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Stretching   Listen
adjective
Stretching  adj.  A. & n. from Stretch, v.
Stretching course (Masonry), a course or series of stretchers. See Stretcher, 2.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stretching" Quotes from Famous Books



... the eye is called away into far-reaching vistas, bounded on either hand by headlands in charming array, one dipping gracefully beyond another and growing fainter and more ethereal in the distance. The tranquil channel stretching river-like between, may be stirred here and there by the silvery plashing of upspringing salmon, or by flocks of white gulls floating like water-lilies among the sun spangles; while mellow, tempered sunshine is streaming over all, blending sky, land, and water in pale, misty blue. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... so sleepy and tired, from the length of the journey, as well as the imperfect slumber obtained inside the preceding night, that he preferred changing his quarters, to the risk of falling from his perch above. It so happened that the coach was empty inside, and Louis indulged himself by stretching at full length on one of the seats, and soon lost the recollection of his troubles in sleep. How long he had slept he could not tell, when the stopping of the coach disturbed him, and rising lazily, he looked out to see where they were. Instead, however, of the "White Lion," in Bristol, ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... drowsy days on escort, riding slowly half asleep, With the endless line of waggons stretching back, While the khaki soldiers travel like a mob of travelling sheep, Plodding silent on the never-ending track, While the constant snap and sniping of the foe you never see Makes you wonder will your turn ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... that had sunk roots into its depths; the shadows were heavy about it; a sense of despair brooded in the loneliness. And so up and up the endless ascent; sometimes great chasms were at one side, stretching further and further, and crowding the narrow path—the herder's trail—against the sheer ascent, till it seemed that the treacherous mountains were yawning to engulf them. The air was growing colder, but was exquisitely clear and exhilarating; the great dewy ferns flung silvery fronds ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... butterfly. The tail was furnished with long streamers, and little flags were stuck in the body for additional ornament. There were also Chinese characters painted on the body signifying "Good luck to the Junk." Between the main-mast and fore-mast were two large rough windlasses stretching across the deck, and used for getting up the anchor. By the entrance to the forecastle were two water-tanks, capable of holding one thousand five hundred gallons each. The fore-mast was seventy-five feet from the deck. It raked ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... adjacent orchestra chair. But it was out of the question, of course. There was only one seat, and there were three girls, besides all those others. With a sigh, then, Billy turned her eyes back to those others—those many others that made up the long line stretching its ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... very lively. There were a Christmas tree, Yule cakes, log, and candles, furmety, and snap-dragon after supper. When the company were tired of the tree, and had gained an appetite by the hard exercise of stretching to high branches, blowing out "dangerous" tapers, and cutting ribbon and pack-threads in all directions, supper came, with its welcome cakes, and furmety, and punch. And when furmety somewhat palled upon the taste (and it must be admitted to boast more sentiment than flavor as a Christmas dish), ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... to the extended boundary between the Argentine Republic and Chile, stretching along the Andean crests from the southern border of the Atacama Desert to Magellan Straits, nearly a third of the length of the South American continent, assumed an acute stage in the early part of the year, and afforded ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... entrances to Piccadilly and St. James's and Hyde Parks, are generally considered superior to those that have been adopted. The park entrances were to consist of two triumphal arches connected with each other by a colonnade and arches stretching across Piccadilly. The same ingenious architect likewise designed a new palace at the top of Constitution Hill, from which to the House of Lords the King should pass Buckingham House, Carlton House, a splendid Waterloo and Trafalgar monument, a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In two extended groups, separated by a narrow but ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... neither the number of the species, nor the nature of the great classes to which they belong, can possibly in all cases be explained by the conditions of their country. New Zealand{385}, a linear island stretching over about 700 miles of latitude, with forests, marshes, plains and mountains reaching to the limits of eternal snow, has far more diversified habitats than an equal area at the Cape of Good Hope; and yet, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... and stretching forth her hand Backward his comrade Sthenelus she drew From off the chariot; down in haste he sprang. His place beside the valiant Diomed The eager Goddess took; beneath the weight Loud groan'd the oaken axle; for the car A mighty Goddess and a Hero bore. Then ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... the coast a long way to the south, and northward as far as