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More "Clutch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bob-sleigh worked admirably, and if it happened to catch, there was always the banister to clutch at. Its popularity eclipsed even that of the soap-slide and the roller skates. The fun waxed fast and furious, not to say noisy. Bumpings and bursts of laughter began to echo downstairs on to the lower stories. Miss Hampson, coming to unlock the jam-cupboard ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... chair before the little window, automatically scanned the faces of those passing through the barrier, ready to release the clutch with a "Good evening" if the person were known to her, or to say in a dull monotone, "Six-pence, please," to a stranger. Every now and then she glanced at the darkening sky towards the North where clouds were gathering up, and after a while, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... world invisible, we view thee: O world intangible, we touch thee: O world unknowable, we know thee: Inapprehensible, we clutch thee! ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... triumphant and grim. Nick fairly writhed in that iron clutch, and his face had assumed a sickly sallow color; while his eyes reminded Hugh of those of a hunted wild animal at bay, fear and defiance ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... Trojans; he, with brandish'd spear aloft, Sprang forth, and through the shoulder, from above, Deiopites wounded: Thoon next He slew, and Ennomus; then with his spear Chersidamas, in act to quit his car, Thrust through the loins below his bossy shield: Prone in the dust, he clutch'd the blood-stain'd soil. From these he turn'd; and wounded with his spear Charops, the high-born Socus' brother, son Of Hippasus; then forward sprang, to aid His brother, godlike Socus; close he stood Before Ulysses, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... man, but how did any man maintain a foothold there? He descended the rock, crying all the time: "Courage! Courage!" Suddenly his hands ceased to clutch the rocks, and he dropped. The water rose to his knees, but tempestuous as was the rush, he ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... for the officers to cry out, "Hold on for your lives." We struggled to windward, grasping whatever we could clutch. More and more the ship heeled over; then there came another loud report, the mainmast went by the board, the fore-topmast fell over the starboard bow, and the next instant the mizzenmast was carried away half up from the deck, while the sound of repeated blows which ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... political organization, the college and the legislature, however remote they may seem from the random impulses to cry and clutch at random objects with which a baby comes into the world, must start from just such materials as these. The same impulse which prompts a five-year-old to put blocks into a symmetrical arrangement is the stuff out of which architects ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ultimate contradiction which we name dogmatic religions. To make such a symbol once more fluid and flexible, to restore it to its place in the organic life of the soul, it is necessary to extricate it from the clutch of any dogmatic religion. I do not say that it is necessary to extricate it from religion, or even from every aspect of dogma; for it is of the very essence of such symbol to be a stimulus to the religious ecstasy and there ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... waters, as the squat craft heaves and rolls with rhythmic regularity. From somewhere below comes the monotonous throb of the protesting engines. A red light gleams suddenly on our starboard, and I catch my breath. AEons pass, it seems, before a panther-like clutch at the wheel carries us aside in time to let the offender plunge drunkenly past. We were near enough to throw a biscuit on her deck. A swift exchange ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... sank and grew heavy, Doris was moved with an almost terrible understanding of the girl across the room. She wanted to push her on her way instead of holding her back, and at the same time she was striving to clutch her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... They bent eagerly over the board, each watching with feverish anxiety his companion's movements, each casting, now and again, a gloating eye upon the heap of gold and greenbacks that lay between them, and at times half stretching out his hand to clutch it. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... strapped steamer rug, my large yellow valise, and sundry smaller articles, were gone, I knew not whither. I did but know they had vanished utterly; wherefore I adhered with the clutch of desperation to my umbrella and my small black portmanteau. Even my collection of assorted souvenir postcards of European views, whereof I had contemplated making an albumed gift to my Great-Aunt Paulina, on my return to my beloved ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... lips, whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such: Her glance, how wildly beautiful! how much Hath Phoebus wooed in vain to spoil her cheek Which glows yet smoother from his amorous clutch! Who round the North for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear? how languid, wan, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... kind that I have been describing. If once we feel ourselves to be struggling in the black flood of that awful river, we shall want a firmer hold upon the bank than is given to us by some rootless tree or other. We must clutch something that will stand a pull, if we are to be drawn from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heroism superior in kind or degree to that which this illustrious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to snatch some human victim from the clutch of the destroyer thirsting for ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... opposing foe In deadly fight—yet brings to light no friend: In travail sore hope comes not to the birth— Fear hydra-headed terror still begets;— All fancies grim I see, and straight embrace, At hope I clutch, who still eludes my grasp; Her rainbow hues adored are but a frame That serve by contrast to make fear more dark. Severus haunts me—oh, I know his love, Yet hopeless love must mate with jealousy,— While Polyeucte, who has won what he has lost, Can meet no rival with an equal eye. The fruit of ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... know not where! Lured by voices that cry and cry, Drawn by fingers that clutch my hair, Called to the mountains bleak and high, Led to the mesas hot and bare. O God! How my heart's blood wakes and thrills To the cry of the wind, the lure of the hills. I'll follow you, follow you far; Ye voices of winds, and rain and sky, To the peaks ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... shrewd calculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, then why do they manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable to answer this question. But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in a lynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and ease the throttle of the noose about his neck so that ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... shall we run away from it? Such a gift of fortune it were a shame to take in an unworthy spirit. For what were madder than to spurn wealth that is set openly before us, and to desire it when it is shut up and kept from us? Shall we squeamishly yield what is set under our eyes, and clutch at it when it vanishes? Shall we seek distant and foreign treasure, refraining from what is made public property? If we disown what is ours, when shall we despoil the goods of others? No anger of heaven can I experience which can force me to unload of its lawful burden the lap ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... I confess that through love men win to sick disgust and self-despising, and for that reason I will not love any more. Now breathlessly the tall lads run to clutch at stars, above the brink of a drab quagmire, and presently time trips them—Oh, Sesphra, wicked Sesphra of the Dreams, you have laid upon me a magic so strong that, horrified, I hear the truth come babbling from ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... said, "through and through you are evil, I think, and I can't help thinking you are a little crazy. But I wish you would teach me to be as you are, for tonight the hands of my dead father strain from his grave and clutch about my ankles. He has the right because it is his flesh I occupy. And I must occupy the body of a Townsend always. It is not quite the residence I would have chosen— Eh, well, for all that, I am I! And at ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... fly upon the ear is unnoticed. The auditory nerve is anesthetic. There is a swaying of the whole body and an apparent failure of co-ordination, probably the effect of some disturbance in the semi-circular canals of the ear. The hands tremble and then clutch wildly. The head is inclined forward as if to approach some object on a level with the shoulder. The mouth stands partly open, and the lips are puckered and damp. Of a sudden there is a sound as ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... no reply, standing riveted to the floor in an attitude of unconsciousness, her arms folded tightly across her bosom, her throat constricted as by the clutch of a mailed hand, gazing on the horrible spectacle. Then all at once she perceived that Charlot was there, grasping her skirts with his little hands; he must have awaked and managed to open the intervening doors, and no one had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and woe, Like a thick midnight fog, moved there so slow, He did nor stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, scowl Upon his soul, And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout. Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found, Worked under ground, Where he did clutch his prey. But one did see That policy. Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rained about him blood and tears; but ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a whip. The stranger girl, too, had not blabbed but had even seemed to smile her forgiveness when Mavis turned, with no good-by, to follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little mountaineers had crossed the threshold of a new world that day. Together they were going back into their own, but the clutch of the new was tight on both, and while neither could have explained, there was the same thought in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in each heart, and both were in the throes of the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... patience just a moment longer, Then with safety clutch them fast— Thus the spirit of delay beguiles us, Till the lucky ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... apple of his eye, as you may say, and not bother him and the young man around the corner there in their boss trade, eh?' What say?" He was flushed and red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out—and after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose hastily ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... left hand, I threw out my right at the little jutting point. The tips of my fingers just reached their aim, but only touched without anchoring themselves. As I fell back, my foot missed its former support, and my whole weight came heavily on the feeble left hand. The clutch was instantaneously torn apart, and I was falling through the air. All was over! The mountains sprang upwards with a bound. But before the fall had well begun, before the air had begun to whistle past me, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... steady. First over the side goes Dunningham, backward, then Mr. Pulitzer facing forward, one hand on the gang-rail, the other on Dunningham's shoulder; then an officer and one of the secretaries, close behind J. P. and ready to clutch him ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... proportions. "Here was your life," he said, "your beautiful life opening and full—full of such dear seeds of delight and wonder, calling for love, ready for love, and there came this Clutch, this Clutch that embodied all the narrow meanness of existence, and gripped and crumpled you and spoilt you.... For I tell you my dear you don't know; ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... for the storm was upon them with a wild, shrieking, hissing, deafening roar that nearly took Steve off his legs, and sent the doctor staggering forward to clutch at the nearest object that would offer a hold. In an instant the deck was white with a fine, powdery dust that bit and stung and filled the hair, penetrating to the skin. Voices were inaudible, but there ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... sails; you get all of it you have room for, and a ship of the line could do no more; indeed, your very nearness to the water increases the excitement, since the water swirls and boils up, as it unites in your wake, and seems to clutch at the low stern of your sail-boat, and to menace the hand that guides the helm. Or if you beat to windward, it is as if your boat climbed a liquid hill, but did it with bounding and dancing, like a child; there is the plash of the lighter ripples against the bow, and the thud of the heavier ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... thrust, he must take good heed the animal does not knock it out of his hands by a side movement of the head; (29) for if so he will follow up the impetus of that rude knock. In case of that misfortune, the huntsman must throw himself upon his face and clutch tight hold of the brushwood under him, since if the wild boar should attack him in that posture, owing to the upward curve of its tusks, it cannot get under him; (30) whereas if caught erect, he ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... in alarm at Father Cipriano. Jurissa thrust his right hand under his cloak, and seemed to clutch some weapon. Even the counsellor's dame for a moment turned her eyes from the jewels she was admiring to the anxious countenance of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... disrelish for his flippant tone, by removing her hand from his arm. But at once the faint hiss of a snake as it glided into the swamp from somewhere just in front of them made her clutch his wet sleeve afresh. His hints as to the nature of the treasure had roused her inquisitiveness to a keen point. Yet, remembering what he had said about her praiseworthy dearth of feminine curiosity, she approached the subject in a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... were breathless. Then she was being led over hard snow, towards a place where men stood, where there was new-turned earth, where a coffin lay upon the ground. She suffered the sound of more words which she could not follow, then heard the dull falling of clods upon hollow wood. A hand seemed to clutch her throat, she struggled convulsively and cried aloud. But ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... anything had happened to him, when something did happen which very nearly petrified me. I felt a clutch on my shoulder. Quickly turning my head, I was horrified to see him standing on his seat and ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Ellins," I breaks in, "but you're slippin' your clutch. Tricks! Why, he ain't even wise to what you want him to do it for. All he knows is that it's crooked, and he renigs on a general proposition. And, say, when a man's as straight as that, with the workhouse starin' him in the face, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... devil, a devil personified! I saw him to-day," murmured the monk, "I reached him but a finger, and he took my whole hand! No," sighed he, "the wickedness is in myself; it is also in this man, but he is not tormented by it; he walks with elevated brow, he has his enjoyment; I but clutch at the consolation of the church for my welfare! But if this is only consolation! If all here consists of beautiful thoughts and but resemble those which beguiled me in the world? Is it but a deception like unto the beauty of the red evening clouds and like ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch—but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, but Nightspore ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the city. One thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were genuine. Still, as she went, she spied around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers. To Challoner her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expression and a languid manner, struts leisurely towards us, with his hands in his pockets, thereby giving what I am forced to admit is an imitation of myself perfect in its burlesque. Ben Flint roars with laughter. I clutch the imp and throw him across knee and pretend to spank him. We struggle lustily till ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... then, and I shook like a leaf with the pain of it. Again and again I faced it, again and again I failed. It was physical pain, it was a thing that I could feel like a clutch at my heart. Was it not ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... walked to the door, and father and son were left together. John Jervase, banker, capitalist, driver of men, was not in the least like himself that morning, and his hands trembled so that he was fain to clutch one with another, and to hold both tight between his knees as ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... answer, she felt a mighty clutch on the oar, a clutch that strained her arms to the breaking-point as she tried to brace her knees against the runners of the ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... to one side by a quick movement, he sprang to his feet, and as Overman rose, fastened his enormous hairy left hand on his throat and closed it with the clutch of a bear. His enemy writhed and plunged the steel twice to the hilt in Gordon's breast before his big right hand found the knife and ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... hot breath of the flames upon her cheek, and saw that the whole house had suddenly become involved in the universal destruction, that she knew what had befallen her, and that death was striving hard to clutch her and make ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... seized by sudden inspiration, whether because the tails of Rourke's long coat hung out in a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... "to see him clutch his flesh and shriek and mouth, is enough to make a man live sober for his remaining days," and he shook his big shoulders ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... against the canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became instantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken. One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperately for a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in some way he managed to save himself with his legs. He was hanging by them, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... link, Call no land free that holds one fettered slave. Until the manacled, slim wrists of babes Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee; Until the Mother bears no burden save The precious one beneath her heart; until God's soil is rescued from the clutch of greed And given back to labour, let no man Call ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of a landing company, refusing the help of the Flemings ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... not like to think of Cora in the clutch of those unscrupulous persons. The thought was like a knife to him. Jack saw his chum's new alarm and tried to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in honorable house with them. One day go by, and 'nother night come. Sick boy's mama have look of ivory lady as she rest her tired, and maid girl make tea. I watch by side of bed on floor. Big ache in heart clutch' me when I look round room and see blue soldier's suit hang' near. It have look of empty and lonely, dragon-fly kite in corner have broken wing. But when I bring gaze back Tke Chan, loveliest sight of ...
— Mr. Bamboo and the Honorable Little God - A Christmas Story • Fannie C. Macaulay
... slipping her clutch to the lapel of his old coat, spoke. She looked into his eyes with a smile that was sweeter—oh, much sweeter!—for tears that dimmed it, and she choked most awfully between words. "Jim"—and a choke. "Jim, I'm terrified to think I nearly ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... ravings. He fell to the floor and seemed stricken with a fit, and Bob thought the man had gone stark mad. He struck out and grasped those within his reach, and they were glad to escape from his iron clutch. For several minutes this wild frenzy lasted before he said ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... changed. This"—she gave herself a downward look—"this isn't the 'gel' he wants.... Probably by now he's given me up. Maybe he's found another. Everything that's bad and hateful can find me out here. Bad things can find you out and try to clutch after you anywheres. But when something wild and clean comes hunting for you, something out of the big lonely places—why, it would be scared to follow into ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... law that will deport me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help me to put up with the world, which cannot ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... grand hereditary master of the hangar, and Miss Annette Kellerman in charge of the swimming-pool. I am not denying that such a castle is easier to enjoy before the air has been squeezed out of it by the horny clutch of reality, which moves it to the journey's end and sets it down with a jar in its fifty-foot lot, complete with seven rooms and bath, and only half an hour from the depot. But this is not for one moment admitting the contention of the lords of literature that the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... what sum of money represents his debts?" Alston threw in, as you would clutch at the bit of a ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... every American schoolboy: "My country, in her intercourse with other nations may she always be in the right! But right or wrong, my country!" And he will never do a really good job of supporting her standards if, when the clutch comes, he ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... a hill, formidable from its narrow track and deep drop on either side. Dahlia, it seemed, jibbed sometimes, she must—Bluebell was paying no attention. Good Heavens! what was happening?—the leader backing and sliding! Jack's stinging whip and clutch at the reins could not arrest the catastrophe. Dahlia rears and falls over the edge, pulling sleigh and wheeler after her into a trough ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... went abroad that he was saving money. At first no one believed this except the man who told it, but there seemed after all to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree's trouser pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid to let it out of his clutch. Those who sat on dykes with him when his day's labor was over said that the wearer kept his hand all the time in his pocket, and that they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it slip through his ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... end of the craft began to rise. Very shortly the deck was in a level position. Then, as Harry continued to empty the water ballast, Frank and Ned, assisted by Jimmie and Jack, threw the clutch on the propeller shaft out of contact in order to permit the tail shaft to turn without moving ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... unhappy-looking,—were all represented. The men for the most part hardened and merciless, and many careless young gentlemen, some of them innocent-looking lads enough, but others, alas! showing painfully their habits of dissipation, in spite of their youth,—all waiting eagerly to clutch their winnings or silently lose ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... frieze-like material was turned up in the collar until it covered his ears. His neck was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he seemed, as the car now slid noiselessly down the long, sloping road, with the clutch disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead of him through the darkness in ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not fled; I had brought back the body; I had handed over the property. But how did that help me? It would only suggest that I had yielded to a sudden funk after killing my man, and had no nerve left to clutch at the fruits of the crime; it would suggest, perhaps, that I had not set out to kill but only to threaten, and that, when I found that I had done murder, the heart went out of me. Turn it which way I would, I could see no hope of escape by this ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... throat, her lungs seemed bursting, the blood was beating in her ears like the deafening roar of waves, and the room was darkening with the film that was creeping over her eyes. Her hands fell powerless to her sides and her knees gave way limply. He was holding her upright only by the clutch on her throat. The drumming in her ears grew louder, the tent was fading away into blackness. Dimly, with no kind of emotion, she realised that he was squeezing the life out of her and she heard his voice coming, as it were, from a great distance: "You will not languish long in Hawiyat ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... with perforated sides. This vessel is either mounted or hung on a vertical axis, and is lined with wire cloth. Having taken a proper portion of the melada into the centrifugal, the operator starts it to revolving, and by means of a friction clutch makes such connection with the engine as gives it about 1,500 revolutions per minute. The centrifugal force developed drives the liquid molasses through the meshes of the wire cloth, and out against the husk, from which it flows off into a tank. The sugar, being solid, is retained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... then pausing only long enough to clutch some of the gleaming jewels from the inanimate form, he stealthily withdrew, and, skulking unobserved along the corridors, passed out into ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... had at once sent for Dr. Brownlow as the nearest, and he was at home; but he could only look and do nothing, but attempt to revive circulation, all in vain; and with Marilda standing by, with one convulsive clutch of Angela's hand, the true mother of her orphaned life, little Lena sank to a peaceful rest from the ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... said the prisoner, extending his arm as if to clutch at a still vague inspiration—"wait a moment. When I arrived in Paris I had with me a trunk containing my clothes. The linen is all marked with the first letter of my name, and besides some ordinary coats and trousers, there were a couple of costumes I ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... fathers and of themselves in wresting the fields of the South from the clutch of forest; in crimsoning American soil with their blood in every war that has been fought; in yielding of all of the best of their heart and mind for this country's good is, according to Mr. Dixon, to count ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... had made no miscalculation. He dropped on me once again, but this time as an inert mass. Burrowing out from under him, I sprang to my feet aglow with triumph—and found myself in the clutch of the second gentleman from the chimney-place, who apparently had come ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Pablo spoke, the guaco, which had hopped down to the lowest branches of a neighbouring tree, swooped suddenly at the snake, evidently aiming to clutch it around the neck. The latter, however, had been too quick, and coiling itself, like a flash of lightning darted its head out towards the bird in a threatening manner. Its eyes sparkled with rage, and their fiery glitter could be seen even at ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... gone to have it verified. But, in spite of everything, realization was difficult: the realization that, turn whither she would, there was upon her—upon that poor, tortured breast, the relentless clutch of death. Struggle as she might, through the ensuing months—the few, few ensuing months, that clutch must grow tighter and more cruelly tight, until—the end. During the years since her marriage Madame Gregoriev had, more than once, wished—nay, prayed for death. But ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... larger of the pulleys, D, round the second guide pulley, L, then back to the large wheel, and over a fixed guide pulley across to the reeling frame. Power is supplied to the latter by means of a friction clutch, and to insure even winding the usual reciprocating motion of a guide is employed. The measuring apparatus is pivoted at F, and by raising or lowering the nuts at the end of the bar the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... blood in my body rushed back to my heart—a deadly thrill ran through every limb—from shame and indignation, no doubt; my vision became obscure; it seemed as if my soul was leaving my body, and I fell forward fainting, and dragged her down to the bottom of the water in a mortal clutch. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... fellow, is just what they're fond of! And remember, them that are stupid, or the women folk, as can't put their money into use themselves, they take it to the bank, and they there, deuce take 'em, clutch hold of it, and with this money they fleece the people. It's ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... he had set forth in the former lectures on the Resurrection, Heaven, and Hell. His strange doctrine responded to the sympathies of the time, and gratified the immoderate love of the marvelous, which haunts the mind of man in every age. This effort of man to clutch the infinite, which for ever slips through his ineffectual grasp, this last tourney of thought against thought, was a task worthy of an assembly where the most stupendous human imagination ever known, perhaps, ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... They walked on slowly along the dike for a short time, talking busily, though not able to see where they were going, when suddenly Katharine felt her feet slipping. In trying to steady herself she let go of Gretel, gave a wild clutch at the air, and then rolled, rolled, right down a steep bank, and, splash! into a pool of water at the bottom. For a moment she lay half stunned, not knowing what had happened to her; then, as her sense came, "Oh," thought she, "I must be killed, or drowned, or something!" She ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... my intention in my eyes; or observed my fingers taking a firmer clutch of my gun, I know not, but at this moment he seemed to evince sudden fear, and, dropping down from the seat, he ran backward to the bow, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... reached this delightful point, and Livingstone was down on his hands and knees trying with futile dexterity to avoid the clutch of a pair of little arms that apparently were pursuing him with infallible instinct into an inextricable trap, when he became conscious of a presence he had not observed before. Some one not there before was ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... great for words. His right hand hung poised and moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to his face on ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... his knife, and Myles, with the energy of despair, holding him tightly by the wrist. It was in vain the elder lad writhed and twisted; he was strong enough to overbear Myles, but still was not able to clutch the haft ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there,—weeds and violets together,—not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... theme, and impatient to manifest our royal descent, in a paroxysm of enthusiasm we clutch our Cremona, clasp him lovingly to our shoulder, and high waving in air our magical bow, which is to us a sceptre, bring it down with a crash, exulting in the immortal harmony about to gush, like a mountain torrent, from the teeming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... her around the end of the altar. Tarzan strained at the bonds which held his arms pinioned behind him. The woman did not see—she had forgotten her prey in the horror of the danger that threatened herself. As the brute leaped past Tarzan to clutch his victim, the ape-man gave one superhuman wrench at the thongs that held him. The effort sent him rolling from the altar to the stone floor on the opposite side from that on which the priestess stood; but as he sprang to his ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... daring to shine in his presence; for being the president of an academy of which he, Voltaire, was only a simple member. Above all this, the king loved him, and praised his extraordinary talent and scholarship. Voltaire only watched for an opportunity to clutch this dangerous enemy, and the occasion soon ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... indeed, for a passing ship or boat would not only be going at great speed, but would be very unlikely to see his cockle-shell in the darkness, or to hear his cry in the roaring gale. Still he grasped that hope as the drowning man is said to clutch ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ben!" shouted Johnny, fearing lest his artistic labors in the way of the "Wild Indian" would be ruined, and then he and Mopsey sprang on the stage, rescuing the curtain from the frantic clutch of the ghost, and leaving that worthy to get to his ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... at hand," said Peter. "Will any one pass a rope round my waist? I am sure I could clutch him." ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... Haywood, were anarchists like themselves, and although they professed contempt for law, as soon as they were arrested and brought up for trial, they clutched at every quibble of the law, as drowning men clutch at straws to save them; and, be it said to the glory or shame of the law, it furnished enough quibbles, not only to save them from the gallows, but to let them loose again on society with the legal whitewash ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... upon his wrist the scar from a saber cut which he had received in a duel outside of Paris when he was nineteen. She touched his hand as she scanned the red cicatrice on the inside of his white wrist. A quick impulse that was somewhat spasmodic impelled her fingers to close in a sort of clutch upon his hand. He felt the pressure of her pointed nails in the flesh ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... not let him go: that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the currents when the sails have been ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... a fascinating sight. Few things could be finer than to see him snatch away a barbed-wire entanglement of blackberry-bushes, clutch a three-inch thorn sapling with his hairy left, and with one swing of his terrible right cut the taproot through. I had figured that it would take a month to clear away that mess along the brook, but on the evening of the fifth day Pop had ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... stream, and the crashing fall of the stones, which accompanied its course. Down, down went the poor wretches, now utterly overwhelmed by the torrent, now regaining their feet only to utter a scream, and then be swept off. Here a miserable struggler, whirled onward, would clutch at the banks and try to scramble forth, but the soft turf giving way beneath him, he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... face and his eyes started from their sockets. His head seemed on the point of bursting. He reeled, staggered, and then, together with his terrible assailant, fell heavily to the floor. As they did so, the old man's head struck on a sharp corner; he uttered a moan, and at last the deadly clutch on Peveril's ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... and laughed. "You funny little thing! You're rather sweet. George hasn't a clutch strong enough to hold me. You can be sure ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... raise his pistol, was the right one. He had seen her dark eyes aglow; he had seen the sunlit sheen of her black hair rippling in the wind; he had seen the white pallor in her face, the slimness of her as she stood over him in horror—he remembered even the clutch of her white hand at her throat. A moment before she had tried to kill him. And then he had looked up and had seen her like that! It must have been some unaccountable trick in his brain that had flooded her hair with golden ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... touch, Her lips whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such; Her glance how wildly beautiful—how much Hath Phoebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek, Which grows yet smoother from his amorous clutch, Who round the north for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear! how languid, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Orloff endeavored to force a corrosive poison into Peter's mouth. Peter, who was powerful of build and now quite desperate, hurled himself upon his enemies. Alexis Orloff seized him by the throat with a tremendous clutch and strangled him till the blood gushed from his ears. In a few moments the unfortunate ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Though in gulfs Of yet unsounded ruin I should die At the end miserably, I still shall seek In life itself my refuge: not in God That stands apart from life, on heights of peace. All my desires, my visions, my dreams, my unrest, My loathing and my longing will I clutch And cry: "With all its bitterness on my head, My Will be done, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... of Charity turned and smiled at Maryette, made her a friendly gesture, threw in the clutch, and, twisting the steering wheel with both sun-browned hands, guided the machine out onto the road and sped away swiftly after ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... blush by praising you, but I give you a good mark for the whole affair. If you had excused yourself, or asked to be let off, or told a lie, it would have been ugly. What you did was in the best taste: and that is what I mean. The ugly thing is to clutch and hold on. You did more for yourself by being polite and honest than even George Meredith could have done for you. What I mean by the sense of beauty, as applied to morality, is that a man must be a gentleman first, and a moralist afterwards, if he can. It is ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... perspective of vision. For all his keenness of insight, he failed utterly to see into the mysterious mind of his wife. He could not penetrate that subtle interplay of traditional virtues and discover that she was in the clutch of one of the oldest and most savage of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... make a chinking sound, and the car lost pace. And then Mr. Britling saw a pleading little white board with the inscription "Concealed Turning." For the moment he thought a turning might be concealed anywhere. He threw out his clutch and clapped on his brake. Then he repented of what he had done. But the engine, after three Herculean throbs, ceased to work. Mr. Britling with a convulsive clutch at his steering wheel set the electric hooter snarling, while one foot released the clutch again and the other, on the accelerator, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... months. She had asked for ten months; not a day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the outside. And the check—it was a clutch at the heart that brought her brain up staggering—came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost rim of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of it; it was not long indeed before he could manage to keep his legs against Job, for that hero was slow of offence, and gained his victories chiefly by allowing others to throw themselves against his immovable legs and loins. But Harry Winburn was undeniably his master; from the first clutch of hands when they stood up, down to the last trip which sent him on to his back on the turf, he felt that Harry knew more and could do more than he. Luckily Harry's bright unconsciousness and Tom's natural good temper kept them ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... clutch at my resolution. "People who do that kind of thing always get into trouble. She might miss her train. She's almost certain to miss ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fell clutch of Circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance My head is bloody ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hear der ghostes yell mit der outside?" said Carl, who had been thrust away from his clutch on Bud, and was standing in the middle of the floor, trembling ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentered all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my sight ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... each other, the girls came up; but they would have sunk again immediately if he had not been there to clutch them. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... looked out upon the cathedral—or into a troubled doze rather, from which he awoke all at once with a start, and, seeing the window shut, rose hurriedly to go and open it for the "Boy." He had done so before at night often when he chanced to forget it. But when he got to it now he had to clutch the frame to support himself, and he looked out stupidly for some seconds, wondering in a dazed way why the sun was shining when it should be dark. Then suddenly full consciousness returned, and he remembered. He should ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... another—ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had carried with her. Left alone, he revealed numb withered patches, ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... from the axe to tear With a chain-laden hand his master's crowned head, Thou gav'st thy hand unto the noble pair; Before ye, struck with horror, fell That Areopagus of hell. Be proud, O Bard! and thou, fiend-wolf of blood and guile, Sport with my head awhile; 'Tis in thy clutch. But hark! and know, thou Godless one, My shout shall follow thee, my triumph-laugh of joy! Aye, drink our blood, live to destroy: Thou'rt but a pigmy still; thy race shall soon be run. An hour will come, an hour thou can'st not flee— Thou shalt fall, Tyrant! Indignation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... prescription with a complacent grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his hand, chill dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental strictness, his liver turned instantly to water. However, he made a feeble clutch at Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, "Here's a many ingredients, and the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where we keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half an hour, Miss, could ye?" She acquiesced readily, for she was not habitually called ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... I was badly "rattled"; I knew by the clutch of Sylvia's hand that she was too. But here I got a lesson in the nature of "social training." Some of the bright colour had faded from her face, but she spoke with the utmost coolness, the words coming naturally and simply: "We can't get through the crowd." And at ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... fern guess heave live talk kern start leap stick walk sperm wrath knee cliff chalk serve floor spleen writ lawn were czar have bronze daub herb haunch frank buzz fault strength flaunt slake snatch spawn sneak haunt smack dredge drift purse sharp clamp church fund clutch kneel ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... trotted beside Tim, obediently silent. He was so tired that his feet stumbled, but he plodded on, keeping a tight clutch on his friend's hand. ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... felt a tight clutch upon his arm, and Ralph pulled him around. Casting eyes outward, the captain saw that it was the lake that ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... came and went, and still the West held him in its powerful clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the sweet, new joy of a woman's love and devotion, and into his home came the happy music of children's voices. When his eldest boy was eight years old, his district elected him to the State senate, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... actor's mobile features were suddenly contracted under the lash of violent despair; and tears, genuine tears which he did not even think of concealing behind his hand as they do on the stage, filled his eyes but did not flow, so tightly did his agony clutch him by the throat. The poor ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... leaped through her brain. Perhaps they were this moment going down. Now she knew what it was like! This thing she had read of in newspapers! Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she, Betty Vanderpoel! And, as she sprang to clutch her fur coat, there flashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlines in the newspapers and the inevitable reference ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the step. It seemed an hour since he had first heard it begin to climb the stairs. It sounded heavily on the floor outside his door. There was a heavy tapping on the door itself. For an instant the clutch of Lowrie froze around his gun; then he twitched the muzzle back against his own ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... to dig out of your life quite a brilliant philosophy, though I suppose you do not know what that is. It's holding to your ideal, the thing that seems most worth while, and forcing everything else into line with that. Now, you see I had a bad handicap—a clutch on me that made me a weak, sickly fellow, but through it all I ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... indigestible meals, occasionally wetted the bed, dreaming that she was frightened by some one running after her, and wetted herself in consequence, after the manner of the Ganymede in the eagle's clutch, as depicted by Rembrandt. These two cases, it may be noted, belong to two quite different types. In the first case, the full bladder suggests to imagination the appropriate actions for relief, and the bladder actually accepts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... right in plain sight. He had failed because his mind was so full of Grandfather Frog and Longlegs that he forgot to look around, as he usually does. Just skimming the tops of the bulrushes he sailed swiftly out over the Smiling Pool and reached down with his great, cruel claws to clutch Grandfather Frog, who sat there pretending to be asleep, but all the time watching Longlegs and deep down inside chuckling to think how he ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... promise—foreseeing even then the possibility of this black hour—he had meant, at the moment, to turn his back for ever on the seductive thing which whispers such sweet, such deliriously fatal promises to the man in the clutch of any agony he does not know ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... made the job difficult, and my heart was in my mouth, for the noise in that quiet place must have woke the dead. Then, by the mercy of Heaven, the engine started, and I sprang to the driving seat, released the clutch, and opened the throttle. The great car shot forward, and I seemed to hear behind me shrill voices. A pistol bullet bored through my hat, and another buried itself in a cushion ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Johnnie Green began to walk towards him Twinkleheels waited until his young master reached out a hand to take hold of his mane. Then Twinkleheels wheeled like a flash and tore off across the pasture, leaving Johnnie to clutch the ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... moving to and fro and the drone of a priest praying and a touch upon her hand from which she shrank. And oh! she wished that dream were done, for it was long, long. It wearied her, and grasped her heart with a cold clutch ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... out of you, you young beast!" exclaimed the tramp, preparing to clutch Harry by the throat. The moment was a critical one for the poor boy, whose career came near ending then ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... death; like the footsteps of death are the moments. "Arise!"—At the word, with a bound, to their feet spring the vigilant Frenchmen; And the dark, dismal forests resound to the crack and the roar of their rifles; And seven writhing forms on the ground clutch the earth. From the pine-tops the screech owl Screams and flaps his wide wings in affright, and plunges away through the shadows; And swift on the wings of the night flee the dim, phantom forms of the spirit. Like cabris ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... own voices. We agreed there was nothing for it but to stop where we were till morning, clinging to the short grass; so we lay there side by side, for what may have been five minutes or may have been an hour. Then, attempting to turn, I lost my grip and rolled. I made convulsive efforts to clutch the ground, but the incline was too steep. How far I fell I could not say, but at last something stopped me. I felt it cautiously with my foot; it did not yield, so I twisted myself round and touched ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... impartial and honest man. That cannot be helped. Impossible or not impossible; true or false, it is necessary for their very existence, so that, just as a drowning man catches at a straw, though it cannot possibly support him, so do these most unfortunate and hardly-pressed men clutch at and cling to the hollow theory of continuity. Sometimes, when off their guard, and in a less cautious mood, they will confess as much themselves. And what is more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a confession. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... hall had been reached, and she had gone up half a dozen steps into a small dressing-room. This was crowded to suffocation—by men who played the Game, she concluded, in one capacity or another. And here she lost Joe. But before the real personal fright could soundly clutch her, one of the young fellows said gruffly, "Come along with me, you," and as she wedged out at his heels she noticed that another one of the ...
— The Game • Jack London
... to my father. He was a marvelously clever man, dexterous with hand and brain alike. Moreover, he was no weakling; perchance I should credit him with some of my agility, for he was famed as a gymnast, though not a powerful one. 'Twas he who taught me how to disable my enemy with a mere clutch of the neck ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... always believed love a breath of beauty that would hold its purity even in a hovel, but she had not been prepared for the sordidness that seemed to envelop her as she crossed the threshold of the first home of her married life. Martin, held in the clutch of the strained embarrassment that invariably laid its icy fingers around his heart whenever he found himself confronted by emotion, had suggested that Rose go in while he put up the horse and fed the stock. "Don't be scared ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... strange. A girl goes through the world Like a white sail over the sea, a being Woven so fine and lissom that her life Is but the urging spirit on its journey, And held by her in shape and attitude. And all she's here for is that you may clutch Her spirit in the ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Arkansas River. We had only a meagre measure of rations, less of grain in proportion, and there was no military depot to which we could resort. The maps were all wrong, and in the trackless wastes and silent sand-dunes of the Cimarron country gaunt Starvation was waiting to clutch our vitals with its gnarled claws; while with all our nakedness and famine and peril, the winter blizzard, swirling its myriad whips of stinging cold came raging across the land and caught us ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... midnight fog, moved there so slow, He did nor stay, nor go; Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, scowl Upon his soul, And clouds of crying witnesses without Pursued him with one shout. Yet digged the mole, and, lest his ways be found, Worked under ground, Where he did clutch his prey. But one did see That policy. Churches and altars fed him; perjuries Were gnats and flies; It rained about him blood and tears; but he Drank them ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All manner of doubt, inquiry, [Greek: skepsis] as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is getting to know and believe. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... "It'll be human, too, when we start to hunt you down!" He let the staff car in gear. Dillon smiled at him. He let in the clutch, and the ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... he saw the sole protection which had hidden him from his enemies begin to move away his courage failed him, and he had not sufficient boldness to carry out the plan he had so neatly arranged. Instinctively he threw his arms up to clutch the rope again, but it was too late, it had already passed beyond his reach; there was nothing left to save him. Another moment and his hiding place would be discovered, when——, Sir Thomas missed his footing, and with a gesture of impatience he let the bundle fall again, and ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... The young lady of charming countenance and sprightly manners is too much besought to choose for her choice to be decided; the numbers beseeching prevent her from choosing instantly, after the fashion of holiday schoolboys crowding a buffet of pastry. These are not coquettish, they clutch what is handy: and little so is the starved damsel of the sequestered village, whose one object of the worldly picturesque is the passing curate; her heart is his for a nod. But to be desired ardently of trooping hosts is an incentive to taste to try for yourself. Men (the jury of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... looked at the face. Ah, there was no imperial grandeur here! Only a feeble, sallow, tired, and sickly creature, whom a strong man could crush down with one blow of his fist. Rohan grew weak as he looked, and the long knife almost fell from his clutch. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... our sensibilities. We must cultivate conscience until we have too much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking old gentleman opposite. When we see men so distrustful, we shun them. They then call us selfish when we feel only solitary. We protest against such manhood as would lower golden ideals of youth to its own contemptible Avernus. And ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... Anak, sinewed strong, The fingers that on greatness clutch, Yet lo! the marks their lines along Of one who strove ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... we note the altered demeanor of bellboys and janitors as the Date flows quietly toward us; we pass through the haggard perplexity of "Only Four Days More" when we suddenly realize it is too late to make our shopping the display of lucid affectionate reasoning we had contemplated, and clutch wildly at grotesque tokens—and then (sweetest of all) comes the quiet calmness of Christmas Eve. Then, while we decorate the tree or carry parcels of tissue paper and red ribbon to a carefully prepared list of aunts and godmothers, or reckon up a little pile of bright quarters on the dining-room ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... the lightning flash. Will could not, of course, carry out this plan fully, nevertheless the memory of it served him in good stead, for, the instant he caught the drowning man by the hair, he kept him at arm's length, and thus avoided his death-clutch until he could grasp him under the armpits from behind, and thus render him powerless. He then rose and drew him gently upon his breast, at the same time striking out ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... not proceeded far when the captain ordered the crew to prepare to dive, and immediately the engine was shut down and the clutch connecting its shaft with the electric apparatus thrown off and another connecting the electric motor with the propeller thrown in; a switch was then turned and the current from the storage batteries set the motor and propeller spinning. While this was ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... firemen penetrated only a short way into the mass before they were slowed almost to a standstill. From the sidelines it seemed as though they were wrestling with an invisible octopus. Feet were lifted high, but never free of the twining vegetation; the ladder was pulled angrily forward, but the clutch of the grass upon it became firmer with ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... hoofs following closely in the rear, someone is nearly upon him gaining inch by inch. His courage sinks—dies—he is white, perspiring, terrified, limp! His senses reel, he drops the reins, falling forward on his horse's neck. His fingers clutch the mane, while a woman's ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... vehement prompting of conscience. It did not make it any the less probable that the girl would die on or before Midsummer Day; but, supposing her story were true, it absolved him from any charge of assistance to the designs of those grisly powers in whose clutch she was. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the headgear. A dark ulster of some frieze-like material was turned up in the collar until it covered his ears. His neck was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he seemed, as the car now slid noiselessly down the long, sloping road, with the clutch disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead of him through the darkness in search of ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... land? Should when he pleases, and on whom he will, Wage war, with any or with no pretence Of provocation given, or wrong sustained, And force the beggarly last doit, by means That his own humour dictates, from the clutch Of poverty, that thus he may procure His thousands, weary of penurious life, A splendid opportunity to die? Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees In politic convention) put your trust I' th' shadow of a bramble, and recline In fancied peace ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... that clutch holds and hurts. What have you grasped in me? Is there a father's heart as well as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... fires of the wonderful spring that had accompanied it. He recalled every detail of his conversation with me. His confidence that life would now be fine for him—how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, the treasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them? It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair—blame of Marie Ivanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile, idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he not ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... it is done at last! I have broken the King's stronghold! I have stolen away his children twain From the clutch of their guardsmen bold. I have dragged them here to my castle tower. Prince Hero is strong and fair. But he and his sister shall rue my power, When ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... glimpses. Yet all these rainbows which span the heaven of thought, finely woven of the tears of humility, one would sometimes grasp and crystallize forever. In that I find my satisfaction in what I know of Fourier; but to clutch at the rainbow! can it ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... softly under the hood, and there was a blur in the mechanician's seat which answered for the crouching figure of the ward-worker. By a supreme effort of will Blount swung himself up behind the steering-wheel and let the clutch in. Luckily, the street was clear of vehicles and he made the turn in safety; but fully realizing his handicap, he steered straight away from the business district, and making a wide circuit through the ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... springs this well of mournfulness profound, Unfathomable to plummet cast by man? Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind Heaving the ocean into maddened arms That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks, And scatter them, as if compacted slight As little eggs boys star against a tree In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable, To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws, The power that in the logging crocodiles' Outrageous ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... with one of the disks fixed, serves as a brake for arresting motion, and this again without shock, but with gradually increasing action. Where space is very much circumscribed, the clutch and the brake may be combined, by fitting a disk with brushes on one side, and projections on the other, so that it may be brought by a lever against a second disk, for transmitting motion, and against a third, fixed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in thought that she discovered with a start, from a lettered lamp, that she was at Morningside Park, and thought she was moving out of the station, whereas she was only moving in. "Lord!" she said. She jumped up at once, caught up a leather clutch containing notebooks, a fat text-book, and a chocolate-and-yellow-covered pamphlet, and leaped neatly from the carriage, only to discover that the train was slowing down and that she had to traverse the full ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... on his engine as I leaped into the car. My "Let her go!" wasn't needed to make him throw in his clutch, and give me a flying start straight ahead down the broad plank way of the Embarcadero. Looking back as we hit the belt-line tracks, I saw a small car with two men in it, shoot out from one of the wide doorways of the plant; ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... with vermin; gibbering cretins with the ghastly wens; lepers by the hundred, too shocking for mothers to gaze at, and therefore driven forth to curse and howl in the lazar-house outside the walls, there stretching out their bony hands to clutch the frightened almsgiver's dole, or, failing that, to pick up shreds of offal from the heaps of garbage—to these ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... and with outstretched arms launched himself at the bow of the other, where the captor had flung the flag, to use both oars. His boat slipped from under his feet, and he fell short, but caught the gunwale of the other, and dragged himself up to it. He held just long enough to clutch both flags, and the next second, with a faint cheer, he rolled off and sank with a ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... came down on the cowcatcher. He said though he had reversed the engine, it seemed as though it were going at lightning speed, faster and faster, though it was really slowing up, and with almost supernatural clutch he caught the child by the hair and lifted it up, and when the train stopped, and the passengers gathered around to see what was the matter, there the old engineer lay, fainted dead away, the little child alive and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... still uppermost, and though he twined and twisted like a serpent, I held on while my head seemed almost bursting. The thought of Jacob wrestling through the night sustained me, and now at last 'Brownie's' clutch upon ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... away some of its surroundings in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Bass Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... said, can the whole library of human history present us a form of heroism superior in kind or degree to that which this illustrious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to snatch some human victim from the clutch of the destroyer thirsting for ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... by you, and even let your work go—everything, just for a time until I'm safe. I suppose that moment comes to most women in their married lives. But to me, when it happens, it will be worse than for most women because I've always had my way. You mustn't let me have my way then—simply clutch me, be cruel, brutal, anything only don't let me go. Then, if you keep me through that, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... on his left leg, was not hurt, and his right arm was free. He drew his revolver, and when the Arab stood over him he shot him in the breast. The man fell—but not dead—across Harry, with whom he grappled, seeking to clutch him with the left hand by the throat and sabre him with the right. But Harry caught his right wrist, and a struggle took place, in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... paw, hand, finger, wrist, fist, neaf^, neif^. bird in hand; captive &c 754. V. retain, keep; hold fast one's own, hold tight one's own, hold fast one's ground, hold tight one's ground; clinch, clench, clutch, grasp, gripe, hug, have a firm hold of. secure, withhold, detain; hold back, keep back; keep close; husband &c (store) 636; reserve; have in stock, have on hand, keep in stock &c (possess) 777; entail, tie up, settle. Adj. retaining &c v.; retentive, tenacious. unforfeited^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Susan's tight clutch on the roll of bills loosened so abruptly that the money fell to the floor. But at once Susan stooped and picked it up. The next moment she had crossed the room and thrust the money into ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... off his clutch, clapped on his brakes and stopped short. Varney slid out of the seat and stood waiting in the black inkiness beside the unlighted car. In the sudden stillness they could hear the rattle of the bicycle chain and even the crunch ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... had rolled by since King Louis XV. had descended to a dishonored grave, and on the mighty current which was bearing France towards reform, whilst dragging her into the Revolution, King Louis XVI., honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which was slipping from his feeble hands. Every day his efforts were becoming weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller was less and less deserving of public confidence. From M. Turgot to M. Necker, from Calonne ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hapless girl replied not, heard not, heeded not; deaf, blind, insensible was she to all—everything but to that sharp, mental grief, that seemed so like physical pain; that fierce anguish of the breast, that, like an iron band, seemed to clutch and close upon her heart, tighter, tighter, tighter, until it stopped the current of her blood, and arrested her breath, and threw her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a-goin'! My, how easy!' She seemed for a moment to hold her breath, and then I saw her hands clutch at the revolving seat. 'Land sakes, it's tippin'! Mercy on me, I can't stand this! Say!' to the man in charge, who was just about to begin his 'story of the wheel,' 'I want to get out! I can't never go no higher. Jest turn back; ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... took his place. To my astonishment, I found this was an entirely different stream from the steadily flowing rivers of the East. My paddle was like to be snatched from my hand at the first dip into the powerful current, and though I saved it by a mad and desperate clutch, yet it felt like a feather in my hands, and I saw my captain (who had witnessed my peremptory usurpation of the paddle) trying to suppress a sly smile, while my mortified ears caught the sound of derisive snickers behind me, and Yorke, the impudent ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... about; for Shady's past experience with traps had been large. She had seen Collins take many a coyote from his traps. Twice she had slipped away to steal the bait from some set near the cabin and both times had felt the sudden deadly clutch of steel jaws on her foot, remaining in their grip till Collins had released her. She had seen coyotes dead and bloated from eating poison baits,—and meat was now a danger signal to Shady, not a lure. She would touch no food except ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... sooner did the inhabitants perceive the 'War Sprite' and the 'Dreadnought,' than they began to throw up defences and remove their valuables into the interior. It was in the highest degree irksome to Raleigh to wait thus inactive, while this handsome Spanish colony was slipping from his clutch, but he had been forbidden to move without orders. After three days' waiting for Essex, a council of war was held on board the 'War Sprite.' On the fourth Raleigh leaped into his barge at the head of a landing company, refusing the help of the Flemings ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... now revive, and I hustle them about to make more fires, no easy work in the drenching rain, but work that has got to be done. We soon get three well alight, and then I clutch a blanket—a wringing wet blanket, but a comfort—and wrapping myself round in it, issue orders for wood to be gathered and stored round each fire to dry, and then stand over Cook while he makes ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that walk. To her, also, the distance seemed interminable, and the firm clutch of his hand upon her shoulder for its support almost to break her own bones. His face, when she now and then glanced toward it, was pallid with suffering, but his lips were grimly shut, defying his own misery. As he ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... suddenly, "have you decided what you will do? Your mine in the mountains—it will be foolish to return there while the hands of the Vigilantes are reaching out to clutch you; do you not think so? More of the tale I have heard from Valencia, who returned with Manuel. Those men who died at the hand of your friend—and died justly, I am convinced—had friends who would give much for close ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Always I'd think him after me. There would be no sleep for me. I'd think him after me—you know how it is in a dream, when you are like a ghost—all limp in the limbs, but trying to run! It would be like that, if I fled from him—always expecting him to clutch me from behind!... My God, if he would only make me mad! But ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... of command, a virtual dictatorship might work great things for the North. But whence is he likely to emerge? Hardly from the midst of this vast political and military turmoil, where every man is struggling and straining to clutch at the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... say—what?' They did not yet even know that he was married. To tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before he was free to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his arms. The liberating shock was as great as had been her terror. She began to tremble violently. Her hands got back a sense of strength to clutch. Heart and blood seemed released from that ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... and with a sickening clutch at my heart I recognized who it was. Mary had been aeroplaning with Woods instead of automobiling as I had supposed. At the sight of her, laughing gaily at some witticism that Woods made as they walked across the field toward us, my head spun with ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... river by some of the ship's papers not being ready. Such a scene at the dock gates. Not a sailor will join till the last moment; and then, just as the ship forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the men half tipsy clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty little girls stand still and cry ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... depths, when his ears were bursting and his eyes starting from their sockets, he found himself once more at the surface, breathing in great gulps of the blessed air, and alone. For a moment he could not believe it, but gazed wildly about him, expecting each instant to feel the awful clutch that should again drag him under. He was nearly exhausted, and so weak that had not a floating oar come within his reach he must quickly have ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... Death! Death is far too easy! An innocent child may die; do not give to a false-hearted knave the simple exit common to the brave and true! Disgrace!—disgrace! Shame, confusion, and the curse of the country,—let these be your vengeance on the man who seeks to clutch the reins of government!—the man who would drive the people like whipped horses to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... murmur to the ceremonies established for the coronation. Only this concession was made to their susceptibilities: that in the rules the phrase, bear the cloak was substituted for carry the train, "for," as Miot de Mlito says, "Vanity will clutch ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ashes in my grasp! What ghost is that which beckons through the mist? The duke! the duke! and bleeding at the breast! Whose dagger struck ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head, for a swift instant I could see the light of day through its emerald body; then down would go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those smashing blows to an invalid ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... throw the clutch into high-gear," promised Walter, laughing. "Look out for the flying ice, girls. I haven't the screen up, for I want to see what ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... idea that he might be a better man in the woods than I had thought he was, for he slid out of the house shadow into the bush without ever showing up in the moonlight. And as I thought it I felt Paulette clutch me, shivering from head to foot. It shocked me, somehow. I put my arm straight around her, like you do around a child, and spoke deliberately, "Steady, sweet, steady! It's all right. Hutton's gone by now. Anyhow, Macartney and I'll take care ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... roared the mighty stranger. "And you will never get out of my clutch until you tell me the nearest way to the garden of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... rapped frenziedly against the heavy, glazed doors; women screamed. It was the Black Hole of Calcutta over again, and yet no one in the blouse department seemed to notice the signals of distress. Lily felt the perspiration on her brow and chin, and then she knew that she, too, must scream and clutch; and she cried out, and the pressure which forced her against the door grew more and more terrible.... She had dropped the corset.... She murmured feebly 'Alb—'.... She began to dream queer dreams and to see strange lights.... And then something gave ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... I was going first he was rather hurt, but I did not wait for his protests. I swung my feet over the sill and dropped. I made a clutch at the window-frame with my good hand when I found no floor under my feet, but I was too late. I dropped probably ten feet and landed with a crash that seemed to split my ear-drums. I was thoroughly shaken, but in some miraculous way the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... doubled back," he cried. "He's gone to New Haven." He stooped and threw in the clutch. The ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... hand seemed to clutch Billy's heart. She caught her breath with a little gasp and tried to speak; but she had to try twice ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... down Fern's back, and when they went swimming (the women modestly changing in the car with the side curtains up, the men undressing behind the bushes, constantly repeating, "Gee, hope we don't run into poison ivy"), Dave splashed water on them and dived to clutch his wife's ankle. He infected the others. Erik gave an imitation of the Greek dancers he had seen in vaudeville, and when they sat down to picnic supper spread on a lap-robe on the grass, Cy climbed a tree to ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to the head of the bed and supported the dying man, while Bianchon drew off his shirt; and then Goriot made a movement as if he tried to clutch something to his breast, uttering a low inarticulate moaning the while, like some ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... he dove like a base-runner, and his hands closed around the dog's neck. Over they went with the shock of the onset, and before they were still, the hands had finished their work. A clutch, and a snap, and it ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... smile her forgiveness when Mavis turned, with no good-by, to follow Jason. Hand in hand the two little mountaineers had crossed the threshold of a new world that day. Together they were going back into their own, but the clutch of the new was tight on both, and while neither could have explained, there was the same thought in each mind, the same nameless dissatisfaction in each heart, and both were in the throes ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... different person. His face was all smiles, and there was a jaunty air about him as though he had received good news. His management of the car, too, left nothing to be desired. He started off swiftly, but with a smoothness that told of perfect mastery of the clutch and gears. He took chances, too, as he dashed through town, cutting corners, darting before this car, back of the other until, used as the colonel was to taxicabs in New York, he held ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... my desire towards you, Froeken Thelma,—even as Jacob's desire was towards Rachel! Let me see this hand." He made a furtive grab at the white taper fingers that played listlessly with the jessamine leaves on the porch, but the girl dexterously withdrew them from his clutch and moved a little further back, her face flushing proudly. "Oh, will it not come to me? Cruel hand!" and he rolled his little eyes with an absurdly sentimental air of reproach. "It is shy—it will not clasp the hand of its protector! ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... daintily-penned and delicately-enveloped billets of up-towndom to the ill-spelled, pencil-scrawled, uncovered notes of Greenwich and Hudson streets. It matters not that he has indicated any definite locality; sanguine householders in remote Brooklyn districts clutch at him, Hoboken residents yearn toward him, and the writer of a stray Williamsburg epistle is 'confident that an arrangement can be made,' if he will favor her with a visit. After laying aside as ineligible as many letters as there are Smiths in a New York Directory, he devotes ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... his hand! If, even after that act of folly, he had refused to go until she gave it him! How inconceivable his madness seemed now, his fear of scandal, his thought of others! Others? There was one of whom he dared not think; for when he did his head began to tremble on his shoulders; and he had to clutch the arms of the chair to stay the palsy that shook him. If she, the girl who had destroyed him, thought it was all one to him whom the drug advantaged, or who lived or who died, he would teach her—before he died! He would teach her! ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... time by Karnian sentries. A bit more danger, too, for the captain in charge of the guard asked for matches, and dangled a careless hand over the side, within a few inches of Nikky's head. Then the jerk following a hasty letting-in of the clutch, and they were ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... something to clutch. There was a muslin kerchief lying on the table; she took it up and tore it into shreds as she walked up and down, and then pressed it into hard ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... madame," replied Louis XIV., tearing the parchment which Mazarin had not yet ventured to clutch; "yes, I annihilate this deed, which despoiled a whole family. The wealth acquired by his eminence in my service is his own wealth and ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... replied by shaking the little purse in his eager hand, and then throwing it down upon the table, and gathering up the cards as a miser would clutch at gold. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... seems much frightened by being put into the tub, spread a bath towel or small thin blanket over it and have someone hold his hands, so that he will not clutch so wildly at everything, then lower him into the water, towel and all, and he will not notice ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... rules which my friend Demetrius bids him who would make progress in philosophy to clutch with both hands, never to let go, but to cling to them, and make them a part of himself, and by daily meditation upon them to bring himself into such a state of mind, that these wholesome maxims occur to him of their own accord, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... "Cotch him! Massa Tom's hurt!" and only just in time did Mr. Peterson clutch the young inventor in his arms. For Tom, white of face, had fallen back ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... him wonderingly. John Redpath threw in his clutch. "So long," he said. "I've a brother in Tucson, and I'm going to his place until this ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... the time the ship struck, and which I had clung to firmly all the time I was in the water. Indeed it was with difficulty that Jack got it out of my grasp when I was lying insensible on the shore. I cannot understand why I kept such a firm hold of this telescope. They say that a drowning man will clutch at a straw. Perhaps it may have been some such feeling in me, for I did not know that it was in my hand at the time we were wrecked. However, we felt some pleasure in having it with us now, although ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... heroic Frenchman. The sinking in of the turret roof satiated the destroyer, so that the further wing of the house was preserved. Its master lived unharmed, to rouse himself from his portentous slumber and face his calamity, while the lover lay writhing and raging in the clutch of wild fever. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Bill held the reins in one hand and attempted to take mine with the other, a proceeding which I checked, whereupon he was exceedingly confused. The whip fell from his clutch over the dasher, and in recovering it his hat fell off; shame kept him silent for the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... waver dreamily before me, Forms that so early cheered my troubled eyes! To hold you fast doth still my heart implore me? Still bid me clutch the charm that lures and flies? Ye crowd around! come, then, hold empire o'er me, As from the mist and haze of thought ye rise; The magic atmosphere, your train enwreathing, Through my thrilled ...
— Faust • Goethe
... in his desert lair— Now half the world! Beholding with dismay That Human Freedom is the tiger's prey, A giant, down whose shoulders, broad and bare, The long, thick, crimson flow is Sampson's hair, Makes haste to clutch the beast. Oh, how the clay beneath their struggle, reddens, night and day, Till lies the beast, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... course. Down, down went the poor wretches, now utterly overwhelmed by the torrent, now regaining their feet only to utter a scream, and then be swept off. Here a miserable struggler, whirled onward, would clutch at the banks and try to scramble forth, but the soft turf giving way beneath him, he ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a compound slide rest, and a self-acting reversing tackle, consisting of three bevel wheels, one a stud, one loose on the driving shaft, and another on a socket, with a pinion on the opposite end of the driving shaft running on the socket. The other end was the place for the driving pulley. A clutch box was placed between the two opposite wheels, which was made to slide on a feather, so that by means of another shaft containing levers and a tumbling ball, the box on reversing was carried from one ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... finding lost shin-guards and nose masks, and so he found a seat out of the way, and, searching the room with his gaze, at length found Prince. That gentleman was having a nice, new pink elastic bandage put about his ankle. He was grinning sturdily, but at every clutch of the web his lips twitched and his brow puckered. Joel watching him wondered how much more he would stand, and whether his (Joel's) chance would come ere the fatal whistle piped the end ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of impulse, sensitive and plastic. Because she had been hard on him before he was struck down, her spirit ran open-armed to make amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what availed that to keep her, a creature of fire and dew, from the clutch of emotions strange and poignant? He had called himself a liar and a coyote, yet she knew it was not true, or at worst, true in some qualified sense. He might be hard, reckless, even wicked in some ways. But, vaguely, she felt that if he were a sinner he sinned with self-respect. He was ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the sounds, and then I saw something come up above the sill, and clutch at the broken window-frame. It caught a piece of the woodwork; and, now, I could make out that it was a hand and arm. A moment later, the face of one of the Swine-creatures rose into view. Then, before I could use my rifle, or do anything, there came a sharp crack—cr-ac-k; and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... order to make ready his breakfast. He had already, the night before, exhausted the supply within reach on the tree at hand, so another source of supply must be sought Forthwith, on hands and knees, with bared knife in his clutch, he crawled blindly until he found another tree. Circling about it, with swift strokes of the knife, he quickly had an ample store of fuel for his need. Gathering this up, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... turning to speak with Omar, had unfortunately loosened his hold of one of the handles, and the sudden jolt at such a high speed was so violent that our faithful guide and friend was shot off backwards, and ere Omar could clutch him he had disappeared with a shriek of despair into ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... usually late on these occasions, as a man still detained in the clutch of giant enterprises when other men had shaken off their dwarfs for the day. On this occasion, he was the last arrival. Treasury said Merdle's work punished him a little. Bishop said he was glad to think that this wealth flowed into the coffers of a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... tormented him swimming, Flood-beasts no few with fierce-biting tusks did Break through his burnie, the brave one pursued they. The earl then discovered he was down in some cavern Where no water whatever anywise harmed him, And the clutch of the current could not come anear him, Since the roofed-hall prevented; brightness a-gleaming Fire-light he saw, flashing, resplendent. The good one saw then the sea-bottom's monster, The mighty mere-woman; he made a great onset With weapon-of-battle, his hand not desisted ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... of Federation, preparations for the pitched battle had been going forward, especially in the columns of the Signal, where the scribes of each one of the Five Towns had proved that all the other towns were in the clutch of unscrupulous gangs of self-seekers. After months of argument and recrimination, all the towns except Bursley were either favourable or indifferent to the prospect of becoming a part of the twelfth largest town in the United Kingdom. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... She sees her soldier boy, crouching low, draw himself to Walsh's side, sees him glancing eagerly over the rocks, then signalling to some one on their own side, pointing here and there along the wooded slope beyond her vision; sees him now, with fierce light in his eyes, suddenly clutch Walsh's sleeve and nod towards some invisible object to the south; sees Walsh toss the butt of his carbine to the shoulder and with quick aim send a bullet driving thither; sees Drummond take the field-glass and, resting it on the eastward ledge, gaze long and fixedly out over the eastward ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... der ghostes yell mit der outside?" said Carl, who had been thrust away from his clutch on Bud, and was standing in the middle of the floor, trembling like ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... back from the party on the prow of the wrecked tartane in search of little Ulysse, he succeeded in grasping the child, but at the same moment a huge breaker washed him off the slipperily-sloping deck, and after a scarce conscious struggle he found himself, still retaining his clutch of the boy, in the trough between it and another. He was happily an expert swimmer, and holding the little fellow's clothes in his teeth, he was able to avoid the dash, and to rise on another wave. ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... letter in her shoe," repeated Mr. Gryce, with his finest smile, "she had but to signify that the boots sent by Altman were a size too small, for her to retain her secret and keep the one article she traded upon from his envious clutch. You seem struck dumb by this, Miss Butterworth. Have I enlightened you on a point ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... on limbs which terminate abruptly as extinct races. They can, in no sense, then, be the ancestors of man, or connecting links. Why, then, do they cling so desperately to these alleged proofs, when they admit they have no evidential value? Only sheer desperation, just as a drowning man will clutch a straw. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... crossed her face; she shuddered so violently that his hand went forth to clutch the fingers that trembled on the arm of the chair. He held them in his firm grasp for a moment. They looked into each other's eyes and he saw the flicker of undisguised horror in hers. An instant later she was ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... thinking of his own danger, Francesco gave him a push, and losing his balance the captain fell over the edge, a distance of sixty feet, upon the jagged rocks beneath. But not alone! Still retaining his fierce clutch upon the Italian's throat, the murderer, too, fell with him, and both were stretched in an instant, mangled and lifeless, at the ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... breath of air. She smiles in passing by. O thou that dost alike accord With red and yellow and arrayed in each, alike art fair, Thou sportest with my wit in love, so that indeed meseems As if a sparrow in the clutch of playful ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... practice on the part of the railway company (alias the Government) to take sovereigns in at the window at ten rupees, and sell them at the door for eleven and a half, to speculators waiting ready and eager to clutch and sell them again ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... thought you had courage sufficient to have taken such decided measures, after keeping on terms with the man so long. When he spoke of justices and warrants, you looked so overawed that I thought I felt the clutch of the parish-beadles on my shoulder, to drag me to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... words. The old actor's mobile features were suddenly contracted under the lash of violent despair; and tears, genuine tears which he did not even think of concealing behind his hand as they do on the stage, filled his eyes but did not flow, so tightly did his agony clutch him by the throat. The poor ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... search for its owner. There were half a dozen different cars with which Van Buren was familiar. He ran to it, glanced at its levers, wheel, and clutch, recognized the one type he had coveted, and hurled himself into ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... most resolved To burst the barrier and to fire the fleet) 245 Beside the foss, pondering the event. For, while they press'd to pass, they spied a bird Sublime in air, an eagle. Right between Both hosts he soar'd (the Trojan on his left) A serpent bearing in his pounces clutch'd 250 Enormous, dripping blood, but lively still And mindful of revenge; for from beneath The eagle's breast, updarting fierce his head, Fast by the throat he struck him; anguish-sick The eagle cast him down into the space 255 Between the hosts, and, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... there came the clutch and stab at his heart, and the struggle for breath, which he had felt for the first time that September day (but ah! how many times since, and with what increasing persistence!) would creep to the stairway beside which hung ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... clutched the rope over his head to save his neck from being broken. The Sheriff dismounted from his horse, climbed up the gallows and tied the prisoner's hands more firmly behind his back. The gallows was braced, and Omic contrived to clutch one of the braces with his hands, fastened behind his back as they were, as he fell when the drop-rope was cut. He hung in that position for some time, until his strength gave way and he swung off. When he had hung sufficiently ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... proved already that her moral nature was not superior to eavesdropping; already she had my secret by the ears, and one-sided and innocent though that secret may have appeared to her, it was not really a one-sided secret, and when she had got her clutch upon the other side, she could be almost as dangerous and mischievous ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... engine was blocked upright on the ground, Solomon backed his Moreland out of the way, carried a tray of tools to the engine and squatted in the dirt to work. First, the intake manifold came off and was bolted to the clutch housing so the carburetor mounting flange faced skyward. Solomon stopped for a minute to worry. "If it works," he thought, "when I get them nearer each other, it'll go up in my face." Scanning the yard he thought of fenders, doors, wheels, ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll
... elder man was tiring, and the youngster must have shared that opinion. There was a leap to the right, a sudden flurry of dart and retreat, and then a net curled high and fell, enfolding flailing arms and kicking legs. When the clutch rope was jerked tight, the captured youth was thrown off balance. He rolled frenziedly, but there was no ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... enemy, the sand, never allowed him to relax. He could almost remember his father resuming it and repairing the stone hedges which enclosed the old fields. In those days Saaron had supported, or failed to support, five families; but of these all but Tregarthen had lost their clutch on the barren rock and drifted away to other islands. He could remember their going. He passed their roofless cottages half a dozen times ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers and press his windpipe with his thumb. "I needn't tell you how you strike me," he said; "of course you know that. But I should think you would be afraid of your friends—all those people you introduced me to the other night. There were some ...
