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Shut in   /ʃət ɪn/   Listen
Shut in

verb
1.
Surround completely.  Synonyms: close in, enclose, inclose.  "They closed in the porch with a fence"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Shut in" Quotes from Famous Books



... should say," exclaimed the American, shading his eyes with his hand. "A bit shut in and shady, but all the better in a tropical country: why, it's lovely. Here, gentlemen, I'm getting a bit tired of being cramped up in a boat. I vote we call this Golden Valley and come and live here for a ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... tableland of Kwang-si and the Nanshan hills (whose elevation seldom exceeds 6000 ft.). The basin of the Yangtsze-kiang forms the whole of central China. Its western border, in Sze-ch'uen and Yun-nan, is wholly mountainous, with heights exceeding 19,000 ft. Central Sze-ch'uen, which is shut in by these mountains on the west, by the Yun-nan and Kwei-chow plateau on the south, by the Kiu-lung range on the north, and by highlands eastward (save for the narrow valley through which the Yangtsze-kiang ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... thought, almost in tears herself. "I would not have her know I heard for anything. What can make her so unhappy? She seems to have no friends, no country. I do not believe it is pride, either, nor any feeling of rank and exclusiveness that keeps her so shut in, else why should she be so pleasant to me? It is some great misery, I'm sure. God ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... trackless wild the outlaws had made them a haven of refuge, a camp remote and well sequestered. Here were mossy, fern-clad rocks that soared aloft, and here green lawns where ran a blithesome brook; it was indeed a very pleasant place shut in by mighty trees. Within this leafy boskage stood huts of wattle, cunningly wrought; beneath the steep were many caves carpeted with dried fern and fragrant mosses, while everywhere, above and around, the trees spread ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... in any smaller house than that," responded Rifle-Eye, "an' I reckon now I never will. There's some I know that boasts of ownin' a few feet o' space shut in by a brick wall. Not for me. My house is as far as my eyes c'n see, an' from the ground ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... depart I must set down an incident of my reporter's experience that crowds in with a good hearty laugh, though it was not the slum that sent me to the Church of the Holy Communion over on Sixth Avenue. And though the door was shut in my face, it was not by the rector, or with malice prepense. A despatch from the Tenderloin police station had it that the wife of the Rev. Dr. Henry Mottet was locked up there, out of her mind. We ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... "automaton-dog," in this age of psychology and science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton he certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the heart, like the mill- wheel, keeping all in motion, and the consciousness, like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying the view out of the window and shaken by the thunder of the stones; an automaton in one corner of which a living spirit is confined: an automaton like man. Instinct again he certainly possesses. Inherited aptitudes are his, inherited frailties. Some things he at once views ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... at once done away with by all enlightened governments, after what has passed among us."—I am sure, good people, nobody can yet say whether those calling themselves scientific, will allow us to profit by your sad experience; but I believe that the people of Sunderland are not to be shut in, but allowed to remove, if they choose, in spite ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... valley of the Light, we had some rich and picturesque scenery around us—the fertile vale running nearly north and south, backed to the westward by well wooded irregular ranges grassed to their summits, and to the eastward shut in by a dark looking and more heavily timbered range, beyond which rose two peaks of more distant hills, through the centre of the valley the Light took its course, but at present it was only a chain of large ponds ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... Head Magician of our Egypt, will only have to say, "Presto pass," and they will find themselves a Slave State in the glorious Union, under a solemn contract, struck by this same act, to endure Slavery for six years to come. If they say, "No, we won't," the door of the Union is shut in their faces, and they are told to wait without in all the bleakness of Territorial dependency, subject to the laws now afflicting them, with a satrap sent down from Washington to rule over them, and with Lecomptes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... that things seemed spooky when I'd waited so long that I couldn't get out. I took solid comfort in the ferns and in a sea pink that had put out a scared little blossom right where we are sitting. I was shut in the better part of six hours and time proved a bit slow. I remember coming to the conclusion that perhaps the people I'd left behind weren't so utterly unreasonable after all. I fancy it's a rather sure sign that ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... place between Buxton and Chatsworth, perched high on a hillside, and shut in by another higher mountain—extremely beautiful, but exactly one of those that, for want of free air, always become the especial prey of infection. At that time lead works were in operation in the mountains, and the village ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... their army within the lines of Genoa, and forced the right wing under Suchet across the Var. Their advance was stayed by Massena's defence of Genoa. His troops suffered terribly from famine; they were shut in on land by the Austrians and bombarded from the sea by British ships. Meanwhile Bonaparte was preparing to attack the Austrians in northern Italy as soon as their chief army in the Black Forest country under ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water's edge, with bells ringing above them in the air, and ever and again out of their arched doors a swell of music pealing. There they remain, the grand old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amidst the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness, and the commerce of the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift and the birds circle and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... contrary, was even larger than that of the Terebinth, and from Hininsu, its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the Fayum and the plains of Beni-Suef.