"Benumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seized bomb-shells while they were yet in the air, warmed their hands upon them, and then threw them back into the enemy's camp, where they exploded with great carnage. They did not even know when they were killed, so benumbed by the cold had they become. In short, those days on the Alps made us invincible. No wonder, then, that in 1804, when I got permanently back to Paris, I found the people ready for an emperor! They were bloody years, those from 1800 to 1804, but ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... adventures, and night overtook us in the midst of a forest, uncertain where we were, and half dead from exposure to the storm; but after several hours of hard riding, we found ourselves, drenched to the skin and benumbed with the cold, before the door of a one-story log cabin, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed, and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge in this room also, yet I could not keep out the wind and rain.... Afterwards I hired a soldier to fetch me water and bread, and something to make a fire of, when I was in a room where a fire ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly warm and ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... dumb under the surging confusion in her brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... but her words of courage and consolation lifted many a despondent heart from the depths, while her own faith in the love and mercy of her heavenly Father brought confidence and comfort to many a benumbed and wavering soul. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... lay, quaking, when all the caitiffs had departed, and the black, chill night received me into itself. At first my mind was benumbed, like my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the boughs through which I had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear. I turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the sky, but nothing ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind completed the little drama it started again ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... he cut the cord, and releasing the dog from the bottom swam with him to the opposite shore from where Robert stood, all the while threatening him. Here his younger brother smoothed the water from the dog's coat, and instinctively rubbing its benumbed limbs until it became quite resuscitated, and after a short time, following close to Charles for protection, it returned to his mother's side in her boudoir. But Robert had been there before him, and had already manufactured a ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... was however mistaken, in supposing he could excite the benumbed faculties of the Doctor, by provoking a discussion. From that time, henceforth, he was never known, except on one occasion, to utter a word that indicated either the species, or the genus, of the animal. He obstinately refused the nutritious ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the steamer's side, deep in the waves. He goes down suddenly, cold, frightened, benumbed. He feels that some one is trying to pull the rope out of his hands. It must be Lockwin. The drowning man clutches with a hundred forces. The tug increases. The struggling man will lose the rope. Lockwin is striking Corkey with a bludgeon. That is unfair! ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... with its melancholy freight, was being slowly trailed over the scene of the late battle, Harold partially recovered his benumbed senses. He lay there as in a dream, striving to recall himself to consciousness of his position. He felt the dull throbbing pain upon his brow and the stinging sensation in his shoulder, and knew that he was wounded, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the ability of their country to effect her redemption. Some doubted the capacity, and perhaps the sincerity, of the chiefs. Some were schooled in duplicity, and under the ermine, or under the privy councillor's robe, carried fierce hearts, benumbed by mendicancy and seared by shame. But the first flash of their country's liberty would see them ranged at that country's side, repaying with the fiercest hate the beggar crumbs which England had flung from the fragments of her overloaded ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... slow, impeded by the frequent repetitions, but so the wearied mind, after nervous exhaustion, is "palsied and sere." There is no appeal to the intellect, but this is characteristic of Poe and appropriate to a mind numbed by protracted suffering. It is this mood of wearied, benumbed, discouraged, hopeless hope, feebly seeking for the "Lethean peace of the skies" only to find the mind inevitably reverting to the "lost Ulalume," that finds expression. There is no definite thought, ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the dogs. They came huddling from the ladders where I had left them, the sleigh still trailing at their heels. One poor animal was so benumbed I cut him from the traces and left him to die. Gathering up the robes, I shook them free of snow, replaced them in the sleigh and led the string of dogs down to the river. It would be bitterly cold facing that sweep of unbroken wind in mid-river; but the trail over ice would permit ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter, aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so that Jim dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and exhausted. Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day so, and then ten miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of the northlands; and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding snow descended! Woe came upon Jim ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... these scenes, were usually turned into a channel of childhood reminiscences, and she gave them utterance in a kind of monotonous recitative—slightly disconnected, but generally describing the glories of the Sultan of Sulu, his great splendour, his power, his great prowess; the fear which benumbed the hearts of white men at the sight of his swift piratical praus. And these muttered statements of her grandfather's might were mixed up with bits of later recollections, where the great fight with the "White Devil's" brig and the convent ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the surface of enjoyment and the substance of woe, for beneath those painted cheeks was the pallor of despair and broken health, and beneath those whitened bosoms, half veiled with gaudy silks, were hearts that were aching with remorse, or, yet more unhappy, benumbed and callous with ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... voice penetrated even the spy's benumbed brain. "Why is Mrs. Whitney wearing these finger tips?" and he held up the limp right hand. Each finger was fitted with a wax tip, and on the index finger, distinct and plain, was the scar shaped like a ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... over the brown hills on the way to her mother with the news, saying over and over to her benumbed senses that Gavin was not dead, that he was alive. It seemed as if her heart had been so stupefied with grief that it could not yet accept joy. She ran in a kind of dream saying that she would soon wake up and find ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... caused him to be burnt, by means of sharp irons thrust under the nails of his thumbs, fingers, and toes, and the nails to be torn, off; and, because he never flinched, we thought his hands and feet had been benumbed with tying, wherefore we burnt him in other parts, as the hands, arms, shoulders, and neck, but even this had no effect. We then burnt him quite through the hands, and tore out the flesh and sinews with rasps, causing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... repeated, and sank back benumbed. It was all theirs to the last farthing: my grandfather had died too soon to ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... parley they concluded to get some more dogs and be on the ground before daylight, so as to make sure of me. As soon as they had gone out of my hearing I emerged from the brier thicket. I found my limbs had become sore and benumbed from the exposure and hardships I had undergone, and I was intensely hungry. I worried along, however, to get out of that neighborhood as soon as possible. The sky was now clear, the air frosty, and my rags were but a scant protection to me. After ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... not entered the victim's brain. It was imbedded in the thick part of the skull, and its pressure on the brain had benumbed the intellectual faculties, producing all the ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... his friend spoke. He little knew how easily acquaintances, who call themselves friends, can change, when their interest comes, in the slightest degree, in competition with their friendship. Hurried by his impatient rival, and with his hand so much benumbed that he could scarcely feel how to fix the arrow in the string, he drew the bow. The arrow was within a quarter of an inch of Master Sweepstakes' mark, which was the nearest that had yet been hit. Hal seized his second arrow. "If I have any luck," said he ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... trouble will come some day, depend on it," said the Viking's wife, "and dreadful will it also be for me. Better had it been that you had been put out on the highway, and the chillness of the night had benumbed you until you slept in death;" and the Viking's wife wept salt tears, and went angry and distressed away, passing round behind the loose skin partition that hung over an upper beam to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... in spirit he rose benumbed, yet calmed, as one who feels that he has made his last effort and can do no more. He opened the door of his study and listened. There was no sound. The children had all gone to bed. He turned back to the old table ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... under the lights was to invite the fate he had so narrowly escaped. He knew Mattacheco's skill as a marksman: the Mexican would not be rattled twice in the same half-hour. Ford gripped the benumbed arm in ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... went into a nearby house. Dorian moved away, benumbed with the despair which sank into his heart at the final setting of his sun. Dead! Mildred was dead! He felt the night wind blow cold down the street, and he saw the storm clouds scudding along the distant ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... other for an instant in dumb fear, as they saw in the narrow strip of moonlight, the minister's head, just above the black hole. He was clinging desperately to the edge of the ice, which broke off now and then in his benumbed grasp. Donald shouted a word of encouragement, and laying the rail upon the ice he threw himself across it and worked cautiously forward. As he went down upon the rail there was a ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... other good night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine's every movement in the room above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... happen that when a prisoner was about to be slaughtered some one of the dusky assemblage, moved by pity or admiration or some unexplained freak, would interpose in behalf of the victim; and as a rule such interposition was heeded. Many a poor wretch, already tied to the fatal tree and benumbed with unspeakable terror, while the firebrands were heating for his torment, has been rescued from the jaws of death and adopted as brother or lover by some laughing young squaw, or as a son by some grave ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... burn, and burnt for three days until all the wood was consumed, and when the flames had burnt out, the Frosty One was standing amid the ashes, trembling like an aspen leaf, and saying, "I never felt such a frost during the whole course of my life; if it had lasted much longer, I should have been benumbed!" ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... and fed in the stable. While the horses were eating and resting, I cleaned the cutter of snow looked after my footwarmer, and, by tramping about and kicking against the tree trunks, tried to get my benumbed circulation started again. My own lunch on examination proved to be frozen into one hard, solid lump. So I decided to go without it and to save it for ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... of heat produces pain and inflammation in our hands, after they have been for a time immersed in snow; which is owing to the accumulation of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the cutaneous vessels during their previous quiescence, when they were benumbed with cold. And we feel ourselves cold in the usual temperature of the atmosphere on coming out of a warm room; which is owing to the exhaustion of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the vessels of the skin by their previous increased ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... very grave results; but this very condition is a source of injury, since it is nothing more nor less than the going to sleep of the sentinels which nature has posted at the portal of the body, for the purpose of giving warning of danger. The nerves of sensibility have become benumbed to such a degree that they no longer offer remonstrance against irritating substances, and allow the enemy to enter into the citadel of life. The mischievous work is thus insidiously carried on year after year until by and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... ordinary tones, being men too much hardened to danger and mighty tasks to show emotion. Robert stood under the same inverted boat that sheltered them, and he heard their words in a kind of daze, his brain still benumbed after the long and terrible test. But it was a pleasant numbing, a provision of nature, a sort of rest that was akin ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... half-dead with cold, hunger, and fear, the snow nearly up to her knees, saw ere long, to her intense horror, a savage bear approaching; and Catharine, making a frantic effort to escape, found her limbs so benumbed and her weakness so great that ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... occupation. It was undone by means of one of the keys which hung behind the private door, probably deposited there, that the Marquis might, if he pleased, dismiss a prisoner, or remove him elsewhere without the necessity of summoning the warden. The outlaw stretched his benumbed arms, and bounded from the floor of the dungeon in all ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... Those terrible cries that rent the air were the first sounds that Dorothy heard as her benumbed brain gained consciousness. And as she staggered, benumbed and dazed, to her feet she almost fell over a slimy knife lying there, and at that instant a strong hand flung back the rose-vines and Harry Kendal, white and quivering with wrath, ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... complete seclusion in which he buries himself. He has struggled long enough with one idea. He now needs a variety of thought, which cannot be otherwise so readily supplied to him, as through the medium of a variety of scenes. His mind is awakened, now; his heart, though full of pain, is no longer benumbed. They should have food and solace. If he linger here much longer, I fear that he may sink back into a lethargy. The extreme excitability, which circumstances have imparted to his moral system, has its dangers and its advantages; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, [20] but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... with an aching sense of suffocation, and she sat up, with nerveless hands lying on the package in her lap. She was prepared for, expectant of the worst, but the details added keener stings to suffering that had benumbed her. At last, with a shuddering sigh, she broke the seal, and took from folds of tissue paper, a long thick tress of the beautiful black hair. Shaking it out of its satin coil, she held it up, then wrapped it smoothly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... on the hummock and whipping their arms about them the prisoners succeeded in getting some warmth into their benumbed bodies. To their surprise the noise they made did not attract any notice from the Indians or Callack. As it happened, the Alaskans were all so wearied with their day's labor that they slept sounder ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... and the half-submerged man parted company. The former was steered for the open sea; the latter drifted and tossed helplessly to and fro, growing hourly weaker and more and more benumbed, but always hanging on with convulsive tenacity to the friendly timber that buoyed him up, and was his last frail chance ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... had become somewhat more light, and we crawled out of our lair. The rain had ceased, but everything around us was dripping with moisture. We stripped off our saturated garments, and wrung them as dry as we could. We contrived to make the blood circulate in our benumbed limbs by rubbing them vigorously with our hands; and after performing our ablutions in the stream, and putting on our still wet clothes, we began to think it advisable to break our long fast, it being now twenty-four hours since ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... tied in four-sided racks. To these {187} Iberville had the wounded bound, and the crew plunged for the shore. Eighteen men perished going ashore in the darkness. On land were two feet of snow. No sooner did the French castaways build fires to warm their benumbed limbs than bullets whistled into camp. Governor Bayly of Port Nelson had sent out his sharpshooters. Luckily Iberville's other ships now joined him, and, mustering his forces, the dauntless French leader ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... returned to his place, not without stumbling. Never, not even at Chartres, had he been able to hinder the torpor that overpowered him at the moment of receiving the Sacrament. His powers were benumbed, his faculties arrested. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... following question: what would happen if I were to chill the creature in its immobile posture? I foresee a more prolonged inertia. The chill, of course, must not be great, for it would be followed by the lethargy into which insects capable of surviving the winter fall when benumbed by the cold. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of its authour, and began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed. The rapidity with which this work was composed, is a wonderful circumstance. Johnson has been heard to say, 'I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I sat ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... than done," snapped the other. He managed, however, to get his benumbed feet to the floor and presently stood up on them. Mr. Smilk watched him with interest as he hobbled back and forth in front of the desk. "They'll be all right in a minute or two. By Jove, I wish my sister could have heard all you've been saying about prisons and paroles and police. I ought to have ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... waiter, pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not the nearest way to the cataract, but about the dinner-hour. The interval was spent in arranging my dress. Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a slight depression, not decided enough to be termed sadness. My enthusiasm was in a deathlike slumber. Without aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could have imitated ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Motionless, benumbed, as if struck by lightning, remained the prince upon the threshold; behind him were seen the astonished faces of his generals, who, on tiptoe, stretched their necks to gaze, over each other's shoulders, upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... still stood cold and motionless. He was stunned, benumbed, by what he saw and heard. Laura drew away from Hector, and tried to free her ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fall would kill him, and he groaned in agony. His fingers were benumbed and beginning to slip. Then he fell. The air whizzed in his ears. He tried to keep his feet downward, but it was no use. He was whirled heels over head many times, and his senses were leaving him when he was restored by a plunge into the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the attendants were attempting to force the locked jaws apart, that they might administer a potion, and others were applying a red hot iron to the patient's head, in a desperate endeavor to arouse and bring back again into action the benumbed and stupefied sensibilities. Queen Catharine was so shocked by the horrid spectacle that she sank down in a fit of fainting and convulsions, and was borne immediately away back to her ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... them was more severe than in any other small-calibre bullet injuries that I witnessed. The patients lay still with the eyes closed, great pallor of surface, sometimes moaning with pain, the sensorium much benumbed, or occasionally early delirium was noted. The pulse was small, often slow and irregular, and the respiration shallow. The originally quiet state was often changed to one of great restlessness of the unparalysed part of the body, with ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... to scream and could not. She was benumbed with fright. He advanced briskly toward her, like a rapacious wild beast, flung something over her head, something stifling, heavy and white.... What happened afterward I do not remember.... I do not remember! It was like death, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... out to see Jim Cleve sauntering up, careless, untidy, a cigarette between his lips, blue blotches on his white face, upon him the stamp of abandonment. Joan suffered a contraction of heart that benumbed her breast. She stood a moment battling with herself. She was brave enough, desperate enough, to walk straight up to Cleve, remove her mask and say, "I am Joan!" But that must be a last resource. She had no plan, yet she might force ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... you back your liberty.... I will not let you know what happens to me; I will not shed tears for you to see; only—I will not see you again.... Ah! I cannot go on, my heart is breaking.................. I have been sitting benumbed and stupid for some moments. Dear love, I do not find that any feeling of pride rises against you; you are so kind-hearted, so open; you would find it impossible to hurt me or to deceive me; and you will tell me the truth, however cruel it may be. Do you ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... follows that the Soul does not see well thro' purblind Eyes. The Ears hear not clearly when stopped with Filth. The Brain smells not so well when oppressed with Phlegm. And a Member feels not so much when it is benumbed. The Tongue tastes less, when ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... myself, "farewell to life; these accursed, arrant sorcerers will bear me to some nobleman's larder or cellar and leave me there to pay penalty by my neck for their robbery, or peradventure they will leave me stark-naked and benumbed on Chester Marsh or some other bleak and remote place." But on considering that those whose faces I knew had long been buried, and