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Grapple   /grˈæpəl/   Listen
Grapple

noun
1.
A tool consisting of several hooks for grasping and holding; often thrown with a rope.  Synonyms: grapnel, grappler, grappling hook, grappling iron.
2.
A dredging bucket with hinges like the shell of a clam.  Synonym: clamshell.
3.
The act of engaging in close hand-to-hand combat.  Synonyms: grappling, hand-to-hand struggle, wrestle, wrestling.  "We watched his grappling and wrestling with the bully"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books



... hath no younger dome than this; And now, the strength which brought us o'er the deep, Hath grown to manhood with its nurture here,— Now that they heap on us abuses, that Had crimsoned the first William's cheek, to name,— We're ready now—for our last grapple ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... feel the ship being pulled toward the Platform by the magnetic grapple. It was a landing-line. It was the means by which the ship would be docked in the giant lock which had ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... for the woods, just as a boy conceives a longing for the out-of-door life of which he hears in the conversation of his elders about the winter fire. He became eager to get away to the front, to stand among the pines, to grapple with the difficulties of thicket, hill, snow, and cold that nature silently interposes between the man and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... more familiar, intimate, and discursive—that ultimately held the Rector's thoughts as he kept his watch. For in those letters were contained almost all the objections that a sensitive mind and heart had had to grapple with before determining on the course to which the Rector of Upcote was now committed. They were the voice of the "adversary," the "accuser." Crude or conventional, as the form of the argument might be, it yet represented the "powers and principalities" to ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Duchies, was adopted in England solely from the dense and inconceivable ignorance of the British mind on all German topics, and the equally inexplicable but inborn dislike of all British politicians to grapple with any ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... aware that it was not best for him to attempt to speak upon subjects of which he was entirely ignorant. He made one of his funny speeches, very short and entirely non-committal. Colonel Alexander followed, endeavoring to grapple with the great questions of tariffs, finance, and internal improvements, which were ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... stone I stood, On one she that was eldest of the brood That hunted me so long. And many a word Touching my mother's death was spoke and heard, Till Phoebus rose to save me. Even lay The votes of Death and Life; when, lo, a sway Of Pallas' arm, and free at last I stood From that death grapple. But the Shapes of Blood— Some did accept the judgment, and of grace Consent to make their house beneath that place In darkness. Others still consented not, But clove to me the more, like bloodhounds hot On the dying; till ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp report inside, and the heavy fall of a body ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain—grapple (in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually classed under the head of genius. He knew—he admitted—his parts to be pedestrian, but he had considered them (until quite lately) fully equal to the demands of life. And to-day he owned himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... away a great deal teaming, working desperately to get something laid up for the winter. The summer excursion, with its laughter, its careless irresponsibility, had become a deadly grapple with the implacable forces of winter. The land of the straddle-bug had become a menacing desert, hard as iron, pitiless ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland

... heard of the 'Trojan' Horse; With Seventy Men in his Belly? This Dragon was not quite so big, But very near, I'll tell you; Devoured he poor Children three, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he eat them up, As one would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... wouldn't mind taking in this wee piggie; he's rather a little love, but he has a vile temper. He gets that from his mother—not that I like to say things against her when she's lying dead and drowned in her stye, poor thing. What he really wants is a man's firm hand to keep him in order. I'd try and grapple with him myself, only I've got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... face of Sir Amyas Oxhead of Elizabethan days whose pinnace was the first to dash to Plymouth with the news that the English fleet, as nearly as could be judged from a reasonable distance, seemed about to grapple with the Spanish Armada. Below this, the two Cavalier brothers, Giles and Everard Oxhead, who had sat in the oak with Charles II. Then to the right again the portrait of Sir Ponsonby Oxhead who had fought with Wellington in Spain, and been ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... the excellent jewel Had failed of its fame. Firm-mooded after, Not heedless of valor, but mindful of glory, Was Higelac's kinsman; the hero-chief angry Cast then his carved-sword covered with jewels That it lay on earth, hard and steel-pointed; He hoped in his strength, his hand-grapple sturdy. So any must act whenever he thinketh To gain him in battle glory unending, And is reckless of living. The lord of the War-Geats (He shrank not from battle) seized by the shoulder The mother of Grendel; then mighty in struggle Swung he his enemy, since his anger was kindled, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... the night. The Stranger was beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 'You might do murder before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... In peril, in battle, in reckless bravery, in the rush of the charge and the excitement of the surprise, in the near presence of death, and in the chase of a foe through a hot African night when both were armed to the teeth, and one or both must fall when the grapple came—in all these that old instinct, aroused and unloosed, made him content; made him think that the life which brought ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... impossible to row in such a sea. As soon as they approached each other, both fleets broke up, and the vessels each singling an opponent out, the combat began. It was a singular one, and differed widely from ordinary sea fights of the time, in which the combatants always tried to grapple with their enemies and carry them by boarding. This was almost impossible now, for it seemed that the vessels would be dashed in pieces like eggshells were they to strike each other. Clouds of missiles were poured from one to the other. The archers plied ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... higher wages and conspire against their employers and their capital, doubtless thinking such a course justifiable, think of such wages as that, and provisions very dear, as they were at that time? I began to think myself rough and ready and was able to grapple with almost anything and do a good days' work. Father, I and the team all worked hard and with the wood thrown in we all together did not ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... "but it is warm. That is enough for me. Curse the cold, say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the heights a flea would have made ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... two; the temperature of the room could be turned up, and he had developed a certain fondness for the place with its warm gray walls and its soft relaxing light. Here on the tapes were things that he could grapple with, things that he could understand. If a problem here eluded him, he could study it out until he had mastered it. The hours he spent here were a welcome retreat from the confusing complexities of getting ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... meaning of 'treasure,' then this great saying of nay text is, as a matter of course, true. For what in each case makes the treasure