— The American • Henry James
... distinguish the meaning, she spoke so rapidly. When the gipsy answered, I caught the word Droa, uttered under the breath two or three times. The woman seemed to be giving some directions; she spoke almost in a whisper, and I saw the long bony hand clutch Zillah's arm, as if to impress what she was saying more forcibly upon the girl's attention. Then I saw Zillah hand the piece of gold I had given her that morning, to the woman, while she asked ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Washington; I shall force attention to our suspended land laws; demand the rights the United States allows her western territories; I shall ask for the same concessions that were the making of the Oregon country; and first and last I shall do all I can to loosen the strangling clutch of Conservation." He paused, while his hand fell still more heavily on the table, and the glasses jingled anew. "And, gentlemen, the day of the floating population is practically over; we have our settled communities, our cities; ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... riding like Lord Hugo you hook the fastening of the gate with the handle of your crop and make your horse shunt slowly backwards by applying the reverse clutch with your feet. As the gate refuses to give, you are, of course, drawn gently over the animal's head until you tumble into the bog like a man whose punt-pole is stuck in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... cling to it, though even the very grasp of our hands tends to make it pass away, as the children coming in from the fields with their store of buttercups and daisies in their hot hands, which by their very clutch hasten the withering. And that is just our position. We have them for a brief moment, and they all perish in the using. Oh, brother, have you set your heart on that which is not, when all the while there, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... to her, caught her up under the arms and lifted her fully gracious weight to the saddle. Her left foot by fortune found the cleft in the stirrup fender, her right leg swung around the tall horn, hastily concealed by a clutch at her skirt even as she grasped the heavy knotted reins. It was then too ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch. Ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him; if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim, or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... a mad hope, but yet it was a hope; and I argued: Is it better to clutch at the veriest shadow of a chance, or to sit down and end my life amongst scoundrels and assassins? Unless the man "Four-Eyes" deliberately deceived me, Black would connive at the murder of fifty British seamen before another twenty-four hours had sped. These men would have all ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... house. In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... s-s-smashed, d-d-don't you?" answered back the indignant boy, as he continued to clutch that root, as though he believed it to be the only thing between himself ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of the wall, and hauling himself up a little, he was able to stretch out his feet sufficiently to reach it. He put out one hand in the same direction, and caught hold of an iron staple. He could now clutch the wall, and feeling his way, he descended about eight feet to the ground. It was fortunate that he had not jumped, for, instead of sand, there was a slab of hard rock on which he would have fallen. Scarcely ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... demoniac stratagem gave one simultaneous shout of indignation. Those nearest the wagons strove to clutch at them with their hands. Some held on even to the wheels, some mounted the horses, some snatched the reins. But sharp swords were near; and, at the word of command, every outstretched arm was hacked off, and fell, severed, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... they creaked aloud in the lonely night, thinking of woodlands out of which they came, then I only gripped them tighter still, for the poor useless hate is in my soul of those that made me in the place of doom. Yet, for all the things that my prison-clutch has held, the last work that I did was to set something free. I lay idle one night in the gloom on the warehouse floor. Nothing stirred there, and even the spider slept. Towards midnight a great flock of echoes suddenly leapt up from the wooden planks ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... on his suspicions of the lieutenant's defection proving unfounded, and that he will now clutch the prize long coveted, he gives his horse the spur, and rides ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... gardens and similar spaces from the lane. From behind it there was coming a curious scrambling and scraping noise, as of a desperate thing imprisoned in this box of thin wood. The King threw away his cigar, and jumped on to the table. From this position he saw a pair of hands hanging with a hungry clutch on the top of the fence. Then the hands quivered with a convulsive effort, and a head shot up between them—the head of one of the Bayswater Town Council, his eyes and whiskers wild with fear. He swung himself over, ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... wishes," replied she, relaxing her clutch of his arm. "Le Gardeur de Repentigny can speak for himself. I will not allow even my brother to suggest it; still less will I discuss such a subject with the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... man whose part in the drama of life was Care. There was no hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... contents of its treasure-chest among beds of scented moss. The fingers sink in the soft, moist verdure, and make at each instant some superb discovery unawares; again and again, straying carelessly, they clutch some new treasure; and, indeed, all is linked together in bright necklaces by secret threads beneath the surface, and where you grasp at one, you hold many. The hands go wandering over the moss as over the keys of a piano, and bring forth fragrance for melody. The lovely creatures twine and nestle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... anything more or came to a full stop at once, I am sure I could not tell you to this day. For, as the devil would have it, the shoulder he laid hold of was the one Goguelat had pinked. The wound was but a scratch; it was healing with the first intention; but in the clutch of Major Chevenix it gave me agony. My head swam; the sweat poured off my face; I must have ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repudiated by every impartial and honest man. That cannot be helped. Impossible or not impossible; true or false, it is necessary for their very existence, so that, just as a drowning man catches at a straw, though it cannot possibly support him, so do these most unfortunate and hardly-pressed men clutch at and cling to the hollow theory of continuity. Sometimes, when off their guard, and in a less cautious mood, they will confess as much themselves. And what is more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a confession. Many will well remember a well-known and ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... down the hillside to the level of the hollow, the authority of his look and gesture making way for him through the crowd that surged this way and that, and walked up to us where we stood, hemmed round but no longer in the clutch of our enemies. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... miscellaneous objects tossed aside in that hurried search and clearing up, into the inner room. And Spargo, looking about him, suddenly caught sight of something lying on the floor at which he made a sharp clutch. He had just secured it and hurried it into his pocket when Breton ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... their bed; silently, speaking only for the purpose of curses, they gulped the food that was passed out to them, taking the steaming coffee straight down in spite of its burning clutch at tender membranes, gnawing and tearing at their meal like beasts at the kill, then, still wadded in their clothing, sinking to the floor—and to sleep. The air was rancid with the odor of wet, steaming clothing. Men ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... Sohr, perhaps, be a fresh persuasive?" hopes Friedrich;—but as to Britannic Majesty's breaking off, his thoughts are far from that, if we knew! Poor Majesty: not long since, Supreme Jove of Germany; and now—is like to be swallowed in ragamuffin street-riots; not a thunder-bolt within clutch of him (thunder-bolts all sticking in the mud of the Netherlands, far off), and not a constable's staff of the least efficacy! Consider these dates in combination. Battle of Sohr was on ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... clearing where the grass was rich and luxuriant, where overshadowing branches formed an idealic bower, where heavy white waxen flowers were looped from branch to branch holding the green boughs in their parasitical clutch. Hamilton followed the direction of his eyes. In the middle of the clearing a long, sinuous shape, dark brown, and violently coloured with patches of green and vermillion, that was swaying backward and forward, hissing angrily at ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... above his head in a melodramatic way of denunciation, but the tragic effect was completely ruined when the porcelain basin began slipping across the hard-wood floor. He wildly threw out both hands to clutch at something for support, but the low chair he had occupied was not near the dressing table nor any other article ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... from its grimly ironic philosophy, the topography, the earthy quality—'take of English earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch'—of the Wessex master's work makes it indigestible reading for an exile of more than thirty or forty; unless, of course, he is of the fine and robust type, whose minds and constitutions function with the steadiness of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... those chances came to Lousteau which such bohemians ought to clutch by every hair. In the middle of December, Madame Schontz, who took a real interest in Etienne, sent to beg him to call on her one morning ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... starting from their sockets, he found himself once more at the surface, breathing in great gulps of the blessed air, and alone. For a moment he could not believe it, but gazed wildly about him, expecting each instant to feel the awful clutch that should again drag him under. He was nearly exhausted, and so weak that had not a floating oar come within his reach he must quickly have ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... all at once saw something which caught at his breath with a sharp clutch. Alice had risen from the minister's pew—the most conspicuous one in the church—and was moving down the aisle toward the rail, her uplifted face chalk-like in its whiteness, and her eyes ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... sensible fellow and ought to be commended for his decision. They declared that they were the more inclined to take him up because of it. It was their wives, where they had wives, and especially their daughters, with the young men who had not known the brunt of the battle, and felt inclined to clutch their professional dignities and privileges, that were of a different mind. Girls like the Millars turned up their saucy little noses at the shop. They thought it was mean-spirited and vulgar-minded, "low" of Tom Robinson to sit ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... shouts broke from the boys; and George, leaning over the side of his stalled Wireless, in the vain hope of being able to clutch the boy who was in the dangerous waters of the inlet, came near upsetting his ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... chasing first one and then another, we may well fear lest that fate be ours which, the proverb tells us, falls on those mariners who cannot forgo their voyages in the pursuit of wealth, and one day the deep sea swallows them. Thus has many a warrior achieved one victory only to clutch at another and lose the first. [16] If indeed, our enemies who have fled were weaker than we, it might be safe enough to pursue them. But now, bethink you, how small a portion of them we have fought and conquered; ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... ghostly light. As he came through the trees he saw they were all dead, with neither leaf nor twig upon them, their roots were crooked out of the ground as if they would throw his horse, and their limbs were stretched as if they strained to clutch him. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... of that terrible thing in his eyes? He did not reply to that at all. I thought my arm would break in his clutch. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... till Esau was about half-way, when we saw him look down again, and then make quite a convulsive clutch at the rock, against which he now rested motionless, and without making ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... one of the most sublime and tragic figures of the revolution. O'Higgins, it is true, divested himself of his insignia of office by a spontaneous act. This, however, only came about when the opposing parties had stretched forth their hands to clutch at each other's throats. In the majority of cases the ending of the careers of these early patriots was ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... this dear, misguided one that, even as those rollicking words were spoken, I felt the clutch of a cold foreboding that ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... present; he looked round him, and for the first time he felt the disabling clutch of physical fear. The life-belts were being given out, and there came to him a horrid vision of the people round him as they might be an hour hence, drowned, heads down, legs up, done to death by those monstrous yellow bracelets ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... by maintaining a desperate, murderous clutch on Ricardo's windpipe, till she felt a sudden relaxation of the terrific hug in which he stupidly and ineffectually persisted to hold her. Then with a supreme effort of her arms and of her suddenly ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... following night. The next day, as the will of God, or the force of the wind so ordered, more like a sponge than aught else, but still with both hands holding fast by the edges of the chest, as we see those do that clutch aught to save themselves from drowning, he was at length borne to the coast of the island of Corfu, where by chance a poor woman was just then scrubbing her kitchen-ware with sand and salt-water to make it shine. The woman caught sight of him as he drifted shorewards, but making ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... he rejoined, "you need not be afraid. In your heart you don't want me to desert a friend, and, besides, leave the best part of my artistic life in Reginald's clutch." ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... 'Because thou hast twelve rods in thine hand, and I have but one. Give thine to me, and peace shall prevail between us!' But Judah refused to do his bidding, and Joseph beat him until he dropped ten rods, and only two remained in his clutch. Joseph now invited his brethren to abandon Judah and follow after him. They all did thus, except Benjamin, who stayed true to Judah. Levi was grieved over the desertion of Judah, and he descended from the sun. Toward the end of the day a storm broke ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... could make ME play like that," she said; "yet I have had two or three masters who were supposed to be first-rate. One of them was a German, who used to clutch his hair like a walking tragedian whenever I played a wrong note. I believe he got up his reputation entirely by that clutch, for he often played wrong notes himself without minding it. But just because he worked himself into a sort of ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... and not bother him and the young man around the corner there in their boss trade, eh?' What say?" He was flushed and red, and he did not know exactly where to stop, but it was out—and after a few sparring sentences, he broke away from the clutch of his bungling intrusion and was gone. But as the Captain left the couple at the table, the spell was broken. Life had intruded, and Ahab rose hastily and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... impulse, sensitive and plastic. Because she had been hard on him before he was struck down, her spirit ran open-armed to make amends. What manner of man he was she did not know. But what availed that to keep her, a creature of fire and dew, from the clutch of emotions strange and poignant? He had called himself a liar and a coyote, yet she knew it was not true, or at worst, true in some qualified sense. He might be hard, reckless, even wicked in some ways. But, vaguely, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... man close at hand," said Peter. "Will any one pass a rope round my waist? I am sure I could clutch him." ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... was sitting on the circular seat looking out on the oak avenue; she did not turn her head, and there was something hopeless in the line of her stooping shoulders. I saw her hands clutch the cushions nervously as her cousin walked straight ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the red face became mottled with yellow; a thick-fingered, tottering hand made a clutch at the tell-tale ribbon. "Medal!" the man cried, wonderfully ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... troublesome questions are constantly arising as to whether an invention should be classified in a combination class or an element class. The point will be illustrated by example: A describes and illustrates an automobile having an internal-combustion motor and a friction-clutch in the motor transmission-gear. He states that the clutch is in the usual relationship to the motor and gearing, but claims a new clutch for whatever it may be adapted. B discloses an internal-combustion ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... revengeful onslaught upon himself. Finally, he uttered a loud unearthly screech, in the midst of which his voice broke, as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, starting forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch the life that was being rent away,—and fell forward with a dead ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... clawing in through the door, Jack let in the clutch, slamming the gear-lever from low to high and skipping altogether the intermediate. The big car leaped forward and Hen bit his tongue so that it bled. Behind ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... knees, and with one hand holding her shift and with the other trying to clutch the quilt, huddled against the wall . . . . She looked at Yergunov with repulsion and terror in her eyes, and, like a wild beast in a trap, kept cunning ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... plucked him from his sleep; for a moment he wrestled and struggled to raise his head from the pillow and loosen the clutch of the night-hag who had suddenly seized him, and with choking throat and streaming brow he sat up in bed. Even then his dream was more real to him than the sight of his own familiar room, more real than the touch ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... vertical axis somewhere just below the catches; and this wheel may bear an eccentric pin which hits each catch as it rotates. Alternatively the carbide boxes may be made to revolve horizontally on a vertical axis by the movements of the bell communicated through a clutch; and thus each box in succession may arrive at a certain position where the catch is knocked aside by a fixed pin. The boxes, again, may revolve vertically on a horizontal axis somewhat like a water-wheel, each box having its bottom opened, or, by a different ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... memory: the golden sunshine streaming in, the old carved pews in the background, and the dainty little white figure hugging her spaniel in her arms, would have charmed an artist's eye. But it was not this sight that made the strong man suddenly turn pale and clutch the back of the seat in front of him with nervous, trembling hands; his startled gaze was no longer upon Betty, but upon the slight, graceful figure that was now taking ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... have hoped to catch the wind in a sixty-mile gale as overtake that speedy runner. It was as though Jack had reserved his best powers for this special occasion. He saw just where he meant to hurl himself over the line, and clutch that envied touchdown. Had a dozen followed he would have distanced them every one, such was his mettle just then. He seemed endowed with supernatural speed, many who stared and held ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... there and then, All her body and soul That completes my whole, All that women add to men, In the clutch of my ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... reassured the negro came a step or two forward, and made a feeble clutch at the reins, which dropped from his grasp when the roosting turkeys stirred uneasily on the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... cover everything, however. There's lots of good jobs outside its clutch, and the men that get them are grateful every time. I'm not speakin' of Tammany Hall alone, remember! It's the same with the Republican Federal and State officeholders, and every organization that has or has had jobs to ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... weight at the end. Another sea poured in; we hastily gathered in the slack of the rope, and when the water retreated, we found both Bramble and Bessy clinging to the rope. In a moment the men rushed down and hauled up the bodies. Bramble had hold of the rope by both hands—it was the clutch of death; Bessy had her arms round her father's neck; both were senseless. The boatmen carried them up to the cottage, and the usual methods of recovery were resorted to with success. Still we had to lament the death of two of our best pilots, whose loss their wives and children were ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... part, I was badly "rattled"; I knew by the clutch of Sylvia's hand that she was too. But here I got a lesson in the nature of "social training." Some of the bright colour had faded from her face, but she spoke with the utmost coolness, the words coming naturally and simply: "We ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... buttonhole whenever we have a dinner. The first time Johan noticed it he almost fainted away, as he knows every decoration under the sun, and, thinking it looked like the Legion d'Honneur, he proposed to question Robert about it; but Robert eluded the master's clutch as the door-bell was ringing. Johan was considerably disturbed until he learned the truth, which was that Robert belonged to a reading-club—a Browning and Tennyson club—and this was its badge. Our colleagues thought he ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... with salt tears; shredding finer still The blanket huddled to the stone-cold heart Of the wild, bigot, ghastly, dying wretch.— Thus, for a devilish and unnatural gain, Mowing the lean grass of a Golgotha! Sitting, like grinning Death, to clutch the toll Tortur'd from poverty, disease and crime; And this with Liberty upon their lips, Bland words, and specious, vulgar eloquence, And large oaths, with the tongue thrust in the cheek, And promises, as if they were as gods, And no God held the forked ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... on caring him till he came to sensible years; and one day when he went out he saw a wild duck on the lake with her clutch, and he made a cast at her that cut the wings off her that she could not fly, and he brought her back to the cabin, and that was his ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... dwelling-house. I saw on the ground shadows, as if something were falling around me, and started back. Seven or eight savages had surrounded me, and raised their great clubs in air. I heard a shout—"Kill him! Kill him!" One savage tried to seize hold of me, but, leaping from his clutch, I drew the revolver from my pocket and leveled it as for use, my heart going up in prayer to my God. I said, "Dare to strike me, and my Jehovah God will punish you. He protects us, and will punish you for burning His Church, for hatred to His Worship and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... hardly thought you had courage sufficient to have taken such decided measures, after keeping on terms with the man so long. When he spoke of justices and warrants, you looked so overawed that I thought I felt the clutch of the parish-beadles on my shoulder, to drag me ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... top he heard the sound of Dai and Rachel running to him, each screaming upon him to stop. Rachel seized the bridle of the horse, and Dai tried to climb over the back of the cart. Evan bent forward and beat the woman with his whip, and she leaped aside. But Dai did not release his clutch, and because the lantern swayed before his face he flung it into ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... of the druidical stone, watches the progress of the day. Her red, parted mouth twitches as she follows the efforts of the men. Behind her, the gars of Savenaye, grasping with angry clutch, some a new musket, others an ancient straightened scythe, gaze fiercely on the scene from under their broad felts. Now and then a flight of republican bullets hum about their ears, and they look anxiously to Their Lady, but that fearless ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the cell against which she dashed herself were strong. I had read of Furies—one was now before me. The bloated, gin-inflamed face, the fiery-red, wicked eyes, the swinish chin, the tangled coarse hair falling around her like writhing snakes, the tiger-like clutch of her dirty fingers, the horrible words—the picture was sickening, disgust for the time ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the wagon and Billie Warren felt a sudden clutch of fear as he halted before Harper and she realized that he had taken her words literally ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... becomes aware of the central station in the spine where the messages are received. By centering his attention on this station and tightening up his back-muscles, he increases this over-awareness and easily gets himself into the clutch of a vicious habit. ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... a clutch so tight that the boy started away from him, saying, "Great Peter, don't pinch like that! You hurt! 'cause I'm ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... beginners at a single-command monoplane school are permitted to fly only under the most favorable weather conditions. Even then, old Mother Earth, who is not kindly disposed toward those of her children who leave her so jauntily, would clutch us back to her bosom, whenever we gave her the slightest opportunity, with an embrace that was anything but tender. We were inclined to think rather highly of our own courage in defying her; and sometimes our vanity was increased by our moniteurs. After ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand— Mother, O Mother!— God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... all its sweets And like a jointed cane, she sways to every breath of air. She smiles in passing by. O thou that dost alike accord With red and yellow and arrayed in each, alike art fair, Thou sportest with my wit in love, so that indeed meseems As if a sparrow in the clutch of playful urchin 'twere. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... sadly; "you were with me all day; stood with me, sat with me, talked with me, looked at me, ate with me, drank with me; and yet, your last act was to clutch for a monster, not only an innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree may malign machinations and deceptions impose. So far may even the best man err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... marl; to see and taste the withering Third in the bosom of sweetness; to be dragged through the past and find the fair Eden of it sulphurous; to be dragged to the gates of the future and glory to behold them blood: to adore the bitter creature trebly and with treble power to clutch her by the windpipe: it is to be cheated, derided, shamed, and abject and supplicating, and consciously demoniacal in treacherousness, and victoriously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the small bony hands reaching for him. He was so frightened with their hot, tremulous clutch, that he tried to pull away, dragging the tiny figure half to light and bringing from it moans ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... indeed, almost as swift—the bright shape swooped to the grass. The four shining wings waved there for a moment, and there seemed to be a mild struggle. Then the giant fly rose again, lightly, into the air, holding in the clutch of its six slender, jointed legs the body of one of those black, rat-like animals which Grom knew so well as infesting the grass of all meadows near the water. The captor flew to a naked branch near the waterside, alighted upon ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the keen-edged sword that hung, Massive and finely tempered, at his side, And sprang—as when an eagle high in heaven Through the thick cloud darts downward to the plain, To clutch some tender lamb or timid hare. So Hector, brandishing that keen-edged sword, Sprang forward, while Achilles opposite Leaped toward him, all on fire with savage hate, And holding his bright buckler, nobly wrought, Before him. As in the still hours of night ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... awful danger ahead; for the maddened filly, having run wildly around the enclosure several times, turned and rushed straight toward the low open doors of the smithy and the pasture beyond. But he would not release his clutch; and with his body bent a little forward, he received the blow of the projecting shingles full on his head as the mare shot from under him into the shop, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... of scares me these black nights," said Mrs. Jake Dyer. "I expect something to clutch at me every minute, and I feel as if some sort of a creatur' was travelin' right behind me when I am out door in the dark. It makes it bad havin' a wanin' moon just now when the fogs hangs so low. It al'ays seems to me as if 't was darker when she ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... like you, who come to lament their wasted lives. If I could receive him this once as he expects to be received, we cannot doubt that it would mean an income of two thousand francs to me. Prosperity dangles before us—shall I fail to clutch it? Mon Dieu, what a catastrophe, his coming to Paris! Why cannot he conduct his business in Lyons? Is there not enough money in the city of Lyons to satisfy him? O grasper! what greed! Nicolas, my more than brother, if it were night when I took him to a sumptuous apartment, he might not notice ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... danger's shape could fright, Unpaid, refuse to mount their ships, for spite Or to their fellows swim, on board the Dutch, Who show the tempting metal in their clutch.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... clenched eyes, and the soul's vast distress? Has she forgotten thus the old caress That made our breath a quickened atmosphere That failed nigh unto swooning with the sheer Delight? Mine arms clutch now this earthen heap Sodden with tears that flow on ceaselessly As autumn rains the long, long, long nights weep In memory of days that used to be,— Has she forgotten these? And in her sleep, Has ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... down to the ground close by the hangar where it was to be housed, the three comrades were only too glad of a chance to clutch hold, and assist to the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... of Junius Brutus upon Tarquin. But, there was just as much of Shylock's nature in Henry Irving's performance as in any performance that is recorded. The lack was overwhelming physical power—not mentality and not art. At "No tears but of my shedding" Henry Irving's Shylock took a strong clutch upon the emotions and created an effect that will never ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... her hand. During these days, had there been any one to observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this adoration—no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is more, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the horse, the long rope went spinning through the air, and its noose was seen settling over the shoulders of the bear. The huge quadruped, puzzled by this mode of attack, endeavoured to seize hold of the rope; but so thin was the raw-hide thong, that he could not clutch it with his great unwieldy paws; and by his efforts he only drew the noose tighter ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. The name he ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... lacking. Canning's letters to Pitt on the negotiation at Lille in 1797 show signs of those inductive powers which appear at their zenith in his brilliantly correct inference ten years later that the Danish fleet must be snatched from the clutch of Napoleon. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... more careful than these two brothers, one of whom was called Clutch, and the other Kind. Though brothers, no two men could be more unlike in disposition. Clutch thought of nothing but how to make some profit for himself, while Kind would have shared his last morsel with a hungry dog. This ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... no answer. He stood, in Ruth's sharp clutch, and hung his head without a word. The girl had ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... darkness Napoleon missed his tackle, and the full shock came on Dickson. He aimed at what he thought was the enemy's throat, found only an arm, and was shaken off as a mastiff might shake off a toy terrier. He made another clutch, fell, and in falling caught his opponent's leg so that he brought him down. The man was immensely agile, for he was up in a second and something hot and bright blew into Dickson's face. The pistol bullet had passed ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... was a bright fire burning there, for the spring days were chilly. There was a clock ticking delicately on the mantel-piece, and my mind fastened on to the sound as if there were possibility of checking and steadying my whirling thoughts by thinking of it—pretty much as a man would clutch a straw in a whirlpool. The rustle of a dress sounded in the corridor outside, and a step paused at the door. My heart beat furiously, and then as the door opened it seemed as if it stopped for a second. Miss Rossano entered (it is the last time I shall call ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... this way, right up under your hair,"—Polly spread out her fingers,—"and clutch at the scalp hard, as if you were going to pull it off. Go all over the head, again and again for five minutes—two or three times a day. Aunt Susie says it will make the ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... given it by ladies, and is not in general use. So, having no name, it is called the nameless finger. And how comes it to have no name? Why, because it is of all the fingers the least useful. When we clutch at or grasp things, we do so by the strength of the thumb and little finger. If a man scratches his head, he does it with the forefinger; if he wishes to test the heat of the wine[95] in the kettle, he uses the little finger. Thus, although each finger ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... till the ripples closed above it. One instant the terror held me,—the next I was far down in those waves, so silver fair above, so black and terrible below. A brief, blind struggle passed before I grasped a tress of that long hair, then an arm, and then the white shape, with a clutch like death. As the dividing waters gave us to the light again, Agnes flung herself far over the boat-side and drew my lifeless burden in; I followed, and we laid it down, a piteous sight for human eyes to look upon. Of that swift voyage home I can remember ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... From 190 B.C. thirteen decades forward to 60 B.C., and,—squish! But, courage! throw out your arm and clutch—at this trailing root, 57 B. C., here within easy reach; and haul yourself out. So; and see, now you are standing on something. What it is, Dios lo sabe! But there is an Indian era that begins in 57 B.C.; for a long ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... nodded, and stepped into the front seat. The girl was already in the tonneau. The man slipped in his clutch, and they glided round the broad, circular sweep in front of the entrance. Just as they started the wagonette ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gone, every treaty was thrown to the winds, and every hand seemed extended by a common impulse to clutch what it could from a woman's weakness.[14] The first to move was Frederick II, King of Prussia, he whom his admirers have called the Great. He was a young man, he had just succeeded to the Prussian kingdom which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... upon the dead tree. Nick's back was turned, and Aim-sa was intent upon her companion. She seemed to be hanging upon his every word. And Ralph's heart grew harder within him. His hand held his rifle in a nervous clutch and his finger-nails scored the stock. A shout from him would avert disaster; a shot would arrest that terrible advance. But the shout remained unborn; the trigger still waited the compressing hand. And the unconscious brother stood with death stealing ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... could calm her, and when I managed at last to do so, it needed all my powers of persuasion to get her to confide in me the cause of her outburst. At first she said it was nothing but the hysteria of happiness. Then she asked me, with a fierce clutch on my arm, if I should think her unmaidenly if she asked that our wedding-day should be hastened. We had fixed it for September, so ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... passed. Without a word Doctor John was on his knees beside the bed, and Doctor George, glancing up, saw that it was Clary's Father who had entered. Then he stood up straight, and would have retreated hastily, but his forefinger was tight in the clutch of a weak, small hand. Doctor George was chained to the spot; he dared ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... concussion of my skull against the bulkhead and by the avalanche of ponderous tomes that came crashing down upon me as the worthy medico's tier of hanging bookshelves yielded and came down by the run at my wild clutch as I stumbled over ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... his clutch and settled himself down. They glided off along that winding stretch of road. To its very edge, on either side of them, so close that they could almost touch it, came the water, water which stretched as far as they could see, swaying, waveless, sinister-looking. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You'll hurt the delicate thing you ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... three yards apart, but Jack never reached his man. Without a sign, without a sound, someone sprang upon him from behind, flung a cord over his head, and seized him in a strangling grip. Jack was as strong as a young bull, but in this awful, noiseless clutch he was helpless. He fought madly to throw off his unseen assailant, but he fought in vain. He felt a noose close upon his throat, and his eyeballs began to start out and his head to swim. In front of him stood the mysterious ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Abbe Susini glanced uneasily over his shoulder. These still, stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... surf waves. He delighted to drive his canoe alone out into the storm. He fought with the monsters of the deep, as well as with men. He captured the great shark that abounds in the bay, and he would clutch in the fearful grip of his hands the deadly eel or snake of these seas, the terror of ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... climbed a tree, little 'un," the Maluka chuckled; and the mimicry of action had been so perfect that we knew it could only be that. Every detail was there: the moment of indecision, the wild clutch at the habit, the quick, feminine lift of the running feet, and the indescribably feminine scrambling climb ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Hercules slew the Hydra, the Lion, and many another noxious thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity. This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the Reason that knows (gnosis) as distinguished from the Lower Reason of mere opinion (doxa). He is no earthly warrior. He carries celestial ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the boy threw in the descending clutch, and the big monoplane began to drop as swiftly as a buzzard that has espied some prey ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... no time in making the attempt to secure it; but whether he was too sure of his prize, or from some other unexplained reason, certain it is that he gave a practical illustration of the old and well-known adage about the cup and the lip, by failing to clutch ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... at him wonderingly. John Redpath threw in his clutch. "So long," he said. "I've a brother in Tucson, and I'm going to his place until ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... pushing out his clutch and pausing at the curb; and as I grabbed my suit-case and sprang to the seat beside him, he let the clutch in again and we were off. "No time to lose," he added, as he changed into high, ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... about nervously for something to clutch. There was a muslin kerchief lying on the table; she took it up and tore it into shreds as she walked up and down, and then pressed it into hard balls ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Tete Jaune and the Blacktons, and tried to take an interest in the scenery they were passing. In spite of this he could see that she was becoming more and more nervous as they progressed toward the end of their journey. He felt the slow dampening of his own joy, the deadening clutch of yesterday at his heart. Twice she lifted her veil for a moment and he saw she was pale and the tense lines had gathered about her mouth again. There was something almost haggard in her look the ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... peacemen, also; crying for Peace, peace at any price—though it be war! We must live free, at peace, or each man dies With death-clutch fast for ever on the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... circumscription. Far as eye can reach Around me lies a wild and watery waste, With every billow sentinel to keep Its prisoner fetter'd to his ocean cell— What were it but a plunge—an instant strife— Then liberty snatch'd from the clutch of Death The Tyrant, who with mystic terror grinds Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free, And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven, Now rushing with wild joy around the belt Of whirling Saturn, then away through space Till he and all his radiant brotherhood Dwindle to fire-flies ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... at all? Is it not better for you mortals to clutch error as in a vice, than have your fingers meet in your hand? And to what end your eternal inquisitions? You have nothing to substitute. You say all is a lie; then out with the truth. Philosopher, your devil ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... interest. Not a word was spoken, but a hundred hands were eagerly held out to him from the shore, to show him the welcome he would receive on landing. Some of the strongest men among the Greeks joined hands and formed a line into the sea, that the outer man might clutch the bold young swimmer if he could get within his reach. Meantime a boat's oar and some line had been cast on shore. Some of the Greeks, more thoughtful than the rest, had secured the oar to the line, and stood ready to let it float out as Jack approached. He saw the aid prepared, and ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... its surroundings in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Bass Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly superior, and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the world seemed the darker for his going. And as he went he blew upon his pipe a tremulous and hesitating melody, piercing sweet and piercing sorrowful, so that whosoever should hear it should clutch his throat with tears at the wild pity of it, and the strange and haunting beauty. And the boy stood still, watching, until the man was lost upon the edge of night. Then he turned his face eastward, whence the new day comes, carrying ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... know not how many score leagues—at a crisis, too, of peculiar difficulty—for a single pte! "Go," cried the illustrious exile to his messenger; "dispatch, mon enfant! Mount the tricolor! Shout Vive le Diable! Any thing! But be sure you clutch the precious compound! Napoleon has driven me from my throne; but he cannot deprive me of my appetite!" Here was courage! I challenge the most enthusiastic admirer of Charles to produce a similar instance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help me to put up with the world, which cannot ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... an instant, then opened his clenched fists to clutch the lean neck of an enemy before him. He whirled the man's body and held it as a shield while he reached vainly to grip at the thrusting spear. Dimly he saw the flash of white and gold where the girl, Luhra, threw her own body upon the armed figure and clung in desperation to the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... repeat it? Do you think, perhaps, that all at once I may begin to clutch at you like a love-sick thing, dreaming of eternities?—No, that isn't my way—oh, no!... But I want to tell you once at least that I am fond of you. May I not for once?—Do you hear? I love you. And I wish that sometime later on ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... answer. The clutch of an unformulated doubt had checked the words on her lips. She had meant, on the day of her sister's marriage, to give Evelina the other half of their common savings; but something warned her not to say ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the foothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into a bleak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two bad hemorrhages on the way, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... court, and hearkening and watching his conduct like a mouse in a cat's ear. Through all the other islands a stream of native visitors comes and goes, travelling by families, spending years on the grand tour. Apemama alone is left upon one side, the tourist dreading to risk himself within the clutch of Tembinok'. And fear of the same Gorgon follows and troubles them at home. Maiana once paid him tribute; he once fell upon and seized Nonuti: first steps to the empire of the archipelago. A British warship coming on the scene, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the clutch and rolled northward. This was the strangest "pinch" of his experience and he didn't know just what to make of it. After he had gone a few blocks he turned on his ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... a tight clutch upon his arm, and Ralph pulled him around. Casting eyes outward, the captain saw that it was the lake ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... was coming a curious scrambling and scraping noise, as of a desperate thing imprisoned in this box of thin wood. The King threw away his cigar, and jumped on to the table. From this position he saw a pair of hands hanging with a hungry clutch on the top of the fence. Then the hands quivered with a convulsive effort, and a head shot up between them—the head of one of the Bayswater Town Council, his eyes and whiskers wild with fear. He swung himself over, and fell on the other side on his face, and groaned ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... E, provided with the roller, D, upon which the cloth is wound, in connection with the gearing, k u, clutch, o, driving pulley, m, and shaft, l, all arranged ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in love at fifteen or sixteen. Yet most unfortunately, just as De Quincey's merits, or some of them, appeal specially to youth, and his defects specially escape the notice of youth, so age with stealing steps especially claws those merits into his clutch and leaves the defects exposed to derision. The most gracious state of authors is that they shall charm at all ages those whom they do charm. There are others—Dante, Cervantes, Goethe are instances—as to whom you may even begin with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... at a distance of only a few feet by the real body of the woman about whom he had dreamt so many million dreams, Ralph stammered; he made a clutch at his self-control; the color either came to his cheeks or left them, he knew not which; but he was determined to face her and track down in the cold light of day whatever vestige of truth there might be in his persistent imaginations. He did not succeed in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... direction of the railway, but fainted before she had more than cleared the thicket. When they lifted her up, they all saw the reason for this. She had come upon a little shoe which she held with frantic clutch against her breast—her child's shoe, which, as she afterward acknowledged, she had loosened with her own hand on the little ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... the congregation—a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child. She was hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced, ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. Mary could only ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the name broke from her lips with a gasp and a spasmodic heart-clutch of panic. Her well-kept secret stood unveiled! She did not know how it had come about, but she realized that the time of reckoning had come and, if her husband's face was an indication to be trusted, that reckoning belonged to to-day and would be ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... let them go. He held them in a clutch that seemed like hot iron in both his, and dragging himself nearer to them covered ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... launch at another, and on the instant made a grab at Mrs. Clerihew's brow. . . . It was a matter of notoriety in St. Hospital that Mrs. Clerihew wore a false "front." The thing came away in Mrs. Royle's clutch, and amid shrieks of laughter Mrs. Royle tossed it to Mrs. Ibbetson, who promptly clapped down a hot flat-iron upon it. The spectators rocked with helpless mirth as the poor woman strove to cover her bald brows, while the thing hissed and shrivelled to nothing, emitting ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and many another noxious thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity. This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the Reason that knows (gnosis) as distinguished from the Lower Reason of mere opinion (doxa). He is no earthly warrior. He carries celestial arms, and bears the ensigns ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... and avoided me, but it was impossible for her altogether to escape me. Risking everything, emboldened by impunity with Charlotte, I used to clutch her knees, and put my head up her clothes, kissing and smelling her motte, I began to love the smell of it. She used to dislodge me, and neither made a noise, nor uttered a word in doing so—indeed she rarely spoke at any time. But it is difficult for a woman who has ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of Her Majesty's noblest monopoly by the throat, as he paused smiling with the door of the pillar-box open and the light of the street-lamp falling on the single letter which lay within. The clutch was no light one, and the man's life ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... here, some of you fellows! What did you promise before we left Liberty Hall?" Hardy shouted frantically, as he writhed in Amos's clutch. ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... stones, which accompanied its course. Down, down went the poor wretches, now utterly overwhelmed by the torrent, now regaining their feet only to utter a scream, and then be swept off. Here a miserable struggler, whirled onward, would clutch at the banks and try to scramble forth, but the soft turf giving way beneath him, he was hurried off ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... south wind, breath of the ocean, hath driven them back. The sea is cleft asunder; the ebbing waters spewed up sand. Well I know Almighty God hath showed you mercy, ye bronze-clad earls. Most haste is best now, that ye may escape the clutch of foes since God hath reared a rampart of the red seastreams. These walls are fairly builded to the roof of heaven, a ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... threw in the clutch, and the big machine very slowly and painfully plowed its way through the clinging mud of the road and turned its face toward the crossroads and, in all ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... crowd was thoroughly frightened there could not be the slightest doubt. Even when they told their story many looked behind them, as if they expected the ghost to pop out of the woods and clutch them ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... case when the ship heeled over every now and again before the force of the wind and then righted herself on an even keel without warning, throwing Mr Smythe off his balance and causing him to clutch frantically at Joe's arm for support till he recovered ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... waterspout played separate tunes. I am well used to the night-time bravado of mice, who fight duels and sometimes pull shoes about, of the pranks of squirrels and other little wood beasts about the floor, but the noise that made me sit up in the cot and reach over until I could clutch Bart by the arm belonged to neither of these. There was a swishing sound, as of water being wrung from something and dropping on the floor, and then a human exclamation, blended of a sigh, a wheeze, and a cough, at which the pup wakened with a growl entirely out of proportion to his age ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... home, thinking that perchance it might have come down to us from one planted by Marban's hand. Of blackthorns there are plenty. The adjective he uses is "dusky." Could he have chosen a more appropriate one? I thought, too, of "the clutch of eggs, the honey and the mast" that God sent him, of "the sweet apples and red whortleberries," and of his dish of "strawberries of good taste ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... slipped, and was shot out of that open doorway, he would execute some violent and curious movements in the effort to save himself in which his arms would play an important part. For one thing, he would certainly throw out an arm—to clutch at anything. That's what Varner most probably saw. There's no evidence whatever that ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... hills, shining in the heat, were compelling—very compelling. Besides, I reflected, a trip like that might help to straighten Whitney up a little. I hadn't much hope, to be sure, but drowning men clutch at straws. It's curious what sophistry you use to convince yourself, isn't it? And then—something happened that for two weeks occupied all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the open door of a cathedral, and, passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits, clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still, that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs from him, facing him, knelt his ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... her destiny. He would have had his Erin famed, The green flag gloriously unfurled, Her statesmen, bards and warriors raised Before the nations of the World. He dreamed (alas, 'twas but a dream!) Of Liberty: but as he strove To clutch that idol, treachery Sundered him from the thing he loved. Shame on the coward, caitiff hands That smote their Lord or with a kiss Betrayed him to the rabble-rout Of fawning priests—no friends of his. May everlasting ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... black lashes drooped; her white fingers relaxed their clasp of his, and she sat down on the sofa near. Ah! her womanly intuitions, infallible as Ithuriel's spear, told her that he was no longer the Eugene she had loved so devotedly. An iron hand seemed to clutch her heart, and again a shudder crept over her as he seated ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... keenest love that ever entered the heart of man? To the eyes of strangers my conduct might be reprehensible, but it had the sanction of my own conscience. It is thus that the noblest feelings, the sublimest dramas of our youth must end. We start at dawn, as I from Tours to Clochegourde, we clutch the world, our hearts hungry for love; then, when our treasure is in the crucible, when we mingle with men and circumstances, all becomes gradually debased and we find but little gold among the ashes. Such is ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... were on our way again, the man within clutch of my hand. All progressed without further trouble until we reached the top of the trough, where we halted to rest and to look down into Wild Basin, memorable scene of my first camp! My charge craftily escaped my clutches, walked out on a promontory, and again threatened to jump. Secretly ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the top of the druidical stone, watches the progress of the day. Her red, parted mouth twitches as she follows the efforts of the men. Behind her, the gars of Savenaye, grasping with angry clutch, some a new musket, others an ancient straightened scythe, gaze fiercely on the scene from under their broad felts. Now and then a flight of republican bullets hum about their ears, and they look anxiously to Their Lady, but that fearless ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... United States court a third time. A poor young man had been seized by the same talons which subsequently griped Sims in their poison, deadly clutch. But that time, wickedness went off hungry, defeated of its prey; "for the Lord delivered him out of their hands," and Shadrach escaped from that Babylonish furnace, heated seven times hotter than its wont: no smell of fire had passed on him. ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... vague before him, and that somehow, under the soft searching prod of her song, he was otherwhere. So much was he otherwhere that he did the surprising thing. He sat down abruptly, almost cataleptically, drew his head away from the clutch of her hands and out of the entanglement of her hair, and, his nose thrust upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, he began to quiver and to breathe audibly in rhythm to the rhythm of her singing. With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to the zenith, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... position, and fixes his eyes on the offender, with a tardy yet angry scowl. If the annoyance be repeated, he draws back his thick lips and reveals a prominent row of hideous fangs (large canines being especially noticeable), and then makes a quick and cruel clutch with his open hand at the offending person. The rapidity of this clutch, as Dr. Browne remarks, is marvellous in a being ordinarily so torpid that he takes about fifteen seconds, when attracted by any noise, to turn ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... to do but plunge and swim? Out on the sinking billow cast, She toil'd, she dived, she groped for him, She found and clutch'd him fast. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... her heart sank and grew heavy, Doris was moved with an almost terrible understanding of the girl across the room. She wanted to push her on her way instead of holding her back, and at the same time she was striving to clutch her as she ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... whose kisses pout to leave their nest, Bid man be valiant ere he merit such; Her glance how wildly beautiful—how much Hath Phoebus woo'd in vain to spoil her cheek, Which grows yet smoother from his amorous clutch, Who round the north for paler dames would seek? How poor their forms appear! how languid, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and there was a jaunty air about him as though he had received good news. His management of the car, too, left nothing to be desired. He started off swiftly, but with a smoothness that told of perfect mastery of the clutch and gears. He took chances, too, as he dashed through town, cutting corners, darting before this car, back of the other until, used as the colonel was to taxicabs in New York, he held ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... delusional sentimentality, by means of a romantic fable and a vigorous fable. It shows us three souls suffering from the kind of sickly vanity that feeds on day-dreams. Orsino is in an unreal mood of emotion. Love is an active passion. Orsino is in the clutch of its dangerous passive enemy called sentimentality. He lolls upon a couch to music when he ought to be carrying her glove to battle. Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... he growled. "I have waited long enough, and too long, and you must choose between us now. You know we will soon be at 'Five Fingers,' and you must be good or they may get you," with a wicked leer and clutch at her arm calculated to startle her as she carelessly sat on ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... even than this followed. It was not very long before the opium nearly lost its power to excite and enliven, though it still kept an inexorable clutch on every fibre of my frame, and I was compelled to take it daily to keep the ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... triumph over my defeat; for I dare not leave to my successor the accursed inheritance of civil war. To the last hour of my life I must humble my will before the decree of that cruel destiny which has persecuted me from boyhood! Be it so!—I must clutch at the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... nervous clutch on the reins as she made this dire discovery and remembered Lady's antics on the ferry-boat, or whether the saucy little breeze which chose that moment to stir the elm branches and set the shadows dancing on the white road, was responsible, is a matter of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... just reached this delightful point, and Livingstone was down on his hands and knees trying with futile dexterity to avoid the clutch of a pair of little arms that apparently were pursuing him with infallible instinct into an inextricable trap, when he became conscious of a presence he had not observed before. Some one not there before was standing ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... beneath a careless touch; Endurance hardens with a word; She holds a trifle with a clutch So strangely, childishly absurd, That he ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock, sways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. This force is not a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip my bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. Then let me not forget the sudden clutch of arrest upon my hurrying wheels. Oh, this is pain to me! While I am rushing forward, surpassing myself in an elan vital, suddenly the awful check grips my back wheel, or my front wheel, or both. Suddenly there is a fearful arrest. My soul rushes ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... and fight to slip the clutch of the ship's suction, in the middle of a heavy sea he managed to get off his clothes, and set to swimming, whither he did not know, a toy on mountains ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... get in the top of the tree, For all your crying and grief? Not a star would you clutch of all you see— You could only gather ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... circumstances. For a few bright days in England the hurricane must break forth and the North Sea pay a toll of populous ships. And when the universal music has led lovers into the paths of dalliance, confident of Nature's sympathy, suddenly the air shifts into a minor, and death makes a clutch from his ambuscade below the bed of marriage. For death is given in a kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life, where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes its entrance from the mother's corpse. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains; One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, 45 Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, —A lion who dies of an ass's kick, The wronged great ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... nose masks, and so he found a seat out of the way, and, searching the room with his gaze, at length found Prince. That gentleman was having a nice, new pink elastic bandage put about his ankle. He was grinning sturdily, but at every clutch of the web his lips twitched and his brow puckered. Joel watching him wondered how much more he would stand, and whether his (Joel's) chance would come ere the fatal whistle piped ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... money. At first no one believed this except the man who told it, but there seemed after all to be something in it. You had only to hit Cree's trouser pocket to hear the money chinking, for he was afraid to let it out of his clutch. Those who sat on dykes with him when his day's labor was over said that the wearer kept his hand all the time in his pocket, and that they saw his lips move as he counted his hoard by letting it slip through his fingers. So there were boys who called "Miser Queery" after him ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... you go into the hall, don't press up too high. Don't be shamefaced. Wherever you go, good manners make the man. Reverence your betters, but treat all equally whom you don't know. See that your hands are clean, and your knife sharp. Let worthier men help themselves before you eat. Don't clutch at the best bit. Keep your hands from dirtying the cloth, and don't wipe your nose on it, or dip too deep in your cup. Have no meat in your mouth when you drink or speak; and stop talking when your neighbour is drinking. Scorn and reprove no man. Keep ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... no greater insult to me than this," said he. And thereupon he rushed under the horses and cut off their lips at the teeth, and their ears close to their heads, and their tails {42} close to their backs, and wherever he could clutch their eyelids, he cut them to the very bone, and he disfigured the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... the course of a single performance, and somebody usually goes raving mad for love. When Melba sings the mad scene from Lucia, and that beautiful voice descends by lingering half-notes from madness and nameless longing to love and prayer, the women in the house sob in sheer delight and clutch the hands of their companions in ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... return; for the scanty dollars it yields him, but the gamester had chosen his time well, and the men who had borne the dreary solitude of winter in outlying farms, and now only saw another adverse season opening before them, were for once in the mood to clutch at any excitement that would relieve the monotony of ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... Rourke's long coat hung out in a most provoking fashion and suggested the thing that followed or not, I don't know, but now the red-faced intruder jumped forward, and seizing them in a most nimble and yet vigorous clutch, gave an amazing yank, which severed them straight up the back, from seat to nape, at the same ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... throbbing of the motor, a grinding and shrieking as the clutch was thrown in, a trembling to the car as Fritsch advanced the spark and opened the gasolene throttle still wider and the automobile, bearing the German reporter, Larry and Grace, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... preliminary jack-rabbit jumps she begun to get headway, and the next I knew our driver was leanin' over his wheel like he was after the Vanderbilt Cup. He must have been throwin' all his weight on the juice button and slippin' his clutch judicious, for we sure was breezin' some. Inside of two blocks we'd eaten up half the lead and was tearin' uptown like a battalion chief answerin' a third alarm. I glances at Old Hickory to see if he's ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... along, following its graceful windings—sometimes touching bottom, and sometimes skimming smoothly over deep water, where Kitty could no longer clutch for the tall, bright grass that here and there had reared itself above the surface. Often Big Tom would sing out, "Lie low!" as some great bough, hanging over the stream, seemed stretching out its arms to catch them; and often they were nearly checked in their course by a fallen trunk, or ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... shot as he fell, but it was from the death clutch upon the trigger, and the bullet went over the heads of the crowd, while instantly was heard the doctor's ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... did purchase, made others brave In shape and riches, and myself a knave. For though my wealth rais'd some to paint their door, 'Tis shut against me saying I am but poor: Nay, even the greatest arm, whose hand hath grac'd My presence to the eye of majesty, shrinks back, His fingers clutch, and like to lead, They are heavy to raise up my state, being dead. By which I find spendthrifts (and such am I) Like strumpets flourish, but are foul within, And they (like snakes) know ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... toward Eunice, who had arisen and stood trying to drive away the passions of rage that seemed to clutch her vocal cords so that she could not speak. At last getting sufficient strength ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... though he sent the ball to a good distance, he only reached the fourth base. When he got there, he called out to Ellis to go in. Ellis seized the bat with a convulsive clutch, as if he was about to fight a battle with it, or was going to perform some wonderful undertaking. Even Ernest could scarcely help laughing at the curious contortions of countenance in which he indulged. However, remembering Ernest's advice, he kept his eye on the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... she interrupted him with a fresh fit of weeping, "you are too good and honest to wish to throw me away, now when you have seen how my soul has hungered for the sight of you these many years, how even now I cling to you with a despairing clutch. But you cannot disguise yourself, Ralph, and I saw from the first moment that ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... sneaked his way along the elevated part of the roof, so that he could clutch one side or the other in case of need. The train was now winding through a narrow gulch in a line of hills and a fierce wind tore at his body as though trying to fling him loose. He felt that it was more than he had bargained for, as the grimy roof ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... along, Alice held Dan's wrist in the cold clutch of her trembling little ungloved hand, on which her wedding ring shone. "O dearest! let us be good!" she said. "I will try my best. I will try not to be exacting and unreasonable, and I know I can. I won't even make any ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with their guns, in those first proud days of the war, when they had reckoned themselves invincible, and been so sure of victory. She knew what cruelties, what indignities, they had put upon the helpless people the war had swept into their clutch. She knew the defilements of which they ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... impossible; true or false, it is necessary for their very existence, so that, just as a drowning man catches at a straw, though it cannot possibly support him, so do these most unfortunate and hardly-pressed men clutch at and cling to the hollow theory of continuity. Sometimes, when off their guard, and in a less cautious mood, they will confess as much themselves. And what is more, we can provide our readers with an instance of such a confession. Many will well remember a well-known and ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... of him woke into life deafeningly and, waving away the mechanics holding the wings, he pressed the clutch pedal and moved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... on Saturday! Nothing more can be done this week, so you drag yourself wearily and despairingly "home," with the cheerful prospect of a penniless Saturday afternoon and evening and the long horrible Australian-city Sunday to drag through. One of the landlady's clutch—and she is an ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... stairway, and out into the street. There, something in the air—the balm of advancing spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun; or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the landscape—apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But however bewildered Florian's ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... thrill of anxiety, a clutch at his heart, he thrust his latchkey into the door. It stuck; he could not turn it. This had never happened before. He tried, with force, to pull the key out. It would not move. He shook it. The doctor's coachman, he felt, was staring at him from the box of the brougham. As he struggled ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... means to embroil the Sarzan and the son Of Agrican, she deems herself possest. A certain mode to enrage these two is won; And other means may work upon the rest. She thither with the dwarfish page is gone, Where the fierce Pagan in his clutch had prest Proud Paris, and they reached the river strand, Exactly as the felon swam ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... sound, the huge crowd which filled the square began to run in tumult to the neighbouring streets, where each one rushed to find shelter, and a few moments later the leaders of the Austrian party, with the mayor at their head, came to clutch at my hand and beg me to spare the town. I agreed on the condition that they would send immediately to tell the miners and workmen to go back to their homes. They hastened to comply, and the elegant young men who were the best mounted, jumped on ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... likely give you more trouble than any one thing on your engine, from the fact that to be satisfactory they require a nicety of adjustment, that is very difficult to attain, a half turn of the expansion bolt one way or the other may make your clutch work very nicely, or very unsatisfactory, and you can only learn this by carefully adjusting of friction shoes, until you learn just how much clearance they will stand when lever is out, in order to hold sufficient ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... surface was there. I found nothing to clutch or stay my fall, and a moment later so great was my speed that ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Augustine says, 'They slew Him that they might possess, and, because they slew, they lost.' So is it always. Whoever tries to secure any desired end by putting away his responsibility to render to God the fruit of his thankful service, loses the good which he would fain clutch at for his own. All sin ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Fothergil finch said to me, the other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction, "some day It will get me! Some day I will overtake me. The great Beat, Popularity, which pursues me! Some day It will clutch me and tear me and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... it is clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet, ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d'or has been stuck to a candle. There's the epoch for you. My demand is that I may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... single-command monoplane school are permitted to fly only under the most favorable weather conditions. Even then, old Mother Earth, who is not kindly disposed toward those of her children who leave her so jauntily, would clutch us back to her bosom, whenever we gave her the slightest opportunity, with an embrace that was anything but tender. We were inclined to think rather highly of our own courage in defying her; and sometimes our vanity ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... the earth. They reel back into their seats, or clutch the nearest support. They hear the falling of the shattered glass ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the better," said he firmly. "I thought he was dead. His blood flows; then I will save him. Don't clutch me so, Josephine; don't cling to me like that. Now is the time to show your breed: not turn sick at the sight of a little blood, like that foolish creature, but help ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Ha, old witch, it is done at last! I have broken the King's stronghold! I have stolen away his children twain From the clutch of their guardsmen bold. I have dragged them here to my castle tower. Prince Hero is strong and fair. But he and his sister shall rue my power, When once ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I could do. Dan would order me to steer this way and that—to throw out the clutch—to throw it in. Still I was able to keep track of events. This fish made nineteen rushes in the succeeding half-hour. Never for an instant did Captain Dan let up. Assuredly during that time he spent more force on the fish than I ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... "the safe side" would have no pertinency, even with the imbecile, if man were immortal. It seeks advantage from the fact that every man must die. It tries to paralyse reason with the clutch of fear. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... under the tyranny of the blues is temporarily unable to adjust life to its usual limitations. He or she cannot see an inch beyond the dreadful present. Everything looks dark and forbidding, and despair with an iron clutch pins its victim down. People think, loosely, that trials that may be weighed and measured and felt and handled are the worst trials to which flesh is heir. But they are mistaken. Hearts are elastic, and real sorrows seldom ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... to the company; and, as all were in sympathy with America, it was received with great applause. Little, however, did any of them then imagine, how invincible was the animal the British government was about to clutch in its talons, supposing it to be ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... doubt of the man on whose compassion I had thrown myself entered my mind. Plague-stricken, hopeless as I was, it chilled me to the very heart; staying in a moment the feeble tears I was about to shed, and curing even the vertigo, which forced me to clutch at the straw on which I lay. Whether the thought arose from a sickly sense of my own impotence, or was based on the fellow's morose air and the stealthy glances he continued to cast at me, I am as unable to say as I am to decide whether it was well-founded, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... whose clutch George had just freed himself, stopped short and looked after them. Then he ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eyes, the youngest with wide and startled looks, and parted lips, and quick-drawn breath that sobs and is caught at sight of each deadly stab and gash of broadsword and trident, and hands that twitch and clutch each other as a man's foot slips in a pool of blood, and the heavy harness clashes in the red, wet sand. Then grey-haired senators; then curled and perfumed knights of Rome; and then the people, countless, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Castle Craneycrow wrapped in the stillness of death. Its inmates were awake, but they were petrified, paralyzed by the discovery that Dorothy Garrison was gone. Scared eyes looked upon white faces, and there was upon the heart of each the clutch of an icy hand. So appalling was the sensation that the five conspirators breathed not nor spoke, but listened for the heartbeats that had stopped when fears finally gave way to complete conviction. They were as if recovering from the fright of seeing ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work, and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it eludes your grasp, and you watch it, as Orpheus watched Eurydice, gliding back again into the twilight kingdom, fly—fly—if you can remember the advice—to the haven of your present ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... was there before it. The kitten feinted; the gentleman was altogether too much on the spot. Immediately—and just as Miss Carewe, flushed and glowing, ran into the street—the small animal doubled, evaded Miss Betty's frantic clutch, re-entered the gateway, and attempted a disappearance into the lilac bushes, instead of going round them, only to find itself, for a fatal two seconds, in difficulties with the close-set thicket ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Lord Jesus left as his parting gift to his people; the peace that is not as the world giveth. How the world gives, Mr. Rhys briefly set forth; with one hand, to take away with the other—as a handful of gold, what proves but a clutch of ashes—as the will-o'-the-wisp gives, promise but never possession. Eleanor would not have much regarded these words from any other lips; they accorded with her old theory of disgust with the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... of the fire-building Lance turned over, drawing up his feet and straightway extending them again; making a sleepy, futile clutch at the fur coat, that had slipped off his shoulders when he turned. The bartender reached out and flung the coat up on Lance's shoulders, and bit off a chew of tobacco and stowed it away in his cheek. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Aunt Mary exclaimed, as the thing began to whiz and she felt suddenly impelled to clutch wildly at her flanking escorts. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... should get one or two, if I could have a look at the pools this week. Jolly little dog! he was paddling and spinning about last night, and enjoying himself, 'ere age with creeping'—What is it?