[**] To the south, Apu on the right bank governed a district so closely shut in between a bend of the Nile and two spurs of the range, that its limits have never varied much since ancient times. Its inhabitants were divided in their employment between weaving and the culture of cereals. From early times ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and just as she turned the corner in question there fell upon her astonished vision the spectacle of a panther, which at the moment was busily engaged in devouring the family cat. When the panther saw the lady he tried to make off along the veranda (which at that point was shut in at the side by a trellis-work), but at the moment of his flight the cook, who had also heard the noise, appeared at the opposite end of the veranda with a lamp in his hand. The panther then turned back in the direction ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... shrieking of a soul Shut in a tomb, a darkened cry Of inward-wailing agony Surprised them, and all eyes on each Fixed in the mute-appealing speech Of self-reproachful apprehension: Knowing not what to think or do: But Joan, recovering first, broke through The instantaneous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... like the sound of the box hedge,' said Agatha thoughtfully; 'it seems so shut in, and ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... beat with emotion, and tingled and 320 shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth— 325 Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth; In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... twenty feet deep in the channel, being high tide, and running in slow. Wine-palms and cocoanut trees grew on the bluffs on each side. Some leaned over, with roots out where the earth had caved away. We came about the curve and saw a closed bay, shut in by the bluffs from the outer sea and even the winds. It was wooded on the north and very rocky on the south, and might have been a quarter of a mile across. We landed on the north side and camped, and set a signal on the bluffs, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... oppressive, something even almost terrible, in being closely confined, shut in by low roof and narrow walls from such sweeping turbulence, such a clamor of wind and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... less bent. Then they served the upper rope the same. Then they drew both together, with the result that at last the tremendously extensive net was folded longwise right over upon itself, the top-line was drawn right down upon the foot-line, and at last the fish left in the net were completely shut in what seemed like an ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... (ii. 341), quoted by Lane, occurs the Hadis, "Shut your doors anights and when so doing repeat the Basmalah; for the Devil may not open a door shut in Allah's name." A pious Moslem in Egypt always ejaculates, "In the name of Allah, the Compassionating," etc., when he locks a door, covers up bread, doffs his clothes, etc., to keep off devils ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Mr. Bond's was the pink of neatness, and though we were shut in by rain for five days, we enjoyed it. Sometimes, it would look like clearing up, and we would walk in the garden; but usually we had to hurry in ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... more about this situation at Lady Hazeldean's," whispered Kate, when they were safely shut in ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie

... subjugating the whole country to their sway. Cities and towns, which had been under his dominion when he went to Sicily, had been taken by the Romans, or had gone over to them of their own accord. The government which he had established at Tarentum was thus curtailed of power, and shut in in respect to territory; and he felt himself compelled immediately to take the field, in order to ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... is living a larger life than the man whom the Christ invites to every noble duty, to every faithful fulfilment of himself. I will feel that he, perhaps by the necessity of his nature, perhaps by his circumstances, perhaps by something which came down to him from his ancestors, is shut in, is a contained and hampered and hindered man, and I will long for the day when he, lifting up his eyes, sees that Christ walking in the midst of humanity, and yet at the head of humanity, manifesting our human nature, but outgoing our human nature, glorifying our streets ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... you like to have one end of this porch enclosed with glass, so that you could sit out there with your wraps on, all winter, even on days like this, and feel almost as if you were out of doors? It wouldn't seem quite so shut in ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... succession of wild and gloomy glens, one comes upon a sweet little valley, sheltered from the east and north winds and open to the warm western sea and to the long sunny days of summer. It is a valley full of balmy airs, fragrant with the scents of sea and heather, and shut in from the roar and rush of the great world, just over the ragged rim of the craggy hills that guard it. A veritable heaven on earth for the nerve-racked and brain-wearied, for the heart-sick and soul-burdened; for it was the pleasure of the lady of Ruthven ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... copy. They often have their meals served out of doors, and one can enjoy an afternoon nap in a hammock, or can take one's work out into the shady garden with great satisfaction, unwatched; and even a little piece of ground can be made, if shut in and kept for the use and pleasure of the family alone, a most charming unroofed and trellised summer ante-room to the house. In a large, crowded town it would be selfish to conceal the rare bits of garden, where the sight of anything green is a godsend; but where there ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... his carelessness, he began to retrace his steps, but there was a problem to be dealt with at every step, for he could see nothing familiar. In that multitude of trees, planted so close together, each tree seemed alike. He put his hand to his mouth and uttered a long "coo-ee." The call seemed to be shut in, sounding in his ears ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... Emperor's military career, but at Friedland he regained his advantage and his former superiority. His Majesty, by a feigned retreat, in which he let the enemy see only a part of his forces, drew the Russians into a decoy on the Elbe, so complete that they found themselves shut in between that river and our army. This victory was gained by troops of the line and cavalry; and the Emperor did not even find it necessary to use his Guards, while those of the Emperor Alexander was almost entirely destroyed in protecting the retreat, or rather ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... with the malarious effluvia of those congested alleys, those strictly limited houses swarming with multiplying broods. On the Saturday the gates of the Ghetto were officially closed. The plague was shut in. For three months the outcasts of humanity were pent in their pestiferous prison day and night to live or die as they chose. When at length the Ghetto was opened and disinfected, it was the dead, not the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... assisting the queen back to earth, and thence to her big limousine late that afternoon, she overheard Jacqueline telling Captain Cosgrove about the completion of her accounts for the Shut In Benefit. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... self-gratulation, for as soon as our success had been made known, the frigate wore round—every preparation had been made long before—and we headed at once for North-east Bay; our skipper having taken the utmost care to keep the French frigate shut in all night by the projecting point of land which forms the southern extremity of the bay, in order that the "Astarte" herself might be equally hidden from the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... grinders cease, because they are few, and those that look out of the windows are darkened;" the strongest members of the body fail, the limbs bend beneath the weight of decrepitude and the effects of paralytic distempers, the teeth drop away, while the eyes grow dim and languid; "the doors are shut in the streets when the sound of the grinding is low," the mouth becoming sunken and closed; they "rise up at the voice of the bird," awakened from imperfect slumber when the cock crows or the birds begin their early songs; and "all the daughters of music," the tongue that expresses and the ears that ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... to rent a tenement in a block of model lodging-houses which had been built under his supervision. The young man had been a designer of figures for prints; he was of a delicate frame, and a nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in one miserable room with his wife and little children, without the possibility of pure air, with only filthy, fetid water to drink, with the noise of other miserable families resounding through the thin partitions, what possibility was there of doing anything except by the help ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and keen, and the stars overhead seemed very far away. Betty had no sense of fear as she began to climb, mounting slowly and feeling for each step with her hands. The friendly dark shut in around her and somewhere in the distance a ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... look down the ravine, on fine days, towards the sea. Mighty piles of granite soar above the fishermen's cottages on each side; the little strip of white beach which the cliffs shut in, glows pure in the sunlight; the inland stream that trickles down the bed of the rocks, sparkles, at places, like a rivulet of silver-fire; the round white clouds, with their violet shadows and bright wavy edges, roll ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... night. The darkness was intense, and a thunder shower prevailed. Our route for a long time lay through a thick woods, where the branches of the trees, meeting over our heads, shut out the little light that might have penetrated the thunder clouds, and the column was shut in perfect darkness. The road was terribly muddy, and the batteries which were trying to pass over the same route, were frequently stuck in the mire. Our men stumbled over stones and fallen trees, often falling beneath the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... she, in answer to the apprehensive glance of Helen, "it don't hurt me. It does me good to hear her. It sounds like a singing bird in a cage; and, poor thing, she's shut in a dark ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... years' hard study of law would be amply rewarded by one year of such an exquisite serene life as this—such skies!' looking up—'such crimson and amber foliage, so perfectly motionless as that!' pointing to some of the great forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... shut in. No news from the outer world penetrated to the little party besieged within their own stone walls. Maggie, fearless and innocent, announced her intention of snow-shoeing, but was dissuaded therefrom by Steinmetz ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... we would go round a curve, a ledge of rocks mebby, and lo! far off a openin' through the woods would show us a lovely picture of hill and dell, blue water and blue mountains in the distance. And then a green wood picture, shut in and lonely, with tall ferns, and wild flowers, and thick green grasses under the bendin' trees. Then fur down agin' a picture of a farmhouse, sheltered and quiet, with fields layin' about it ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... given this room to you," she said, "because it was mine when I was a girl, and all my dreams have been shut in—waiting for you." ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... extraordinary position, but it was in her power, in a moment of repentance, to force him from it. While the abbess was ill, Maria was virtually mistress of the convent. At a word from her the doors might be shut in his face. She might promise again, and bite her hand again, but when it came to his waiting outside the garden gate, she might be seized by a fit of repentance, and he might ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... the gully as long as possible and dodging around friendly cliffs when it came to climbing over the ridge which shut in the valley on the west. The gully cut across the valley, east and west, and was very deep at the ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... world, and they said good-bye quite cheerfully to the good old herdsman when at last he stopped and told them he must go back to his cheese-making. From the place where they stood, they could see the path like a tiny thread, winding through forests, down a long, narrow valley shut in by high cliffs, past waterfalls fed by mountain snows, and losing itself at last where a tiny white steeple marked the little village which was the home of the old herdsman. The old man pointed to it. "Follow ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... if you want; we are shut in well enough to have no fear of you, and since you are impudent fellows, we ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... gigantic habitations, branching