that some were thrusting me forward, and others upholding me above every ravine, it dawned ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... craves All dues be rend'red to their owners. Now, What nearer debt in all humanity Than wife is to the husband? If this law Of nature be corrupted through affection; And that great minds, of partial indulgence To their benumbed wills, resist the same; There is a law in each well-order'd nation To curb those raging appetites that are Most disobedient and refractory. If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta's king— As it is known she is-these moral laws Of nature and of ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... about, so sacred that praise was a kind of sacrilege. Perhaps some excuse may be found for his emotion in the fact that for weeks he had heard no poetry except the ode about 'wiping something off a slate.' The violence of the contrast benumbed his critical faculty. So a man who was obliged to gaze for a long time at the new churches erected in Belfast might afterwards catch himself in the act of admiring the houses which the Congested Districts Board builds ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... clearly, and was resolved to end the lie. But for the moment, in his bodily weakness, his will lagged behind his brain. As a sick man tries to lift a hand and cannot, so he sought to rally his will to meet the crisis and was dismayed to find it benumbed and half-asleep. ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lighting up brilliantly. Numbers of people were arriving on foot, and in carriages, hastening in to witness the happy scene. She only, with her poor blind brother, was rudely pushed back by the guards. Poor Raphael began to feel the cold painfully, and Madelaine perceiving that his hands were benumbed, untied her apron, and rolled ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... rum, and become so much intoxicated that a general fight ensued. Many of them lay stretched on the ground, with tomahawks deeply implanted in their skulls: and many others, as the common phrase is, were "dead drunk." This was an exceedingly fortunate circumstance for us. With their senses benumbed, of course they had forgotten their avowal to roast us, or, it may be, the Indian to whom I proposed ransom had conferred with the others, and they, no doubt, agreed to spare our lives until the morning. It was a night, however, of pain ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... shoes, packed up the blanket again, and set out for town. There was no sun to be seen today either; I shivered like a dog, my feet were benumbed, and water commenced to run from my eyes, as if they ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... but looked at Deronda again, straining to see him in the double light. Until now she had been watching the oar. It seemed as if she were half roused, and wondered which part of her impression was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing outward and inward was continually slipping away from her. Her look was full of wondering timidity such as the forsaken one in the desert might have lifted to the angelic vision before ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... not hear what Mary Phillips said. Perhaps my senses were benumbed. Perhaps the wind was carrying away her words. That it was blowing from me toward her soon became too evident. The steamer was receding from the Sparhawk. The instant I became aware of this my powers of perception and reasoning returned to ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... same affectionate, quiet smile that he had shown when leaving his mother's room in former times. Then she summoned them all. They sat down again round the table while she made the tea and poured it out. But the gathering grew sad, benumbed, as it were, with lassitude. Sandoz vainly tried a diversion by admitting Bertrand, the big dog, who grovelled at sight of the sugar-basin, and ended by going to sleep near the stove, where he snored like a man. Since the discussion on Fagerolles ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... little by little, the consciousness of his physical life, Ramuntcho, after his sleepless night; a sort of torpor, benevolent under the breath of the virgin morning, benumbed his youthful body, leaving his mind in a dream. He knew well such impressions and sensations, for the return at the break of dawn, in the security of a bark where one sleeps, is the habitual sequel of a ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... have watched this mysterious slumber, tell us that when it begins the insect is as if benumbed, and will move when touched; but that as the cold increases, the torpor deepens, until the little dormant creature seems no longer to breathe, but lies to all appearance dead, until the warmth of the sun shall break the spell, and call ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... defence of slavery, a power which they themselves had not too much virtue to give? It is dangerous for the sovereign power of a State to license immorality; to hold the shield of its protection over any thing that is not "legal in a moral view." Bring into your house a benumbed viper, and lay it down upon your warm hearth, and soon it will not ask you into which room it may crawl. Let Slavery once lean upon the supporting arm, and bask in the fostering smile of the State, and you will ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... late—the chance which gives "permission" to take action—when their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just as he "sprang up," has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy! "It is too late," he has said to himself—and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.