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noun
Strain  n.  
1.
The act of straining, or the state of being strained. Specifically:
(a)
A violent effort; an excessive and hurtful exertion or tension, as of the muscles; as, he lifted the weight with a strain; the strain upon a ship's rigging in a gale; also, the hurt or injury resulting; a sprain. "Whether any poet of our country since Shakespeare has exerted a greater variety of powers with less strain and less ostentation." "Credit is gained by custom, and seldom recovers a strain."
(b)
(Mech. Physics) A change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass, produced by a stress.
2.
(Mus.) A portion of music divided off by a double bar; a complete musical period or sentence; a movement, or any rounded subdivision of a movement. "Their heavenly harps a lower strain began."
3.
Any sustained note or movement; a song; a distinct portion of an ode or other poem; also, the pervading note, or burden, of a song, poem, oration, book, etc.; theme; motive; manner; style; also, a course of action or conduct; as, he spoke in a noble strain; there was a strain of woe in his story; a strain of trickery appears in his career. "A strain of gallantry." "Such take too high a strain at first." "The genius and strain of the book of Proverbs." "It (Pilgrim's Progress) seems a novelty, and yet contains Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains."
4.
Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Cf. 1st Strain. "Because heretics have a strain of madness, he applied her with some corporal chastisements."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Strain" Quotes from Famous Books



... porous boundary; a joint Bangladesh-India boundary inspection in 2005 revealed 92 pillars are missing; dispute with India over New Moore/South Talpatty/Purbasha Island in the Bay of Bengal deters maritime boundary delimitation; Burmese Muslim refugees strain ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... properties which, in common with silk, wool possesses in a greater degree than the vegetable fibres. When submitted to strain the wool fibre exhibits a remarkable strength, and when the breaking point is reached the fracture always takes place at the juncture of two rings of the outer scales, the embedded edges of the lower layer being pulled out of their seat. The scales ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... utterly foreign to it. There was a frown between Sylvia's gentle eyes, and she moved with nervous jerks, setting down dishes hard, as if they were refractory children, and lashing out with spoons as if they were whips. The long, steady strain upon her patience had not affected her temper, but this last had seemed to bring out a certain vicious and waspish element which nobody had suspected her to possess, and she herself least of all. She felt this morning disposed to ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... had broken under the strain of recent events. Horror had driven him to the verge of the abyss in the depths of which lurked insanity; his final loss had plunged him headlong down. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... so as to dissolve. Then slack 4 lbs. of fresh lime in as small a quantity of water as possible, the water being added very slowly, until slaking is completed; then slowly make up to 4 gallons. When cool, thoroughly stir and strain slowly the milk of lime into the copper solution, stirring well while mixing for another minute or two; it is then fit for use as a winter spray. It should be used when freshly made, (a) Apply before buds start to all fruit trees with the 22 gallons mixture. This can be diluted to a 30, ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... commercial—but representative government all the way. At not one step in the long and shining pathway of the Nation's progress has representative government failed to respond to the Nation's need. Every emergency that 130 years of momentous history has developed—the terrible strain of war, the harrassing problems of peace—representative government has been equal to them all. Not once has it broken down. Not one issue has it failed to solve. And long after the shallow substitutes that are now proposed for it shall have ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... their implications in regard to myself were equally clear; he wanted me to serve again as a getter of information. My stomach rose against my trade; I had become nauseated—I don't know a better word —with this spying business. The strain upon me had been too great; the 23d and 24th of May had brought to my mental nature transitions too sudden and entire to be wholesome; I felt that only a positive command to enter the rebel lines would justify me in doing myself such violence again; I had begun to fear for myself; ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... The Afghans knew this, and knew too, after their first tentative shots, that they were dealing with a raw regiment. Thereafter they devoted themselves to the task of keeping the Fore and Aft on the strain. Not for anything would they have taken equal liberties with a seasoned corps—with the wicked little Gurkhas, whose delight it was to lie out in the open on a dark night and stalk their stalkers—with the terrible, big men dressed in women's clothes, who could be heard ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... been impelled by a strong sense of duty without a touch of vanity. He understood man so well as to cause that same visitor of his to make a resolution never again to publish anything in the same strain as the Zeit Geist article, without first consulting with the bishop. George Holland had pulled the bell at the palace gates with the hand of a Luther; but he had left the presence of the bishop with the step of a Francis of Assisi. He felt that anyone who would ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... in paying when served, and was consequently able to leave abruptly, without giving Ekstrom time to shy. Rising smartly, he pushed the table aside. The girl was no less quick, and little less sensitive to the strain of the moment; but as she passed him her lashes lifted and her eyes were ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... his comrades and lay down with them, waiting through that terrible period of suspense. Strain their ears as they would, they could hear nothing in front. If Timmendiquas and Girty were gathering their men there, they were doing it with the utmost skill and secrecy. Yet the watch was never relaxed for an instant. Every finger remained ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... only an occasional spirit in Massachusetts who made comprehensive political plans. One of these was Samuel Vetch, a man somewhat different from the usual type of New England leader, for he was not of English but of Scottish origin, of the Covenanter