out from the High Street, hidden away from the superficial passer-by faring to Holyrood. They were the pioneers of the trans-Atlantic sky-builders, were those old burghers, who, shut in about their castled hill by the two lochs, one of which is now the enchanting Princes Street, were fain to build heavenwards as population grew. It was a stormy morning when the mercurial Professor of Botany, recking naught of the rain that saturated his brown cloak, itself ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... offshoots of the Tigris, and after wandering capriciously in the space between the two rivers, at last rejoin their parent stream: such are the Shatt-el-Hai and the Shatt-en-Nil. The overflowing waters on the right bank, owing to the fall of the land, run towards the low limestone hills which shut in the basin of the Euphrates in the direction of the desert; they are arrested at the foot of these hills, and are diverted on to the low-lying ground, where they lose themselves in the morasses, or hollow out a series of lakes along its borders, the largest of which, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... jaguars, tigers and lions, and their kind; next the bears, all sizes and colors; after them bisons, wild asses, zebras and unicorns; farther on the rhinoceri and hippopotami, and at the far edge of the forest, close to the trees that shut in the clearing, was a row of thick-skinned elephants, still as statues but with ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh troops. But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces. It might have occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements, that it would be as well to replace the guard, which—as he must have seen—had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Shut in with God alone, I spend the quiet hour; His mercy and His love I own, And seek His ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman

... the brown earth of her garden was more different from the brilliant—coloured Smyrna carpets upon which her feet had moved in some people's houses. Life there and life here,—how diverse from one another! Could both be life? Suddenly it occurred to Lois that her garden fence shut in a very small world, and a world in which there was no room for many things that had seemed to her delightful and desirable in these weeks that were just passed. Life must be narrow within these borders. She had had several times in New York a sort of perception of this, and here ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... shouted the guide. Harriet halted. She hesitated at sight of the black shadows there rather than at the command. She distinctly heard some one floundering over a high board fence that shut in the rear yard of the store and post-office. Janus's hand ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... to Sicilians—religion. It was not enough that hatred grew up between the natives of two different but neighboring localities: it was often born and perpetuated "between those whom one wall and one fosse shut in," and assumed considerable proportions. Thus we see as far back as the fifteenth century the inhabitants of a certain "fifth" (Palermo was divided into five wards) so hostile to those of another ward that the intervention of the senate was necessary in order to obtain from King ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... fair and lovely Highlands of the Hudson, shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, hemmed in all round with memories of Washington, there could be no more appropriate ground for the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... so south-west, And afterwards right west, until they saw Dwaraka, washed and bounded by a main Loud-thundering on its shores; and here—O Best!— Vanished the God; while yet those heroes walked, Now to the north-west bending, where long coasts Shut in the sea of salt, now to the north, Accomplishing all quarters, journeyed they; The earth their altar of high sacrifice, Which these most patient feet did pace ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... this cockpit in which three nations battled. From the cliff at Cape Helles to the top of the impregnable Achi Baba was only 5-1/2 miles. The distance straight across the Peninsula at the firing line was not more than 3-1/2 miles. On our flanks we were shut in by cliffs along the Aegean Sea on the left, and along the Dardanelles on our right. Every acre of ground we held was dominated by the hill in front, about 720 feet high. Our right flank and the vitally important landing places, "V" ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... pulled up at the bank of the Fraser it was on an open flat shut in by low pines and poplars. They could see no building at all; only a few poles and ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... pleasant spot for such work. The north transept, high up towards the vault of the roof, was still occupied by a wide scaffold which shut in the painters and shut out the curious, and ran the whole length of its three sides, being open towards the body of the church. When Esther came to inspect her field of labor, she found herself obliged to choose ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... with being shut in so much this winter, and a trip will do me good whether I buy an automobile or not. Mary's mother will come and stay with her and help out with the children. And if Joel wants to go along, he can." But apparently the protective impulse ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... exactly at ten o'clock. Determined to be in time, I set off, allowing myself some minutes to spare and pulling out my watch at the door, found that for once in my life I had kept my appointment to the second. The servant, to my surprise, told me, that my Uncle Jonathan had ordered the door to be shut in my face for being behind my time. It was then I found out my watch was too slow, and that I was exactly ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... to the house," he resumed presently, "because I thought it possible that the door might be shut in my face. Mallard would have ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... doors were shut in the passage, and it was dark there. Milly opened a door on the left at the foot of the ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... sounds, and one by one Mac caught them up, and the bush appeared to echo him; and leaning half drowsily, against the pack-saddles and swags, we listened until we slipped into one of those quiet reveries that come so naturally to bush-folk. Shut in on all sides by bush and tall timber, with the rushing river as sentinel, we seemed in a world all our own—a tiny human world, with a camp fire for its hub; and as we dreamed on, half