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Mainstay   /mˈeɪnstˌeɪ/   Listen
Mainstay

noun
1.
A prominent supporter.  Synonym: pillar.
2.
A central cohesive source of support and stability.  Synonyms: anchor, backbone, keystone, linchpin, lynchpin.  "The keystone of campaign reform was the ban on soft money" , "He is the linchpin of this firm"
3.
The forestay that braces the mainmast.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mainstay" Quotes from Famous Books



... nothingness). Moreover, the great Turanian family, actually occupying all Eastern Asia, has ever ignored it; and the 200,000,000 of Chinese Confucians, the mass of the nation, protest emphatically against the mainstay of the western creeds, because it unfits men for the business and duty of life by fixing their speculations on an unknown world. And even its votaries, in all ages, races and faiths, cannot deny that the next world is a copy, more or less ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... And there's a feeling about the old regiment too. I can excuse her, though I wish she had not been so impatient. I fancy that eldest daughter is really a good girl and the mainstay of ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... who had given Maimonides to the science of the Middle Ages, and who were the mainstay of all the industries and commerce of Spain, left our country en masse. Spain, deceived by its extraordinary vitality was opening its own veins to satisfy the growing fanaticism, believing that it could survive this loss without danger. Afterwards came what ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... were my escort come up to view the spoil and acclaim my prowess, than there arrived also a wretched cultivator, swearing with tears and howls that I had wantonly destroyed the friend of his family, the mainstay of his lowly cot. I held a court on the spot, and desired to know what sum would compensate him for this cruel loss. The opportunity of taking in the stranger was too promising to resist, and he requested leave ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... individuals were swayed by good or bad motives, where good motives were so often paraded to mask base actions, does not disguise their despicable character. Honest optimates would wish to maintain the Senate's preponderance from affection to it, and from belief in its being the mainstay of the State. Honest populares, like the Gracchi, who saw the evils of senatorial rule, tried to win the popular vote to compass its overthrow. Dishonest politicians of either side advocated conservatism or change simply from the most selfish personal ambition; and in time of general moral laxity ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... was understood that Lady Glencora was not to be snubbed, though she was very much given to snubbing others. She had attained this position for herself by a mixture of beauty, rank, wealth, and courage;—but the courage had, of the four, been her greatest mainstay. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... that I never seed the like of. We were obliged to have three men stationed to hold the captain's hair on his head; and a little boy was blown over the moon, and slid down by two or three of her beams, till he caught the mainstay, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... huts surrounding the rude plaza, women squatted on the ground, their arms swinging monotonously up and down as they struck their wooden pestles into bowls of grain which they were grinding to make the coarse meal which was their mainstay ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole

... once the mainstay of England and now trodden down and neglected, cannot rise alone and without help from those above them. "What right have we to keep them down? . . . What right have we to say that they shall know no higher recreation than the hogs, because, forsooth, if we raised them they might refuse ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... they made the attempt to do so the better: Sir James might hear unfavorable accounts of them, if they gave him time to consort freely with his neighbors. Therefore, with the help of their literary mainstay, Wiggins, they composed a honeyed letter to him, asking leave to fish the Grange water. Sir James consulted Mr. Hilton about the letter, received an account of the Twins from him which made him loath indeed to give them leave; and since he ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... grains an hour, or fifty and sixty grains of quinine in one day or remission to be absolutely imaginary." He is "convinced that it is not a stimulant," and with many apologies he cautiously sanctions alcohol, which should often be the physician's mainstay. As he advocated ten-grain doses of calomel by way of preliminary cathartic, the American missionaries stationed on the River have adopted a treatment still more "severe"—quinine till deafness ensues, and half a handful of mercury, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... plan. There is old Uncle Israel and his wife; then there is the widow Manley, with four little children, suffering for want of the actual necessaries of life; and then there is Mrs. Williams—she is very poor. Her son Philip, who is her mainstay, was sick all the summer and fall, and is sick now; so the woman got nothing from her little patch of land, and is now absolutely reduced to beggary, with herself and sick son to support. Now let us take these three cases in ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... her counsel, however, and feigned to the Moslems that she was glad and wept for excess of joy. But she said to herself, "By the truth of the Messiah, there remaineth no profit of my life, if I burn not his heart for his brother, Sharrkan, even as he hath burned my heart for King Hardub, the mainstay of Christendom and the hosts of Crossdom!" Still she kept her secret. And the Wazir Dandan and King Zau al-Makan and the Chamberlain remained sitting with Sharrkan till they had dressed and salved his wound; after which they gave him medicines and he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... have failed are in the habit of complaining that they have not received sufficient support from the Government, which is accused of having systematically sacrificed the interests of agriculture, the mainstay of the national resources, to the creation of artificial and unnecessary manufacturing industries. How far such complaints and accusations are well founded I shall not attempt to decide. It is a complicated polemical question, into which the reader would probably decline to accompany ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... was vociferous—so long as the singing went on. But he developed, besides an obstreperous voice, an obstreperous interest in one of our Adeles—a piercing soprano who was our mainstay; and he showed some tendency to defeat the occasion by segregating her in a bay window. Segregation was the last of our aims, and Johnny did not quite please. Furthermore, Johnny seemed to feel himself among a lot of boys who were yet to make ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... envy, or the poltroon's drivel! —The enervating friendship which enfolds you Is like an open-laced Italian collar, Floating around your neck in woman's fashion; One is at ease thus,—but less proud the carriage! The forehead, free from mainstay or coercion, Bends here, there, everywhere. But I, embracing Hatred, she lends,—forbidding, stiffly fluted, The ruff's starched folds that hold the head so rigid; Each enemy—another fold—a gopher, Who adds constraint, and adds a ray of glory; For Hatred, like the ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... one could have lived more comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We always kept the house clean—using the word in a rather large sense. There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer, sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days, buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... useful work must, after all, have been the mainstay of the villagers; and how thoroughly their spirits were immersed in it I suppose few living people will ever be able to realize. For my part, I dare not pretend to comprehend it; only at times I can vaguely feel what the peasant's ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... old now, and the end draws near. For half a century I have loved and served Him. I have known trials and sorrows not a few, but His presence has upheld me. The promise he gave his disciples the night before his death has been my mainstay: "Lo, I am with you alway!" In the faith of that promise I have seen men and women die with the light of heaven on their faces, heroic amid the flames, triumphant before the lion's eyes. I have heard them once and again protesting with their last breath, "Christianus ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell

... economic policies, Madagascar has since the mid 1990s followed a World Bank and IMF led policy of privatization and liberalization. This strategy has placed the country on a slow and steady growth path from an extremely low level. Agriculture, including fishing and forestry, is a mainstay of the economy, accounting for more than one-fourth of GDP and employing four-fifths of the population. Exports of apparel have boomed in recent years primarily due to duty-free access to the United States. Deforestation and erosion, aggravated by the use of firewood ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... said brokenly. "Dinna you break doon noo, for you hae been the mainstay o' us a', when we wad hae lost heart often. I used to think that oor lot couldna be harder, when the bairns were a' wee, an' we were struggling frae haun' to mooth, to see them fed an' cled. But wi' a' the hardships, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... over 100 ft. deep and the other scarcely inferior, flowed, the first, 50 miles and the other 40, till they reached the sea, pouring a flood of white hot lava into the ocean, destroying everything in their paths and killing in the waters of the ocean the fish, the mainstay of the inhabitants, who were reduced by the disaster, directly or indirectly, to less than five-sixths of their former strength; and third to that of Galungung, in 1822, which devastated such an immense area in Java; but all the eruptions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... silence prevailed. People looked at one another, and mournfully wrung one another's hands, as if in the presence, I would say, of a public calamity, were it not that these first moments of distress resembled rather the grief of a disconsolate family which has just lost the object and the mainstay of its hopes. The same evening they gave, at the Comedie-Francaise, a performance of the Partie de Chasse de Henri IV. I have often seen at the play in Paris allusions to passing events caught up with great cleverness, but ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... La Salle's enemies in Canada had gained the upper hand and had secured the recall of his mainstay, Count Frontenac. This meant that he could do nothing more from Canada as a ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... Hemans and the poetry of the affections. A public man, a commercial man as we well know, yet his heart is in his home, and his joy in his affections; the presence of this immense assembly here this evening; of the industrious capitalists; of the intelligent middle class; of the pride and mainstay of England, the operatives of Newcome; these, surrounded by their wives and their children (a graceful bow to the bonnets to the right of the platform), show that they too have hearts to feel, and homes to cherish; that they, too, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... given by the lord of the manor in 1305, the first allusion is made to Welsh coal, for the people among other privileges are allowed to dig "pit-coal in Ballywasta." Thus began the industry that has become the mainstay of prosperity in South Wales. Warwick's Castle at Swansea has entirely disappeared, the present ruins being those of a castle afterwards built by Henry de Gower, who became Bishop of St. David's. What is left of it is almost hidden by modern buildings. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... considered Bett-Bett one of the shadows but she persisted that she was the mainstay of the staff. "Me all day dust 'im paper, me round 'im up goat" she would say. "Me ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... The team which had beaten the O.B.s had not had the benefit of his assistance, Lorimer appearing in his stead. Lorimer was a fast right-hand bowler, deadly in House matches or on a very bad wicket. He was the mainstay of the Second Eleven attack, and in an ordinary year would have been certain of his First Eleven cap. This season, however, with Gosling, Baynes, and the Bishop, the School had been unusually strong, and Lorimer had had ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse

... shackles. With difficulty the narrow exchequer had raised cash enough to send Robert on this expedition to London, from which much was hoped. The young man had been tolerably well educated; he possessed a certain amount and quality of talent, extolled by partial friends as far above the average; but the mainstay of his anticipations was a promise of a Civil Service appointment, obtained from an influential quarter; and his unsophisticated country relatives believed he had only to present himself in order ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... revenue. Since the panic of 1857 the Treasury had faced a deficit at the end of each year, and had been compelled not only to spend its accumulated surplus on current needs, but to borrow heavily. The tariff duties, collected at the custom-houses, were, as they always had been, the mainstay of the revenue. But these had not met the needs of the three ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... non-comprehension of the Serb, traditional hatred of the Turk—all these are intensified by egoism. New Greece, with her hazardous northern frontier, needs to cultivate friendship, and will have to employ all her strategy to gain any. Her mainstay is, of course, England. For us Greece has the natural respect which a weak country pays to a strong friend, but she has also a curious covert regard for us as one nation of sailors for another, a petty maritime ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... members of a family, and having them collect the desired information, either by study of extant records, or by word of mouth. But the written records of value have been usually negligible in quantity, and oral communication has therefore been the mainstay. It has not been wholly satisfactory. Few people—aside from genealogists—can give even the names of all their great-grandparents, far less can they tell ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... the soldier to the priest, from the prince to the peasant. The severity of her discipline was tempered by a tolerant and half-amused insight into the pardonable foibles of humanity. She held back her nuns with one hand from "the frenzy of self-mortification," which is the mainstay of spiritual vanity, and with the other hand from a too solicitous regard for their own comfort and convenience. They were not to consider that the fear of a headache,—a non-existent headache threatening the future—was ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... Company, displayed their strength in a spirit of indocility which caused great embarrassment to the governor. Although in time of peace the freebooters kept the French settlements in continual danger of ruin by reprisal, in time of war they were the mainstay of the colony. As the governor, therefore, was dependent upon them for protection against the English, Spanish and Dutch, although he withdrew their commissions he dared not punish them for their crimes. The French buccaneers, indeed, occupied a ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... 1803 and 1805 respectively; but they ably supported Jeffrey by sending numerous contributions for many years. During the first quarter-century of the review's existence, this trio, with the cooeperation of Sir James Mackintosh and a few others, constituted the mainstay of its success. Jeffrey's remarkable critical faculty was displayed to best advantage in the wide range of articles (two hundred in number) which he wrote during his editorship. It is true that his otherwise sound judgment ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... of Sudrland the Pictish family and clan of Moddan in its various branches subsisted all through the Norse occupation, and it is hoped to show good reason for believing that the family of Moddan, with the Pictish or Scottish family of Freskyn de Moravia in later times, was the mainstay of Scottish rule in the extreme north until the shadowy claims of Norse suzerains over every part of the mainland were completely repelled, ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... The mainstay of the Hawaiian Islands has, for the last thirty-five years, been the sugar industry. From this source a large amount of wealth has been accumulated. But the sugar industry requires large capital for ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... Loving her mother with the whole of her affection, she had suffered all the pains and penalties of love from that repository. She was to-day upbraided for her want of coquetry and neatness; to-morrow, for proposing to desert her mother and elope with a person she had never thought of. The mainstay of the establishment, she was not aware of her usefulness. Accepting every complaint and outbreak as if she deserved it, the poor girl lived at the capital a beautiful scullion, an unsalaried domestic, and daily forwarded the food to ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... been said the reader may form for himself an idea of the intellectual and social life of the German town of the period. The wealthy patrician class, whose mainstay politically was the Rath, gave the social tone to the whole. In spite of the sharp and sometimes brutal fashion in which class distinctions asserted themselves then, as throughout the Middle Ages, there was ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... of the buttons. This was the line of experimentation which led to the development of the lime-light. The incandescent burner was widely employed, and until the use of electricity became common the lime-light was the mainstay for the stage and for the projection of lantern slides. It is in use even to-day for some purposes. The origin of the phrase "in the lime-light" is obvious. The luminous intensity of the oxyhydrogen ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... a sense, the mainstay of the Society (British Artists), partly through his own individuality and partly through the innovations he has introduced.... He has several oil and pastel pictures, very slight in themselves, of the female nude, dignified and graceful in line ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... pull up the anchor with?" he was saying. "Why, with yonder big rope that goes from masthead to bows." and he pointed to the great mainstay of our ship. "One must have a long purchase, if you know ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... however, turned what was mainly intended to be an English enterprise into a Scottish one. Scottish participation "which does not seem to have been originally regarded as important," became eventually, as Ford points out, the mainstay of the enterprise. "Although from the first there was an understanding between [Sir Arthur] Chichester and the English Privy Council that eventually the plantation would be opened to Scotch settlers, no steps were taken ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black