—'hath clawed him in his clutch.' That fellow's destiny is not a hopeful analogy for you, sir, who believe that we shall rise after we die into ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... became enveloped in a dense volume of sound. Men and women stood on their chairs and waved frantically, madly, anything they could clutch hold of to wave. The whole Olympia appeared to have gone mad. Noble peers, grave judges, sedate generals and austere philosophers acted as if suddenly bereft of the restaining ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... away and watched him with full understanding of what he was about; for Shady's past experience with traps had been large. She had seen Collins take many a coyote from his traps. Twice she had slipped away to steal the bait from some set near the cabin and both times had felt the sudden deadly clutch of steel jaws on her foot, remaining in their grip till Collins had released her. She had seen coyotes dead and bloated from eating poison baits,—and meat was now a danger signal to Shady, not a lure. She would touch no food except that which ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... some neighboring street, Nor rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades. Honor and blessings on his head While living, good report when dead, Who, not too eager for renown, Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that should a man stare upon the wave in its anger, so that his vesture and body be wetted of the spray, then, whatever be his strength, the water will draw him to itself, for it is mightier than he. Many a man has struggled and fallen on the brink, and been drowned in its clutch. But if a man turn his back upon the water, then he may stand safely upon the bank, taking his pleasure as long as he will. The wave will pass by him, doing him no mischief; he will not be wetted even of the flying foam." So Hoel marvelled greatly ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, and him, whom yesterday two infinities (past and future) would not suffice, a handful of dust is enough to cover and silence for ever. Nay, we see the same fleshless fingers opening to clutch the showman himself, and guess, not without a shudder, that they are lying in wait for ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... shouted, and before I could gather my wits and clutch the sides we were adrift in the night, reeling from hollow to hollow of the steep curling waves. Davies nursed our walnut-shell tenderly over their crests, edging her slantwise across their course. He used very little exertion, relying on the tide to carry ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... had watched him pitted against one stupid obstacle after another—ill-health, poverty, misunderstanding and, worst of all for a man of his texture, his first wife's soft insidious egotism. We had seen him sinking under the leaden embrace of her affection like a swimmer in a drowning clutch; but just as we despaired he had always come to the surface again, blinded, panting, but striking out fiercely for the shore. When at last her death released him it became a question as to how much of the man she had ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... heard a shrill and sudden cry, And, looking up, I saw the antic Puck Grappling with Time, who clutch'd him like a fly, Victim of his own sport,—the jester's luck! He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow, And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck; Whereas the angry churl had ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... in clutch, Mr. Kantor regarded his wife, the lower half of his face, well covered with reddish bristles, undershot, his free hand and even his eyes violently lifted. To those who see in a man a perpetual kinship to that animal kingdom of which he is supreme, there was something undeniably ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... engagement and would break it off; and now she was stamping her little feet, and clenching her little hands, and swearing to herself by all her gods, that this wretched, timid lordling should not get out of her net. She did, in truth, despise him because he would not clutch the jewels. She looked upon him as mean and paltry because he was willing to submit to Mr. Camperdown. But still she was prompted to demand all that could be demanded from her engagement,—because ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... quiet in a moment. She felt in the terror of her young heart an almost irresistible desire to clutch at Glynn's neck; but the well-known voice reassured her, and her natural tendency to place blind, implicit confidence in others, served her in this hour of need, for she ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... rashly into it on low gear; you buzz bravely for possibly fifty feet; you slow down, slow down; your driving wheels begin to spin—that finishes you. Every revolution digs a deeper hole. It is useless to apply power. If you are wise you throw out your clutch the instant she stalls, and thus save digging yourself in unnecessarily. But if you are really wise you don't get in that fix at all. The next stage is that wherein you thrust beneath the hind wheels certain expedients such as robes, coats, and so forth. The wheels, when ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it wouldn't vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened! What is life without ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... washed at the kitchen sink and then walked to the door to shout for Barney. On the other side of the yard, Barney released the pump windmill clutch. While Johnny watched from the porch, the weight of the heavy slop cauldron slowly turned the big windmill and as the arm adorned by the kettle rotated downward, the cast-iron pot slipped off and fell to the hard-packed ground ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... me not one word of answer, but with a sudden clutch he gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down upon the ground as though they had been puppies. Their brains were shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet with their blood. Then he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... more than six left out of the first clutch," said Mrs. Joyce. "There was eleven hatched out, but sure the rats got the rest of them." "I'd be glad," said Joyce, "if you'd fatten them six, and you needn't spare the yellow meal. It'll be worth your while to have them as good as ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... know what sum of money represents his debts?" Alston threw in, as you would clutch at the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... and have, there and then, All her body and soul That completes my whole, All that women add to men, In the clutch of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... returning from the post office, he felt blind for a moment and put his hand to his head. The wold of vivid green grew gray, and life rceded from him into illimitable distance. He had one dim fading glimpse of a shaggy-bearded face looking down at him, and felt the clutch of an iron-hard strong arm under him, and then he lost hold even ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... in the clutch of a great fear; but he felt he was alive and well, and little by little his fear disappeared and left him eager. He went a few steps forward, and saw that the hill sloped downward, and downward he went, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror through ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... readily. "Well, you advance your spark and open the throttle—that speeds her up. This is the spark and this the gas, here. Then you shove your shifting lever—see, here it is—over to the next speed. Remember that, any time you shift the gears, you'll have to pull the clutch. The machine has to gain headway on one speed before it ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... fast and double-locked in sleep in the next bed. He saw also the open trunk by the dressing-table in front of the window. Then he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the silent witness of the hours. And a pair of pincers seemed to clutch his heart, and an anvil to drop on his stomach and rest heavily there, producing an awful nausea. Why had he not looked at the clock before? Was it possible that he had been awake even five seconds without looking at the clock—the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentred all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... man. "The dying world holds your imagination within a morbid clutch. It is all a matter of mental condition. Free your mind of this fascinating influence and come with us to visit other worlds, many of them are both beautiful and new. You will ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... distance! Lunge! Now the thrust ends in the merest harmless touch; But ere the beaten man throws up the sponge, As the boxers say, relaxing his hilt-clutch, There'll be lunges and ripostes of other sort. Firm foot and steady hand must be their friend; The encounter will be struggle, not mere sport, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... Caspar's clutch at his arm. Maurice saw that his purpose—that of haranguing the men outside—had been divined and arrested. He turned to his friend and saw for the first time on Caspar's face that the shaft had gone home. He had shown scarcely any ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... you go," answered Tom, somewhat put out to thus lose a ball which had cost him his week's spending, money; and he sent the sphere flying upward at a smart speed. Mr. Rover made a clutch for it, but the ball slipped through his hands and landed plump on ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... sudden, sharp, bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions above, observing the slide, drew him up. And that, I believe, was the first and last attempt to levv on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... leave me alone," said Priam, rebelling with all the pride of his nature against this clutch of ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... a' plenty and here, somewhere on this island, it lieth waiting to be found. It needeth but for this fool Martin here, as some o' you will mind for Adam Penfeather's comrade, with a curse, it needeth but for him to speak, I say, and in that same hour each one o' you may fill your clutch wi' more treasure than ever came out o' Eldorado or Manoa—so speak he must and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... faith it is, no doubt—in some quiet hour when we are with Him by ourselves, than when swords are flashing and we are in the presence of His antagonists? Do we not know what it is to grasp conviction at one moment, and the next to find it gone like a handful of mist from our clutch? Is our Christian life always lived upon one high uniform level? Have we no experience of hours of exhaustion coming after deep religious emotion? 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone'; there will not be many stones flung if that law be applied. Let ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... prisoner, extending his arm as if to clutch at a still vague inspiration—"wait a moment. When I arrived in Paris I had with me a trunk containing my clothes. The linen is all marked with the first letter of my name, and besides some ordinary coats and trousers, there ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... very good job, and Johann prodded his son to devote his energies to the evolving of new designs. But the boy hated it all—thinking only of his music. And his music meant to him, not sentimental dreaming, but a passionate clutch into the infinite, a battle for deliverance from the bondage of the world. So Johann himself had been in his youth, when he had become a revolutionist, and before beer and gravy and ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Eliz in her arms and proceeded to walk slowly up the straight staircase which occupied one half of the long central hall. The crimson scarfs hanging from Eliz, the length of her own silk gown, embarrassed her; she stopped a moment on the second step, resting her burden upon one lifted knee to clutch and gather the gorgeous raiment ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... had been rescued. It won't be long now before Dinkie has a pinto of his own and will go bobbing off across the prairie-floor, I suppose, like a monkey on a circus-horse. Even now he likes nothing better than coming with his mother while she gathers her "clutch" of eggs. He can scramble into a manger—where my unruly hens persist in making an occasional nest—like a marmoset. The delight on his face at the discovery of even two or three "cackle-berries," as Whinnie calls them, is worth the occasional breakage and yolk-stained rompers. For ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... fulsome about it: Madame, in all things worldly, was in nothing weak; there was measure and sense in her hottest pursuit of self-interest, calm and considerateness in her closest clutch of gain; without, then, laying herself open to my contempt as a time-server and a toadie, she marked with tact that she was pleased people connected with her establishment should frequent such associates as ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... would have it? The Koh-i-Noor' in his clutch (and a knowledge of its value) could not have given him more thrilling rapture. He was speechless with amazement; Maisie, thrilled too, realized that a word spoken would have rung false. The boy gloated over his treasure; ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... redoubled fury burns; From every side the avenging cranes amain Throng, to o'erwhelm this terror of the plain. 160 When suddenly (for such the will of Jove) A fowl enormous, sousing from above, The gallant chieftain clutch'd, and, soaring high, (Sad chance of battle!) bore him up the sky. The cranes pursue, and, clustering in a ring, Chatter triumphant round the captive king. But, ah! what pangs each pigmy bosom wrung, When, now to cranes a prey, on talons hung, High in the clouds they saw their helpless lord, His ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... this juncture, have wished to find his way out, escape was, in fact, out of the question; on the south and north was one continuous dead wall, which, even had he wished to scale, there was nothing which he could clutch and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... floating proudly, and its ranks closed up and dressed with the precision of troops on parade, is a magnificent spectacle. Old soldiers, hardened in the fires of battle, and not given to emotion, lean forward watching the advance of the Virginians with fiery eyes. You would say, from the fierce clutch of the gaunt hands on the muskets, that they wish to follow; ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Calavius, impatiently. "Who does not know that the gods say such words as their thievish priests filch from them. Mark now this fellow that comes from the captain-general. Do you not see how the fingers of his left hand clutch and unclutch? Were Hannibal to crucify him and a few like, his gods might utter more favouring responses. Meanwhile, our engines that should thunder at your Capenian Gate are consumed before mud heaps; and who knows but all the time some tree grows stouter that it may bear the weight of this Hannibal, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... a practical answer ready before he has. Naddo plies him with common sense. "He is to speak to the human heart—he is not to be so philosophical—he is not to seem so clever." Shallow judges pull him to pieces. Shallow rivals strive to sing him down.[15] He loses his grasp of the ideal. He cannot clutch the real. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... his feet, for some god parched it evermore. And tall trees flowering shed their fruit overhead, pears and pomegranates and apple trees with bright fruit, and sweet figs and olives in their bloom, whereat when that old man reached out his hands to clutch them, the wind would toss ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... miles after leaving Varesnes it was retreat—rapid, undisguised, and yet with a plan. Thousands of men, scores of guns and transport vehicles, hundreds of civilians caught in the last rush, all struggling to evade the mighty pincers' clutch of the German masses who, day after day, were crushing our attempts to rally against their weight and fury. Unless collectedly, in order, and with intercommunications unbroken, we could pass behind the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... watching the huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works. A shoal of coal barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water below, and a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to be controlling them but only moving about among them. These gas-works have a big chimney that belches a lurid flame into the night, a livid shivering ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... was swift and strong, and, good swimmer as he was, it was no easy task which Alleyne had set himself. To clutch at Tranter and to seize him by the hair was the work of a few seconds, but to hold his head above water and to make their way out of the current was another matter. For a hundred strokes he did not seem to gain an inch. Then ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; aye, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... out a hand and patted his neck, and in doing so secured a firm clutch of the mane in his hand; the next instant his foot was in the stirrup, and the next he had vaulted into the saddle, before the horse had ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... a basement chop-house, another day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in both cases the premonition of failure checked him on the brink of avowal. His dread of being taken for a man in the clutch of a fixed idea gave him an unnatural keenness in reading the expression of his interlocutors, and he had provided himself in advance with a series of verbal alternatives, trap-doors of evasion from the first dart of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... irritating amiability. I began to understand what an annoyance it must be to have a bough up there that you couldn't flick at with your stick as you passed by, and that even when weighed down by its summer greenery would bemock you if you made a casual clutch at its foliage, and laugh at you in its leaves. I went inside and returned with a step-ladder and an umbrella and a carving-knife, and I stood on the summit of the ladder and made abortive slashes at space with my right hand, while the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— I have thee not!—and yet I see thee still! Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind—a false creation, Proceeding from a heat-oppressed brain? ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... gritted through his teeth, as he jabbed the key with frantic haste into the lock. "I'll fix you for this!" He made a clutch at her throat, as he ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... tossed the ball high in the air between them. They leaped as far as they could; but Sawed-Off's enormous height carried him far beyond the other man, and, giving the ball a smart slap, he sent it directly into the clutch of Reddy, who had run on and was waiting to receive it half over his shoulder. Finding himself "covered" by the opposing forward, he passed the ball quickly under the other man's arm across to Heady, who had run down the other side of the floor. Heady received the ball without ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... Billie's day for bumping into people—for at the foot of the stairs she had to clutch the banister to keep from colliding with Miss Walters, the beautiful and much loved ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... we sought one of the many radiating centres of festivity in the neighbourhood. She was very tired and cold,—so tired she seemed hardly to have the spirit to eat, and evidently the cold had taken tight clutch of her lungs, for she had a cough that went to my heart to hear, and her face was ghastly pale. When I had persuaded her to drink a little wine, she grew more animated and spots of suspicious colour came into her cheeks. So far she had seemed all but oblivious ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... breaking free from all restraint, rose up in rebellious desire. It was a slow agony of temptation, in which the weapons of faith fell, one by one, from his faltering hands, in which he lay inert in the clutch of passion, in which he beheld with horror his own ignominy, without having the courage to raise his little finger to free himself ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Stoughton Page's reputation as an automobile driver would not be undamaged in the estimation of at least one person. But for that and for what must be when the crisis arrived—well, it was inevitable. I threw in the clutch and drew out of the stable. At any rate, there were the hours back of me, and Margery was—Margery. There was sweetness in this thought, and infinite ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... is not all. In our own country the British land shark has made his appearance. His vile clutch, which our forefathers unwrenched in the strength of their Colonial greatness, has again been fastened upon our throat. The following table will show the extent to which the parasite has insinuated himself into our vital parts. Let the good people of this country—who should ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... pointed down at his feet as he spoke, and Maurice, turning his gaze in that quarter, instantly saw something that caused him to draw in a quick breath and involuntarily clutch the gun with a ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could run free. To start the car it was necessary to turn the motor over ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... you to leave me alone," said Priam, rebelling with all the pride of his nature against this clutch of the law. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... standing, and had had a reading-desk placed on the platform, adapted to his own very tall stature, so that when I came to get his manuscript it was almost above my head. Though rather disconcerted, I was determined not to go back without it, and so made a half jump, and a clutch at the book, when every leaf of it (they were not fastened together), came fluttering separately down about me. I hardly know what I did, but I think I must have gone nearly on all-fours, in my agony to gather up the scattered leaves, and retreating with them, held them out in dismay to poor Thackeray, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... brother-in-law. "Well, well. So far as in me lies, I'll do as I'm told. But I insist upon plain English. I'm not going to be suddenly yelled at to 'double-clutch,' or 'feel the brake,' or 'close the throttle,' or something. It makes me want to burst into tears. That fellow who was teaching me asked me, without any warning and in the middle of some sheep, what I should do if one of my 'big ends were to run out.' I said I should consult a specialist, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... can feel, When the winds batter, how these parchments clatter, And the beautiful tenor that's ever ringing When thro' the Seaweed the breeze is singing: And you should know, I know a great deal, When the bacchi arcanum I clutch and gripe, I know a great deal of wind and weather By hearing my own cheeks slap together A-pulling up ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... He pays me no manner of attention. [Looking off the stage.] I wonder whether any of the hermits are about here. [Seeing the King.] Kind Sir, could you come hither a moment and help me to release the young lion from the clutch of this child, who is teasing him ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... temper, Byrd laid down his napkin, and rose with an attempt at dignity somewhat marred by the viselike clutch of the swivel chair ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... killed if he did not stop the machine, the lad threw off the clutch and applied the brakes. Then, in the center of a large force of Germans, who came rushing in upon them, the lad stood up in the machine, and, raising ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... mistress, and realising that Fate had not been willing and that she came but as a guest and Countess of Dunstanwolde. Oh, it was a bitter, relentless thing; and why should it have been—for what wise purpose or what cruel one? And with a maddening clutch about his heart he saw again the tragic searching in her eyes when she had said, "Then you have known me long, your Grace," and afterwards, so soft and strangely slow, "Then you might have been one of those who came to my birthnight feast, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... command, a virtual dictatorship might work great things for the North. But whence is he likely to emerge? Hardly from the midst of this vast political and military turmoil, where every man is struggling and straining to clutch at the veriest shred ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... I fell asleep; and when, as day was breaking, I woke once more and remembered all that had befallen me yestereve, I had to clutch my shoulders and temples or ever I was certain that indeed my eyes were open on another day. And what a day! My heart overflowed as I saw, look which way I might, no perils, none, nothing, verily nothing that was not well-ordered and brought to a good end, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as the bride shudders, the bridegroom's hand compresses hers with a sudden vigorous clutch, as if he feared to lose her, ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to my heart—a deadly thrill ran through every limb—from shame and indignation, no doubt; my vision became obscure; it seemed as if my soul was leaving my body, and I fell forward fainting, and dragged her down to the bottom of the water in a mortal clutch. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions. These, you know, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... cruel green depths, when his ears were bursting and his eyes starting from their sockets, he found himself once more at the surface, breathing in great gulps of the blessed air, and alone. For a moment he could not believe it, but gazed wildly about him, expecting each instant to feel the awful clutch that should again drag him under. He was nearly exhausted, and so weak that had not a floating oar come within his reach he must quickly have sunk, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... little clutch in her excitement. She had always lived in the basement kitchen of a house in Mortimer Street and had never had reason to hope she ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... days at least that seem to start the sap in the trees and the blood in the veins, when the first bluebird is heard, and we get one swift, delicious glimpse of the good time coming. But this year the cold only takes a sharper clutch. At its average, our northern winter has a fierce and almost merciless persistence. Those first days of spring are hardly more than the taste of freedom with which the cat tantalizes the mouse. It is this lingering close of winter that is hard to ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... loosened, probably by the blow he received at the outset, and there were finger-nail dents on the throat as from the grasp of a strangling hand. That his opponent should have disengaged himself from his clutch was matter of extreme surprise to all who had experienced submersion, and knew its meaning. Even to those who have never been under water against their will, the phrase "the grip of a drowning man" has a terribly convincing sound. That this opponent rose to the surface alive, and escaped, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... better grip on it. It slipped a wee bit more. Blacky started down towards the ground. But he wasn't quick enough. Striped Chipmunk, watching Blacky from the old stone wall, saw something white drop from Blacky's claws. He saw Blacky dash after it and clutch at it only to miss it. Then the white thing struck a branch of an old apple tree, bounced off and fell to the ground. Blacky ...