conscious of the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... fruit-trees. Karain stopped in the midst of his men and waved his hand; then, detaching himself from the splendid group, walked alone to the water's edge and waved his hand again. The schooner passed out to sea between the steep headlands that shut in the bay, and at the same instant Karain passed out of our ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... wintry storms, and as a relief to these sombre features, the sunniest little homesteads perched on airy terraces of gold-green; crystal streams making vocal the flowery meadow and the mossy dell, and lovely little lakes shut in by rounded hills, made double in their mirror. In Alsace-Lorraine we find a wholly different landscape, and are at once reminded that we are in one of the fairest and most productive districts of Europe. All the vast Alsatian plain in September is a-bloom ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... was particularly wanting in courage, but, shut in there by the darkness, it was impossible to keep back the thought that a desperate man who had stolen out or hidden might be lurking close by ready to spring upon him in an unguarded moment, drive him off the cliff ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... if you would know the truth, We both are by the same dull walls shut in; The gate is massive and the dungeon strong. But you look through the key-hole out beyond, And call this knowledge; yet have not at hand The key wherein to turn ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... piles of office buildings. It was dreadful, this labour through the night. It had all the significance of field hospitals after the battle—hospitals and the tents of commanding generals. The wounds of the day were being bound up, the dead were being counted, while, shut in their headquarters, the captains and the commanders drew the plans for the grapple of armies that was ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the signal. Back in his cabin of rushes across the river he rages like a maniac and buries a tomahawk in the skull of the old squaw Catherine. Monday, May 9, at ten o'clock he comes again, followed by a rabble of hunters. The gates are shut in his face. He shouts for admittance. The sentry opens the wicket and in traders' vernacular bids him go about his business. There is a wild war yell. The siege ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... old sanctuaries of the past, shut in amid the squalor, the hurry, the crowds, the unloveliness, and the commerce of the modern world, and all day long the clouds drift, and the birds circle, and the winds sigh around them, and beneath the earth at their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... excitement and to sway, while spots of intense blue and vivid crimson came out here and there from the blackness when the women rose from their seats on the ground. Then—sharply—there was silence. The sheriff disappeared, and shut in by the sashless window as by a picture frame and blinking in the strong light, stood a man with black hair, cropped close, face pale and worn, and hands that looked white and thin—stood bad ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... she disappeared into a sheltered hollow, the wind, hushed and non-plussed for a minute, paused to meditate further mischief; then, with regathered rage, it tore across country, and boomed, with sullen roar, into a valley shut in by ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... much more snug and comfortable is the house, shut in from the prying winds and shivering cold of the outside air, which the opposite outer doors of an open hall cannot, in their continual opening and shutting, altogether exclude! Our own experience, and, we believe, the experience ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... Earth-serpent, (12) the Crocodile. Chapter LXXXIX brought the soul (ba) of the deceased to his body in the Tuat, and Chapter XC preserved him from mutilation and attacks of the god who "cut off heads and slit foreheads." Chapters XCI and XCII prevented the soul of the deceased from being shut in the tomb. Chapter XCIII is a spell very difficult to understand. Chapters XCIV and XCV provided the deceased with the books of Thoth and the power of this god, and enabled him to take his place as the scribe of Osiris. Chapters XCVI and XCVII also placed him under the protection of Thoth. ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge

... coffee, Eve went to the open door and stood looking out upon the village. It was a warm summer night, and the scent of the prairie was strong upon the air. As yet Barnriff was neither large enough, nor shut in enough by its own buildings to hold to itself that stale, stifling atmosphere which cities obtain. The air was the pure breath which swept over the vast green rollers of the grass world in the ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... mainsail of the Skylark shut in the chimney on the shore; and the six-pounder awoke the ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... leave the world awhile For the soft visions of the gentle night; And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, To live as only in the angel's sight, In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, Where, at the worst, we only ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of Plumfield a pretty brown cottage, very like the Dovecote, nestled among the trees, and on the green slope westward Laurie's white-pillared mansion glittered in the sunshine; for when the rapid growth of the city shut in the old house, spoilt Meg's nest, and dared to put a soap-factory under Mr Laurence's indignant nose, our friends emigrated to Plumfield, and the great ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... though never ceasing to wonder, Nancy was won. Her consent, at length, went to him in her own volume of Browning, a pink rose shut in upon "A Woman's Last Word"—its petals bruised against ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... the west the valley is shut in by the rocks, which extend in a northern direction; the river has worked a passage through them, and runs underground, as I was told, for about a quarter of an hour. Near the west end of Wady Mousa are the remains of a stately ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... this day been kind to me," replied the woman, "and that's what I can't say of many—dear help me!—husht! Every door is shut in my face! Does not every cheek get pale when I am seen? If I meet a fellow-creature on the road, they turn into the field to avoid me; if I ask for food, it's to a deaf ear I speak; if I am thirsty, they send me to the river. What house would shelter me? In cold, in hunger, in drought, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... be so generally used to shut them up with, is one of the saddest signs we have of the caricature of culture that is having its way in our modern world. It is getting so that the only way the average dinned-at, educated modern boy, shut in with masterpieces, can really get to read is in some still overlooked moment when people are too tired of him to do him good. Then softly, perhaps guiltily, left all by himself with a book, he stumbles all of a sudden ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... year, she went out in the dusk of the early winter evening, wrapped close in shawl and cloak. She wore her dark shawl under her cloak, putting it over her head in lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that she might have to wait long in concealment. Then she tramped over the wet fell-path, shut in by misty rain for miles and miles, till she came to the place where he was lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony lane leading up to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... more,and that if He now let me come home to be with Him I could trust Him to be a thousand-fold more to Ernest than I could ever be, and to take care of my darling baby and my precious mother far better than I could. The very gates of heaven seemed open to let me in. And then they were suddenly shut in my face, and I found myself a poor, weak, tempted creature here upon earth. I, who fancied myself an heir of glory, was nothing but a peevish, human creature-very human indeed, overcome if Martha shook the bed, as she always did, irritated if my food did not come ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... and their quarter is the only part of the town which seems alive. They are, as usual, crammed into a corner, five streets being allotted to them, at each end of which is a gate that is closed at nine o'clock, when the Jews are shut in for the night. The houses are filthy, stinking, and out of repair. The Corso is like a street in an English town, broad, long, the houses low, and with a trottoir on both sides. The Castle, surrounded by a moat, stands in the middle of the town, a gloomy place. In it lives the Cardinal Legate. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... apparition. M. Vandenhuten aided me faithfully; he set me on the track of several places, and himself made efforts to secure them for me; but for a long time solicitation and recommendation were vain—the door either shut in my face when I was about to walk in, or another candidate, entering before me, rendered my further advance useless. Feverish and roused, no disappointment arrested me; defeat following fast on defeat served as stimulants ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... flushed with heat from the direct down-beating action of the sun, itself a disk of flame. Low mountains, purplish black in hue, made a horizon on which the ceiling appeared set, like the crystal in the upper valve of a watch. Thus shut in, but still fair to view east and south of the position the spectator occupied, lay El Zaribah, whither, as the appointed meeting place, so many pilgrims had for days and weeks ever wearier growing been ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... angrily, and hurried across the street. Hans closed the upper half of his door, so that he was almost shut in, and only a little light ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... to so beloved a fame. Sheltered by rocks, and in this part winding through the greenest banks, enamelled with a thousand wild flowers and water-weeds, went the crystal Sorgia. Advancing farther, the landscape assumed a more sombre and sterile aspect. The valley seemed enclosed or shut in by fantastic rocks of a thousand shapes, down which dashed and glittered a thousand rivulets. And, in the very wildest of the scene, the ground suddenly opened into a quaint and cultivated garden, through which, amidst a profusion of foliage, was seen a small and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... parochial bounty can only go thus far, and no farther. Charity herself was worn out with the importunity of this persevering pauper, and on Thursday night the doors of the parish workhouse were finally and sternly shut in her face. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... bee-frame is returned and secured, the observation-frame is removed; then the lid, I J, being shut up and bolted, and the upper lid, G H, closed, the box may be locked up. When the bees have been shut in with the slide in the front, the hive or box is ready to be transported anywhere, to procure new pasturage for them, which, as every experienced bee-keeper knows, is of the greatest benefit to ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn

... lay a little glade, shut in by painted rocks, upon whose black sides were engraved many curious pictures, the mystic symbols of the Indians; and as they stood gazing at it an eagle with pointed wings wheeled slowly above them, gazing with clear eyes down into the sunlit vale. From her round nest in the crotch of a sycamore ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... the minds of men are excited, shut in and subjugated by the narrow interests of the present, the more urgent is a general and higher interest in that which is purely human and superior to all influences of the time; an interest which shall set men free again and ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... especially on the Serra Allegri, there are the most lovely country-houses, with elegant gardens, and a most beautiful view over the sea. The prospect inland is not so fine, as chains of tall, naked, ugly mountains rise up behind the hills, and completely shut in the scene. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... the automobile where they had been shut in and entered the spacious lobby of the hotel, where a merry throng of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... the bottom of the valley up which our adventurers were moving, where a brawling river appeared in the distance like a silver thread. The view both behind and in advance was extremely wild, embracing almost every variety of hill scenery, and in each case was shut in by snow-capped mountains. These, however, were so distant and so soft in texture as to give the impression of ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... the floes lies slush-ice, which will soon be quite firm. There is an open pool to be seen to the north, but not a large one. From the crow's-nest, with the telescope, we can still descry the sea across the ice to the south. It looks as if we were being shut in. Well, we must e'en bid the ice welcome. A dead region this; no life in any direction, except a single seal (Phoca foetida) in the water; and on the floe beside us we can see a bear-track some days old. We again try to get soundings, but still find no bottom; it is remarkable ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... he had an opportunity of contrasting the discomfort of the caravansary with a bivouac under a rainy sky; for at nightfall, within two days' journey of Laghouat, the caravan halted in a desolate valley, shut in between two lines of reddish hills seemingly as barren as the valley itself. After long searching in the ravines a little brushwood was collected, and an attempt was made to light a fire, which was unsuccessful. The only food they had that ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... put the blankets in place. Didn't you hear the announcement that this is a committee of honor? The class has a right to send one to any man, and Prescott, the class president, is here. There, those blankets will hold and shut in all light. Turn on the gas, Holmesy, if ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... among meadows all shut in with fine elm trees, and the cows belonging to the sisters were being driven home, their bells tinkling. There was an outer court, within an arched gate kept by a stout porter, and thus far came the whirlicote and the Countess's attendants; but a lay ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hotel is the prettiest imaginable. It stands in a court yard, wholly shut in from the street; and, though not vast, it has all the elegance, if not the splendour, of a fine house. Nothing can evince a purer taste than this dwelling, with its decorations and furniture. It contains all that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... a little court. This was somewhat cleaner than the alley; also it lay so that the sun sometimes visited it, though here too his visits could be but brief, for on the opposite side the court was shut in and overshadowed by the tall backs of great houses. They seemed, to Betty's fancy, to cast as much moral as physical shadow over the place. The houses in this court were small and dingy. If one looked straight up, there was a space of grey cloud visible; ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... whose circular walls, studded with long, sharp spikes, gradually closed upon and pierced the victim, had its spiritual counterpart in his present condition. He was shut in on every side. If he made a push for liberty by abstaining from the drug, he was met and driven back by many nameless agonies. He seemed to recoil, inevitably, as if from steel barbs. Meanwhile the walls were closing in upon him. In order ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... his court by the Emperor Zeno. Now the Ephthalitae made it appear to their enemy that they had turned to flight because they were wholly terrified by their attack, and they retired with all speed to a place which was shut in on every side by precipitous mountains, and abundantly screened by a close forest of wide-spreading trees. Now as one advanced between the mountains to a great distance, a broad way appeared in the valley, extending apparently to an indefinite distance, but ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... had an experience which illustrated the foresight of the Austrians in preparing for the attack they believed would come. Some years before an Austrian had built a hotel in a deep ravine shut in by walls of limestone and very difficult of approach. Tourists had commented upon the lack of practicability of the man who placed a hostelry in so inaccessible a spot. But when the war came it developed that the hotel builder probably had a subsidy from the Government. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... that tear across the district of La Beauce, where nothing can check them, had been bellowing for hours; there had been rain, and the puddles splashed under foot. It was difficult to see, and Durtal had begun to think that he should never succeed in getting past the dim mass of the wall that shut in the square, by pushing open the door behind which lay that weird forest, redolent of the night-lamp and the tomb, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... drum and fife, some armed and some unarmed, coming and going from or to the rendezvous. The jolly sailors in the port mustered strong, and hearty were their demonstrations of enthusiasm. The shops were shut in many of the streets, while barricades were prepared at the street ends leading out of town, ready to be put up at any moment. Information was then so slow in its journeyings that falsehood became as strong-looking as truth, and it was ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... colours, which are painted in such richness by the summer sun, on groups of pinnacles and cones, forest hills, and the fine diversities of woodland and mountain scenery. On one side the eye glanced over a vast sheet of water, shut in by headlands, and as blue and bright as a lake under a serene sky. At the extremity of this noble estuary, a cloud, unchanging and unmoving, showed where a city sent up the smoke of its ten thousand fires; beyond this, all was purple confusion. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... only explain!" she once said to him as they sat facing each other across the table that Toky had laid so artistically. "When I feel the deepest my words seem shut in a cage; only a few get through the bars. I really believe people all feel the same about their little victories. It isn't the kind of victory; it is the sure realization that you are doing your work—the work you can do best. Why, sometimes I feel as if I were the big All Mother, and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... with the certainty of custom. He looked off at both ends of the world. The starlit stretch of road was almost as deserted as when Quebec shut in the inhabitants of Beauport. From the direction of Montmorenci he saw a gray thing come loping down, showing eyes and tongue of red fire. He screamed an old man's scream, pointing to it, and the cry of "Loup-garou!" brought all Beauport men ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the specks that were automobiles and that she liked to watch would become fewer and fewer; the days would grow colder, school would begin, the snow would come and choke the trails and she and Sweetheart and Little-Dad would be shut in at Sunnyside for weeks and weeks. Her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... here with all sorts of good resolutions," she said, fiercely, as she stood by the window, looking out, "but if this rain doesn't stop, I shall do something desperate. I hate to be shut in." ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... a large square one, shut in behind with a wooden gate; the others were common stalls, good stalls, but not nearly so large. It had a low rack for hay and a low manger for corn; it was called a box stall, because the horse that was put into it was not tied up, but left loose, to do as he liked. It is a great ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell

... almost Christmas that mass of green was sweet with perfume and with the songs of appreciative colonies of bright birds. In the midst of the grounds, and ingeniously shut in on all sides from any view that could spoil the illusion of a forest, stood the house, Colonial, creeper-clad, brightened in all its verandas and lawns by gay flowers, pink and white predominating. The rooms were large and lofty of ceiling, and not too uncomfortable ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... cemetery plot in the next block there was not an open spot or breathing-place, certainly not a playground, within reach of that great teeming slum that harbored more than a hundred thousand persons, young and old. Even the graveyard was shut in by a high brick wall, so that a glimpse of the greensward over the old mounds was to be caught only through the spiked iron gates, the key to which was lost, or by standing on tiptoe and craning one's neck. The dead there were of more account, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... her a little. It had grown suddenly, intensely dark—quicker than the slow, creeping change of dusk blending softly into night. Sort of eerie, it seemed—and a wind springing up and rustling through the branches made strange noises all about. They seemed to be shut in by a wall of blackness on every hand, except ahead where, like great streaming eyes of fire, the powerful lamps shot out their rays making weird color effects in the forest—huge tree-trunks loomed a dead drab, like mute sentinels, grim and ominous, that barred their way; ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... my wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it was not till yesterday that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads the highest ridge of the wood. Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on either side by high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of shining beech, and here I followed in their steps, looking out, now and again, through partings in the boughs, and seeing on one side the sweep of the wood stretching far to right and left, and sinking into the broad level, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... hated him nor despised him, as she ought doubtless in consistency to have done. She felt that he was abundantly a man, and she loved him. Richard on his side felt humbly the same truth, and he began to respect himself. The past had closed abruptly behind him, and tardy Gertrude had been shut in. The future was dimly shaping itself without her image. So he did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... and suspicious love, Threaten'd with frowning wrath and jealousy, Surpris'd with fear of [151] hideous revenge, I stand aghast; but most astonied To see his choler shut in secret thoughts, And wrapt in silence of his angry soul: Upon his brows was pourtray'd ugly death; And in his eyes the fury [152] of his heart, That shone [153] as comets, menacing revenge, And cast a pale complexion on his cheeks. As when the ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... day of the last month he takes her to a room she'd never set eyes on before. There was nothing in it but a spinning-wheel and a stool. And says he: "Now, my dear, here you'll be shut in to- morrow with some victuals and some flax, and if you haven't spun five skeins by the night, your head'll ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... plain, on the verge of the sudden descent toward Badulla. This position was two miles and a half from Newera Ellia, and was far more agreeable and better adapted for a settlement, the land being comparatively level and not shut in by mountains. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... windows, these were luxuries which could well be dispensed with; the open door was an excellent substitute for them in the daytime, and at night none were required. When I ventured to object to this arrangement, that he would have to keep the door shut in the winter time, the old man replied, in the style so characteristic of his country, "Shure it will be time enough to think of that when the could weather sets in." Everything about the house wore a Robinson Crusoe aspect, and though there was not any appearance ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the consequence of evil-doing," said Fairburn, moralising, as we came to this conclusion. "Honest men can go where they like, and have no enemies to fear; rogues have the door shut in their faces in all directions, and have reason to fear that ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... what it meant," he reflected once, "to a boy in those days, shut in as we were, to see those steamboats pass up and down, and never to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... carriage in the rear of the train, the clerk at the station stepped up to them, and with an air of great effrontery demanded to see their passes; these were instantly shown with an alacrity that plainly indicated fear; they were then shut in a box in the rear of the train, in which I could see no sitting accommodation. The way in which these men were treated presented nothing new, for I had invariably noticed that coloured people in the south, whether bond or free, were spoken to ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... abruptly, checking what he had intended to say. Nan felt as though a door had been shut in her face. This man had a rare faculty for implying everything ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... and wild pears, between this tangle of thickets, over the clematis and blackberry bush,—and here we are under the pines, the lofty and majestic pines. How different are these natural hedges, growing in wild disorder, from the ugly cactus fences with which my neighbours choose to shut in their homes, and even their souls. But my business now is not with them. There are my friends the children again gathering the pine-needles of last summer for lighting the fire of the silk-worm nursery. And down that narrow foot-path, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani



Words linked to "Shut in" :   hedge in, surround, skirt, swallow, fence in, fence, tuck, encase, enclose, eat up, rope in, incase, environ, wall up, border, frame in, frame, ring, cordon off, immerse, swallow up, insert, embower, glass in, bower, fortify, rope off, enshrine, encapsulate, fort, corral, wall in, dyke, bank, casket, bury, shrine, glass, hedge, dike, case



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