is precisely the going out of the heart to grapple it, and it is just because the heart is there that a thing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... he was strong to do and dare: If a host had withstood him there, He had braved a host with little care In his lusty youth and his pride, Tough to grapple though weak to snare. He comes, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... comment on her extravagances amused Ben exceedingly, and by keeping to a line of questioning he drew from her nearly all her salient experiences—excepting, of course, her grapple with ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... off. But Dodd knew better. He was but retiring a little way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he would soon wear, and cross the Agra's defenceless bows, to rake her fore and aft at pistol-shot distance; or grapple, and board the enfeebled ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... phantom, this siren of secession, with her enticing song, seems to have lulled to sleep the better part of human nature. At the sound of her voice, and the flash of her eye, men have sprung to arms, to grapple with the life of the nation, because it was free! They have followed, at the beck of the siren, over desolated homes; they have trampled over the dead corpses of murdered brothers, and innocent women and children. They ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... have hesitated to volunteer for Indian work because they felt that they were not competent to grapple with the acute intellects and subtle philosophy of Indian thinkers. It is commonly said that the acutest intellects in India are to be found amongst the Brahmins of Poona City. A tolerably wide acquaintance amongst ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... been, notwithstanding the high presumption of his remark, a manful thickness of voice in Alvan's 'That is he!' The rivals had fastened a look on one another, wary, strong, and summary as the wrestlers' first grapple. In fire of gaze, Marko was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Gray did not come back. Neither by word nor sign did those who feverishly awaited news of him receive even the faintest intimation of his whereabouts. Added to the heavy strain that Mrs. Gray and Grace were laboring under, they were destined to grapple with the question: Why had David Nesbit not responded to their plea for assistance? After three weary days of waiting, Grace wrote to Miriam Nesbit asking if David were in New York City. Miriam's prompt reply stated that business had called David to Chicago. She expected ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... grapple with him, there was a sharp report, a lurid gleam of flame in the darkness, and Mohammed Beyd rolled over and over upon the floor to come to a final rest beside the bed of the woman he had ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... expectations. Accordingly, on returning to Dayton towards the end of 1901, they set themselves to solve the various problems which had appeared and started on a lengthy series of experiments to check the previous figures as to wind resistance and lift of curved surfaces, besides setting themselves to grapple with the difficulty of lateral control. They accordingly constructed for themselves at their home in Dayton a wind tunnel 16 inches square by 6 feet long in which they measured the lift and 'drag' of more than two hundred miniature wings. In the course of these tests they for the first ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... a time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know what it was—it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did. Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records—" and there was more of it—the old story of the town's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... instance, are tempted by pride of strength to attack their neighbours, usually march most confidently against those who keep still, and only defend themselves in their own country, but think twice before they grapple with those who meet them outside their frontier and strike the first blow if opportunity offers. The Athenians have shown us this themselves; the defeat which we inflicted upon them at Coronea, at the time when our quarrels had allowed them to occupy the country, has given great security to Boeotia ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... has been estimated, in a manner extremely gratifying to me. As regards satisfaction to myself in the manner of its execution, I cannot say so much. Backed by a numerous and warm-hearted party, and strong in the consciousness of a good cause, I did not find it difficult to grapple with the more popular parts of the question; but I fell miserably short of my desires in touching upon the principles which the discussion involved, and I am sure that it must be long before I am enabled in any reasonable sense to be a speaker according even to the conception ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... fasten, bind, secure, clinch, twist, make fast &c adj.; tie, pinion, string, strap, sew, lace, tat, stitch, tack, knit, button, buckle, hitch, lash, truss, bandage, braid, splice, swathe, gird, tether, moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple^, link, yoke, bracket; marry &c (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, fuse together; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Mainwaring hurled himself forward to prevent the thing he saw impended. Too late. Even as he flung out his hands to grapple with his lordship, Rotherby's arm drove straight before him and sent his sword through the undefended back ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... time conform to our wishes; and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India,—to bring before your Lordships the direct articles, to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lordships' decision in that manner which the confidence we have in the justice of our cause demands ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... flame from the Fury's torch had spread with a vengeance. Gage was a brave man, an able man, an {166} honorable man; but for Alexander he was a little over-parted. The difficulties he had to encounter were too great for him to grapple with; the work he was meant to do too vast for his hands or the hands of any man. He was sent out to sway a chastened and degraded province; he found himself opposed by a defiant people, exalted by injustice and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... perhaps the only thing that could then have diverted Herrera's thoughts from the painful subject pre-occupying them. In his galled and irritated mood, driven to doubt of what he never before had doubted, the idea of something to grapple with, of resistance to overcome, an enemy to strive against, was a positive relief, and he answered the Mochuelo ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... parapet hysterically hurling bombs at the machine. They might as well have been throwing pebbles. Scornfully the tank slid over into the wide trench and landed with a crash in the bottom. For a moment she lay there without moving. The Germans thought she was stuck. They came running along thinking to grapple with her. But they never reached her, for at once the guns from both sides opened fire and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... Arveron were given to meditation on a great problem which had been set, as it seemed, for him to solve, ever since he had written that chapter on "The Nature of Gothic." Now at last, in the solitude of the Alps, he could grapple with the questions he had raised; and the outcome of the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... of gulf-weed caused quite a little excitement, and set an enthusiastic pair of naturalists—a midland hunting squire, and a travelled scientific doctor who had been twelve years in the Eastern Archipelago—fishing eagerly over the bows, with an extemporised grapple of wire, for gulf-weed, a specimen of which they did not catch. However, more and more still would come in a day or two, perhaps whole acres, even whole leagues, and then (so we hoped, but hoped in vain) we