and ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... as she would have liked to get Dolly out of the clutches of her captor at once, had to be content. She realized fully that in Lolla she had gained an utterly unexpected ally, in whom lay the best possible chance for the immediate release of her chum, and the mere knowledge of where Dolly was hidden would ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart

... deliver me out of their hands. On this they untied me, and gave me a great load to carry on my back, under which I travelled all that night with them, full of the most terrible fear lest my unhappy wife should likewise have fallen into their clutches. At daybreak my master ordered me to lay down my load, tying my hands round a tree with a small cord. They then kindled a fire near the tree to which I was bound, which redoubled my agony, for I thought they were going ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... in your friend George Gaylord, a man who is aimlessly drifting on the sea of life, like a ship without a rudder. A man not yet thirty, without a home, without ambition, hope or purpose! Possibly, I may be in the clutches of some approaching attack of nervous prostration, I ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... Du Couedic; "Montesquieu may be better informed than we suppose; and if it be Dubois who holds us in his clutches, we shall have some difficulty in ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... fight, indeed. Christopher Holland, in the clutches of the loathsome disease, was an object from which his nearest and dearest might have been pardoned for shrinking. But Eunice never faltered; she never left her post. Sometimes she dozed in a chair by the bed, but she never lay down. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... it cannot do the good it ought to do: a nation which has eaten of its Fruit of Love and has learned to scorn the littleness of war is yet forced by that same Love to fight, that it may rescue a weak and helpless country from the greedy clutches of those who have refused to let my dear plant bloom. In the end it shall spread, no doubt, and my work shall be complete; but the time is long, ...
— Wonderwings and other Fairy Stories • Edith Howes

... the assistance of my good sword, I extricated myself from their grasp. Though wounded, I escaped to the dry ground, where I fainted and remained for some time insensible, owing to my great exertions and the loss of blood. When the enemy had me in their clutches, I recommended myself to the aid of God and his blessed Mother, and they heard my prayer: Glory be to them for all their mercies! From the time that we had cleared the flanks of our post by the destruction of the houses, Alvarado ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... for developing water powers including:—Water Wheels, Flumes, Governors, Supply Pipes, Gates, Hoists, Valves, Screens, Gears, Pulleys, Clutches, Bearings, Shafting, etc. ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... however, the case. The primitive draughtsman and the child are recording impressions received in the course of the locomotion either of the thing looked at or of the spectator. When they unite whatever consecutive aspects are most significant and at the same time easiest to copy, they are in the clutches of their cubic experience, and what they are indifferent about, perhaps unconscious of, is the two-dimensional appearance which a body presents when its parts are seen simultaneously and therefore from a single point of view. The progress of painting is always ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... slope between the bush and the cliff. Rotund little Charlie "fetched way" as he advanced, despite one or two feeble clutches at the rocks. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... is my warm & world-embracing Christmas hope that all of us that deserve it may finally be gathered together in a heaven of rest & peace, & the others permitted to retire into the clutches of Satan, or the Emperor of Russia, according to preference—if ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... yez. Look back upon your work an' see what yez desarve from the counthry. You began with a farm of sixty acres, and you took farm afther farm over the heads of the poor an' them that wor strugglin', until you now have six hundre' acres in your clutches. You made use of the strong purse against the wake man; an' if any one ventured to complain, he was sure to come in for a dose of the horsewhip from your tyrannical sons, or a dose of law from yourself. Now all that I've mentioned ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Murilla. If I don't git anything but State Prison, it's goin' to kill me, for I've lived too free and open to be penned up at my time o' life. It ain't fair—it ain't noways fair!" His voice broke. "It was all a matter of discipline. But you can't prove it to land-sharks. If they git me into their clutches ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... increase of his original power. Whatever it was, he seemed to her superhuman. The house was full of him—full of his rapid movement, his ringing orders. If he knew that the sapphire was gone, what was the meaning of this bold command? Was he, knowing all lost, plunging gallantly into the clutches of his enemies? Or was this only a blind, a splendid piece of effrontery to cover his too long delayed retreat? She sat like a jointless thing on the fauteuil in the large hall, and all at once saw him in front ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... and sisters!" he shouted, "here we are a-kneelin' at the altar's foot and what's goin' on