Your pride stiffens again when you have just been on the point of throwing it aside.
"The Story of Louie"
Oliver Onions
The tail is now drawn off slowly, continuing the rotation, raising the work just out of the flame whenever the thread of glass drawn off becomes too thin, and lowering it again to the point where the flame just touches it when the glass stiffens a little.
"Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing"
Francis C. Frary
There were no more pomp and circumstance; no more of the reassuring thunder of gathering regiments, nor for that matter any more of that unarmed native helplessness that so stiffens the backs of the official English.
"King--of the Khyber Rifles"
Talbot Mundy