should have our feast of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... is the American woman not stirred by these facts? Why does she not recognize their meaning and grapple with her labor problem? It is certain that at the beginning of the republic she did have a pretty clear idea of the kind of household revolution the country needed. Our great-grandmothers, that is, the serious ones among them, made a brave dash at it. There is no family, at ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... Board met, but only to be informed that the Clearing-House was not yet ready to complete the work of Friday. Important accounts had been kept back, and the dealings, swollen in sum-total to five hundred millions, were beyond the capacity of the clerical force of the Gold Bank to grapple with. A resolution was brought forward proposing the resumption of operations Ex-Clearing-House. The measure took the members by surprise, for a moment quivered between acceptance and rejection, and then was swiftly tabled. It was an immense ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... honor your draft. Nature is sure to give you strength, energy and vim, in boundless measure. Just try this my friends, you, who write me of "there being a serious lack of vitality" in your system and hence your inability to grapple with the occult. No such thing. Fact is you lack courage and initiative, pluck and "go" and you are labouring under the hypnotism of weakening thoughts. Just change your thoughts, and your reserve forces will rush ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... same time we find a decidedly lowered standard of general morality—a distinct approach towards the fay ce que voudras of the Restoration. We are also nearer to the region of the commonplace. Nowhere appears that attempt to grapple with the impossible, that wrestle with the hardest problems, which Marlowe began, and which he taught to some at least of his followers. And lastly—despite innumerable touches of tender and not a few of heroic ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... all," said he, "and there's my money gone that I spent for a gross of stenlock hooks to grapple you." ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... the anchor resembles a body with six legs, like a fly—three on either side. Each leg has a crook at the end, which will grapple firmly wherever the least hold can ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... himself confronted by an athletic young man who held the muzzle of an ugly revolver within two inches of the bridge of his nose and in a remarkably firm and steady grip. Another glance showed him the figure of a second business-like looking young man at his side, whose attitude showed a desire to grapple with him. ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... shows power thought, and courage to grapple with the profoundest problems. In the 'Ode to Free Rome' we find worthy treatment of the subject and passionate expression of generous sympathy."—Saturday Review, July ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... slavery was one of the first with which the Company had to grapple, the Royal Charter having ordained that "the Company shall to the best of its power discourage and, as far as may be practicable, abolish by degrees, any system of domestic servitude existing among the tribes of the Coast or interior of Borneo; and no foreigners whether European, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... the past two years every thinking man and woman must have been impressed by the gravity of the problems with which our present Chief Executive has been forced to grapple: problems that have demanded of him many of the great qualities which distinguished our first President. These problems involved a steady adherence to what is right, a lofty patriotism sinking the individual in the consideration of the public good. Firmness before the enemy, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... far from being at an end. The patriarch told Stern, when he brought the grapple to the hut—followed by a silent, all-observant crowd—that sometimes these torrential downpours lasted from three to ten sleep-times, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... Greece; but when I got as far as Homeric Theogony, she looked piteously at me, while with Hesiod and Orpheus she was hopelessly bewildered, and by the time I reached the extra Hellenic religion she was fast asleep! I do not believe her mind is strong enough to grapple with those old Greek chaps; at all events they worry her, and tire her more than they rest. So I have abandoned the gods and come down to common people, and am reading to her Tennyson's poems. Have read the May Queen four times, until ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... South London Working Men's College has undertaken is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie ready to a man's hand just ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... keep them from coming to the scratch as soon as they should. They hang off, growling and grumbling, and blackguarding, and blaspheming, when, if they would only take hold, and come to an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show themselves—broken heads and noses would follow—the bad blood would run, and as soon as each party found his level, the one being finally on his back, peace would ensue, and there would be good humor for ever after, or at least until the blood ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... the fascination of his purely unaffected, earnest manner, the magic power of his unstudied action, and the thrilling intonations of his deep rich voice, rendered him, in his best days, "before public assemblies, almost irresistible." He managed his strength to such advantage, that few men dared to grapple with him "in a pitched field of long and serious debate." His general tone and style in debate were marked by an intense earnestness, whilst his narrative, possessing, from its striking naturalness and simplicity, a high degree of dramatic interest, was occasionally relieved ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... to every danger, had drawn upon him all the bravest of the enemy, He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his ship: he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard: he sunk three fireships, which endeavored to grapple with him: and though his vessel was torn in pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained, near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... then another to the right, and then one more to the left, jest like a wriggling wum. Tell your skipper to follow me close so as to run by me as soon as he sees the schooner lying at anchor. She'll come into sight all at once from behind the trees like, and whatever you do, run close aboard and grapple her. Her skipper'll have no time to show fight if you do your work to rights. I'm all of a tremble about it, I tell yew, for it means so much to me. There; my work's jest about done, and I'm going to run for the shore out of the way. I don't want the Portygee ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... like those of Rousseau, are, if anything, indecent and nauseating. The case of a man in such situations is bad enough, but the remedy for it is perforce committed to his own hands. Let him put his hand to the plough and not turn back, let him grapple with the evil in his nature and subdue and transform it, let him accomplish his inner redemption, let him make himself what he ought to be—what others perhaps think he is. What aid can the spiritual view of life extend to him in ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... usage in the world; the sun and rain hardly fell on me unpaid. I've earned every inch of this flesh and muscle, worked for it as it grew; the knowledge that I have, scanty enough, but whatever thought I do have of God or life, I've had to grapple and struggle for. Other men grow, inhale their being, like yonder tree God planted and watered. I think sometimes He forgot me,"—with a curious woman's tremor in his voice, gone in an instant. "I scrambled up like that scraggy parasite, without a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... sincerely