outside? Why, the Devil's got his clutches in our midst. The horn of the wicked is exalted. They're sellin' rum—RUM—in this town! They're a-sellin' rum and drinkin' of it and gloryin' in their shame. But the Lord ain't asleep! He's got his eye on ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... within the hurricane's clutches. With a yell of indescribable fury the blast struck us, and as the storm-wave boiled in over our taffrail and swept along the deck, filling it to the level of the rail and taking with it in its rush for'ard every movable thing in its way, I saw the storm ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... the shade; but one sees on it remorse and agony, as the traitor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools which have been used in making it,—the cross to which his treason had doomed his friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... kingdom, by deducting this colony from the north into America, where they have increased since into an innumerable multitude. And where did the Devil ever reign more absolutely, and without control, since mankind first fell under his clutches? ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... to know that our comrade had not yet fallen into their clutches. How far he was injured, we could not have an idea. The rope had given way close to the top, and Rube had carried most of it down with him. In the confusion, we had not noticed how much remained, behind our hands, when he fell; and now we could ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... logs, page 17, when skilfully scented and baited, will often allure a wolf into its clutches, and a very strong twitch-up, with a noose formed of heavy wire, or a strip of stout calf hide, will successfully ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... are all too quick. They all proceed to swallow their children before the children can get out of their clutches. And even if parents do send away their children at the age of puberty—to school or elsewhere—it is not much good. The mischief has been done before. For the first twelve years the parents and ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... condemned by the mob to be burned alive over a slow fire, which was put into execution, for murdering a black woman and her master Mr. Green, a respectable citizen of that place, who attempted to save her from the clutches of this monster." Such is the newspaper version of the affair. Had the real truth been stated, it would have appeared that this Green was the "monster," who had seduced ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... he expostulated. "Really, one might think that you actually enjoyed this sort of thing! One of these fine days, if you're not careful, you'll be caught napping, and it'll take all Dollops's and my ingenuity to get you out of the clutches. I do beg of you to be careful—for Ailsa's sake, if ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... him. What was the man to him, or the man's guilt, or his father, that he should be made miserable? The man's attack upon him had been ferocious in its nature,—so brutal that when he had escaped from Mountjoy Scarborough's clutches there was nothing for him but to leave him lying in the street where, in his drunkenness, he had fallen. And now, in consequence of this, misery had fallen upon himself. Even this empty-headed fellow Baskerville, a man the poverty of whose character Harry perfectly understood, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... any warning of what impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving her hand and smiling farewell from the coach window; her evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... is and my name is Harmony Diggs, and they's no buggular livin' can get out'n my clutches oncet I gits these boys on him," the visitor shouted, waving an antiquated pair of handcuffs ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... him the suspicion of bad faith or incapacity. When he returned to Venice, the state received their captain with all honors, and displayed unusual pomp in his admission to the audience of the Council. But no sooner had their velvet clutches closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, instituted a secret impeachment of his conduct, and on May 5, 1432, led him out with his mouth gagged, to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned for this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been convicted ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... in the clutches of that famous and infamous proclamation issued from Brussels on the twentieth of June, 1892, by Secretary ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Martin, did ye hear it? Shoot the poor rogues d'ye say? Sink me, but I will so if Fortune be so kind. Yonder's short shrift and quick dispatch for me, shipmate, and then—the women! Think of my Lady Joan writhing in their clutches. Hark'ee to the lewd rogues—'tis women now—hark to 'em!" And here again their vile song burst forth with much the same obscenity as I had once heard sung by Abnegation Mings in a wood, and the which ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... florins—against you, which I have bought for less than quarter price from Jinkerini Bros, No. 124 Rialto. With them I offset the sum which this unhappy but excellent merchant" (pointing to the father) "owes you. Here, sir; now you are released from yon monster's clutches." (Hands package of judgments to the father, who, overpowered by the scene, takes and holds them in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... him, and fell on Pud just as Pud in his dream was set grimly to await the