the point that Master Cabot reached, when he sailed down from Newfoundland; but due west they have never sailed far, and have found the sea ever stretching away in front of them; so that it is clear that either the great mainland is split in two at this point, or there is a vast bay. This I shall try to discover, and if we find these people of whom the Indians speak, we may well return ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... sheet of water, hemmed in on the south by bold mountain ranges, filling the interim between the Rhine valley and the long undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, cleft at intervals by green smiling valleys and deep ravines, are only the front of table-land stretching away like an inclined plane, and dotted with scattered houses and cloistering villages. The deep green of forest and pasture land was beginning to show the touch of autumn's pencil; the bright hues striking against gray, ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society

... back there was no sign of any town behind her. Echo had disappeared as completely as if it had been swallowed. Even the unseemly bay-windowed houses on the hill had gone under. She walked for another half hour and saw only the gray sage stretching all around her. The hills looked farther away than when she started. Still, that beaten road must lead somewhere. Two hours later she began to wonder why this particular road should be so unending and so empty. Never in her life before ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire, which he also took out of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... ambulance orderlies, we motored a mile or so farther on to the nearest trench. It was in an orchard beside a brick farmhouse with a vista in front of barbed-wire entanglement and a carefully cleaned firing field stretching out to a village and trees about half a mile away. They had looked very interesting and difficult, those barbed-wire mazes and suburbs, ruthlessly swept of trees and houses, when I had seen the Belgians preparing for the siege six weeks before, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... the smoke of hundreds of small chimneys and vast edifices, stretching in lines for miles and miles. The latter were crowded with women and children, young in years, but withered in form and feature. The countenances of the men were as colourless as the white fabric in their ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... say. Will was looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked at her and not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been easier. At last he turned, still resting against the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... mistress, whom I carried off on your wedding-day, and have loved so constantly ever since, let me sleep a few moments by you; for I found myself so very drowsy that I came to this place to take a little rest." Having spoken thus, he laid down his huge head upon the lady's knees, and stretching out his legs, which reached as far as the sea, he fell asleep presently, and snored so loud that he made the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... care at all, do we, sister?" said Beth, stretching up on tiptoe to get her "bawheady" from the bureau. "We'd just as lief give it away as not, 'cause we've always you, ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... drawing out any thick soft places there may be in the length of thread between each spindle and the roller, a distance of 64 inches. It is a property of the twist that it will run much more readily into the thinner portions of thread than the thicker, thus leaving the latter capable of stretching out without breaking. ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... of gossip Cap'n Aaron Sproul spent his bland and blissful days up under the shade of the big maple in the Ward dooryard, smoking his pipe, and gazing out over the expanse of meadow and woodland stretching away ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... the birds; only one, the youngest, Anna Dorothea, felt grieved in her heart; and when they made preparations to fell a tree that was almost dead, and on whose naked branches the black stork had built his nest, whence the little storks were stretching out their heads, she begged for mercy for the little things, and tears came into her eyes. Therefore the tree with the black stork's nest was left standing. The tree was not ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... slept the busy men who were hastening to the gold-fields west of the Sierra Nevada. At the end of some twenty years the old unknown Yerba-Buena had given place to a town unique of its kind, peopled by 100,000 inhabitants, built under the shelter of a couple of hills, away from the shore, but stretching off to the farthest heights in the background—a city in short which has dethroned Lima, Santiago, Valparaiso, and every other rival, and which the Americans have made the queen of the Pacific, the "glory of the ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... up, resolved on going to bed. "Come on," he said, stretching himself. "Our jaw about women doesn't appear ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... hoped for. The sudden fall of so many gave him time to launch out his great fists a second time. They fell with the weight of sledge-hammers on the faces of two more of his opponents, flattening their noses, and otherwise disfiguring their features, besides stretching them on the ground. At the same time, Corrie flung his empty pistol in the face of a man who attempted to assault his companion on the right flank unawares, and laid him prone on the earth. Another savage, who made the same effort on the left, received a gash on the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... much puzzled as I daresay you are, at present, to understand how these two seeming contradictions could be reconciled; and all sorts of odd hypotheses were resorted to. It was supposed that the coral did not extend so far down, but that there was a great chain of submarine mountains stretching through the Pacific, and that the coral had grown upon them. But only fancy what supposition that was, for you would have to imagine that there was a chain of mountains a thousand miles or more long, and that the ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley

... young scapegrace," he exclaimed, "that you might either have been eaten by a shark, or have broken up an old friendship, for such nonsense as that." And, turning to me, and stretching out his huge paw, "My hand, old ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... was fair, and the sky clear, save a broad and mountainous ridge of clouds piled up towards the north-east, from whence hung a black and heavy curtain stretching behind the hills in that direction. The sparkling of the sea was visible at intervals behind the low sand-hills skirting the coast, giving out, in irregular flashes, the rich and glowing radiance it received. A lucid brightness yet lingered over the waves, which De Poininges stood for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... this island of ours! How did it all come about? "Not assuredly," Valeria remarked with sudden malice, "by taking things as they stood, and making the best of them with imbecile impatience. If everyone had done that, what sort of an England should I have had stretching before my eyes at ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... pillow he had no recollection of placing there when he went to sleep. By degrees the events of the past night forced themselves upon his benumbed faculties, and he sat up. The sun was riding high; the door of the cabin was open. Stretching himself, he staggered to his feet, and looked in through the yawning crack at the hinges. He rubbed his eyes again. Was he still asleep, and followed by a dream of yesterday? For there, even in the very attitude he remembered to have seen her sitting at her luncheon on the previous day, with her ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... humour was with her to the end. As she lay on her crazy bed, surrounded by priests, she made the supreme and crowning bon mot of her brilliant life. Stretching out her wasted arm to the nearly empty absinthe bottle by her bed, she made a slightly resentful moue and murmured ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... Samothrace. Now Samothrace, according to the map, appeared to be not only out of all seeing distance from the Troad, but to be entirely shut out from it by the intervening Imbros, which is a larger island, stretching its length right athwart the line of sight from Samothrace to Troy. Piously allowing that the dread Commoter of our globe might have seen all mortal doings, even from the depth of his own cerulean kingdom, I still felt that if a station were to be ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... Deputy of the Almighty Awfulness, the Giver and Withholder of Eternal Life. Tremble, slave! Fall down and bow your forehead in the dust! I can see in my memory the sight that thrilled my childhood—my grim old Bishop, clad in his gorgeous ceremonial robes, stretching out his hands over the head of the new priest, and pronouncing that most deadly of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... they pass the solemn precincts of the village Church, and that burying-ground where, since the Indian left his dead with us, generations of their successors are already lain. And now they enter the wide village street, wide as it is, shaded and embowered by dense maples and wide-stretching elms; and enlivened with neatly-trimmed court-yards and flower-gardens, It was a pleasant walk, and its sweet influences bound these young people's hearts together. We are not telling a love-story, and do not mean to intimate that ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... out, followed by Don, but the latter was thrust back into the hut directly, Tomati stretching out his arms so as to spread his blanket wide to act as a screen, under cover of which Don and Jem were half pushed, half backed into the large gathering hut of the tribe, Ngati giving some orders quickly, the result of which was that Don and Jem were hustled down into a sitting ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... Great died, leaving an army that he had raised to the pinnacle of fame. With this army he had faced and vanquished, standing at bay against almost the whole of continental Europe, his powerful foes. Little Prussia, a straggling strip of territory stretching from the ice-bound Niemen to the vine-clad Rhine, Frederick's genius had lifted until it took rank with the powers that prescribe laws to ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... way of stretching a village all along one street is Roman, and is the mark of civilization. When I was at college I was compelled to read a work by the crabbed Tacitus on the Germans, where, in the midst of a deal that is vague and fantastic nonsense and much that is wilful lying, comes this excellent ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... remind the old man, very gently, that a paper-forest ranger made only so much money, and that there would have to be more saving before such things could be bought. He did not—ever—remind the old man that he, Wang, was stretching a point to keep his grandfather on the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... something to reflect upon the royal family. But presently the lecturer gets to understand that it is only the nine-o'clock train and that all the audience know about it. Then it's all right. It's just like the people rising and stretching themselves after ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... man, stretching out his hand, "the woman I love has this day honored me, but by heaven I believe you have honored me more. I did think it was a low-down trick for you to go to Miss Glen, but I know why you did it, and you were right. ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... laid his fat, white hands on the arms of the chair, lifted them, glanced at his rosy and shining nails, and frowned. Then he shut his little eyes so tightly that the skin round them became wrinkled, and, stretching out his feet, seemed almost angrily ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... even the words and voice of man: everything has its place and purport." Personality was but a metamorphosis of the soul, which develops from one personality to another. The single life of the personality was only considered as a link in the chain of development stretching backwards and forwards. ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... abjectly bound to be his slave, and to live or die by his breath, as you are bound to your Master. You are Christians in the measure in which you are the captives of His spear and of His bow; in the measure in which you hold your territories as vassal kings, in the measure in which you say, stretching out your willing hands for the fetters, 'Lord! here am I, do with me as Thou wilt.' 'I am not mine own; be Thou my will, my Emperor, my Commander, my all.' Loyola used to say, as the law of his order, that every man that became a member ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... a great highway, stretching southward from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson, over which rival armies had often passed to victory or defeat in the old wars. Open water offered an easy transit for nearly the whole way. A chain of forts ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... her gentle, timid speech, and the child in her arms looked up in his face and smiled, stretching out its rosy hands to grasp at the winged circle of gold on his breast. His heart warmed to the touch. It seemed like a greeting of love and trust to one who had journeyed long in loneliness and perplexity, fighting ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... Transvaal State. They also desired (but did not expect to obtain) complete freedom in regard to their external relations, and they lost no time in trying how far they would be allowed to go in the direction of stretching the spirit of the Convention. Nothing in that ineffectual and miserable document is clearer than the definition of certain boundaries, and the provision that no extension shall be allowed. This hemming of them in—or shutting ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... the food off and hide it, as they certainly do corn when I put it out for the hens. The jay has a capacious throat; he will lodge half a dozen or more kernels of corn in it, stretching his neck up as he takes them, to give them room, and then fly away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the little kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... presence and absence of various harmonics. In German, we stretched an old word, and called it Farbe; in English, timbre was borrowed from the French, just as we may call a pound vingt-cinq francs; but the French themselves got their word by the ordinary process—viz., by stretching the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... cutter made but little progress. Sail was made as quickly as possible and as the cutter headed North-North-East there was every likelihood of her clearing the land; but a quarter of an hour afterwards, by the light of another flash, it was again seen close to us, stretching from right ahead to our lee-quarter and so near that the breakers were distinctly seen gleaming through the darkness of the night. A third flash of lightning confirmed our fears as to the dangerous situation ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... voice aroused old Hector, the watchdog, who had been lying in the sun upon the piazza. Stretching his huge limbs and shaking his shaggy sides, he stalked into the sitting room, and going up to his mistress laid his head caressingly in her lap. The sight of Hector made Mrs. Wilmot's tears flow afresh, for during many years he had been the faithful companion of Richard, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... the fire-escape to be cleared. It was a kitchen-garden with vegetables, and was almost all the green there was in the landscape. From one or two other windows in the yard there peeped tufts of green; but of trees there was none in sight—nothing but the bare clothes-poles with their pulley-lines stretching from every window. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... something brokenly and tried to rise, but the big Irishman held him firmly. "Easy, I'm telling you!" The boy relaxed, stretching out to his lank length, one arm crooked childishly over his eyes, and Michael Daragh sat down beside him, his long legs folded under him, on the floor. "'Tis the true word, surely," he said. "We don't know, indeed. And—glory be—there's many the time that ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... you surpass yourself!" Holmes took the bag, and, descending into the hollow, he pushed the matting into a more central position. Then stretching himself upon his face and leaning his chin upon his hands, he made a careful study of the trampled mud in front of him. "Hullo!" said he, suddenly. "What's this?" It was a wax vesta half burned, which was so coated with ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... of war were what we had most to fear from, we constructed on the river bank a battery of 6 guns, four of which covered the approach to the Fort. From the foot of the battery a bank twenty-two feet high stretching to the Fort, was begun, so as to protect the curtain on this side from the fire of the ships, but it was not finished. We had also to attend to the inhabited portion of the town; it was impossible to do more, but we determined to protect it from a surprise, ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... slippery, shining fronds which the deep-lying weed-beds had thrown up gleamed in the evening light and slid gently across his shoulders, and far out in the west lay the land of Fortune, beyond the vast radiant portals of the sunset; or it showed its golden plains stretching out into infinity. There it lay, shining with a strange enticing radiance, so that Pelle forgot the limits of his strength, and swam out farther than his powers justified. And when he turned round, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... those about them. They in turn, as they grow, interlock their boughs, and repeat in a season or two the same process of mutual suffocation. The forest is full of lean saplings dead or dying with vainly stretching towards the light. Not one infant tree in a thousand lives to maturity; yet these survivors form an innumerable host, pressed together in struggling confusion, squeezed out of symmetry and robbed of normal development, as men are said to be in the level sameness of democratic ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... most important subjects considered by the Senate within the last ten years, to which I have given special attention, is the construction of a ship canal across Central America. The American continents, stretching from the polar regions of the north to the Straits of Magellan, south of the 50th parallel of south latitude, present a barrier to navigation from the east to the west, to overcome which has been the anxious desire of mankind ever since the discovery of America by Columbus. It was the object of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... terms are often regarded as identical and interchangeable, but they ought, I think, to be distinguished. From the ethnographic, the linguistic, and the religious point of view they differ widely from each other. The Kazan Tartars, the Bashkirs, the Kirghiz, in a word, all the tribes in the country stretching latitudinally from the Volga to Kashgar, and longitudinally from the Persian frontier, the Hindu Kush and the Northern Himalaya, to a line drawn east and west through the middle of Siberia, belong to the Tartar group; whereas those further eastward, occupying Mongolia and Manchuria, are ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... him occasional and very uncertain glimpses of the French coast at the opposite side of the strait. Misty strips long and narrow, extending over one portion of the disc—probably cloud-scuds sustained by a highly rarefied atmosphere—permitted only a very dreamy idea of lofty mountains stretching beneath them in shapeless proportions, of smaller reliefs, circuses, yawning craters, and the other capricious, sponge-like formations so common on the visible side. Elsewhere the watchers became aware for an instant ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... Similar quantities were placed in a clump and secured as the rest. This was done in December 1830. In July following, each detached mass was nearly level with the sea at low water, quite immovable, and several feet long, stretching as the parent reef, with the coast current from north to south. The masses accumulated in a clump were found equally increased, but some of the species in such unequal ratios, as to be growing over each other." ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... After all we have in Chaucer's text (Frag. G. Canon's Yeoman Prologue) merely the name, and that in the old form, Boghton under Blee. All this wild woodland and forest country which lies on a great piece of high ground stretching north-east and south-west across the Way parallel with the valley of the Great Stour, between Faversham and Canterbury, hiding the one from the other, was known as the Blean. It is equally certain that the village of Dunkirk was known ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... in the Puritan scheme (and The Scarlet Letter, save for that one treacherous, warm human moment in the woodland where "all was spoken," lies wholly within the set framework of Puritanism) there is no forgiveness for a sin of the flesh. There is only Law, Law stretching on into infinitude until the mind shudders at it. Hawthorne knew his Protestant New England through and through. The Scarlet Letter is the most striking example in our national literature of that idealization of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... President himself stepped forward with the flowers. That's where the real trouble began, with the flowers. I remember Ross stretching out his arms to take the bouquet, like a mother reaching for a baby. Then suddenly he dropped them, sneezing and coughing and sobbing for breath, and the President reached out to help him, asking him over and over what ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable

... Stretching out his arm, he pointed to the group below him. The crowd pressed forward and stood on tiptoe to see better. Beppo and Giovanni and Paolo wriggled through the forest of legs and skirts and came out into ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown

... the stretching, she said several times, 'O God, you tear me to, pieces! Lord, pardon me! ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... on ascending unexpected little steps; entered doors that opened abruptly as panels in the wall, branched off into yet narrower halls, and finally was ushered into what seemed a sort of anteroom, with only a few chairs furnishing it, and a great extent of polished floor stretching out in front of me to a curtain which hung across one whole side of it. There was a sweet though rather close odor, which wrought powerfully upon my imagination. Walking cautiously, since the floor seemed as slippery as glass, I followed my conductor. He drew ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... three deep. From the middle, toward each end, they become gradually narrower, the after-part, or stern, ending abruptly or perpendicularly, with a small knob on the top; but the fore-part is lengthened out, stretching forward and upward, ending in a notched point or prow, considerably higher than the sides of the canoe, which run nearly in a straight line. For the most part they are without any ornament; but some have a little carving, and are decorated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... that territory as a separate estate. On his petition, a charter was issued in 1681, granting to him, in absolute property, by the name of Pennsylvania, that tract of country bounded on the east by the river Delaware, extending westward five degrees of longitude, stretching to the north from twelve miles north of New Castle to the forty-third degree of latitude, and limited on the south by a circle of twelve miles, drawn round New Castle to the beginning of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... opens the Vallee d'Ossau; and a host of villages, and a wide spread of pasture-land, with high mountains stretching far away into the distance, were before us. We breakfasted at Louvie, and then continued our route, the road becoming wilder, and having more character, than hitherto; we seemed now to have entered the gorges, and to be really approaching ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... nothing to do but to pass through Mrs. Medlicott's apartment, out into the lesser hall, and then turning to the right as she passed on to the terrace, she could go down the flight of broad, shallow steps at the corner of the house into the lovely garden, with stretching, sweeping lawns, and gay flower-beds, and beautiful, bossy laurels, and other blooming or massy shrubs, with full-grown beeches, or larches feathering down to the ground a little farther off. The whole was set in a frame, as it were, by the more distant woodlands. The ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... seen, he is appointed at twenty-seven by Mr. Gladstone to an office which Lord Palmerston did not bestow upon Mr. Bruce until the latter was verging on fifty; and it is not at all improbable that Lord Palmerston, when he made the appointment in 1862, took credit to himself for stretching a point in favour of a laborious and ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... themselves and the boy drew his bow across the instrument. The brush of a painter could not have made the picture more perfect than the vision the Lad brought forth as the bow played on the strings. The picture of a sea, sunlighted and level, stretching far out; the picture of a curved shore: the shore of a quiet bay, rimmed with its beach of shining sand and noisy with the gurgle and splash of lapsing waves; the picture of a home quiet and orderly and filled with the tenderness of a ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... them all under the roof of that house, without either stretching it out wider or boiling the guests down, would have been out of the question, and so the majority, with Dabney in his new clothes to keep them countenance, stood or sat in the cool shade of the grand old trees during the ceremony, which was performed near the open door, and were afterward ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... point of sailing on the Great Lakes, it was requisite to dress the yacht in her proper array, with her high tapering masts; the cords of her rigging stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture; and so equipped, as to give her the appearance of a majestic, white winged sea-bird resting gracefully on ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the woman I loved, chafing the wet white temples and gazing wildly into the wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of those dear hands stretching out toward me. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... another there's a fair chance of spoiling my pupil," laughed Dick, stretching himself. "I'll have to be doubly stern to counteract the evil influences, Norah. You can prepare for awful times. When next Monday comes, Mr. Linton—may it be soon!