strain. Vetch, himself an adventurous trader, had taken a leading part in the ill-fated Scottish attempt to found on the Isthmus of Panama a colony, which, in easy touch with both the Pacific and the Atlantic, should carry on a gigantic commerce between the East and the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... imagined that the entertaining of Dick Follingsbee was no small strain on the conjugal endurance of our faithful John; but he was on duty, and endured without flinching that gentleman's free and easy jokes and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... take up the nervous desire and exertion which mark the men of our time in the western civilized societies. There is a wide popular belief in what is called progress. The masses in all civilized states strain toward success in some adopted line. Struggling and striving are passionate tendencies which take possession of groups from time to time. The newspapers, the popular literature, and the popular speakers show this current and popular tendency. This ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... as business-like a fashion as any other government. It seems to me that the first step toward providing this is to supply ourselves with a systematic method of handling our estimates and expenditures and bringing them to the point where they will not be an unnecessary strain upon our income or necessitate unreasonable taxation; in other words, a workable budget system. And I respectfully suggest that two elements are essential to such a system-namely, not only that the proposal of appropriations should be in the hands of a single body, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... predetermined proportions. When the design is for a plain text letter, similar to that with which this book is printed, it is essential to have the letters proportioned and shaped in such a manner as will cause the least strain on the eye in reading, and, at the same time, produce a pleasing effect when the page is viewed as a whole. When the printed page conveys information to the reader, without attracting attention to itself, it ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... the sea. The tactical gain was his, the strategic victory rested with his opponent; but that his ships also had been much maltreated is shown by the fact that half a dozen could not put to sea three weeks later. The French admiral broke down under the strain, to which was added the grief of losing a son, killed in the recent engagements. He asked for his recall. "The command of so large a fleet," he wrote, "is infinitely beyond my capacity in all respects. My health cannot endure such continual fatigue and anxiety." Certainly this seems a tacit ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... 'metis', as they are called—and Indians as among the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company and the white settlers. He had ever been credited with having a philosophical turn of mind; and this was accompanied by a certain strain of impulsiveness or daring. He had been accustomed all his life to make up his mind quickly and, because he was well enough off to bear the consequences of momentary rashness in commercial investments, he was not counted among the transgressors. He had his own fortune; he was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... with the extraordinary success of "The Last of the Mohicans," nor has it ever been as great a favorite with the general public. It was written in a far more quiet and subdued vein. It never keeps up that prolonged strain upon the feelings which characterizes the work that preceded it, and which while a defect in the eyes of some is to most readers its special charm. There are, indeed, in many of Cooper's stories, situations more thrilling ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... lanyards was severed by the keen blade in Brook's hand. The others attached to the same shroud immediately began to render through the deadeye, throwing an extra strain upon the lanyards of the other shrouds, one of which immediately parted under Bob's knife; then twang, twang, twang, one after the other, they rapidly yielded, until, as the last lanyard parted, crash went the mizen-mast short off by the deck and away to ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... and tongues must not be underestimated. At first there was perhaps a suggestion of blatancy, and of mere pride in dominion, in the way in which these celebrations were received; the graver note of Kipling's 'Recessional,' inspired by the Jubilee of 1897, was not unneeded. But after the strain and anxiety of the South African War, a different temper ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... forget! If only I could hide from that scene—my sister torn from me, my mother's last look! I have felt the plague's breath, and the shock of ships in battle; I have heard the tempest lashing the sea, and laughed, though others prayed: death would have been a riddance. Bend the oar—yes, in the strain of mighty effort trying to escape the haunting of what that day occurred. Think what little will help me. Tell me they are dead, if no more, for happy they cannot be while I am lost. I have heard them call me in the night; I have seen them on the water walking. Oh, never anything so true as my mother's ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... in this strain to his mother her tongue probably gave utterance to "Bless the bairn!" and, in her private soul, the epithet "wake-minded" may then have recorded itself. But, though few lonely, thoughtful, studious boys of sixteen give vent to their thoughts in such stately ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... in many modern political theories, this error has been deliberately affirmed. But for illustration I prefer to turn to the case of Plato. The Republic was conceived, it is true, without bias of party or race, but there is none the less a strain of arbitrariness and illiberality in it. This is due to the fact that the state is conceived by itself, with a quality and perfection of its own that displaces the interests of its citizens.[14] A state which is defined ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... gentleman from Virginia. Mr. Madison replied by saying, that no collector of customs would presume to apply the terms "goods," "wares," and "merchandise" to persons. Mr. Sherman followed him in the same strain, and denied that persons were anywhere recognised as property in the Constitution. Finally, at the suggestion of Mr. Madison, Mr. Parker consented to withdraw his motion with the understanding that a separate bill should be brought in. A committee was appointed to discharge ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... us we occasionally had a turn at trawling, and usually caught some fine flat fish, turbot, soles, and plaice. Our net was a very primitive one of our own manufacture, and had to be handled very gingerly, as the netting was old and the ironwork very fragile, but knowing this we did not put undue strain ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... the son, instantly relieving his brows from the strain upon them, and beaming again. "But I was thinking whether you were not perhaps right in your impression that it might be well for you to make Colonel Lapham's acquaintance ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.