—In the domain of genius, may not the "Raphael without hands" (taking the expression in its widest sense) ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... steps aright, Yet not enough from far to show His figure to the watchful foe. With cautious step, and ear awake, He climbs the crag and threads the brake; 10 And not the summer solstice there, Tempered the midnight mountain air, But every breeze that swept the wold, Benumbed his drenched limbs with cold. In dread, in danger, and alone, 15 Famished and chilled, through ways unknown, Tangled and steep, he journeyed on; Till, as a rock's huge point he turned, A ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... side, was now the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Captain Hall, of Company I. His was a most singular wound. We were all lying prone upon the ground, when suddenly he spoke rather sharply and said he had got a clip on his knee. He said it was an insignificant flesh wound, but his leg was benumbed. He tried to step on it, but could not bear his weight on it, and very soon it became exceedingly painful, and his ankle swelled to double its natural size. He was taken back to one of the hospitals, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... upwards, and I had only to hold on to it at arm's-length. O'Brien had a tow line, and taking this in his teeth, he towed me down with the stream to about a hundred yards clear of the fortress, where we landed. O'Brien was so exhausted that for a few minutes he remained quite motionless. I also was benumbed ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... the public rooms lay, in blankets, several others who had been benumbed by the water. Mrs. Rosa Abbott, who was in the water for hours, was restored during the day. K. Whiteman, the Titanic's barber, who declared he was blown off the ship by the second of the two explosions after the crash, was treated for ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... stood before the piazza, she could not have managed the little step had he not virtually lifted her up. He took her directly to the library and laid her on the sofa. The fire, owing to the absence of McVay, had gone out. It took Geoffrey some time with his benumbed hands to build a blaze. When he turned toward her again she was sleeping like ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... nice, I think," said Ben, drawing them on; "and I am much obliged to you. I was just wishing I had a pair of gloves to keep my fingers warm to-day, for I never can shoot well when my hands are benumbed. Look, Hal; you know how ragged these gloves were; you said they were good for nothing but to throw away; now look, there's not a hole in them," ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... his horse into the snow; harder and harder it became to raise its hoofs clear for the next step. Snorting with fear, and trembling in every limb, the gallant beast struggled on. He must go on! To stop would be fatal. Benumbed as he was by the intense cold, bewildered by the storm, with hand and voice Jim cheered on his ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... became so strained and fatigued that it was impossible for him to hold out much longer. His hand was tightly clutched about the haft of his knife, but it was so benumbed that he could not feel the weapon. Still with the energy and resolution of despair he continued the unequal conflict, hoping against hope that some unexpected turn of affairs ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... silence, as if her sensations were suddenly benumbed. She felt nothing but a horrible surprise. Her lover—her platonic lover—that other half of her mind and heart—with whom she had been in such tender sympathy, in unison of spirit, so subtle that the same thoughts sprang up simultaneously in the minds of each, the same language ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Benumbed by countless centuries of superstition and passive surrender to false education, to social influences, to pre-natal conditions, to the terrors of law and custom, and to the lurid threats and horrors of the imaginary drama ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... them with their weight; in a word, warring even to the death with cold, the greatest enemy of life. This marvelous feat was accomplished by our French pontoon corps. Many perished, borne away by the current or benumbed by the cold. The glory of this achievement, in my opinion, exceeds in value ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... worse, step in between us and bar the enjoyment of a mutual correspondence? We are not shapen out of the common, heavy, methodical clod, the elemental stuff of the plodding selfish race, the sons of Arithmetic and Prudence; our feelings and hearts are not benumbed and poisoned by the cursed influence of riches, which, whatever blessing they may be in other respects, are no friends to the nobler qualities of the heart: in the name of random sensibility, then, let never the moon change on our silence any more. I have had a tract of had health ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... gains, Possessions now, that once were pains; Joy's blossom gone, as go it must, To ripen seeds of faith and trust; Why heed a snow-flake on the roof If fire within keep Age aloof, Though blundering north-winds push and strain With palms benumbed against the pane?' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... ineffable and eternal happiness. It was to redeem man from this deplorable state, and deliver him from the destroying power of sin, that Jesus came into the world. But when he came he found man so low down in the darkness of ignorance, so stupid and slow to open his eyes, so benumbed by the chilling power of the love of self, so infested and possessed by evil spirits of hell, that but little impression could be made upon him, except such as could be felt and seen by ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... however, these also fade away, and the unhappy youth rushes frantically home on the stumps of his ankle-bones—at least so it appears to him, and so in reality it would turn out to be if he did not speedily rub the benumbed ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... extricate him. Excessive cold froze his limbs and deprived him of strength, yet the Indians dared not approach him until he threw away his arms and made signals of submission. Then they drew him out, and, chafing his benumbed body, speedily restored him to activity. His self-possession was never lost for a moment. Discovering that Opecancanough was the chief, he presented to him a small magnetic dial, and made the simple savages wonder at the play of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... by the huntsmen. It was bitterly cold; the wind howled through the firs, and drove the light snow-flakes right in my face, so that when at length it came on to be dusk I could scarcely see six paces before me. Quite benumbed by the cold, I left the place that had been assigned to me and sought shelter deeper in the wood. There, leaning against a tree, with my firelock under my arm, I forgot the wolf-hunt entirely; my thoughts had ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a January morning, the wailing of the winds in the tree-tops, and the few flying snowflakes foreboded a storm which burst upon them in great fury while about two miles from home. Bewildered and benumbed, they dug a hole in the snow down to the earth, and were soon buried many feet deep, thus affording them some relief from the cold; but they nearly famished with hunger and gave themselves up for lost. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... to determine the latitude of the place by the passage of Fomalhaut over the meridian; but the observation was lost, owing to the time I employed in taking the level of the artificial horizon. It was midnight, and I was benumbed with cold, as were also our guides: yet the thermometer kept at 19.7 degrees. At Cumana I have never seen it sink below 21 degrees; but then the house in which we dwelt on the Imposible was 258 toises above the level ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... could condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity—a Gray Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated, by the education she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... still in the same hurried, almost insane manner. "You have work to do! Now, while I secure the door, do you rub and chafe your stiffened joints." The door was soon fastened, and then she assisted in restoring the circulation to my partially benumbed limbs. This was at last accomplished, and Marie Duquesne drew me toward a window, which she softly opened. "It is useless," she whispered, "to attempt a struggle with the men below. You must descend by this," and she placed her hand upon a lead ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... her son's remarks, but she did not remove her features from the dead. The saint-like expression of her child, and the placid and beautiful face that lay before her devoid of animation, had awoke the benumbed feelings of affection within her. A bright light flashed across her brain, and the long pent up tears, were about to flow, when the door was widely opened, and a dark shadow spread itself over the body ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... residual remnant of persons to some extent mentally infirm or physically incapacitated from engaging in the harder toils. For these people it is necessary to find work, and I think there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in looking after rabbits, feeding poultry, minding bees, and, in short doing all those little odd jobs about a place which must be attended to, but which will not repay the labour of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Mrs. Stowe's life when she made her first visit to Florida, in the winter of 1867. She was tired and benumbed with care and cold. Suddenly the thought came to her that she would go to the South, herself, and see what the stories were worth which she was constantly hearing about its condition. In the mean time, if she could, she would enjoy the soft air, and find retirement in which she might continue her ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... nine hundred kino shows, a hundred and twenty theatres are needed to satisfy the amusement seeking crowd of New York, in addition to the half dozen which offer art. This mad race to outdo one another and this hunting after pleasures which tickle the senses have benumbed the social mind and have inhibited in it the feeling for deeper values. But if by a magic word extreme equality of material means were created and the mere sensuous enjoyments evenly distributed, in that moment all the other differences from individual to individual would be felt with heightened ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... watch was kept upon him; but as the Dipsey was anchored some distance from the landing-place, Mr. Marcy was of the opinion that if he attempted to swim ashore it might be well to let him do so, for if he should not be benumbed in the water into which he would plunge he would certainly be frozen to death as soon as ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... the river, and were as eagerly pursued by Sempro'nius, the consul. No sooner had his army attained the opposite bank, than he perceived himself half-conquered, his men being fatigued with wading up to their arm-pits, and quite benumbed by the intense coldness of the water 5. A total route ensued; twenty-six thousand of the Romans were either killed by the enemy, or drowned in attempting to repass the river. A body of ten thousand men were all ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... his horse. Snow was falling fast, and he was ten miles from camp, when discovered by four Indians, outlying members of a large party of Shawnees under Munseka and Black Fish, who had taken the war-path to avenge the murder