hoped that many may be led by the facts here presented, to grapple with the monster and to thus promote ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... was too deep—a good five fathom he said there was over 'em—and then there was sharks about too. So he unlaid a bit o' rope from the wreckage, knocked some nails out o' some o' the timber that had druv ashore, and fixed up a sorter small grapple, with which he went gropin' out on this here oyster bed. But the thing wasn't of much account, accordin' to what Abe himself said. First he'd got to git it just so over a oyster afore it'd take holt; and then, when he'd hooked one, as often as not the blamed thing'd let go ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... country before its discovery, ask not who, but what sort of men inhabited it, their habits and their relations, the gentlemen who compose this society of Americanistes would probably reach valuable results. There is plenty to occupy them. If they do not want to grapple at once such a knotty subject as the relation of the Mound Builders to the existing tribes, let them explore Spain for relics of the Aztecs. It is highly probable that records of the most precious character are still to be found there in public ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Give me the railway guide, and I'll tell you when he will be here tomorrow. You may trust me, Catherine, to make no mistakes. Mr. Presty's wonderful knowledge of figures has been of the greatest use to me in later life. Thanks to his instructions, I am the only person in the house who can grapple with the intricacies of our railway system. Your poor father, Mr. Norman, could never understand time-tables and never attempted to conceal his deficiencies. He had none of the vanity (harmless vanity, perhaps) which led poor Mr. Presty to express positive ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... creature has got this seed-vessel of the grapple plant into his mouth," he said, exhibiting it. "I suspect that any of you who had taken the same between your jaws would have roared too, if ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... thee only by their unbought love, Ready to stand—to fight—to die with thee, Be that thy pride, be that thy noblest boast! Knit to thy heart the ties of kindred—home— Cling to the land, the dear land of thy sires, Grapple to that with thy whole heart and soul! Thy power is rooted deep and strongly here, But in yon stranger world thou'lt stand alone, A trembling reed beat down by every blast. Oh come! 'tis long since we have seen thee, Uly! Tarry but this one day. Only to-day! Go not to Altdorf. ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... forty thousand men. They were met by the Carthagin'ians with a fleet equally powerful, and men more used to the sea. 16. While the fight continued at a distance, the Carthagin'ians seemed successful; but when the Romans came to grapple with them, the difference between a mercenary army and one that fought for fame, was apparent. 17. The resolution of the Romans was crowned with success; the enemy's fleet was dispersed, and fifty-four of their vessels ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... chapters in the writers who have refuted him. My own reading has led me to become moderately well acquainted with the literature of evolution, but I have never come across a single attempt fairly to grapple with Lamarck, and it is plain that neither Isidore Geoffroy nor M. Martins knows of such an attempt any more than I do. When Professor Ray Lankester puts his finger on Lamarck's weak places, then, but not till then, may he complain ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... splinter of wood against my face. The boat gave a sudden tremor, and, with a quick, sharp cry of pain, the negro next me leaped into the air, and went plunging overboard. I flung forth a hand in vain effort to grapple his body, yet never touched it, and everything about became ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... Teucrians; why this quarrel in face of my injunction? What terror hath bidden one or another run after arms and tempt the sword? The due time of battle will arrive, call it not forth, when furious Carthage shall one day sunder the Alps to hurl ruin full on the towers of Rome. Then hatred may grapple with hatred, then hostilities be opened; now let them be, and cheerfully join in ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... their lazy, disorderly keepers and crews, scattered along the coast, to the order, discipline and efficiency of forts and drilled soldiers, and the result proved that order and discipline, when evolved out of the worst materials, can grapple with and conquer even the sea. In 1873 the seventy-one station-houses were increased to eighty-one, the line having been extended along the coasts of Cape Cod and Rhode Island. Congress having appropriated one hundred thousand dollars ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... bad effect for Harry Paul, inasmuch as it made him he was trying to succour struggle and endeavour to clutch at the arms that held him. Once he could do this, Harry knew that his case would be hopeless, for from that death-grapple there could be no escape. He held the man then firmly and swam on, feeling himself moment by moment grow more weary, for he was swimming in his clinging clothes, and unless help soon came he knew that he must loosen his grasp and strive to ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn

... said L'Isle, bitterly. "What made it more provoking was, that we had at that very time the man to mate him;" and, standing up on his stirrups, he raised his clenched hand above his head, exclaiming: "O, for one hour of Peterborough to grapple with his countryman and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... huge rock, he scanned another crag, Saying: "To that one grapple afterwards, But try first if 'tis such that it ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... candle. To-day Joel, one of a squad of unfortunates, was relearning the art of tackling. It was Joel's first experience with that marvelous contrivance, "the dummy." One after another the squad was sent at a sharp spurt to grapple the inanimate canvas-covered bag hanging inoffensively there, like a body from a gallows, between ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... preferable to another of those long, driving blows. He clung until his head cleared. Then he shook himself loose and dropped, as if dazed, to one knee. McTee's bellow of triumph filled his ears. The captain bore down on him with outstretched hands to grapple at his throat, but at the right instant Harrigan rose and lurched out with stiff arm. The punch drove home to the face with a shock that jarred Harrigan to his feet and jerked McTee back as if drawn by a hand. Before he recovered ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... youth by his teachings. Socrates does not have recourse to the ordinary methods adopted by orators on similar occasions. He prefers to stand upon his own integrity and innocence, uninfluenced by the fear of that imaginary evil, death. He, therefore, does not firmly grapple with either of the charges preferred against him. He neither denies nor confesses the first accusation, but shows that in several instances he conformed to the religious customs of his country, and that he believes in God more than he fears man. The second charge he meets by a cross-examination ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato

... of any size desired without impairing distinctness of vision!" He wrinkled his brow and fell to making geometrical diagrams on the envelope, but neither his theoretical mathematics nor his practical craftsmanship could grapple with so obscure a request, and he forgot to eat while he pondered. He consulted his own treatise on the Rainbow, but to no avail. At length in despair he took up the last letter, to find a greater surprise awaiting him. A communication from Professor Fabritius, it bore an offer from the Elector ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... by bars of iron and large nails, carried up to the height of a lance or spear, and so large that it was able to contain forty men with several pieces of ordnance. It was proposed that this castle should be brought Up to grapple with the caravels, by which the Portuguese might be attacked on equal terms. On seeing this machine, the zamorin liberally rewarded Cogeal for his ingenuity, and gave orders to have other seven constructed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... thing must be made to bend. Such, too, was the feeling of that extraordinary man, who, with the solitary exception of England, exacted homage from every crowned head of Europe. This man, in the plenitude of his power, felt that something was still wanting to enable him to grapple with one little island, invulnerable by its maritime strength, the sinews of which he knew to be derived from its colonies: he felt that, deprived as he was of "ships, colonies, and commerce," England was able to stand alone among nations, and to bid defiance to his overwhelming power. That cunning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... again Grace looked at Kit. He had not got his color back, his lips were set and his gaze was fixed. The shock had broken his control and brought her enlightenment. He loved her, but she needed time and quietness to grapple with the situation. Her heart beat and her nerves tingled; she could not see the line she ought to take. Yet he must ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... Grapple not now with such thoughts. To-morrow we will speak of this. Your mind wavers, and its agitation will find relief in the exercise of simple memories. Look not around, nor forward—but back. I am ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his assailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... after a while, but our fine new seine was gone, and the big school of fish too. After a hard grapple we got the dories and a little later the seine-boat, and after a lot more work we got them right side up. The dories we pulled the plugs out of to let them drain and then took them on deck, but the ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... homeward, laid siege to Ludlow Castle, which had not been reduced with the rest: here Prince Henry of Scotland, boiling with youth and valour, and exposing his person upon all occasions, was lifted from his horse by an iron grapple let down from the wall, and would have been hoisted up into the castle, if the King had not immediately flown to his assistance, and brought him off with his own hands by main force from the enemy, whom he soon ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... hope that handkerchief. Weak natures shiver and procrastinate, shunning confirmation of their dread; but to this woman had come a frantic longing to see, to grasp, to embrace the worst. She was in a death grapple with appalling fate, and that handkerchief would ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... and trackless plains,—that is to my mind wonderfully striking and sublime. He is formed for the wilderness, as the Arab is for the desert. His nature is stern, simple, and enduring; fitted to grapple with difficulties and to support privations. There seems but little soil in his heart for the support of the kindly virtues; and yet, if we would but take the trouble to penetrate through that proud stoicism and habitual taciturnity which lock up his character from casual ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... he exclaimed in utter astonishment; "how? I shouldn't think you had the strength to grapple ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... cable could be made. The "Great Eastern," the largest ship in the world, was secured, and began paying out the cable; but twelve hundred miles from shore the cable parted and could not be regained, although every effort was made to grapple it. So the vessel had to put back to England, and Field was confronted with the heart-breaking task of raising even more money. He succeeded in doing so, and in 1866, another expedition started out with a new cable. This time, it met with no serious ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... the collision. He could see dimly the shape of a ship's prow, and the broken end of a bowsprit was not yet wholly disentangled from the rent in the side of the steamer. The two vessels, locked together like a pair of sea-monsters that had perished in the death grapple of a desperate encounter, tossed up and down on the long swell, swayed by the wind which seemed to be increasing ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... found it much easier to condemn M. SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very ingenious, and had a great appearance of truth; but still they said it was not truth. They never, however, as far as I could observe, thought proper to grapple with him, to point out anything unfounded in his premises, or illogical in the conclusions which he drew from them; they generally confined themselves to mere assertions, or to minute and unimportant observations by which the real question was in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... yourself," he said, with an appearance of dignity. "You spring forward as if you were going to grapple with me, and then you are surprised that I should ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... boys em' up, and makes em' happy, is the thought that they are a keepin' trouble and care offen wimmen. That is a sweet thought to men, and always wuz. And there wuz great strains put onto our minds, us men that sot, that wimmen couldn't be expected to grapple with, and hadn't ort to try to. It wuz a great ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... is far too deep for Freddy, and he takes a bite of sweet-cake in sign that he does not think of solving it. Frank looks at him gloomily for a moment, and then determines that he can grapple with the difficulty more successfully after he has had tea. "Send up the supper, Bridget. I think, my dear," he says, after they have sat down, "we'd better all question our ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... invisible messenger that took the word across the boundary. He could not fathom the mystery, he could not picture to himself the missing link in the chain. As was always the case with him, his mind began at once to grapple with its problem—in this instance the riddle of the missing link. He ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... before us; who is competent to the task? Statesmen as wise and patriotic as any the world ever produced, have shrunk from the task, confounded and abashed. Where is Clay! Where is Webster? All that was earthly of them, is no more. Long did they grapple with the monster slavery, and by their wise councils, through many a dark and stormy period, did they safely conduct the ship of State. But they are gone, and shall we now confide the interests of this great nation, to the keeping of a few sickly ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... vain to pursue farther the unthinkable vastness of the visible Universe; as for the invisible it is equally useless for even imagination to try to grapple with its never-ending immensity, to endeavor to penetrate its awful clouded mystery ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... see the Piazza di Colonna and the theatre, in which the pantomime of King Midas is acted. Balducci who is there with his daughter among the spectators recognizes in the snoring King a portrait of himself and furiously advances to grapple with him. Cellini profits by the ensuing tumult to approach Teresa, but at the same time Fieramosca comes up with Pompeo, and Teresa cannot discern which is the true lover, owing to the masks.—A fight ensues, in which Cellini stabs Pompeo. He is arrested ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... rode thither with Carrigan that night it seemed as if he now was at grapple with forces, invisible, powerful, malevolent, that strove to dispossess him of everything that was dear. His project! What means, what help, what law was there of which he could make use to ward off this deadly assault on it? And Ruth! ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... allowed Beowulf, at his request, to remain alone in the hall with his men. Aware that no weapon could pierce the armed hide of the uncanny monster, Beowulf—who had the strength of thirty men—laid aside his armor and prepared to grapple with Grendel by main ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... all-enveloper. But if nothing escapes this all-enveloper, he is responsible for everything, including evil, and all the paradoxes and difficulties which I found in the absolute at the end of our third lecture recur undiminished. Fechner tries sincerely to grapple with the problem of evil, but he always solves it in the leibnitzian fashion by making his God non-absolute, placing him under conditions of 'metaphysical necessity' which even his omnipotence cannot violate. His will has to struggle ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... immediately—since there was no glamour of passion on his side—he began to resent her small tyrannies, to draw in, and draw back. A few quarrels—not ordinary lovers' quarrels, but representing a true grapple of personalities—sprang up behind a screen of trifles. Daphne was once more rude and provoking, Roger cool and apparently indifferent. This was the stage when Mrs. Verrier had become an admiring observer of what she supposed to be his "tactics." But she knew nothing of ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... accustomed to say that women were incapable of business, and yet here are the ladies of his own household compelled to grapple with the most perplexing forms of business or suffer aggravated losses. Though all of his family were of mature years, and thousands had been spent on their education, they were as helpless as four children in dealing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... also on account of the vast mortality caused by the Great Plague, the burials in the large common pits and public burial grounds, and the opposition of the Quakers to inspection and registration. All these causes contributed to the issuing of unreliable returns. The company did their best to grapple with all these difficulties. They did not escape censure, and were blamed on account of the faults of individual clerks. The contest went on for years, and was only finally settled in 1859, when the last bills of mortality ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... at each other blankly, two children face to face with one of the most terrible of modern social problems, aghast at their powerlessness to grapple with it. It is a situation which wrings the souls of the strong with an agony worse than death. It crushes the weak, or drives them mad, and often brings them, fragile wisps of human semblance, into the criminal dock. Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... mass, Melts into lymph, or kindles into gas. ATTRACTION next, as earth or air subsides, The ponderous atoms from the light divides, 240 Approaching parts with quick embrace combines, Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lines. Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite, Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite; And quick CONTRACTION with ethereal flame Lights into life the fibre-woven frame.— Hence without parent by spontaneous birth Rise the first specks of animated earth; From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims, And buds or breathes, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... however, in no mood for praying; and putting forth his slabs of arms like the paws of an alligator, he tried to grapple his foe by the throat. The cries of the mother now mingled with those of the child as he put out his little arms to shield his black protector. The ruffian, foiled in his purpose, with baffled rage evaded the negro by stepping to one side; and as he did so, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... the distance of races! The meditation of this young French soldier, in face of the enemy who is to attack on the morrow, resumes the strange ecstasy in which was rapt the warrior of the Bhagavad Gita between two armies coming to the grapple. He, too, sees the turbulence of mankind as a dream that seems to veil the higher order and the Divine unity. He, too, puts his faith in that 'which knows neither birth nor death,' which is 'not born, is indestructible, is not slain when this body is slain.' This is the perpetual ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... name the thing was called, but he still appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;—Hodder, with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm. The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated, and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were infinite, whose victims had never escaped. The monster was in Eldon Parr—that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... turned in time to see the heavy spear flying toward them and then, as he dashed into their midst, Billy Byrne drew his revolver and fired to right and left. The two prisoners took advantage of the consternation of their guards to grapple with them and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the period of my lay preaching, both in Nottingham and London, I had to grapple with other difficulties. What with one thing and another I had a great struggle at times to keep my head above the waters, and my heart alive with peace and love. But I held on to God and His grace, and the never-failing joy that I experienced in leading ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... There is a large number of imperfectly equipped men in all professions and in social movements, presuming to act as leaders, who might well be replaced by disciplined and cultured men, able to grapple with modern social problems, and to conduct the people to higher thought and nobler action. Men who are to become leaders and gain a strong hold on society must have a good foundation of general knowledge, and be trained to think on complicated questions. The man of thorough ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... was a deadly one, for it was aimed with judgment, and Gyt was a bold and powerful man; but it did not prove effectual so as to save Gyt's life, for the enraged lion, striving in his death agonies to grapple with Gyt,—held at arm's length by the strength of desperation on the part of the boor,—so dreadfully lacerated with his talons the breast and arms of poor Gyt, that his bones ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... stupor due to the food and the reaction from her nervous and physical exhaustion came over her. She felt too languid to grapple with the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... stood the dog Queen, crouching, waiting, bristling. By her side Harry Wendel crouched on one knee, as if awaiting the signal. Behind him, the Nervina, supporting the awakening Aradna. And in front of all, the powerful bulk of Hobart Fenton, standing squarely at the head of the stair, ready to grapple the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... warriors of terrible aspect, and thus feign a defence of seeming impregnability, until some bolder champion of the besiegers dashes forward to try an encounter with the foremost foeman, and finds him melt away in the death grapple. With such heroic adventures let the march upon Manassas be hereafter reckoned. The whole business, though connected with the destinies of a nation, takes inevitably a tinge of the ludicrous. The vast preparation of men ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the cliff they rolled. We crouched closer to the rocky wall, gazing up at the death grapple of the two. Who they were we did not know but that one was fighting for and the other against us we ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... situation found himself so utterly strange, that, if left to himself, he would scarcely have known what to set about first, and he was therefore only too glad to find that Gaunt was not only so willing, but also so thoroughly able to grapple with the difficulty. He said as much; and when Nicholls was asked his opinion it turned out that, like a great many more of his class, he was quite unable to advance one, but was perfectly willing to follow ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... pleased or disappointed to find the meal served as well as before, but her thoughts were not cheerful while she ate. She remembered her ambitions and her resolve to leave the dreary plains and make her mark in Toronto or Montreal. Now her dreams had vanished and she must grapple with dull realities that jarred her ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... you that throw some day, friend," he was saying. "Had I not known the trick of it, you had mauled me sadly. I had liefer grapple with a bear." ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... individual with whom they were in daily intercourse, it is not extraordinary that their faith faltered, and that their powers of apprehension failed, as they pondered the prophecies relating to His advent. When they attempted closely to grapple with the amazing truths there presented to their contemplation, and thought of "the Word made flesh," well might they be overwhelmed with a feeling of giddy and dubious wonder. Even after the resurrection ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... hunter, I was told by him that he once, while out in the woods, came upon the skeletons of two large bucks, that, in fighting, had got their horns so interlocked and wedged together, that they could not separate them, and thus, locked in the death grapple, they had starved and died. There lay their bones, the flesh eaten from them by the beasts and carrion birds, and, bleached by the sun and the storms, the two skulls with the horns still interlocked; and the narrator told me he had them ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... the gulf. You can make up a crack in a wall with plaster after a fashion, and it will hide the solution of continuity that lies beneath. But let bad weather come, and soon the bricks gape apart as before. And so, as soon as we get down below the surface of things and grapple with the real, deep-lying, and formative principles of a life, we come to antagonism, just as they used to come to it long ago, though the form of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... and the difficult double rhyme, sustains the mood of victorious but not lightly won serenity of soul—"too full for sound and foam." It is, among songs over the dead, what Rabbi ben Ezra and Prospice are among the songs which face and grapple with death; the fittest requiem to follow such deaths as those. Like Ben Ezra, the Grammarian "trusts death," and stakes his life ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... with such tenacity of life, and such methods of propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance? It is truly a mystery, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the situation.[3] The North-West Council sent strong memorials backing the requests of the Metis. And still, though some of the grievances were redressed, in piecemeal fashion, no attempt was made to grapple adequately with the difficult questions presented by the meeting {77} of two stages of civilization, to understand the disputes, the real wrongs, the baseless fears. When in 1883 Blake in the House of Commons called for papers, none ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... number of duels did not diminish, and the wise Sully had still to lament the prevalence of an evil which menaced society with utter disorganisation. In the succeeding reign the practice prevailed, if possible, to a still greater extent, until the Cardinal de Richelieu, better able to grapple with it than Sully had been, made some severe examples in the very highest classes. Lord Herbert, the English ambassador at the court of Louis XIII., repeats, in his letters, an observation that had been previously ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... purpose of regulating the railway traffic of the country, has, as Mr. Justice Harlan observes,[95] "been shorn by judicial interpretation, of authority to do anything of an effective character." Both the general and the state governments in their efforts to grapple with this problem have encountered the restraining arm of the Federal judiciary which has enlarged its jurisdiction until nearly every important case involving corporate interests may be brought before ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... John Meredith walked the floor with rapt face and shining eyes, thinking out his message of the morrow, and knew not that under his own roof there was a little forlorn soul, stumbling in darkness and ignorance, beset by terror and compassed about with difficulties too great for it to grapple in its unequal struggle with ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is turned to the supposed new point of attack, and I will leap down and make a spring to get within the line of the muzzle before he can fire; and, the instant I disappear, you and these men follow, and be close on my heels for the grapple." ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... was not going well there. When the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed, Sumner exultantly exclaimed: "It sets freedom and slavery face to face, and bids them grapple." Nebraska was conceded to freedom, but the day Kansas, the southern Territory, was thrown open to settlement, a long, confused, confusing struggle began. The whole country was drawn into it. Blue ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... sparse, and school-houses were at long intervals, and in these the mere rudiments of an English education were taught—spelling, reading, and writing, with the four elementary rules of arithmetic; and it was a great advance to grapple with the grammar of the language. As population and prosperity increased, their almost illiterate teachers gave place to a better class; and many of my Georgia readers will remember as among these the old Irish preachers, Cummings, and that remarkable brute, Daniel Duffee. He was an Irishman ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... dealing with Hobbes, Parker thinks fit to assert the claims of conscience so strongly, when he has to grapple with those who, like the immortal author of The Pilgrim's Progress, "devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church," and upheld "unlawful Meetings and Conventicles," his tone alters, and ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... is no pain. I don't mean to be sententious, but this is the death-grapple that is coming. They will need me and every ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... to those days that will never come again; hours when you listened perhaps guiltily to the stinging words of the coach; moments when spurred on by the thunder and lightning of his wrath you could hardly wait to get out upon the field to grapple with your opponents. At such times, all that was worth while seemed to surge up within you, fiercely demanding a chance, while if you were a coach you yearned to get into the game, only to realize as the ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... social change hereby involved, and the consequent differences in the moral relations between individuals, have not as yet been thought of,—much less estimated,—by any of your writers on commercial subjects; and it is because I do not yet feel able to grapple with them that I have left untouched, in the books I send you, the question of co-operative labor. When I use the word "co-operation," it is not meant to refer to these new constitutions of firms at all. I use the word in a far wider sense, as opposed, not to masterhood, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... in Midian, who seems to have been the only able, honest, and experienced man within reach. Joshua, indeed, might be held to be an exception to this generalization, but Joshua, though a good soldier, was a man of somewhat narrow understanding, and quite unfit to grapple with questions involving jurisprudence ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... Lady Strangways said hastily; "I mean, my dear, that would be more difficult perhaps for you to grapple with. Really, I have no choice in the matter; ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... the end of one sleeve and throwing him the other), or some other convenient object. If you are obliged to jump in after him, approach him with great caution, throw your left arm around his neck