onset of the monster. Bill, though half awake, was sure the bear had him, and Pud was just as sure when Bill grabbed him that he was in the clutches of a mighty black bear. They threshed around a moment and did not really wake up until they fell on Bob and nearly smothered him. Bob had been too sleepy to dream of bears, but he got up very quickly. After a hearty laugh at their vivid dreams, the boys got into their blankets again ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... caught, are taken home in a small yellow pail. They seem quite cheerful. They are kept, of course, in their native fluid, which is liberally thickened with the oozy emulsion of moss, mud, and busy animalculae that were dredged up with them in clutches along the bottom of the pond. They lie, thoughtful, at the bottom of their milk bottle, occasionally flourishing furiously round their prison. But, since reading that article in the Britannica, we are more tender toward them. For the learned G.A.B. says: "A glandular streak extending ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... the expedition, one of the few who escaped into the woods and swamps with Laudonnire the dreadful morning of the massacre, was named by Basanier. He also mentions a lad named De Bry who was lucky enough to find his way out of the clutches of the Spanish butchers into the hands of the more merciful American Savages. This young man was found by De Gourgues nearly three years later among the Indians that joined him in his mission of retribution against the Spaniards, and was restored to his friends ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... I nearly go wild with regrets until I have to undo it, if possible, and then only to regret that. I am this way about the most trifling things and about the most serious. I can't perform any duty well. In business and in social affairs, it is always with me. It has me in its clutches, a horrible monster dragging me down. My friends misinterpret me and wonder what I mean by doing so when all the time I want to do what is for the best and cannot for this tyrant who is ever present with me. I will plod for hours and ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... was watching for Jerry Dillon, who, he knew, would not leave him if there was the least chance of getting him out of the Yankee's clutches. He did not have to wait long. Two men had gone to get the horses, and as Dan stepped through the yard-gate with his captors, two figures rose out of the ground. One came with head bent like a battering-ram. He heard Snowball's head strike a stomach on one side of him, and with an ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... woman is never so bright and full of health as when deeply in love. Many sickly and frail women are snatched from the clutches of some deadly disease and restored to health ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... peaceful passenger vessel, or from those of a cruiser on the watch for just such crafts as the Osprey was; and so Captain Beardsley prudently came about and sailed leisurely back toward the point from whence he started. This move was just what brought her first prize into the clutches of the Osprey. ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... things that don't come off. This thing, unfortunately, was one of the things that didn't come off. From beneath me I heard a shrill cry of, "Oh, it's my sore knee!" And Harold wriggled himself free from the puma's clutches, bellowing dismally. Now, I honestly didn't know he had a sore knee, and, what's more, he knew I didn't know he had a sore knee. According to boy ethics, therefore, his attitude was wrong, sore knee or not, and no apology was due from me. I made half-way ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... ropes or lines to lead it, there might be difficulty enough. It might take a notion to resist, or get clear out of their clutches. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... gown, "not always; and I'm sure I hope Tedcastle won't be. To my way of thinking, he is quite the nicest young man I know. It would make me positively wretched if I thought Marwood would ever have him in his clutches. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... Tom, never! The dear old place where Flora and I spent our childhood, only to think it should come at last into the clutches of the plausible skinflint Keane; the father, though, of—but go ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... the Bengalis live by cultivating the soil. The vast majority are in the clutches of some local Shylock, who sweeps their produce into his garners, doling out inadequate supplies of food and seed grain. Our courts of law are used by these harpies as engines of oppression; toil as he may the ryot is never free from debt. The current rates ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... man's arms. I cannot forget Karen's origins. There must be in her the element of reckless passion. Mr. Drew is spreading a highly idealised account of her and says that to see you together was to see Antigone in the clutches of Clytemnestra. There is some satisfaction in knowing that the miserable man is quite distracted and is haunted by the idea that Karen may have committed suicide. Betty Jardine says that in that case you and he would have to appear at the inquest.—Oh, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... buyers come)—and at that he began to tell me how Lienard, that did such beautiful work for the Government in the Chapelle de Dreux, had been at the Aulnay sale and rescued the carved panels out of the clutches of the Paris dealers, while their heads were running on china and inlaid furniture.