... the coterie of local Maskilim formed the mainstay of Lilienthal, the apostle of enlightenment, in, his struggle with the orthodox. In the year 1840, prior to Lilienthal's arrival, when the first intimation of Uvarov's plans reached the city of Vilna, the local Maskilim responded to the call of the Government in a circular ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... It has been my mainstay for more years than I care to think about. A well-educated sense of humour will save a woman when Religion, Training, and Home influences fail; and we may ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling

... Andorra Tourism, the mainstay of Andorra's tiny, well-to-do economy, accounts for roughly 80% of GDP. An estimated 9 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... China could endure. Within the few years since the dawn of the twentieth century the torpid leviathan of the East has shown decided signs of awakening. Most prominent among these indications is the fact that the ruling empress, but recently a mainstay of the conservative party, has entered the ranks of reform and given her imperial assent to radical changes in Chinese methods ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... mothers and fathers and children could once more go out to their daily tasks and return in the evening, tired but happy, to gather round the family board. Family life, the sacred hearth! It was the pride, the strength, the mainstay of the country; it was the source whence the rising generation drew their earliest notions of piety and right conduct. Nothing in the world could replace home influence, the parents' teaching and example—nothing! And this poor boy, now threatened with imprisonment, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... plenty of aged men there, whose lives had been honourably worn out in her service; a goodly band of young men, with not a little of the ardour and enthusiasm of youth; not a few of riper years, who, after weary waiting, had at last been promoted to pastoral charges. But that class which is the mainstay of a Church—the men who have attained to experience by years of labour in her service, and are still able to bear the burden and heat of ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... I tell of it! Jean, who had become my sister, who was part of Grant Harlson, drifted away before my eyes! It was harder, almost, for us than the fierce fight with death of the one who had been the mainstay of us all. Somehow, we knew she was going to leave us, and the grief of the children was something terrible. She listened to them and was kind to them, wildly affectionate at times, but she lapsed ever into the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... names—for he was a man who could laugh—and to declare that his only ambition was to fight the devil under whatever name he might be allowed to carry on that battle. And he was always fighting the devil by opposing those pursuits which are the life and mainstay of such places as Littlebath. His chief enemies were card-playing and dancing as regarded the weaker sex, and hunting and horse-racing—to which, indeed, might be added everything under the name of sport—as regarded the stronger. Sunday ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... friend, we never think of accomplishing anything without his help. He is our mainstay. But how ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... thought that it was the first duty of the man who ought to be Caesar's mainstay and representative here, to let his sovereign hear nothing but the undistorted truth. Nothing, it seems to me, can be less excusable than a lie told ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... letter from Guy, and that fact disheartened her more than any other. She had never before had to wait so long for word from him. Very brief, often unsatisfying, as his letters had been, at least they had never failed to arrive. And she counted upon them so. Without them, she felt bereft of her mainstay. Without them, the almost daily, nerve-shattering scenes which her step-mother somehow managed to enact, however discreet her attitude, became an infliction hardly to be borne. She might have left her home for a visit among friends, but something held her back from this. Something warned ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... we must be strong. But what is the secret of strength? It is fundamental to the whole question to understand this rightly, and, once grasped, make it the mainstay of individual existence, which is the foundation of national life. So much has the bodily power of over-riding minorities been made the criterion of absolute power, that to make clear the truth requires patience, insight, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... Overview: The mainstay of Andorra's economy is tourism. An estimated 13 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts. Agricultural production is limited by a scarcity of arable land, and most food has to be imported. The ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... his contemporaries, and left empty space there." Still, when he saw his childish religious faith departing from him, as he thinks it must necessarily depart from all intelligent male Parisians, he wept. Since that moment, however, a gaiety, serene and imperturbable, has been the mainstay of his happily constituted character. The girl to whom his uncle desires to see him united—odd, quixotic, intelligent, with a sort of pathetic and delicate grace, and herself very religious—belongs to an old-fashioned, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... months, or even years, to find. No, as you said at the beginning of this conversation, you must go somewhere abroad to get what you want; and in a foreign land you may find even such despised accomplishments as riding, swimming, and straight shooting of the utmost value to you. But in my opinion your mainstay must be the medical and surgical knowledge which you have acquired. Now, whereabout on the face of this old globe of ours are you likely to be able to employ your knowledge to the best and most profitable account? It should be where wealth ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... recognized the force of this provision. But whether they stood in the line of succession or no, the favour which was shown them alike by Henry the Fifth and his son drew them close to the throne, and the weakness of Henry the Sixth left them at this moment the mainstay of the House of Lancaster. Edmund Beaufort had taken an active part in the French wars, and had distinguished himself by the capture of Harfleur and the relief of Calais. But he was hated for his pride and avarice, and the popular hate grew as he showed his jealousy of the Duke ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... he did not know, at such short notice, how to answer them. Suddenly a hymn was started by a voice which every one knew, though they seldom heard it in prayer-meeting. It belonged to Judge Prency's wife, who for years had been the mainstay of every musical entertainment which had been dependent upon local ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton

... Thornhill's notice; but seems to have failed to show any exceptional proficiency in his life studies. Form, we have seen already, lay outside—in certain manifestations entirely outside—the peculiar limits of his temperament. Shop-bills and coats-of-arms were probably the mainstay of his livelihood at this period, though plates for books were beginning, little by little, to come in his way; but when in 1730 he clandestinely married the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, the Court painter was so incensed at this mesalliance ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... to as a man of inspired wisdom—my incredulous attitude towards the supernatural was loudly condemned on all hands. However, I was not frightened by his long hair, nor by his reputation. 'Dear, dear!' I exclaimed, 'so Arignotus, the sole mainstay of Truth, is as bad as the rest of them, as full of windy imaginings! Our treasure proves to be but ashes.' 'Now look here, Tychiades,' said Arignotus, 'you will not believe me, nor Dinomachus, nor Cleodemus ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... opening. So he went on, "I've been working away at several special jobs, as you know I like to do, and one of them has a good deal to do with a young fellow named Farwell, John Wesley Farwell, Jr., who'll be the mainstay of the best hardware store in Delafield before long if he sticks to it. Everybody calls him 'J.W.,' and he's the sort of boy that has always interested me, he's so 'average,'" He paused; his thoughts busy ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... permit him to hang about a little longer? I see you do not quite take me. I will, therefore, endeavor to explain myself more clearly! If, for instance, I should be too quick in issuing a writ, I provide him in doing so with a species of moral support or mainstay—I see you are laughing?" (Raskolnikoff, on the contrary, had no such desire; his lips were set, and his glaring look was not removed from Porphyrius's eyes.) "I assure you that in actual practice such is really ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... preparing for a concert. Add to this arpeggios and Bach, and you have the basis upon which my technical work stands. Pianists who have been curious about my technical accomplishments have apparently been amazed when I have told them that scales are my great technical mainstay—that is, scales plus hard work. They evidently have thought that I had some kind of alchemic secret, like the philosopher's stone which was designed to turn the baser metals into gold. I possess no secrets which any earnest student may not acquire if he will work in the laboratory of music ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... had not arrived; so after his meal Mr. Bumpkin looked into the other room to see how Joe was getting on, for he was extremely anxious to keep his "head witness" straight. "Joe was his mainstay." ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... most commonly seen on new farms, and that may fairly be termed the pioneer's mainstay, is a simple one of stakes. This is the kind we went in for, as we had the material for it in any quantity ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... depose alleged a number of most damaging facts. He was the mainstay of the prosecution. Those on the other hand who followed showed themselves well disposed to the prisoner. The Deputy of the Public Prosecutor spoke strongly, but did not go beyond generalities. The advocate for the defence adopted a tone of bluff conviction of his client's innocence that earned ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... vanished from before their eyes ere yet the nobles had rallied from their astonishment. And they were downcast and oppressed with boding cares, and they held counsel among themselves what to do; for Rustem was their mainstay, and they knew that, bereft of his arm and counsel, they could not stand against this Turk. And they blamed Kai Kaous, and counted over the good deeds that Rustem had done for him, and they pondered ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... was her mainstay. Her last forgery was a very serious affair—she did not realize how serious, or how large the sum, until the first excitement had died down, and all the money had been paid away. The possibility of raising ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... unwilling to accept in place of the bureaucrats the dominance of an unprogressive habitant majority. The first leader of the opposition which developed in the Assembly after the War of 1812 was James Stuart, the son of the leading Anglican clergyman of his day, but he soon fell away and became a mainstay of the bureaucracy. His brother Andrew, however, kept up for many years longer a more disinterested fight. Another Scot, John Neilson, editor of the Quebec "Gazette", was until 1833 foremost among the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... his time and not destined to many more years of life. With the perfect and self-sacrificing courage which he always showed, he did not shrink from this new demand, although Ezekiel was the prop and mainstay of the house. He did not think for a moment of himself, yet, while he gave his consent, he made it conditional on that of the mother and daughters whom he felt he was soon to leave. But Mrs. Webster had the same spirit as her husband. She was ready to sell the farm, to give up ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... him; mentally he saw a stable lad put it over a jump or two, with credit to all concerned, and inevitably he saw himself outbidding less discerning rivals and securing the desired piece of horseflesh, to be the chief glory and mainstay of his hunting stable, to carry him well and truly and cleverly through many a joyous long-to-be-remembered run. That scene had been one of the recurring half-waking dreams of his long days of weakness in the far-away Finnish nursing-home, a dream sometimes of tantalising mockery, sometimes of ...
— When William Came • Saki

... recognised, but also bought. On the 10th of July in that year (1765) Lord Rockingham became Premier, and a week later Burke, through the good offices of an admiring friend who had come to know him in the newly-founded Turk's Head Club, became Rockingham's private secretary. He was now the mainstay, if not the inspirer, of Rockingham's policy of pacific compromise in the vexed questions between England and the American colonies. Burke's elder brother, who had lately succeeded to his father's property, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... consummate art, or rather natural gift of the art of narrative, is the mainstay of the fabric her imagination has reared. That incomparable style of hers is like some magic fairy-ring, that bears the wearer, safe and victorious, through manifold perils—perils these of prolixity, exaggeration, and disdain of careful construction. Both Indiana and Valentine, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... to the events of which the XVth. and XVIth. chapters of La Politique Boer give a summary. The Jameson raid is, of course, the mainstay of the delegates' argument. After showing what this is really worth, and also discussing the arbitration question, ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... her, and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing, she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she said:—"I've come to see ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... that he clearly realised that men create their gods in their own image. On another main point, too, he was in direct opposition to the religious ideas of his time: he rejected Divination, the belief that the gods imparted the secrets of the future to men—which was deemed a mainstay of the belief in the existence of the gods. As a positive counterpart to the anthropomorphic gods, Xenophanes set up a philosophical conception of God: God must be One, Eternal, Unchangeable and identical ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... possible, is more than I can comprehend. Girls are not wrong-headed like this. Where the son is the source of all the annoyance, and ill-humour, and retrenchment in a family, the daughter is generally the mainstay, and comfort, and sunshine of the whole house. When shall we poor women be done justice to? But to return to Frank. By his own account he was a gambler, of course. A man turned loose upon the world, with such ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... see if there is any water in it. I should have gone again to-day to the Davenport range, to see if I could find the quartz reefs by striking it more to the south-west, but it would be too much for the horses, which are my mainstay, and this water will not last longer than to-day; it is going very fast. I do wish to goodness it would rain, for I do hate going back. Muller returned at sundown. He has been about twelve miles down the creek, but can find ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... jargon: the virtue and wisdom of the people; the natural rights of man; the natural propensity of rulers and priests to ignore them; and other similar high-sounding words, the shibboleth and the mainstay of the Democratic party to this day. The Anti-Federalists were as much pleased to learn that they had been contending for these beautiful phrases as was Monsieur Jourdain when told he had been speaking de la prose all his life. They assumed the title of Citizen, invented that of Citess to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... hours, which, strain had exhausted him very much both physically and mentally. His success in maintaining his ground was undoubtedly largely influenced by the fact that two-thirds of the National forces had been sent to his succor, but his firm purpose to save the army was the mainstay on which all relied after Rosecrans left the field. As the command was getting pretty well past, I rose to go in order to put my troops into camp. This aroused the General, when, remarking that he had a little flask of brandy in his saddle-holster, he added that he had just stopped for the purpose ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... who was one of the instructors at the Seminary. That he should have fallen in love with her, and soon become engaged to her is therefore not surprising. They were married the year after his graduation, and she continued a faithful, industrious and uncomplaining wife; his mainstay in ill-health and misfortune till the end. They were not always happy together; but it is a rare marriage where that is the case. Wasson's struggle with the world was often reflected in his own family, disturbing the harmony and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... borne a bad reputation. Even in the days before the big hotel had been built, when the railroad company maintained merely a little red frame building there, known as the Eating House, these waitresses had been a mainstay of local bachelordom. Their successors were still referred to by their natural enemies, the respectable ladies of the town, as "those awful eating house girls"; while the advent of a new "hash-slinger" was always a matter of considerable interest ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... that many women thought pitifully of a life so full of passion about to be cut off forever. "The Last Day of a Condemned Man," that mournful elegy, that useless plea against the penalty of death (the mainstay of society!), which had lately been published, as if expressly to meet this case, was the topic of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... daylight the morning after that we knocked at the door of Montague's bedroom. When he woke up enough to open the door—it took some time, 'cause eating and sleeping was his mainstay—we told him that we was planning an early morning fishing trip, and if he wanted to go with the folks he must come down to the landing quick. He promised to hurry, and I stayed by the door to see that he didn't get away. In about ten minutes we had him in the skiff ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... freedom from earthy impurities is as follows: Fruits, fish, animal flesh (including eggs), vegetables, cereals; so that the advocates of a strictly vegetable diet find themselves confronted by the formidable fact that their mainstay is that class of foods that contain the largest proportion of those substances that hasten ossification. Ample proof is at hand that a strictly vegetable diet results in what is known as atheroma (chalky deposit), ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... asked Adam Besso of Issachar, the son of Selim, the most cunning leech at Aleppo, and who by day and by night watched the couch which bore the suffering form of the pride and mainstay of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... to Shredded Wheat Biscuits and Triscuits, while another stood by the "Artox" Biscuits. Besides these there are several other specially good whole-wheat biscuits, among which may be mentioned Chapman's Nut Wheat Biscuits; Winter's "Mainstay" series of Diet Biscuits, including some dozen varieties, all excellent, ranging in price from 4d. to 8d. per lb.; and the "P.R.," a Wallaceite specialty. Among the latter the "Barley Malt," "Crispits," "P.R. Wheatmeal," "New P.R. Crackers," &c., are ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... curule office and were therefore excluded from debate—the non-nobles, although they probably sat in considerable numbers in the senate, were reduced to an insignificant and comparatively uninfluential position in it, and the senate became substantially a mainstay of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... large family, a small cottage, smaller savings, and a good character; Jim was the eldest sort, and next to him was a poor crippled sister, whose patient hands added a little to the common stock by sewing; Jim, however, had been his widowed mother's mainstay since his father's death, and a willing, loving helper he was: ay, he had been, but was he still? Jim had got a place at "The Firs"; first of all as a general helper, then as a footman, in which latter capacity he enjoyed the very questionable privilege of waiting at table, and ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson

... other notions of civilization, for settling, were studiously (?) omitted. Sometimes sugar was added, but most of the men, especially the old vets, took it straight. It was astonishing how many of the "wrinkles of grim visaged war" were temporarily smoothed out by a cup of coffee. This was the mainstay of our meals on the march, a cup of coffee and a thin slice of raw pork between two hardtacks frequently constituting a meal. Extras fell in the way once in a while. Chickens have been known to stray into camp, the ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... an appearance, his face showing plainly that he was not at ease. His manner was as flambuoyant as ever: "Where is this mainstay of the only panorama on earth? Come here, boy, I want to talk ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... overview: Tourism, the mainstay of Andorra's tiny, well-to-do economy, accounts for roughly 80% of GDP. An estimated 9 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts. ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the school did not end with Reading, for the St. Quentins afterwards removed to 22 Hans Place, where they had under their charge Mary Russell Mitford. Still later, after the fall of Napoleon, the St. Quentins moved to Paris, together with Miss Rowden, who had long been the mainstay of the school. It was while the school was here that it received Fanny Kemble ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... which contain the sources of her power, that is to say, the islands and coast-lands of the Aegaean. For if our revolt is successful, others will follow our example, and the Athenians will be stripped of their revenues, the mainstay of their empire. You can lend us aid most effectually by summoning your allies for a second [Footnote: Attica had already been invaded earlier in the summer.] invasion of Attica, and thus preventing the Athenians from sending reinforcements to Lesbos. You have ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... was needed at the cabin. After his day's work with Boreland, he had his meals to prepare. There were brown beans to clean and cook, and sourdough hotcakes to set for the morning. Kayak had taught him to prepare his sourdoughs—a resource which was to become the food mainstay of all on the Island. Harlan learned from the old man that the sourdough hotcake, or flapjack is as typical of Alaska as the glacier. The wilderness man carries, always, a little can filled with a batter of it; with this he starts ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... Overview: Tourism, the mainstay of Andorra's economy, accounts for roughly 80% of GDP. An estimated 13 million tourists visit annually, attracted by Andorra's duty-free status and by its summer and winter resorts. The banking sector, with its "tax haven" ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... life might have been called a game of cards. He carried a deck forever next his heart. Sometimes he gambled with other vehicles—stocks, shares, currency—but the cards were still his mainstay, and he was well acquainted with every known or obsolete game. There was no trick, nor fraud, nor waggery which he had not at ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... all, the old, happy, resonant cheerfulness gradually found its way back to Marsfield, as though nothing had happened; and poor broken Marty, who had always been our idol, became our goddess, our prop and mainstay, the angel in the house, the person for every one to tell their troubles to—little or big—their jokes, their good stories; there was never a laugh like hers, so charged with keen appreciation of the humorous thing, the relish of which would come back ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... of five months away from the one who needed her so badly. He died, and for a time she was broken-hearted; but gradually she came to prove the reality and comfort of her religion, and then, taking up the interests of those around her, she had cheerfully buried her own sorrow, and became the mainstay of her aunt and her household. Perhaps Agatha felt most keenly being shut out from her aunt's dying room, she certainly uttered with heartfelt fervour morning and evening, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... now revealed. Ransom's secret, about the penny, was a very good one, so far as it went. But he had not really told the whole truth. He could not venture to tell his less fortunate comrade that the root of all domestic prosperity, the mainstay of all domestic comfort, is the wife; and Ransom's wife was all that a working man could desire. There can be no thrift, nor economy, nor comfort at home, unless the wife helps;—and a working man's wife, more than any other man's; for she is wife, Housekeeper, nurse, and servant, all in ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... sail the vessel careened over, and shot foaming forward with new life for a moment. The next, the topsail had burst away from the bolt-ropes with a report as of a cannon-shot, and she had fallen away into the trough of the sea. The mainstay-sail sheet parted at the same time, and a deluge of water carried overboard, with part of the bulwarks, a large portion of the deck cargo, which consisted of heavy timber, leaving the remainder tossed about in the wildest confusion, and much of it standing on ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... own manufacture is his mainstay. It resembles the ollas or earthen pots used so universally throughout the Philippines. In addition to this there is used, though very rarely among the remote Manbos, an imported cast-iron pan.[5] It is from 5 centimeters to 10 centimeters in depth and from 25 centimeters ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... either application, distinguish democratic Victoria's condition. Protection had been quite in abeyance under the old regime, beyond at least, an occasional sigh from agricultural Geelong for higher prices for the farmer, "the mainstay of every country." Even during the interregnum of semi-constitutionalism, 1851-55, the tendency had been effectually checked, chiefly by the energy of the Collector of Customs, Mr. Cassell, then one of the Official Legislative Members, who, supported ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... not much, then, to detain us during this period. Rosalie and Albert had their engagements, Rosalie being the mainstay of the family. On May 1, 1824 Clara made her debut. Uncle Adolph, ceaseless in objurgations touching every one who had any connection with the court or trade theatres of the day, had to accept the situation; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... boy, and my mainstay now, for it is hard sometimes to manage for so many; but will you not please tell me some more ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis^, trave^, corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion^; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. trunnion, pivot, rowlock^; peg &c (pendency) 214 [Obs.]; tiebeam &c (fastening) 45; thole pin^. board, ledge, shelf, hob, bracket, trevet^, trivet, arbor, rack; mantel, mantle piece [Fr.], mantleshelf^; slab, console; counter, dresser; flange, corbel; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... will also give an indication to those who are not already familiar with this organization, of its character and purpose. That a combination of serious work and relaxation can be reconciled without sacrificing the former, has been demonstrated in this case, for the P. D.'s are the mainstay of the Boston Architectural Club and have accomplished considerable in other directions, having done very notable work in several of the Beaux-Arts Society's competitions. Their motto and seal shown in the other illustration is a ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 - Fragments of Greek Detail • Various

... piece of paper on which she had written down, at her old Anna's dictation, a list of groceries and other things needed at the Trellis House. And then she looked round, instinctively, towards the corner of the large shop where all that remained of what had once been the mainstay of Manfred Hegner's business was always temptingly set forth. This was a counter of Delicatessen. Glancing at the familiar corner, Mr. Hegner's customer told herself that her eyes must be playing her false. In the place of the ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... while great fortunes were being made by the speculators who fitted them out. Nor was this all. Such was the attraction of the privateer's life that it drew to it seamen from every branch of the maritime calling. The fisheries and the West India trade, which had long been the chief mainstay of New England commerce, were ruined, and it seemed for a time as if the hardy race of American seamen were to degenerate into a mere body of buccaneers, operating under the protection of international law, but plunderers and spoilers nevertheless. Fortunately, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... the President spoke of were natural enough. He was the founder and mainstay of the association—probably paid its expenses. The whole object of the institution, it may be suspected, was to exalt the founder. In such a state of things, it was natural that there should be an opposition, or discontented party, headed by "that Blotton." When Blotton was got ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... confidential, and little by little they unfolded to one another the story of their lives. One prisoner, well versed in law, who knew Antonio's father, showed the boy much sympathy. Another prisoner, a sailor, grieved over the old parents whose mainstay he had been for many years. "Oh," sighed he, "now hunger and want will overtake them." Another, a fisherman, somewhat older than the rest, was the saddest of them all. He sat apart at one end of the ship, holding his head in his hand and weeping silently. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne

... attention. I have reasons to hope good dispositions in the new ministry towards our commerce with this country. Besides endeavoring, on all occasions, to multiply the points of contact and connection with this country, which I consider as our surest mainstay under every event, I have had it much at heart to remove from between us every subject of misunderstanding or irritation. Our debts to the King, to the Officers, and the Farmers, are of this description. The having complied ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... beach in Hanover Bay; leaving the party to make the best of their way to the heights above the valley where we had first encamped, and where plenty of food and water could be found for the ponies; these, in the event of anything having happened to the schooner, would become the mainstay of our hopes. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... have carried them out. In the absence of principles Morier had to study the strife of parties, and his correspondence gives us lively pictures of the eloquent Castelar, the champion of a visionary Republic, the harsh, domineering Romero y Robledo, at once the mainstay and the terror of his Conservative colleagues, and the cold, egotistic Liberal leader Sagasta, whose shrewdness in the manipulation of votes had always to be reckoned with. The constitution given in 1876 had entirely failed to establish Parliament on a democratic basis. For ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... means sufficed to dispose of the surplus products, so that foreign markets were necessary. The people were especially concerned for the establishment of the old trade with the West India Islands, which had been the mainstay of their prosperity in colonial times; and after the British Government, in 1783, restricted that trade to British vessels, many people in the United States were attributing hard times to British malignancy. The only action which seemed possible was to force Great Britain in particular, ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... the events of 1880. Finding that the Premier was no longer to be the mainstay of their hopes, the Boers began to renew their agitations. These agitations, it will be remembered, during the end of the Zulu war and Sir Garnet Wolseley's arrival in the Transvaal, were merely suppressed, because at that ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... many brilliant visions of hope filled her ambitious little head. Yes, father would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... century Haiti has been shipping tens of millions of pounds of coffee annually; and the product is the mainstay of the country's economic life. In all that time, however, shipments have maintained much the same level. The country has been a coffee producer from the early years of the eighteenth century, when the plants began to spread from the original sprigs in Guiana or Martinique. After ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... us who were still suffering somewhat from fever. No one was in really buoyant health. For some weeks we had been sharing part of the contents of our boxes with the camaradas; but our food was not very satisfying to them. They needed quantity and the mainstay of each of their meals was a mass of palmitas; but on this day they had no time to cut down palms. We finally decided to run these rapids with the empty canoes, and they came down in safety. On such a trip it is highly undesirable to take any save necessary risks, for the consequences of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... lose the fine courage that has been your mainstay through other troubles," Nellie said, as she laid a hand on his arm and looked steadfastly into the young ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... given, the inhabitants all rush to the rescue, eager to combine against their common foe. As, everywhere else, straw is supposed to be of all things the most helpless in the water, of course, in Holland, it must be rendered the mainstay against a rushing tide. Huge straw mats are pressed against the embankments, fortified with clay and heavy stone, and once adjusted, the ocean ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... anything when I've once made up my mind; and if a man has but ordinary capacity, and will set to work with heart and soul, and stick to it, he can do almost anything.' With this maxim, which has been pretty much my mainstay throughout life, I fortified myself in my determination to attempt the law. But how was I to set about it? I must quit this forest life, and go to one or other of the towns, where I might be able to study, and to attend the courts. This too required funds. I examined into the state ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... any of their old laws, they would necessarily never have more than one meal a day as long as they lived. Finally, he recalled to their recollection that he had made the island what it was, that he was their mainstay, and that his counsel and exertions had rendered them the wonder of the world. Thus, between force, and fear, and flattery, the Vraibleusians paid for their corn nearly its weight in gold; but what did that signify to a nation with so many ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... Burgundian provinces under the wise administrations of Margaret and Mary, and protected by the strong arm of the emperor from foreign attack, were at this period by far the richest state in Europe and the financial mainstay of the Habsburg power. Bruges, however, had now ceased to be the central market and exchange of Europe, owing to the silting up of the river Zwijn. It was no longer a port, and its place had been taken by Antwerp. At the close of the reign of Charles, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... to do many actions, and religion is of course a mainstay, though irrational accretions, fasting, and superstitious views of the Communion ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... the plans and purposes of the man's life. I wonder if it is woman's real, true nature always to abnegate self." Miss Foster had developed unusual ability and for a number of years had been Miss Anthony's mainstay in the suffrage work, and had grown very close into her heart; it is not surprising, therefore, that she learned of the coming marriage with dismay. She accepted the situation as gracefully as possible, however, and, although too far away to attend the wedding, sent most cordial wishes ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... M. de la Rochefoucauld, one of the leaders of the ultra-Royalist party, contrived to throw her in the way of Louis XVIII., in the hope of counteracting the more Liberal influence which M. de Cazes had acquired over the King. Madame du Cayla became the hope and the mainstay of the altar and the throne. The scheme succeeded. The King was touched by her grace and beauty, and she became indispensable to his happiness. His happiness was said to consist in inhaling a pinch of snuff ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... nutritive value of foods, they stand a better chance, if they eat a large variety, of procuring the required quantity of different nutrients than when restricted to a very limited dietary, because, if the dietary be very limited they might by accident choose as their mainstay some food that was badly balanced in the different nutrients, perhaps wholly lacking in protein. It is lamentable that there is such ignorance on such an all-important subject. However, we have to consider things as they are and not as ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon

... I may be mad, but one seems to see in politics over here a lack of definition and purpose, a tendency to cling to the abstract and to precedent—'the mainstay of the mandarin' one of the papers calls it; that's a good word—that give one the feeling that this kingdom is beginning to be aware of some influence stronger than its own. It lies, of course, in the great West, where the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... oldest of the girls, was past eighteen, but had not as yet been trained to any special work. The other children, George, aged fourteen; Martha, twelve; William ten, and Veronica, eight, were too young to do anything, and only made the problem of existence the more complicated. Their one mainstay was the home, which, barring a six-hundred-dollar mortgage, the father owned. He had borrowed this money at a time when, having saved enough to buy the house, he desired to add three rooms and a porch, and so make it large ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... December 1592, deprived Philip of the genius which had for years past been the mainstay of his power. Henry's public announcement of his return to the Holy Catholic Church, in the summer of 1593, deprived the Spanish king of nearly all the support he had hitherto received in France. Before this Maurice had opened ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... now in rural Wales. The farming classes appear to be extremely sober. Even the village parliament, which in England discusses the nation's affairs in the village public house, has no serious parallel in Wales, for the detached cottage-renting laborer, who is the mainstay of such gatherings, scarcely exists, and the farmer has other interests to keep him at home." Evidently the Welsh farmer does attend to his business in an industrious manner, for he generally has a substantial and prosperous appearance. People with ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... Stead's hand patted the rough, wiry hair, and there was a sort of comfort in the creature's love. But how hard it was to believe that only yesterday he had a father and a home, and that now his elder brother was gone, and he had the great charge on him of being the mainstay of the three younger ones, as well as of protecting that treasure in the cavern which his father had so ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... disappeared, and a gloomy cloud hung over the land, portentous of disasters and dismay. Evils thickened, entirely unexpected, which brought out what was greatest in the character and genius of Washington; for he now was the mainstay of hope. The first patriotic gush of enthusiasm had passed away. War, under the most favorable circumstances, is no play; but under great difficulties, has a dismal and rugged look before which delusions rapidly disappear. England was preparing new and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... though that might easily be set down to the general haziness of young ladies confronted with the mysteries of trade or commerce. Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of junior member of the firm, it appeared, or else he should have been made some such thing; at all events, he was an old mainstay of the business; and he, as much as any Lamb, had helped to build up the prosperity of the company. But at last, tired of providing so much intelligence and energy for which other people took profit greater than his own, he ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... become the mainstay of the family. Whenever a boat could get outside, the "Wild Duck" was sure to be seen making her ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston

... laughter with a scene which might have been made insupportably vulgar. A perfectly respectable young married woman gets very drunk with the equally respectable husband of one of her friends. The scene is the mainstay, the raison d'etre, of the play, and it furnishes the material for the better part of one act; yet young and old, rich and poor, philistine and superman alike, delight in it. To make such a situation irresistible and universal in its appeal is, it ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... that remedies of various kinds do good, but in the large epileptic colonies regular exercise, bland diet, regulation of the bowels, and avoidance of excesses of all kinds, with occupation of mind, constitute the mainstay of their treatment. ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... no cause for forsaking the habits she had acquired in her girlhood. Some people find religion a burden; others regard it as an indifferently useless institution, in which they desire no share, and concerning which they never trouble themselves; others, again, look upon it as the mainstay ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... was formerly the mainstay of the voyageurs. It was made of the flesh of buffalo, musk-ox, moose, caribou, wapiti, beaver, rabbit, or ptarmigan; and for ordinary use was composed of 66 per cent. of dried meat pounded fine to 34 per cent. of hard fat boiled and strained. A finer quality of pemmican for officers or ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... any idea how hard he has worked all his life, and always with the thought of you and your advancement, and welfare? Why, Peter Junior, he is bound up in you. He expected you would one day stand at his side, his mainstay and help and comfort in ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... wishes you to be presented to her," Colonel Maclvor said to Hector. "Everyone knows her reputation; she is the cleverest woman in France, and one of the most intriguing. She is the queen's greatest friend, and has been her mainstay in her struggle with Richelieu. Of one thing we may be sure, that she will not tamely see Mazarin step into his place, and she has, it is whispered, already thrown herself into the arms of 'The Importants,' and if anyone can persuade the queen ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... not to return. The pinch of necessity had come at last: the world no longer offered him the life of an elegant dawdler. He had a serious business before him,—to gain a competency for himself and his brother. The unpractical younger brother was to be after this the mainstay of the family fortunes. And what especially makes this the finest moment of his life is the sudden and clear perception that to gain this end he must depend upon the steady and fruitful exercise of his gift for writing. It was not to be taken up as a last resort, but ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... took her from me, and I lost the mainstay of my existence. Forgive this digression, but I am writing long after these events, and sorrows will have their ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... sanction of the Controller-General. To prevent unnecessary expense on fitting out or refitting of any of the cruisers, the use of leather was to be restricted to the following: the leathering of the main pendants, runners in the wake of the boats when in tackles, the collar of the mainstay, the nip of the main-sheet block strops, leathering the bowsprint traveller, the spanshackle for the bowsprit, topmast iron, the four reef-earings three feet from the knot. All old copper, copper-sheathing, nails, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... many of them went, in a sense: to hard work of some sort—to wage-earning and wage-taking: sometimes becoming the mainstay of aged or infirm parents, the dependence of younger brothers and sisters. If the history of it all is ever written, it will make pitiful, heroic, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... officers' quarters were large and comfortable. A stirring little town had sprung up on the outside, affording the citizens employment in wood and hay contracts, and becoming the home of a large number of civilian employees, the post being the mainstay ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... day, I saw the old knight, with his ruddy steel-eaters' face and great lip-beard, and was told that in his youth he had been a doughty free booter and highway robber, who by his wealth and power had made himself to be a mainstay of the Elector in Altmark, I could well imagine how his threats had sounded, and that all men had been swift to lend ear to his words. Yet that just King to whom he accused Herdegen gave a hearing to von Rochow and the other witnesses; they could but declare that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... first stone at the dictates of conscience and with a sort of holy joy in her own fitness to do so. For years she had been the richest woman in Middleborough, the head of everything charitable and religious, the mainstay of ministers, the court of final appeal in the case of sinners and backsliders. Now, in a moment, through no fault of her own, the whole fabric of her life had crumbled. Again had the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... with the Abbe Xavier Dufresne, a devout and enlightened priest of Geneva, and with his father, Doctor Dufresne, well known as the mainstay of all the works of charity and religion in that city. The Abbe Dufresne became much attached to Father Hecker. "The Almighty knows," he wrote to him, "how ardently I wish to see you again, for no one can feel more than I the want of your conversation, it was so greatly to my ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... for those two hundred bedrooms. The chance travelers are but chance additions to these, and are not generally the mainstay of the house. As a matter of course the accommodation for travelers which these hotels afford increases and creates traveling. Men come because they know they will be fed and bedded at a moderate ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... the spell of the Priestly Lie; it is in his childish days that the individual can be most safely snared. Suffer little children to come unto the Catholic priest, and he will make upon their sensitive minds an impression which nothing in after life can eradicate. So the mainstay of the New Inquisition is the parish-school, and its deadliest enemy is the American school system. Listen to the Rev. James Conway, of the Society of Jesus, in his book, "The Rights of Our ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... succession of scowls that should make her miserable for a month at least. Nor on her behalf would he have hesitated, though the misery might have continued for three months. But then the old man was the main hope of his life, and must be made its mainstay. Brilliant prospects were before him. He had used to think that Mr. Wharton was a hale man, with some terribly vexatious term of life before him. But now, now that he was seen more closely, he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... strangers in Europe, have shown conspicuous inability to comply with the elementary requirements of European civilisation, and have at last failed to maintain that military efficiency which has, from the days when they crossed the Bosphorus, been the sole mainstay of their power and position. It is, as Sir Edward Grey pointed out, unreasonable to expect that we should now save them from the consequences of their own action. Whether Moslems all over the world will or should still continue to regard the Sultan of Turkey as their spiritual ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... excellence of music; to attain this end, I have applauded her, I have listened without yawning to the most tiresome sonatas in the world, and I have at last consented to give her a box at the Bouffons. I have thus gained three quiet evenings out of the seven which God has created in the week. I am the mainstay of the music shops. At Paris there are drawing-rooms which exactly resemble the musical snuff-boxes of Germany. They are a sort of continuous orchestra to which I regularly go in search of that surfeit of harmony which my wife calls a concert. But most part ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... the English sailors with a belief in their own invincibility, when opposed to the Spaniards. They looked, to a certain extent, upon their mission as a crusade. In those days England had a horror of Popery, and Spain was the mainstay and supporter of this religion. The escape which England had had of having Popery forced upon it, during the reign of Mary, by her spouse, Philip of Spain, had been a narrow one; and even now, it was by no means certain that Spain would not, sooner or later, endeavor to carry out the pretensions ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... landing and give him time for evacuation. To his rage panic seized his men and they turned and fled, leaving him almost alone not a hundred yards from the enemy. A stray shot at that moment might have influenced greatly modern history, for, as events were soon to show, Washington was the mainstay of the American cause. He too had to get away and Howe's force landed easily enough. Meanwhile, on the west shore of the island, there was an animated scene. The roads were crowded with refugees fleeing northward from ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... congruity of these two declarations need not imply collusion, but they are none the less complementary propositions and they are none the less indicative of a common trend of convictions among the men who are best able to speak for those pacific nations that are looked to as the mainstay of the prospective league. They both converge to the point that the objective to be achieved is not victory for the Entente belligerents but defeat for the German-Imperial coalition; that the peoples underlying the defeated governments are not to be dealt with as vanquished enemies but as ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... logic blamed her in her misfortune, just as though she had wilfully brought the maladies upon herself in order to vex them. Then, further, it was necessary always to minister to Sarah's illusion that Sarah was the mainstay of the house, that she attended to everything and was responsible for everything, and that without her governance the machine would come to a disastrous standstill: the fact being that she had grown feeble and superfluous. Sarah had taught all she knew to two highly ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... small scale, they ran several hundred head of cattle. Mrs. Miller was a dignified, reserved woman who maintained shiny order in her house. "She even scalds her dishes," folks said, which by the water-hauling populace was considered unpardonable aristocracy. Imbert was the pride and mainstay of his parents. There were warm fires, clean soft beds, and a real Christmas dinner. There was corn-popping, and bob-sledding with jingling bells behind a prancing team, with Imbert and Ida Mary ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... daughter, Miss Lucy, aged about twelve, and a little son, aged about ten years. They occupied a neat cottage near his quarters. They were a nice, intelligent family, then in deep mourning for a son and brother, the hope and mainstay of the family, who had fallen in battle a few months before. Young Dean had proved so good a soldier and had so distinguished himself for personal bravery from all the battles through the Wilderness on down to Petersburg, ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott

... The lesson of the past has not been altogether lost; they have also been much assisted by the new Land Regulations, and a few prosperous seasons will, I sincerely trust, put this class, which ought to be a mainstay of the colony, into ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest

... he says in another place, "that the mainstay of an efficient reform is the adoption essentially of the Italian vowel system: it combines beauty, firmness and precision in a degree not equalled by any other system of which I have any knowledge. The little ragged boys in the streets of Rome and Florence enunciate their ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord

... but at the same time a vast conservatory, the choice flowers exported for princely tables in winter being all reared under glass. How necessary, then, that every detail of this delightful and elaborate culture should be taught the people, whose mainstay it is, a large proportion being as entirely dependent upon flowers as the honey bee! Here, and in the neighbourhood of Nice, they are cultivated for market and exportation, not for perfume distilleries ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards



Words linked to "Mainstay" :   linchpin, forestay, protagonist, booster, admirer, support, supporter, champion, friend



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