with his back to your side (Figure 1), in which position he can't grapple you, and swim with your legs and right arm. If he should succeed in grasping you, take a long breath, sink with him, place your feet or knees against his ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... found in the language of the "Faith Psalm," "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." It is not really death that we have to grapple with. It is only the shadow of death. We do not fear the shadow of a sword, or the shadow of a serpent. The above verse of the twenty-third Psalm is very frequently misquoted. It is called the dark valley. But ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... attempted to keep above water, but it was impossible; I was drawn down with the ship until she reached the bottom. As soon as she grounded, the water boiled and bubbled a great deal, and then I found that I could swim, and began to rise to the surface. A man tried to grapple me as I went up; his forefinger caught in my shoe, between the shoe and my foot. I succeeded in kicking off my shoe, and thus got rid of him, and then I rose to ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... "spurting flames and their ordnance exploding," were borne by wind and tide full upon the crowded Spanish fleet. Fearful of maquinas de minas such as had wrought destruction a year before at the siege of Antwerp, the Spanish made no effort to grapple the peril but slipped or cut cables and in complete confusion ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... matted mass of the bridge so long it will threaten the people along its course with pestilence. The committee confess their inability to do this needed work, and to-day voted to ask the Governors of the several States to co-operate in the establishment of a national relief committee to grapple with the situation. Action cannot and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... gigantic undertaking. In its fourteen books Maimonides presented a clearly-arranged and clearly-worded summary of the Rabbinical Halachah, or Law. In one sense it is an encyclopedia, but it is an encyclopedia written with style. For its power to grapple with vast materials, this code has few rivals and no superiors in other literatures. Maimonides completed its compilation in 1180, having spent ten years over it. During the whole of that time, he was not only a popular doctor, but ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams

... where he found a quantity of little things in gold and silver. He was engaged in bursting open certain boxes to get at the jewels he had noticed, when my dog jumped upon him, and put him to much trouble to defend himself with his sword. The dog, unable to grapple with an armed man, ran several times through the house, and rushed into the rooms of the journeymen, which had been left open because of the great heat. When he found they paid no heed to his loud barking, he dragged their bed-clothes off; and when ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... as I confess for me, "Dona Perfecta" is not realistic enough—realistic as it is; for realism at its best is not tendencious. It does not seek to grapple with human problems, but is richly content with portraying human experiences; and I think Senora Pardo-Bazan is right in regarding "Dona Perfecta" as transitional, and of a period when the author had not yet assimilated in its fullest meaning the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... place in these pages to grapple with a subject so large as that of Love in its varied phases: a theme that must be left to poets, novelists, and moralists to dilate upon. It is sufficient for our purpose to recognize the existence ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... years come and go; the seasons dawn And fade, and pass to swell the solemn ranks Of august ages in the march of Time. But changeless still, amid eternal change, Old Skidloe bears the furious brunt of all The warring elements that grapple mid The mighty insurrections of the sea! Gray desolation, ancient solitude, Brood o'er his wide, unrestful water world, While grim, unmoved, forbidding as of yore, He wraps his kingly altitudes about ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the most isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons, homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will Bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case, is not this the real death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek; whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English costume, uttering audacious ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the protection of property, ordinances, O king, have been established in the world, under the name of chastisement (or punitive legislation). Thither where chastisement, of dark complexion and red eyes, stands in an attitude of readiness (to grapple with every offender) and the king is of righteous vision, the subjects never forget themselves. The Brahmacharin and the house-holder, the recluse in the forest and the religious mendicant, all these walk in their respective ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... by misapplying it, or by straining it too far; being incapable of perceiving when it ought to yield to one of higher order. In it are found critics too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him; men, who take upon them to report of the course which he holds whom they are utterly unable to accompany,—confounded if he turn quick upon the wing, dismayed if he soar steadily 'into the region;'—men of palsied imaginations and indurated hearts; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... nailed down my resolutions, I had determined to hold fast to such threads of my common sense as remained. Only in the night-time, when sleep mocked me and all hope of escape was futile, was I forced to grapple with this new-born monster of folly. It drove me up across the Park to where the house, black and lightless, rose a dark incongruous mass above the trees, down to the sea, where the wind came booming across ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... can already see the woman in her. That child, Sally, has in her the making of a great woman. I've been careful not to crowd her, but she has a wonderful mind,—not the brilliant sort that half sees things in lightning flashes, but a vigorous mind, that can grapple with a problem and fight it out. I'm afraid to tell you how remarkable I think she is. No; poor Edna was not like that. She ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... second the observed of all observers, armed to the teeth, he calmly jumped into the jaws of those baying wolves. The shock of the fall was unwillingly broken by the astonished forms of those on whom he fell, and before they could grapple with him he was pushing boldly through the crowd. But the odds and press were too great for him, and after a brief close scuffle he was for want of elbow-room overpowered and disarmed. Many shouted "Kill him! Kill him! he is a Cavignari-ite!" But above the uproar, holding ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... qualities. He had little experience in statesmanship when he was called to the Presidency. He had only a few years of service in the State Legislature of Illinois, and a single term in Congress ending twelve years before he became President, but he had to grapple with the gravest problems ever presented to the statesmanship of the nation for solution, and he met each and all of them in turn with the most consistent mastery, and settled them so successfully that all have stood unquestioned until the present time, and are certain to endure ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... more congenial to his feelings than to remain under the ceremonial and puritanic restraints of the seat of Government, and involved in perplexities with which he had no ability, and probably no taste, to grapple. He was glad to take himself out of the way; and as his impetuous and impulsive nature rendered those under him liable to find him troublesome, they were not sorry to ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham



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