—'I did not do much myself,' he went on, 'but I may make my traveling expenses out of this,' and he showed me a what-not; a marvel! Boucher's designs executed in marquetry, and with such art!—One could ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... flames leaping up consuming the wrecked remains of the royal seat of the powerful Arab ruler, a woman's scream, louder than the rest, caused me to look suddenly round at the latest victim of the Dagombas' thirst for vengeance, and I beheld in the clutches of half-a-dozen savages, a young woman, dragged as the others had been by her fair, unbound hair towards the spot where each had, in turn, been murdered. She was dressed in a rich, beautiful robe of bright yellow silk, embroidered ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... how long a time had passed since he first tried to bring the culprit into the clutches of the law, he had resumed the pursuit where it was interrupted. As a thoughtless child whose bird has flown from the cage looks into the water jug to find it, he had turned the light of his lantern upon places ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Potts, rudely; "then the sooner you get out of this the better. The devil himself couldn't be more impudent. I have just saved my daughter from your clutches, and I'm going to pay you off, too, my fine ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and 'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the accompanying orchestra. You are right. It's mostly a matter of training. And I am too old, now. I must have the real or nothing. An illusion that won't convince is a palpable lie, and that's what grand opera is to me when little Barillo throws a fit, clutches mighty Tetralani in his arms (also in a fit), and tells her how passionately he ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... for the Bad Man's desperate record, on the startled Hicks, whose first thought was for his beloved banjo. While he held the blithesome tormentor helpless, Butch, Beef, and Roddy Perkins climbed the rope-ladder, and the grinning youth was soon in their clutches, while the collegians below, like a Roman, mob aroused by the oratory of Mr. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... of men drugged and silenced by the seductions of sense and the deceptions of the world. But if, in some moment of detachment and elation, when its captors and jailors relax their guard, it can escape their clutches, it will seek at once the region of its birth and its ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... complete folio volume of charts was not published till 1812, five years after the issue of the book which they were necessary to explain. Flinders had then been released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... again to you, Mr. Mordicai; we're fairly out of your clutches, and we have enough to do ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... about a horse, 4 of them took her each by an arm and leg and laying her upon her "Ventre" flat as a pancake, a fifth cracked his knout (whip) most fearfully over her head, and prepared himself to apply the said whip upon our poor landlady. By good fortune an officer rescued her from their clutches, but she shivered like a jelly when she described her feelings in her awkward position, like a boat upon the shore bottom upwards. Then she told us how her husband died of fright, or something very near it. Her account ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... wholly to her for the first time. Less materialistic and more finely-grained than Man, she aspires toward things that are often out of his reach. Failing in her aspiration, confused by the effort to distinguish the false from the true, she blindly clutches at the counterfeit and so loses the ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... weakness. No sooner is the possibility of a wrong admitted than it becomes actual, and clutches you by the throat, however you may then try to shake off all belief in it. What I should like to be able to tell Nikhil frankly is, that happenings such as these must be looked in the face—as great Realities—and ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... off, determined to rescue Zara from the clutches of the old miser who was so anxious to make her work for him, because he saw a chance to get a good deal for nothing, or almost nothing. If the general opinion about Silas Weeks was anywhere near true, it would cost him mighty little to satisfy himself that he was keeping faith ...
— A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire - The Camp Fire Girls In the Woods • Jane L. Stewart

... necessarily a pretty crude affair. Satan was introduced as the clown, and laughter was provoked at his discomfiture when routed, or at the destruction of those who wilfully cast themselves into his clutches. It is not strange that the pious and learned St. Augustine, in the fourth century, regretted the polished dramatic performances at Alexandria that in his youth had afforded him so much genuine enjoyment. Among the people the ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... famous doctor, especially if he write M.D. after his name. But let none of these poor shifts or sleights deceive you. You will quickly see that the drift of such publication was only to sell off some Packets of Quack Remedies, and hedge you into his clutches, where 'tis odds but he will pinch, if he does not gripe ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence



Words linked to "Clutches" :   taking hold, clutch, clench, prehension, embracing, embracement, grasp, grasping, seizing, hold



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com