"Deafness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Professor of Music, formerly a member of the orchestra of the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's and Covent Garden Theatres,' found life too hard for him. That is all. 'The deceased, a bachelor.'—Heaven help him!—'had of late been afflicted with deafness, which hindered his pursuit of his profession, and' (the witness an old friend feared) 'he was recently in straitened circumstances, but he was too proud and independent to ask or accept assistance.' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... looked at alone, keeps one from seeing what is to either side and behind it. It can also be compared to a continual sound in the ear, which does away with perceiving the harmony of many sounds. Such are the blindness and deafness induced on the mind by miracles. It is the same with anything confirmed but not regarded from ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... somewhat like to a rhinoceros, with a white horn growing in his hinder parts as big as a great hunting-horn, which they use to wind instead of a trumpet. Monardus (Monardes, Historia Medicinal) writeth that a little of the powder of that horn put into the ear cureth deafness. ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... at him rather listlessly. She was growing deaf, or feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was much older than they knew—was growing tired. Her persiflage, which Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old, and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid sweetness ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... its influence on the animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues have been no less extolled by the ancients.[116] Martianus Capella assures us, that fevers were removed by songs, and that Asclepiades cured deafness by the sound of the trumpet. Wonderful indeed! that the same noise which would occasion deafness in some, should be a specific for it in others! It is making the viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps Asclepiades was the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... of egotism and accident, to be greatly competent for these effects. Besides which, there are not a few that have closed their ears, lest they should hear, not a few that are even filled with base astonishment and terror, and out of this with base wrath, to find their deafness assailed. And still further, it must be freely owned that our natures have mysterious elections, and though one desire openness of soul as much as folly fears it, yet may it happen that some tint ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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, often continued till a passage opens through the palate, placing mouth and nose in directer communication. Dr. Ford also recommends during the invasion or period of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret to call ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... seconded by Lord Macclesfield, president of the Royal Society, and Bradley, the eminent mathematician, he distinguished himself greatly in the debates on the calendar, and succeeded in making the new style a fact. Deafness, however, was gradually affecting him, and he withdrew little by little from society and the practice of politics. In 1755 occurred the famous dispute with Johnson over the dedication to the English Dictionary. In 1747 Johnson sent Chesterfield, who was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... dear. You must try hard not to do it. We shall be of no use if we let our minds go. We must try to force ourselves into a sort of deafness and blindness in certain directions. I am trying—with all ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... think Saturday was one of my hearing days. I don't hear so well to-day. My deafness came on when Elder Knapp was here. I was called out on duty at the time of the disturbance in Bowdoin square, ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... others to certain infirmities; the Gascons are given to exaggeration and Parisians to vanity. As we see that apoplexy attacks people with short necks, or butchers are liable to carbuncle, as gout attacks the rich, health the poor, deafness kings, paralysis administrators, so it has been remarked that certain classes of husbands and their wives are more given to illegitimate passions. Thus they forestall the celibates, they form another sort of aristocracy. If any reader should be enrolled in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Session, as they are called, (official persons who occupy an important and responsible situation, and enjoy a considerable income,) who had served upwards of thirty years, felt himself, from age, and the infirmity of deafness with which it was accompanied, desirous of retiring from his official situation. As the law then stood, such official persons were entitled to bargain with their successors, either for a sum of money, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... all over the world to investigate these cures from the standpoint of a religion or pure science. What sights I have seen! Men and women of all ages and walks of life testifying that the waters of the sacred grotto have freed them from this or that malady, from tumors, lameness, deafness, blindness, tuberculosis, nervous trouble and numerous other afflictions. By thousands and tens of thousands these unfortunates crowd here from the four corners of the earth, an endless procession of believers, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... and one plants used in popular folk-medicine we can but give a few illustrations, so numerous are these old cures for the ills to which flesh is heir. Thus, for deafness, the juice of onion has been long recommended, and for chilblains, a Derbyshire cure is to thrash them with holly, while in some places the juice of the leek mixed with cream is held in repute. To exterminate warts a host of plants ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... with a sudden deafness. Ambrose was cast in a dugout. The indefatigable Job hopped in after and made himself small ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... suggested his desertion—for the disappointed crowds considered it a desertion indeed. Even Alderman Fox, deeply troubled as he was, could offer no consolation to his fellow-citizens. He, who was formerly stone-deaf, had gone one day to see Schlatter at Omaha, and