— That strain again;—it had a dying fall; O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour.—Enough; no more; 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love, how ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... to their grief. It was well for them now that they, had plenty of business, plenty of active work on hand. It was a help to Maria; after a little it diverted her thoughts and took her out of the strain of sorrow. And it was a help to Matilda, but in a more negative way. It kept the child from grieving herself ill, or doing herself a mischief with violent sorrow; it was no relief. In every unoccupied moment, whenever the demands of household business left her free to do what she would, ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... pealing; A prayer was then the ecstasy of bliss; A blessed and mysterious yearning Drew me to roam through meadows, woods, and skies; And, midst a thousand tear-drops burning, I felt a world within me rise That strain, oh, how it speaks youth's gleesome plays and feelings, Joys of spring-festivals long past; Remembrance holds me now, with childhood's fond appealings, Back from the fatal step, the last. Sound on, ye heavenly strains, that bliss restore me! Tears gush, ...
— Faust • Goethe

... various concerts in different cities, until she reached the age of twelve and a half, when her career was temporarily interrupted, for Maurice Strakosch, observing the ruinous effect the continuous strain upon her delicate voice was working, insisted upon her discontinuing singing altogether, which advice she happily followed. After this interval of two years' silence, and having emerged from the wonder-child to the young artiste, she recommenced her studies under M. Strakosch, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... but by that of slow-moving years, all had assembled to partake of the evening repast. Surrounding the glittering table were anxious and thoughtful faces. The host was silent and distraught, but not more so than his guests. The terrible strain under which they labored forbade much conversation; and if a laugh, perchance, mounted to the lips of any, it sounded hollow ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... exerted no small influence upon the financial ability of the government to endure the heavy expenditure entailed by the war which immediately followed. Theories were put aside in the presence of a great necessity, and the belief became general that in the impending strain on the resources of the country, protection to home industry would be a constant and increasing strength ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... to-day I was meditating on the continual strain which the pulling of my horse made on the left arm, while the right was idle; and it struck me that this might conduce to the size of the muscles on that side. Also my wife always leans on the left, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... uncertain brain, But gifted yet to know That God has cherubim who go Singing an immortal strain, Immortal here below. I know the mighty bards, I listen while they sing, And now I know The secret store Which these explore When they with torch of genius pierce The tenfold clouds that cover The riches of the universe From God's adoring lover. And if to me it is not given ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... severe strain on his loyalty, but he withstood it; he has, I believe, never expressed his opinion about the King; we can guess what it must have been. It was a melancholy picture: a King violent and timid, obstinate and irresolute; his will dragged now this way, now that, by his favourites, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... conference when Hamilton at last raised his head from his arms. He looked about him dazedly for a little while, as if endeavoring to put himself in touch once again with the humdrum facts of existence. Then, when his brain cleared from the lethargy imposed by the strain to which it had so recently been subjected, he gave a sudden defiant toss of his head, and muttered wrathfully: "Go broke, or starve your men!" He got out of his chair, and paced to and fro swiftly for a little interval, pondering wildly. But, of a sudden, he reseated himself, drew a pad of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... marriage. But he was expected to furnish them with a marriage-portion. This was not obligatory, being probably a matter of negotiation with the parents of the bridegroom. In later times the obligation evidently became irksome and oppressive, and Law E was passed to relieve the strain. A father was bound to do his best to fulfil his promise to dower his daughter, but no more. A father could not hinder his daughter from becoming a votary.(355) If he approved her choice, he might give her a portion, as if for marriage,(356) ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... Mr Hamerton," said the medico; "I have looked after young Andrews, and I must now see to you. You may think yourself made of iron, but the human frame cannot endure the strain you have put on it without reaction; and we shall have you on the sick-list to-morrow, unless you take ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... hog well fed this churl presents, And craves a strain of law; The hog received, the poor man's right Was judged not worth ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... was silent. So were her sisters, awhile. Thoughts of heaven made them serious. They were sad, too. When the youngest—their darling Sue—conversed in this strain, a cloud always came over their sunny faces. They could scarcely tell why it was so; for they, too, loved to think of heaven. But the language of their sister seemed to them to belong to another world; and often, in the midst of their brightest ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... eagerness to rescue, an outgoing of God to individual souls. There is a deep personal affection displayed in this final scene in the Upper Chamber. This is our Lord's real parting from His disciples. He will see them again, but under conditions of strain and tragedy, or under such changed circumstances that they cannot well enter into the old intimacy. But here there is no bar to the expression of love. Here He gives them the final evidence of His utter union with them in the humility of the foot-washing. Here He marvellously ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... him run on in this loud triumphant strain till he had quite done; then put out a brown skinny finger, and poked him lightly in the ribs, and said quite quietly, and oh, so drily, with ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Captain Stewart lay back in his chair and laughed until he was weak and ached from it, the furious, helpless laughter which comes after the sudden release from a terrible strain. He was not, as a rule, a demonstrative man, but he became aware that he would like to dance and sing, and probably he would have done both if it had not been for the servant in ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... a woman's medical college located in the city: the four years' course places the greatest strain on both mind and body; practically no time is left for recreation, and very much too little time is spent in sleep; the amount of exercise taken is the minimum. Yet in spite of all these disadvantages under which the young women labor, a great many of them ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... outward images of thoughts accessible only to the few, and, as I have heard, almost incomprehensible in their depth? My curiosity is excited everywhere, and my interest awakened, but my warm love of the beautiful feels itself in no way attracted. My intellect might strain to penetrate the secrets of your sages, but my heart and mind can never be at home in a creed which views life as a short pilgrimage to the grave, and death ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... he would sympathize with Ricardo, perhaps, that labor is the measure of value, but "embrace, as do generous minds, the proposition of labor shared by all." He would go deeper than political economics, strain out the self-factor from both theories, and make the measure of each pretty much the same, so that the natural (the majority) would win, but not to the disadvantage of the minority (the artificial) because this has disappeared—it is of the majority. John Stuart Mill's ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... she knew by experience that when she had guests to entertain it was far easier and more comfortable to talk than to listen. When you talk there is no need to strain your attention to think of answers to questions, and to change your expression of face. But unawares she asked the student a serious question; the student began a lengthy speech and she was forced to listen. The student ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... loss; How all things were made by the Infant Lord, And the small hand the Magian kings adored. His voice sounded on like a throbbing flood That swells all night from some far-off wood, And when it ended—that wondrous strain - ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth, and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two. Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be once more lightened ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which had opened so auspiciously, closed summarily during the second week of her engagement in darkness that threatened to prove the unlifting shadow of death. The severe tax upon her emotional nature, the continued intense strain on her nerves, as night after night she played to crowded houses—shunning as if it contained a basilisk, the sight of that memorable box—where she felt, rather than saw, that a pair of violet eyes steadily ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... of fruit, if good; if but indifferent, put six pounds, into the steep. Keep stirring them three or four times a day, and let them continue in the steep till the fruit begins to burst, and the stones swim on the top; which will be in about fourteen or fifteen days. Then strain the liquor from the fruit, and press the fruit very dry, mixing the pressings with the rest of the liquor, and put all together into a cask, and ferment it ...
— The Cyder-Maker's Instructor, Sweet-Maker's Assistant, and Victualler's and Housekeeper's Director - In Three Parts • Thomas Chapman

... had heard of. Of course, I wanted to put my head forward and take the carriage up with a will, as we had been used to do; but no, I had to pull with my head up now, and that took all the spirit out of me, and the strain came on my back and legs. When we came in Ginger said, "Now you see what it is like; but this is not bad, and if it does not get much worse than this I shall say nothing about it, for we are very well treated here; but if they strain me up tight, why, let 'em look out! I can't ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... eyes and teeth, while his example carried away all his followers to imitate it. His shouts of command made the scene of the fire like a battle-field; the Moslems, so ably led, regardless of life as they were and ready to strain and exert their strength to the utmost, wrought wonders in the name of their God ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... get our Squire out of sight also, if we could find a line light enough and strong enough to bear the strain of the two kites together, but no string we have got here could bear the strain that would be put upon it," observed Ernest to those who came round to observe the wonder which had ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... minute to hook the chain around a projecting log of the house. A moment more and he had the oxen on the go. Beginning with the foremost pair, he rushed down the line, and the great, heaving, hulking shoulders, two and two, bent and heaved their bulk against the strain. The chain had scarcely time to tighten; no house could stand against that power. The huge pine log was switched out at one end as a man might jerk a corn cob from its crib. The other end, still wedged in its place, held for a moment; but the oxen moved slowly on like a landslide. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... festal bowls went round, He heard the minstrel sing; He saw the tourney's victor crowned, Amidst the kingly ring; A murmur of the restless deep Was blent with every strain, A voice of winds that would not sleep,— He never ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... his gaze from the magnetism of hers, he frowned and bit his lip. Was she feigning madness, or under the terrible nervous strain, did her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Catholic system had come to impose upon such tempers as Luther's an unendurable amount of strain; it was too complex, too demanding, and it failed to carry with it necessary elements of mental and spiritual consent. (St. Paul had the same experience with his own Judaism.) What Luther sought was a peace-bringing rightness with God. He was typically and creatively one ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... himself to the poorest clown, A joyous welcome he had from all, And Care in his presence forgot to frown. Sadly romantic, fantastic and vain, His heart for his head still made amends; For he never sang a malicious strain. And never was known to fail his friends. Who but he, when the captive king, By a brother betrayed, was left to rot, Would have gone disguised to seek and sing, Till he heard his tale and the tidings ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... wrote, in a tone of good-humoured indignation, "My dear fellow, believe me that no audience on earth could be held for ten minutes after the girl's death. Give them time, and they would be revengeful for having had such a strain put upon them. Trust me to be right. I stand there, and I know." Than this nothing could very well have been more strongly expressed, as indicative of the conclusion at which he had ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... picture to me the strain involved in the week's gaieties, informed me that when it was all over she went for a rest to New York, where she attended "a house party ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... better part of the long tramp in the outskirts of the city he had been halting between two opinions. The fighting blood of the Tennessee pioneer strain had clamored for its hearing, prompting him to enter the lists, to set up the standard of honesty and fair-dealing in the Blount name, to plunge into the approaching political campaign with a single purpose—the purpose of overthrowing ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... oars of his men. Move can they, the King's lads, the straight oars in the water. The widows stand and wonder at the oar-strokes so swift, The thole knows hurt when seventy oars do move her I' the water ere the war-folk on the sea their oars do strain. Northmen the serpent row (nailed is she) out on the billow-stream icy; 'Tis ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... composed. But suddenly, as I was sitting beside her, talking, she fainted away in her chair, and I was terribly alarmed. We sent for a doctor at once. He shakes his head over her, and says there are all the signs of a severe strain of body and mind. No wonder, indeed—our poor Julie! Oh, how I loathe some people! Well, there she is in bed, Madame Bornier away, and everybody. I simply can't go to Scotland. But Freddie is just mad. Do, Jacob, there's a dear, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be executed upon them. And I would have done it, I believe, had it not been for that peculiar arrangement of the drawing-room windows, which made it impossible to get at the culprits direct, without going out into the garden and round the house; which, of course, is a severe strain in wet or windy weather to put upon anybody's moral enthusiasm. In the end, therefore, I always gave the evil-doers the benefit of the doubt; and I only mention my ethical scruples in the matter here lest scoffers should say, when they come to read what manner of things Lucy ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... the tense strain and of the terrible burden which is being carried by these people, over and above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... explorer flowed in her veins; her inheritance from hardy ancestors who had hewn their way through trackless forests to found a new home in the wilderness; and the very mention of exploring set her pulses to leaping wildly. Far back in Sahwah's ancestry there was a strain of Indian blood, which, although it had not been apparent in many of the descendents, had seemed to come into its own in this twentieth century daughter of the Brewsters. Not in looks especially, for Sahwah's hair was brown and not black, and fine and soft as silk, and her features were delicately ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... employed for engines of this class, with the exception of the fore carriage, which is fitted with a cross spring in the rear, as well as the two longitudinal springs. This arrangement makes the engine run more lightly, and removes much of the strain on the side frames when traveling rapidly on a rough road. The wheels are fairly light for the weight they have to carry, and have gun metal stock hoops with diamond pent rims to prevent the men slipping when mounting in a hurry. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... destroyed Tongres and Metz, and was in full march for Paris. The whole country was in the utmost terror. Everyone seized their most valuable possessions, and would have fled; but Genevieve placed herself on the only bridge across the Seine, and argued with them, assuring them in a strain that was afterwards thought of as prophetic, that, if they would pray, repent, and defend instead of abandoning their homes, God would protect them. They were at first almost ready to stone her for thus withstanding their panic, but just then a priest arrived from ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the 'Edinburgh Review,' Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur, is, when reduced to practice, apt to strain the relations between the 'judex' and the 'nocens;' and in this case the very outspoken review, published under Reeve's sanction, caused a coolness between the two men, the editor and the author, who had previously been on friendly terms. It is, in fact, easily conceivable ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... illustrate the influences of nature upon the mind, returning to the strain of thought with which his previous Essay has made us familiar. He next considers the influence of the past, and especially of books as the best type of that influence. "Books are the best of things well used; abused ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... to answer him steadily, but her strength was beginning to fail her. The long strain was telling upon her at last. She was uncertain ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... great scientist with an inborn idealistic strain in him. His famous, and to many minds disquieting, declaration, made in his Belfast address over thirty years ago, that in matter itself he saw the promise and the potency of all terrestrial life, stamps him as a scientific materialist. But his conception ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... was purple with rage. He said but the one word "Home!" In a few moments, he and his retinue had turned their backs, and they speedily disappeared behind the hills. There was only left a cloud of dust, and an occasional strain of "The girl I left behind me," borne back upon the wind ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... incessantly changing) must, by mathematical theory, revolve round the axis of figure in a period of 306 days. Provided, that is to say, the earth were a perfectly rigid body. But it is far from being so; it yields sensibly to every strain put upon it; and this yielding tends to protract the time of circulation of