of Cornstalk (see p. 172, note. 2). Benumbed by cold, and unable easily to untie or cut the frozen thongs which bound on the pack, Boone could not unload and mount the horse, and after a sharp skirmish was captured, and led to the main Indian encampment, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... monkeys twitter plaintively, trembling in the chilly air. The parrots have nothing to say: they look benumbed, and sit on their perches ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... day-laborer, for the other side of the river is no longer the United States. The foreign pine-logs may not gladden the hearth of his cabin; his children may not know the taste of Canadian bread, the wool of Upper Canada will not bring back warmth to their benumbed limbs. General utility wills it so. All very well! but acknowledge that here it contradicts justice. To dispose by legislation of consumers, to limit them to the products of national labor, is to encroach upon their liberty, to forbid them a resource (exchange) in which there ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... the summer to the strength of manhood. The evening is an emblem of autumn, and autumn of declining life. The night with its silence and darkness shows the winter, in which all the powers of vegetation are benumbed; and the winter points out the time when life shall cease, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Sophists into Socrates' lecture-room. The admired Heine, so fertile in genial ideas, represented the gods of Phidias and Plato, besides being downfallen and vagabond, selling rabbit skins on the seashore, and being forced to light brushwood fires by which to warm their benumbed bodies during the winter nights. To-day the writers, salaried by Bismarck, known as reptiles, now turn on him, for a similar salary, the venomous fangs which he formerly aimed at his innumerable enemies. And yonder, in the parliament where formerly he strode in with sabre, and belt, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... master came home, dripping wet and benumbed with cold, from his first autumn voyage, it was Toad who was first and foremost to meet him and unbutton his oil-skin jacket for him, and undo his sou'wester, and help him ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... resist; his arm, benumbed by the violence of the blow which had broken his gun, refused its service. In an instant Pepe had untied the woollen scarf which was wound several times round his body, and bound with it the limbs of his enemy. Diaz could offer no ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... and his benumbed faculties began to work. He stopped and scanned the trio closely. They were clothed in dainty muslin, three as sweet young girls as one would ever meet. But Patty and Conny, even in the failing light, were still noticeably brunette—it takes ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... aground. Probably the starting of the boat had defeated his plan, or possibly the person who was trying to save the child had lost his hold on the door. There was no one near the little raft. Matt took the young voyager on the great river from its perilous situation. It was benumbed with cold, and he wrapped it in his blanket, and laid it in the ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... seems to say:— Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast, Which neither deadens into rest, Nor ever feels the fiery glow That whirls the spirit from itself away, But fluctuates to and fro, Never by passion quite possessed And never quite benumbed by the world's sway?— And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield, and be Like all the other men ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... husbands' comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... effective weapons of the Holy Office, the real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be looked for in its dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating penances of the saffron crosses, and in the invisible police with which it benumbed the heart and soul of every man who had once fallen into its hands."[588] It is evident that these means of tormenting and coercing dissenters went much further to cause them to disappear than autos-de-fe and other executions. The selection of those who submitted, or played the hypocrite, was accomplished ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... seemed an emptiness glared at him from hollow sockets, and the thought of the dreary routine he must follow when he went back gave him the same faint nausea he had felt the evening after the circus. And, though it was partly the long sweat of anguish which had benumbed him, his apathy was pierced, at times, by a bodily horror of the scene of his struggle. At night he faced the grotesque masks of the Cross-Roads men and the brutal odds again; over and over he felt the blows, and clapped his hand to where the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... very much, to be sure; however, I had sent away a note of hand to a man whom I wanted to have sign it as second security, and contrary to all expectations, it was returned to me with a refusal. I sat for a while benumbed by the blow, because it was a disagreeable surprise, very disagreeable. The note lay before me on the table, and beside it the letter of refusal. My eyes glanced hopelessly over the fatal lines which contained ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... to, struggling hard, but without effect, for it seemed to him that he was only working with his will, his muscles refusing to help; and by degrees the full truth dawned upon him, that the absence of pain was due to the fact that his body was quite benumbed, and a horrible sensation of fear came over him, with the belief that all beneath the snow must be frozen, and that he could do absolutely nothing to save ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn |
