To an imaginative mind, loving in things rather the ideal than the reality, striving for ever after some poetical or heroic model of love and of life, trying to be at once a patriot out of Plutarch and a lover after the fashion of the Vita Nuova, there are few trials more exasperating than to have to see the real creature who for the moment embodies one's ideal, the creature whom one carefully garlands with flowers and hangs round with lamps, raised above all vulgar things in the niche in one's imagination, Elbowed by brutish reality, bespattered with ignoble miseries.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
Nasmyth, in the meanwhile, Elbowed his way through the crowd of dancers until he stood at Laura's side, and as he looked at her, there was a trace of embarrassment in his manner.
"The Greater Power"
Harold Bindloss W. Herbert Dunton
They Elbowed their way right into the excited crowd.
"The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley"
Bertram Mitford