the displaced pole. The length of its period, then, serves as a kind of measure of the plasticity of the globe; which, according to Newcomb's and S. S. Hough's independent calculations,[893] seems to be a little less ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... seen a change in the condition of his brain. He was yet all but sleepless, and the physical strain had weakened his frame and sharpened his features, but the sheer force of the man, asserting itself, had put down the first wild inner tumult. Imagination was not now whipped to giddy heights, it kept a full, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... rains, the heat and cold, and what underlies them all, are affected with what affects man in masses, and follow his play of passionate action, strain'd stronger than usual, and on a larger scale than usual—whether this, or no, it is certain that there is now, and has been for twenty months or more, on this American continent north, many a remarkable, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... The strain must have been great, the effort enormous, and he knew, as he was bound to know, that his coming had unloosed jealousies and heart-searchings innumerable, with which he could not deal in the usual drastic fashion ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... stirred, and the soft sound of their simultaneous motion was like a mighty sigh breathed up from the secret vaults and the deep foundations of the ancient church; again the pedal note of the organ boomed through the nave and aisles, and again the thousands of human voices took up the strain ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... week after week, had now passed away, and no tidings were heard of the vessel that was to bring relief to the wanderers. In vain did they strain their eyes over the distant waters to catch a glimpse of their coming friends. Not a speck was to be seen in the blue distance, where the canoe of the savage dared not venture, and the sail of the white man was not yet spread. Those who had borne up bravely at first now ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... held. It was generally supposed that the powerful Blackfeet could bring five thousand warriors into the field. They were very resolute men; having been abundantly successful heretofore, it was not doubted they would strain every nerve to wipe out the disgrace of this defeat. The trappers were confident that the savages would soon appear again, with numbers which they would deem sufficient to annihilate the white men. Guided ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... doing very little, and then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening and harder to bear than the fatigue. Hugh was a most faithful and invaluable coadjutor, and his lack of strength was like her own made up by energy of will; but neither of them could bear the strain long; and when the final clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a breathing-time she resolved to dress herself and put her thimble in her pocket and go over to Miss Finn's quilting. Miss Lucy might not be like Miss Anastasia; and if ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... propose to give my method of solution. Any such explanation would occupy an amount of space out of proportion to its interest or value. If I could give within reasonable limits a general solution for all money payments, I would strain a point to find room; but such a solution would be extremely complex and cumbersome, and I do not consider it worth ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... more cheaply manufactured of cast iron; and that part of the bow which clasps the withers and sits on the shoulders spread out in the form of iron wings or plates. The saddle, at some time in its history, had received a strain which was too much for it, and one of the iron wings broke partly across; and this flaw, hidden by leather and padding, had been lurking in the dark and biding its time. When Janet braced her foot in the stirrup and made the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... consequent strain of combating increasing weakness leads to something strange in me. In the middle of my lecture tears suddenly rise in my throat, my eyes begin to smart, and I feel a passionate, hysterical desire to stretch out my hands before me and break into loud lamentation. I want to cry out in a loud ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... he can hold up his heavy eyes and touch his instrument a strain or two. But better give it ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... imagine, he believes I did it. I see it. 'In that case,' I asked him, 'why have you come to defend me?' Hang them all! They've got a doctor down, too, want to prove I'm mad. I won't have that! Katerina Ivanovna wants to do her 'duty' to the end, whatever the strain!" Mitya smiled bitterly. "The cat! Hard-hearted creature! She knows that I said of her at Mokroe that she was a woman of 'great wrath.' They repeated it. Yes, the facts against me have grown numerous as the sands of the sea. Grigory sticks to his point. Grigory's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... their own tongue, made appropriate response; while Rock, when told he had been toasted, delivered himself in characteristic strain, saying:— ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... first day owing to rain. On the second day Somerset scored 157. Rain fell again and Kent were unable to commence their innings till the afternoon of the third day. Obviously they had to strain every nerve to accomplish two things: (1) to avoid getting out and (2) to avoid scoring more than 157. At all hazards they must neither win nor lose on the first innings. They could not win the match. There was no time. And either a win or a loss on the first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