— Blacky the Crow • Thornton W. Burgess
... half round and looked straight at me. For a long second he stared—sitting half upright, his long, fine hands clasping the arms of the chair with a clutch like steel. He said not a word. Then ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and cutlery on the saloon tables crashed to starboard. Were it not for the restraint of the fiddles everything must have been swept to the floor. There were one or two minor accidents. A steward, taken unawares, was thrown headlong on top of his laden tray. Others were compelled to clutch the backs of chairs and cling to pillars. One man involuntarily seized the hair of a lady who devoted an hour before each meal to her coiffure. The Sirdar, with a frenzied bound, tried to turn ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the arches, in the dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like a spark upon the wind. The crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, a tension. It gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon Shere Ali. He ceased to think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy. And then a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... had. He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in a continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy. The Englishman hardly knew whether to put him down as a man haunted by a fixed delusion, or as one oppressed by a guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... upward climb and fight to slip the clutch of the ship's suction, in the middle of a heavy sea he managed to get off his clothes, and set to swimming, whither he did not know, a ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... try to escape," I once asked an exile at Sredni-Koylmsk, "and make your way across Bering Straits to America?" For I was aware that, once in the United States, a Russian "political" is safe from the clutch of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... of heaven, I have made many things, but this is my masterpiece. If I and all my works were swept away, leaving only this thing, it would be enough. In the fiftieth century it will still have its clutch on man, yea, and to the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... was the musical enthusiasm called out. When they returned Schumann's malady returned with double force, and on February 27, 1854, he attempted to end his misery by jumping into the Rhine. Madness had seized him with a clutch which was never to be released, except at short intervals. Every possible care was lavished on him by his heartbroken and devoted wife, and the assiduous attention of the friends who reverenced the genius now for ever quenched. The last two years of his life were spent in the private ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... liberty they allowed was the liberty to believe as they believed. Others were wrong, they were right—therefore it was right for them to take the wrong in hand and set them right. They were filled with fear, and fear is the finish of everything upon which it gets a clutch. Were it not for fear man's religion would reduce itself to a healthful emotional exercise, a beautiful intermittent impulse. Institutional religion is founded on the monstrous assumption that man is a fully developed creature, and has the ability, when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... like a cannon, and the three rows of reef-points slatted against the canvas like a volley of rifles. Harrison, clinging on, made the giddy rush through the air. This rush ceased abruptly. The halyards became instantly taut. It was the snap of the whip. His clutch was broken. One hand was torn loose from its hold. The other lingered desperately for a moment, and followed. His body pitched out and down, but in some way he managed to save himself with his legs. He was ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... ship's papers not being ready. Such a scene at the dock gates. Not a sailor will join till the last moment; and then, just as the ship forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the men half tipsy clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ain't all as should be counted; but then, ye don't count all the folks an' happenin's that pass ye in yer wakin' hours. But when a dream, or a person, or an idee comes along, as means a comfort or a strengthener, I take it that it is a sort o' duty t' clutch it, an' make it real. When ye ain't got nothin' better, dreams is powerful upliftin' at times. Gum!" David drew his shoulders up and plunged his hands in his pockets, as if about to draw comfort ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... her hands a shoe, a tiny, dainty shoe, with embroidery of pearls and flowers,—the shoe of her beautiful mistress that was. For she had sought to grasp Ko-Ngai by the foot as she leaped, but had only been able to clutch the shoe, and the pretty shoe came off in her hand; and she continued to stare at it like ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... there had been no one there, and forced myself to investigate. I saw nothing, heard nothing, and step by step advanced clear to the back window, and looked out. Then, without the slightest warning, something was thrown over my head, and I was utterly helpless in the vice-like clutch of an arm. I cannot explain how startled, how helpless I was. It occurred so suddenly I could not even cry out, could scarcely struggle. I was instantly stifled, and left weak as a child. I know I did make an effort to break away, but the cloth was clutched closer ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Horace felt something clutch at his heart. Fledra's radiant face rose before his mental vision, and he swallowed hard, as he thought of her relation to the brutal ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... commonly used, but as only two are employed on tricycles, I shall leave the third till I come to the special machine for which it is necessary. The most easy to understand is the clutch, a model of which I have on the table. If each main wheel is driven by means of one of these, though compelled to go forward by the crankshaft, it is yet free to go faster without restraint. By this means "double driving" is effected in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... And that's the long and (chiefly) the short of it, And the point of it and the wonderful sport of it; A two-year-old with a taste for a toy, And two chubby fists to clutch it and grasp it, And two fat arms to embrace it and clasp it; And a short stout couple of sturdy legs As hard and as smooth as ostrich eggs; And a jolly round head, so fairly round You could easily roll it, Or take it and bowl it With never a ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... find his sleep less sweet For music in some neighboring street, Nor rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades. Honor and blessings on his head While living, good report when dead, Who, not too eager for renown, Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown! ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is that loyal and faithful servant, touching whom a brief while ago I propounded to you my question, whom her own folk held none too dear, but cast out into the open street as a thing vile and no longer good for aught, but I took thence, and by my careful tendance wrested from the clutch of death; whom God, regardful of my good will, has changed from the appalling aspect of a corpse to the thing of beauty that you see before you. But for your fuller understanding of this occurrence, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... although he had not given her his promise—foreseeing even then the possibility of this black hour—he had meant, at the moment, to turn his back for ever on the seductive thing which whispers such sweet, such deliriously fatal promises to the man in the clutch of any agony he does not know how ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... bronco was carried down into a swirl of deep, angry water. So swift was the undertow that Powder River was dragged from beneath its rider. Bob caught at the mane of the horse and clung desperately to it with one hand. A second or two, and this was torn from his clutch. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... people that he understands and is able to satisfy their needs. More effective than any moral house- cleaning in securing the tenure of an administration is its efficiency in promoting better living and working conditions, improving opportunities for recreation and education, or loosening the clutch of the predatory "interests." Moreover, the politician must be a good mixer, willing to work with those who do not share his idealism, good- natured and conciliatory, ready to postpone the accomplishment of much that he has at heart in order to get something done. As organization is in ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to the Ministry, he shot his glance up and down the street. He was in the clutch now, and knew it. ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... dreamily before me, Forms that so early cheered my troubled eyes! To hold you fast doth still my heart implore me? Still bid me clutch the charm that lures and flies? Ye crowd around! come, then, hold empire o'er me, As from the mist and haze of thought ye rise; The magic atmosphere, your train enwreathing, Through my thrilled ...
— Faust • Goethe
... purlieus of theory, but see it and hear it and feel it in echoes and glimpses. Yet all these rainbows which span the heaven of thought, finely woven of the tears of humility, one would sometimes grasp and crystallize forever. In that I find my satisfaction in what I know of Fourier; but to clutch at the rainbow! can it ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... his jaws to roar again when Fan interposed and, taking a clutch in his shaggy beard, said, calmly: "Now, dad, you hush! George Adelbert and I have made it all up and you better fall in gracefully. It won't do you any good to paw ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Marshall players came dashing; but they might as well have hoped to catch the wind in a sixty-mile gale as overtake that speedy runner. It was as though Jack had reserved his best powers for this special occasion. He saw just where he meant to hurl himself over the line, and clutch that envied touchdown. Had a dozen followed he would have distanced them every one, such was his mettle just then. He seemed endowed with supernatural speed, many who stared and held their ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... been used on the field of honor. Whenever my grandfather went out for a walk, or to play whist at the house of a neighbor, I would get down these pistols and fight duels with myself in front of the looking-glass. With my left hand I would hold the handkerchief above my head, and with the other clutch the pistol at my side, and then, at the word, and as the handkerchief fluttered to the floor, I would take careful aim and pull the trigger. Sometimes I died and made speeches before I expired, and sometimes I killed my adversary and stood ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... and not thinking of his own danger, Francesco gave him a push, and losing his balance the captain fell over the edge, a distance of sixty feet, upon the jagged rocks beneath. But not alone! Still retaining his fierce clutch upon the Italian's throat, the murderer, too, fell with him, and both were stretched in an instant, mangled and lifeless, at the ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... impossible to cast anchor, or to use the capstan. What course had best be pursued in this critical situation? The vessel beat violently against the rocks, and a host of pirogues waited in expectation of a shipwreck, eager to clutch their prey. Fortunately at the end of an hour a favourable breeze rising, disengaged the Dauphin, and wafted her into good anchorage. The damage done was not serious, and was as easily repaired ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... out briskly and without showing the least sign of suspicion, when all at once he gave a loud snort and wheeled sharply to the right, completely unseating me, However, I did not fall off, as I managed to clutch hold of his mane. As I swung back into the saddle, I saw that we had narrowly escaped falling down the sleep bank into ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... Such sweet little souls to ensnare,— Why, no conduct could well have been meaner. But all things went well for a time; The parties they trusted made much of them; Little they fancied that crime Would ever attempt to get clutch of them. Rum ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... of the flood is swept from the face of the earth. The mountains, assailed in a moment with the ferocity of a hundred storms, are ripped and torn like hills of clay. The frosted scale of the granite, the desperate root of the cedar, the poised nest of the eagle, the clutch of the crannied vine, the split and start of the mountainside, are all as one before the June thaw. At its height Little Crawling Stone, with a head of forty feet, is a choking flood of rock. Mountains, torn and bleeding, vomit bowlders of thirty, sixty, a hundred tons ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... visitation—soon regained his composure, it was far otherwise with his friend, who immediately gave the alarm. Mr. Hudson rushed in and boldly attacked the monkey, grasping him by the throat. The book-editor next came in, obtaining a clutch upon the brute by the ears; the musical critic followed and seized the tail with both hands, and a number of reporters, armed with inkstands and sharpened pencils, came next, followed by a dozen policemen with brandished clubs; at the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... for a fat man. They were tapering, slender, delicate, blue-veined, temperamental hands. At this moment, despite his purpling face, and his staring eyes, they were the most noticeable thing about him. His fingers clawed the empty air, quivering, vibrant, as though poised to clutch at ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... sword on the floor he saw nothing clearly. And then he saw mine host coming down the rope, hand over hand quite nimbly, as though he lived by this business. In his right hand he held a poniard of exceptional length, yet he managed to clutch the rope and hold the poniard all the time with the ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... biplane finally dropped down to the ground close by the hangar where it was to be housed, the three comrades were only too glad of a chance to clutch hold, and assist to the best ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... on a surging head. The mill itself, as regards the roll, is much the same as those of other firms; but instead of an engine with a heavy fly-wheel, always working in one direction, and connected to the rolls by double clutch and gearing, the work is done by a pair of horizontal reversing engines, in connection with which there is a very simple, and at the same time extremely effectual, system of hydraulic reversing. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... too much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking old gentleman opposite. When we see men so distrustful, we shun them. They then call us selfish when we feel only solitary. We protest against such manhood as would lower golden ideals of youth to its own contemptible Avernus. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... the sole protection which had hidden him from his enemies begin to move away his courage failed him, and he had not sufficient boldness to carry out the plan he had so neatly arranged. Instinctively he threw his arms up to clutch the rope again, but it was too late, it had already passed beyond his reach; there was nothing left to save him. Another moment and his hiding place would be discovered, when——, Sir Thomas missed his footing, and with a gesture of impatience ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... out, as in memories of nightmare. I remember those trees especially, and my desperate running along under them, and how, every time I fell, roars of laughter went up from the other drunks. They thought I was merely antic drunk. They did not dream that John Barleycorn had me by the throat in a death-clutch. But I knew it. And I remember the fleeting bitterness that was mine as I realised that I was in a struggle with death, and that these others did not know. It was as if I were drowning before a crowd of spectators who thought I was cutting up tricks ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... to seize it in my grasp. Down would I sink before her very feet. Yet, as the fragrance over valleys spread Is scattered by the wind's fresh blowing breath, Along the sloping terrace flees the throng. I tread the ramp—unending, far away It stretches up to heaven's very gate, I clutch to right, I clutch to left, and fear No one of all the treasures to secure, No one of all the dear ones to retain. In vain—the castle's door is rudely closed; A flash of brightness from within, then dark, The doors once more swing clatteringly together. And I awaking hold within ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... bidding the dogs lie close. Then in a moment came a fearful crack from a gun he carried, and something gave a great roar and a wild snort, and I nearly lost my senses with the fright. It was all I could do to clutch on by the branch, my legs shook so with fear; and as for my companion, if it hadn't been for falling into a cleft in a branch, he would have gone straight down on to the man's wide-spreading hat. The cry had come from a boar, ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... these distributions, should have been so coveted. [Sidenote: Why small portions of land were so coveted.] The explanation is probably fourfold. Those who clamoured for them were wretched enough to clutch at any change; or did not realise to themselves the dangers and drawbacks of what they desired; or intended at once to sell their land to some richer neighbour; or, lastly, longed to keep a slave or two, just ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... sobbing as much from anxiety as from the violence of his exertions when he tore Appleton from the clutch of the black man and set ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... Well could I imagine that we were travelling at that same terrific, impossible speed. And we were helpless—helpless in the clutch of—what? What power lay behind this band of light that drew ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... whom no danger's shape could fright, Unpaid, refuse to mount their ships, for spite Or to their fellows swim, on board the Dutch, Who show the tempting metal in their clutch.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... again, sir," whispered Wriggs, with bated breath, as he made a clutch at his messmate and held on tightly, for a curious heaving sensation, as of a wave passing beneath them, was felt, followed by a deep booming ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... your admiration, pardieu," says the Pretender, with a rueful grin down at the shabby clothes which were so tight upon him, and a clutch at ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... on timbers laid on the ground. The driver was moved along and rotated when necessary by ropes passing around the winch head of the engine. The driver had 50-ft. leads and a 3,100-lb. hammer operated by an ordinary friction clutch hoisting engine. The hammer blow was received by an oak block fitting into a recess at the top of the steel core. This block was so battered by the blows that it had to be renewed about every five or six piles driven. A -in. wire rope passing over a 10-in. sheave lasted ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... silencer from a clutch, A sparking-plug from a bearing, But no one, I think, is in closer touch With the caps the women are wearing; I'm au fait with the trim of the tailor-made brim, The crown and machine-stitched strap; Though I've ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... the report of a pistol shot came to their ears. As Alix stopped short, her hand outstretched to clutch the door knob, a second ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... grasping power. The toes on each foot are arranged in opposite pairs—two turning in front and two backward, which gives all parrots their peculiar firmness in clinging on a perch or on the branch of a tree with one foot only, while they extend the other to grasp a fruit or to clutch at any object they desire to take possession of. True, this peculiarity isn't entirely confined to the parrots alone, as such. They share the division of the foot into two thumbs and two fingers with a whole large group of allied birds, called, in the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... said, 'Because thou hast twelve rods in thine hand, and I have but one. Give thine to me, and peace shall prevail between us!' But Judah refused to do his bidding, and Joseph beat him until he dropped ten rods, and only two remained in his clutch. Joseph now invited his brethren to abandon Judah and follow after him. They all did thus, except Benjamin, who stayed true to Judah. Levi was grieved over the desertion of Judah, and he descended from the sun. ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... was for that very evening. He had accepted the invitation verbally, when talking to Mrs. Medhurst at the studio-warming. And now a strange notion seemed to come whizzing at him and he arrested it with a clutch. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... fiercely, and making a clutch at Paul's arm; "he'll turn you out, he will, not being anxious fur anyone to have my flower, though love her as he oughter do, he don't, no," cried Deborah, "nor her ma before her, who died with a starvin' 'eart. But you run away with my sweetest and make her ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... first of the three courses. He held it with the nervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by two grim men who gradually hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Buchanan, and the last poor crisis in his inglorious career, came on Sunday, December 30th. Before that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to pity and his enemies to scorn. ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the nearer he approached the time, the weight of the fragments of his broken images became unbearable. Tsiganok now felt like standing still, like spreading his legs and standing—but a whirling current of thoughts carried him away and there was nothing at which he could clutch—everything about him swam. And his sleep also became uneasy. Dreams even more violent than his thoughts appeared—new dreams, solid, heavy, like wooden painted blocks. And it was no longer like a current, but like an endless fall to an endless depth, a whirling flight ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... division of the empire into Buddhist parishes, the bonzes have had the oversight of birth, death, marriage and divorce. Particularly tenacious, in common with priestcraft all over the world, is their clutch upon what they call "consecrated ground." In a large sense Japan is still, what China has always been, a country governed by the graveyard. These cities of the dead are usually kept in attractive order ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... high as he spoke, and I saw the sharp steel gleam as it turned to fall. And I twisted from his grip, and caught the falling arm, and bent it till the dagger dropped to the ground. And then, for a fierce, desperate, devilish minute, I had him in my clutch, dragging him nearer the smooth, slippery edge. He was no match for me at this I knew, and he knew; but he held me with the hold of his despair, and I could not loose myself. Both of us together, he meant; but not I. Yet I only freed myself just as he rolled ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... fifteen or sixteen. Yet most unfortunately, just as De Quincey's merits, or some of them, appeal specially to youth, and his defects specially escape the notice of youth, so age with stealing steps especially claws those merits into his clutch and leaves the defects exposed to derision. The most gracious state of authors is that they shall charm at all ages those whom they do charm. There are others—Dante, Cervantes, Goethe are instances—as to whom you may even begin with a little ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... lover, but her own brave hero and true knight. Woe! woe! the eager dream is broken by mad war-whoops! Alas! to those fierce wild men, what is love, or loveliness? Pride, and passion, and the old accursed hunger for gold flame up in their savage breasts. Wrathful, loathsome fingers clutch the long, fair hair that even the fingers of love have caressed but with reverent half-touch,—and love, and hope, and life go out in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, through the reverberations of more than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... foot from her clutch. There was a look in his eyes which she never forgot to the end of her life. "Excuse me, but I must hurry," he said. "He is on a fast horse, and the train may be on time. He must not get aboard. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... lantern farther into the mound, he peered in. Below, and immediately under him, was a black hole, about three feet square. Burke was so startled that he almost dropped the lantern. But he was a man of tough nerve, and maintained his clutch upon it. But he drew back. It required some seconds to catch his breath. Presently he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... herself ten months. She had asked for ten months; not a day more. But she had not allowed for friction or disturbance from the outside. And the check—it was a clutch at the heart that brought her brain up staggering—came entirely from the outside, from the uttermost rim of her circle, from ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... made a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... very well known to the reader, was one of the unhappiest of men. Besides the matter at his heart he lived hourly in mortal dread of bodily harm. In the dead of night he would waken, start suddenly from his bed and clutch at some garment hanging upon the wall, deeming the thing to be an assassin. Mr. Begg says that one day he went out to call upon one Charles Nolin, for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation. While he was sitting in the house eating supper, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... then wait for him. If the field was not too large he could easily be heard breaking down the ears, and then the dogs were let loose. They cautiously and silently crept towards the unsuspecting foe. But the sharp ears and keen scent of the raccoon seldom let him fall into the clutch of the dogs without a scamper for life. The coon was almost always near the woods, and this gave him a chance of escape. As soon as a yelp was heard from the dogs, we knew the fun had begun, and pushing forward in the direction of ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... of the Monte Beni family showed valor and policy enough' at all events, to keep their hereditary possessions out of the clutch of grasping neighbors, and probably differed very little from the other feudal barons with whom they fought and feasted. Such a degree of conformity with the manners of the generations through which it survived, must have been essential to the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This visible clutch of heredity is the nearest equivalent that is offered for the whispered refrain: "Ghosts," in the original masterpiece. This hand should also be reiterated as a refrain, three times at least, before this tableau, each time more dreadful and threatening. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... his office on the morrow for counsel on a very vital question. In plain words: how to avoid being a school teacher. And now this brilliant and learned man, by far the brightest star in the Wellington faculty, was dangerously ill. Molly felt suddenly the cold clutch of disappointment. ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... the access open? By the great God of Heaven! it was not My serious meaning, it was ne'er resolved. I but amused myself with thinking of it. The free-will tempted me, the power to do Or not to do it—Was it criminal To make the fancy minister to hope, To fill the air with pretty toys of air, And clutch fantastic sceptres moving t'ward me! Was not the will kept free? Beheld I not The road of duty close beside me—but One little step, and once more I was in it! Where am I? Whither have I been transported? No road, no track behind me, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... which had so often rewarded Spanish chivalry with fabulous wealth. And there were men in those galleons who remembered the sack of Antwerp eleven years before; men who could tell, from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercial city when once in the clutch of disciplined brigands; men who in that dread "fury of Antwerp" had enriched themselves in an hour with the accumulations of a merchant's lifetime, and who had slain fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... had clasped her to him, he released her, springing back with a muttered execration. She tottered dizzily, and involuntarily reached out to clutch his arm for support. He ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... perceive that she was not free, that she was a part of a social machine, the power of which she had not at all apprehended, and that she was powerless in its clutch. She might resist, but peace was gone. She had heretofore found peace in obedience, but when she consulted her own heart she knew that she could not find peace in obedience now. To a girl differently reared, perhaps, subterfuge, or some manoeuvring justified by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Michigan! Land of the Old Thirteen! Massachusetts land! land of Vermont and Connecticut! Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks! Land of boatmen and sailors! fishermen's land! Inextricable lands! the clutch'd together! the passionate ones! The side by side! the elder and younger brothers! the bony-limb'd! The great women's land! the feminine! the experienced sisters and the inexperienced sisters! Far breath'd land! Arctic braced! Mexican breez'd! the diverse! the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... down the prison-door. There stood Wallace and his men, their weapons and armour covered with blood. De Valence, evading the clutch of Kirkpatrick, thrust his dagger into Wallace's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
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