—you can say good-bye to your pickle of a daughter. She will come out from my ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... the world must look to-night to Edna! This enchanting evening world with its dreaming waves, and myriad spires of fragrant firs stretching toward the luminous sky strewn thickly with pulsing stars. She shook off some thought that insinuated itself into her conscious desire. No, no. Her place was here with Aunt Martha. Her thought must dwell only on the possible artistic achievements of her future; ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... they made their way out beyond the walls. Even the light-hearted students were sobered by the sight beyond. Thousands of men were engaged on the work of demolition. Where but ten days since stood villas surrounded by gardens and trees, there was now a mere waste of bricks and mortar stretching down to the Forts of Issy and Vanves. The trees had all been felled and for the most part cut up and carried into Paris for firewood. Most of the walls were levelled, and frequent crashes of masonry showed that these ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... of France," as the programme had it. The road ran down a great aisle with the tall elm trees reaching to the sky, and stretching their long green fingers far above, like the slender pillars of a Gothic cathedral. Down the narrow road below sagged a big motor-bus, painted grey, like a battleship; and, after it, a huge grey motor-lorry; and, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... agreed to risk the storm (threatening even now in the distance). Night-prayers were said by that gladsome fire. Still, the larger of the two muffled shapes above made no sign. Afterwards Hood's bed was made by the stretching out of a strip of sailcloth. A blanket was laid over it, and a knapsack crowned it as a pillow. Hood began to settle himself in with huge content, a pipe between his teeth. One carrier wriggled himself up beside him. The two others ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... said the Peruvian, stretching out his hand to pick up the fallen manuscript, "that you will keep ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... is no longer a Republic, and so has, in a measure, ceased to bear the stamp of his genius. The narrow limits of his theater of action; for the Belgic States were a trifling province of Philip Second's stupendous empire, stretching, as it did, from Italy to the farthest western promontory of the New World. A theater is something. Throw a heroic career on a world theater, such as Julius Caesar had, and men will look as they would on burning Moscow. The scene prevents obscuration. And last, Holland ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... about the sparsely settled countryside. Most of the population of White Lodge, and ranchers from remote districts, visited the scene. One fortunate individual, who had arrived before the body had been removed, interested various groups by stretching himself out on the prairie on the exact spot where the slain man ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... stands on the bridge of Nevers." And more imposing, more exhilarating still, seemed the view from the same spot now; under the brilliant sky, in the clear atmosphere, every feature standing out as in a mosaic proudly dominating all, the Cathedral, with its mass of sombre architecture; stretching wide to right and left, the gay, prosperous-looking city; white villas rising one above the other, hanging gardens and terraced lawns, making greenery and verdure in mid-air. On the occasion of my first visit in August, 1881, the Loire was so low as to appear a mere thread of palest blue amid white ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... stretching her hands as usual. Mickey stooped for her caress, scattering the ribbons over her as he arose. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... summer's noon when quickening steps Followed each other till a dreary moor Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top [A] Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge, I overlooked the bed of Windermere, 5 Like a vast river, stretching in the sun. With exultation, at my feet I saw Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays, A universe of Nature's fairest forms Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst, 10 Magnificent, and beautiful, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... tears and sighs, calmed her voice, and stretching out upon the floor spoke softly, with a sweet accent, as if she ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... green that came peeping through the last snows left in May. Tiny wild flowers purple the surface near us, but blend into the colorless effect of the general distance. We stand on a wave of petrified ocean, tumbling in wild upheaval close at hand; stretching away to the east in a league-long level flat as the barn floor of tradition, and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... the words came to me, while we were still driving down the dark valley, in deeper shadows, under higher bluffs, looking out on a levelled world westward, stretching off with low, white, wreathing mists and moonlit distances of plains beyond the further bunk. We turned a great shoulder of the hills, and the moon shone out bright and clear, riding in heaven; and the southward reach unlocked, and gave itself for miles to our eyes. At the instant, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... with decision. 'Wait a bit, I'll arrange a flag as well,' he added, picking up the kerchief which he had thrown down in the sledge after taking it from round his collar, and drawing off his gloves and standing up on the front of the sledge and stretching himself to reach the strap, he tied the handkerchief to it with a ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy

... reached the garden, there was his self-constituted enemy stretching out before him, far as eye could reach, and sparkling ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... shining eyes, blown-back hair and face on fire, holding out her heart from the threshold, stretching it out at arms' length, crying, 'Who will take this? To whom may I give it?' A vision here of Heaven's core of light. I have seen it. I, Senhouse, have seen the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... suddenly, he said to her, "Cruel woman! you see that I love you—you see that, twenty times a day, I am ready to offer you my hand and my heart; yet you will not inform me who you are! Tell me, Corinne, tell me the story of your past life," repeated he, stretching his hand to her with the most moving expression of sensibility. "Oswald!" cried Corinne; "Oswald! you do not know the pain you give me. If I were mad enough to tell you all you would no longer love me." "Great God!" replied ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... of subduing herself was not so painful as usual, for the blue car went on mile after mile, through the far-stretching orange groves, without a stop; ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... cake with 1 tablespoonful sugar. Heat milk, add remainder of sugar, Crisco, and salt. Cool and add yeast and flour to make stiff dough. Turn out on floured baking board, cut in three pieces, knead first one piece then others stretching dough; let rise over night or in warm temperature five hours. Knead lightly and divide into Criscoed pans. Allow to rise and bake in moderate oven one hour. From same dough, French bread, breadsticks, horse shoe rolls and French rolls ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... the latter, which she brought up in the house. He grew very large, and was domesticated just like a dog, following you everywhere, in the parlour and up into the bed-room; in the winter lying on the rug before the fire on his side, and stretching out his four legs as unconcerned as possible, even refusing to go away if you pushed him. As for the cat, she durst not go near him. He thrashed her unmercifully, for he was very strong; and the consequence was that ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... last the earthquake came—the shock, that hurled To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown, The throne, whose roots were in another world, And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled; The web, that for a thousand years had grown O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread Crumbled and fell, as ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... lofty pines, whose lonely heads were swinging in the air like floating but fettered islands. My head had begun to feel dizzy with the ever-iterated, slow, half-circular sweep, when, just opposite the lawn stretching from a low wire fence up to the door of the steward's house, my mare shied, darted to the other side of the road, and flew across the grass. Caught thus lounging on my saddle, I was almost unseated. As soon as I had pulled her up, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... empties its waters into the Columbia, the Mississippi of the Pacific Coast. From its point of junction with the Spokane, the Columbia makes a big bend in its course until the Snake River is reached, when it turns once more westward, and flows on to empty into the Pacific Ocean. South of the city, stretching westward for some distance from the mountains, and extending in a southerly direction to the Clearwater and Snake Rivers, is a vast country comprising millions of acres, through which the Palouse River and its tributary streams ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... [21] Neither did his pride make him tolerant of pride in others. A neighbour applying for his intercession with a magistrate, who had summoned him for some offence, Dante, who disliked the man for riding in an overbearing manner along the streets (stretching out his legs as wide as he could, and hindering people from going by), did intercede with the magistrate, but it was in behalf of doubling the fine in consideration of the horsemanship. The neighbour, who was a man of family, was so exasperated, that Sacchetti the novelist ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... started in the churches that have always seemed to me to be the right forum for such a discussion, on every ground, and most for their own sake and the cause they stand for. But the awakening proved more of a sleepy yawn than real—like a man stretching himself in bed with half a mind to get up. Five years later, in 1884, came the Tenement-House Commission which first brought home to us the fact that the people living in the tenements were "better than the houses." That was a big white milestone on a dreary road. From that time on ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... but a handful against Pembroke's two hundred, he placed them in the rear as a reserve, in the centre of which waved the banner of Scotland. The remainder of his troops he determined on arranging in a compact crescent, the bow exposed to the English, the line stretching out against the wood. This was his intended line of battle, but, either from mistake or purposed treachery on the part of Pembroke, his plan was frustrated, and in addition to the great disparity of numbers he had to ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... vigils, was seen approaching, hisses were heard, and shouts of derision, and scornful and bitter laughter. The women snatched away their children from his path, lest he should do them a mischief. Still, however, bending his head meekly, and perhaps stretching out his hands to bless those who reviled him, he pursued his way. But the tears came into his eyes to think how blindly the people rejected the means of safety that were ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne



Words linked to "Stretching" :   stretch, enlargement, exercise, extension, tension, workout



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