... receive you kindly, will eventually do you much mischief, besides which these Bedouins will plunder you of all your property.' The other people of the caravan, who are all my friends, also spoke in the same strain. This being noted as a bad halting place, all kept watch with us during ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... superhuman effort to release himself from the strait-jacket in which he was held prisoner. The throat-straps pressed against the neck muscles and the strain on the straps could be heard like pistol-shots as the leather stretched ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... day and night. In the weeks that followed, Abner Bell came and went many times, but for me it was my entire life. Though small of build I was tough and hard, I had not been sick for a day in years, and now I easily stood the strain. Day by day my story grew, my glory story of world trade. Watching, questioning, listening here, making notes, writing hasty sketches to help keep us going at home—slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its punch and bigness, endless rush, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... it! Hear, Earth and Heaven, he owns it! No excuse! No varnish, no disguise!—He will not stoop To use dissembling with a wretch he scorns, Nor thinks it worth his pains to fool me further! Proceed, brave sir, proceed! In trivial strain Tell me how light are lovers' oaths, how fond Youth's heart of change, how quick love comes and flies; And own that yours for me is flown for ever. Then with indifference ask a parting kiss, Hope we shall still be friends, profess ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... bark over the boat's seams, while I sat and cobbled up his boot with sailmaker's needle and twine. He made, indeed, and though swift with the work, so good a job that, inspecting the boat when he had done, I judged she would stand the strain of sailing— whereas I had looked forward to a grilling pull in a craft that leaked ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... allow No strain that shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... land, to destroy the wicked, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to go forth like the sun over the black-head race, to enlighten the land, and to further the welfare of the people." The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid strain and early Egypt was predominantly Negro. These earliest of cultures were crude and primitive, but they represented the highest attainment of mankind after tens of thousands of years in ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... round it. Having no time to think, I was turning to flee and jump out of my bedroom window, for which I had made some arrangements, according to the wisdom of the Councillor, when the flash of some light or the strain of my eyes showed me the body of Thomas Pring, our faithful old retainer, lying at the foot of the broken door, and beside it his good wife, creeping up to give him the last embrace of death. And lately she had been cross to him. At the sight of this my terror fled, and I cared not what ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore

... twenty-four hours, been able to classify the situation and reduce it to its proper proportions. As it stood, it had, he acknowledged, been saved by the rare and unusual qualities of Mary-Clare. But it could not bear the stress and strain of repeated tests. Unless he meant to be a fool and fill his future with remorse, for he was decent and sane, he could do nothing but go away and let the incidents of King's Forest bear sanctifying fruits, not ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... places of his notes insist so much upon verbal trifles. He appears to have had a strong affectation of extracting new meanings out of his author; insomuch as to promise, in his rhyming preface, a poem of the mysteries he had revealed in Homer; and perhaps he endeavoured to strain the obvious sense to this end. His expression is involved in fustian; a fault for which he was remarkable in his original writings, as in the tragedy of Bussy d'Amboise, &c. In a word, the nature of the man may account for his whole performance; for he appears, from his preface ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... sultan put the question; upon which she replied, "I am perfect in all:" and he then requested her to play and sing. She retired immediately, but soon returning with a lute, sat down, tuned it, and played in a plaintive strain, which she accompanied with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... strain of three bouts of three days each has often been found sufficient to unhinge the reason, with a variety of distressing consequences, the least perhaps of which may be seen in a regular percentage of blank papers handed in. On one occasion, a man handed in a copy ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... and the equipment of His Majesty's ships. It was remarked to me by an officer of discernment, captain of the flag ship, that instances of vessels being driven from their anchors by winds blowing into Simon's Bay, were exceedingly rare. He had observed that the strain upon the cables with these winds, was much less than with those of equal strength blowing off the land; and he accounted for it from the water thrown into the bay by sea winds, rebounding from the shore ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... pestilential. If any doubt this truth let him remember the nightmares wherein his nudity made torment. And, while remembering the anguish such lack of clothing has occasioned in dreams, let him think with pity on the suffering of Zeke whose plight was real. It was in sooth, a predicament to strain the savoir faire of the most polished courtier. Perhaps, the behavior of the mountaineer was as discreet as any permitted by the unfortunate circumstances, and could hardly have been improved on by the Admirable Crichton himself. He simply retained an immobile pose, facing the girl, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... man, thrusting out the Symbol in front of him. I could see his eyes gather on the soldier and his brows knit with a strain of will. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... interrupted her bewildered employer. "'Vast heavin' a second, will you? You ought to run that yarn of yours through a sieve and strain some of the 'hes' and 'shes' out of it. 'He said that she said she wanted to see her.' Who wanted to ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... I absolutely defy you not to feel less discontented with yourself than in the past. It is impossible that the exercise of imagination about a person should not result in goodwill towards that person. The exercise may put a strain upon you; but its effect is a scientific certainty. It is the supreme social exercise, for it is the giving of oneself in the most intimate and complete sense. It is the suspension of one's individuality in favour of another. It establishes a new attitude of mind, ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett

... Russification, assimilation, universalism, and nihilism rent asunder the ties that held them together. Judah Loeb Gordon, the same poet who, fifteen years before, had rejoiced with exceeding joy "when Haskalah broke forth like water," now laments over the effect thereof in the following strain: ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... wilderness engineering had progressed for an hour under the watchers' eyes, Jabe began to grow very tired. The strain of physical immobility told upon him, and he lost interest. He began to feel that he knew all about dam-building; and as there was nothing more to learn he wanted to go back to camp. He glanced anxiously at the young face ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... to join Ulster, and there will be such a host of retired officers in the Ulster ranks that men who would stand by the Government no matter what it did, will be worse than half-hearted in all they do. No army could stand such a strain upon it." ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... plates forming the shell, bulkheads and floors are welded instead of being fastened together by rivets. There are three methods of doing this depending upon the thickness of the plates and the sort of strain they are subject to. The plates may be overlapped and tacked together at intervals by pressing the two electrodes on opposite sides of the same point until the spot is sufficiently heated to fuse together the plates here. Or roller electrodes may be drawn slowly along the line of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... over the man and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered under the strain; but when the cataract had disappeared, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... strain to lift it. She had chosen the largest and heaviest; she sighed delicately and delicately she panted. She also looked at her hands, and held them up for me to see the lines of brown on the pink. I put my hands in my pockets and said most sulkily, ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope

... strain, blended, however, with more decorous feeling on the part of Lord Scrope, the young men conversed until the messenger's return with Lord Monteagle's answer. In Hyde Park, in the course of an hour, himself and Lord Cadurcis, attended by ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... of musketry, the groans of the wounded and dying, and the shouts of infuriated columns as they rush into the jaws of death, and are rolled away on the fiery billows of the mighty conflict. We feel all the frenzy of the deadly strife as if we were in the midst of it; and yet, though we strain our inward vision to the utmost, no ray of light comes from the terrible scene to inform us how the scale of victory inclines. We only know that thousands of our brothers lie on the battle field dead or dying, wounded and suffering, and we ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of his spirit. For this reason, whosoever shall follow in the labours of painting the walk pursued by Rosso, must be celebrated without ceasing, as are that master's works, which have no equals in boldness and are executed without effort and strain, since he kept them free of that dry and painful elaboration to which so many subject themselves in order to veil the worthlessness of their works with ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... it appears to us, is the too didactic strain into which the authoress occasionally falls—writing as if for the purpose of forcing lessons on children or the poor, rather than for grown-up and educated readers. The story of "Janet's Repentance" might, with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... was destined to lose the loving father to whom his "shouts of joy" were the sweetest strain in ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... and surged over the man, and the girl, and up to old Willis's throat, and round the knees of Jan and his neighbour; and then followed the returning out-draught, and every limb quivered with the strain: but when the cataract had disappeared, the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... some guests of quality, had just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was content to deceive, if possible, without ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... him, a sense of freedom so great that it seemed actually physical as well as mental. Peril, danger, the strain of the dual life until the nerves were worn raw, the constant anxiety for her safety—all were gone now. "It is the beginning of the end ... the way is clearing"—she had written that tonight. And it meant that, refusing, as she had said, to let him come into the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... the dawning of a day which "uttereth speech." Scientific agnosticism, in so far as it is an humble confession of human ignorance, has its worship scored in this noble poem, ringing the changes on the strain, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... to be a regular epidemic of love affairs in Hillsboro, I do believe," she continued in her usual strain of sentimental speculation. "I saw Mr. Graves talking to Delia Hawes in front of the draper's an hour ago, as I came out from looking at the blue chintz to match Pet for the west wing, and they were both so absorbed they didn't even see me. That ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... happen to your father is to lose control of the Yo Espero property. I think he is going to lose it. They've crowded me out. If I could have endured the strain I'd have stood by your father—for what you did for mine.... But I ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... of plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish—the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding—when it gushed irrepressibly upward—when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... best to attack an enemy so strongly intrenched and so well able to repulse attack; yet his men were burning with ardour, and his own spirit was hot within him. He sometimes felt as though his feeble body would not much longer be able to endure the strain put upon it. The cracked pitcher may go once too often to the well. To die in the service of his country was what Wolfe desired and expected for himself; but he wished that death might come to him in the din and ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... not inform the King of the course I had adopted of burning his papers, and the fear that I should not be able to transmit to him that which he had pointed out as necessary, tormented me to such a degree that it is wonderful my health endured the strain. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... the junior regular officers, and many of the senior regular officers, were fine men. But, through no fault of their own, had been forced to lead lives that fairly paralyzed their efficiency when the strain of modern war came on them. The routine elderly regular officer who knew nothing whatever of modern war was in most respects nearly as worthless as a raw recruit. The positions and commands prescribed in the text-books were made ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... was an oppressive day, and she had been under a mental strain of no small severity. Now she was longing to be at home to tell her mother all her strange adventures, and she had yet to find out by what ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... the rope drew tight across the bough. The fakir had to strain his chin upward in order ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy



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