when the latter took his hand his deafness had completely disappeared. Full of gratitude, he offered Schlatter a large sum of money, which was refused. He then offered the hospitality of his house at Denver, and this being accepted, Schlatter arrived there, preceded by the glory of his saintly reputation and his miraculous ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... have called Mrs Trewthen a good mother; but though well meaning she was maladroit, and her intentions missed their mark. This might have been partly attributable to the slight deafness from which she suffered. Now, as usual, the chief utterances ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... sons were not of the party; and as the persons of the strangers were unknown, and the guise of a militia-man was often assumed by Fagan, our friend was not 'easy in his mind how to act.' His first idea was to feign deafness; but a second knock, loud enough to wake all but the dead, changed his intention—he raised the window and hailed ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... being ill," Agnes Stewart answered darkly. She was a delicate girl, and from that time she starved herself resolutely, until she was so wasted that Miss Clifford in despair sent her home. Another girl was seized with total deafness suddenly, and had also to go; the change brought her hearing back in a very short time; and some of the dockyard girls received urgent summonses from dying relations, and were allowed to go to them. They always returned the brighter ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... church to find a pleasant pew. I wish you'd heard the singin'; it had the old-time ring; The preacher said, with trumpet voice: "Let all the people sing!" The tune was "Coronation," and the music upward rolled, Till I thought I heard the angels striking all their harps of gold. My deafness seemed to melt away; my spirit caught the fire; I joined my feeble, trembling voice with that melodious choir, And sang as in my youthful days: "Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of all." I tell you, wife, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... opened a law-office in Boston. Here he at once entered upon a large and lucrative practice, both in the State and Federal courts, which kept steadily increasing for over twenty years, till declining health and partial deafness compelled him to withdraw from the courts of justice, and confine himself to office business. During this period, his opinion on abstruse and knotty points of law was often solicited by eminent counsel living outside of Massachusetts, and he sent written opinions to attorneys in nine ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... a new title to speak. It is deafness; and I know from deafness that I run a worse chance with a man whose mouth is covered with ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... each other's discourse, and sustaining the interests and the enjoyment of that interchange of thoughts by flying from topic to topic just as their unshackled imagination suggested. But Fernand never questioned Nisida concerning the motive which had induced her to feign dumbness and deafness for so many years; she had given him to understand that family reasons of the deepest importance, and involving dreadful mysteries from the contemplation of which she recoiled with horror, had prompted so tremendous a self-martyrdom:—and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... happens that a mass of wax collects in the auditory canal and closes the passage so completely as to cause deafness (Fig. 155). This may come about without pain and so gradually that one does not think of seeking medical aid. Such masses are easily removed by the physician, the hearing being then restored. Both for painful disturbances of the ear and for the ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... unpleasantness without notice. A telephone subscriber has an evident advantage, for he can switch off the connection when the message begins to be unpleasant. Statesmen or politicians have been known to cultivate convenient deafness; but that is a mere pretence. The unpleasant things heard, would still continue to rankle. It is not every one that has the courage of Mr. Herbert Spencer who openly resorted to his ear plugs whenever ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... hand, was supported by Justice, "in orange velvet," armed with blade and beam. Prudence and Fortitude embraced each other near a column enwreathed by serpents "with their tails in their ears to typify deafness to flattery," while Patriotism as a pelican, and Patience as a brooding hen, looked benignantly upon the scene. This greeting duly acknowledged, the procession advanced into the city. The streets were lined with troops and with citizens; the balconies were filled with fair ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... round. She had actually, in sheer absent-mindedness or negligence or deafness, been shutting the door in ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... of those who chanced to be deaf—and deafness was not uncommon in the London of that age, inscriptions of all sizes were thrown from the roof above upon the moving platforms themselves, and on one's hand or on the bald head of the man before one, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and a scowl that were equally effective in tyrannizing over both his mother and Horace, and he was beloved by everybody. Women turned to look at him in the street. Unhappily, his health was not good. He was afflicted by a slight deafness, which, however, the doctor said he would grow out of; the doctor predicted for him a lusty manhood. In the meantime, he caught every disease that happened to be about, and nearly died of each one. His latest acquisition ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the house likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known in Danish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Goeiske. Jens was a cordial and attentive host, the daughters were all of them women out of the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... to inquire after sick boys, because he had gentlemanly manners. This picture my correspondent recognized; as well as those of the fat little dancing-master who taught them hornpipes, of the Latin master who stuffed his ears with onions for his deafness, of the gruff serving-man who nursed the boys in scarlet fever, and of the principal himself, who was always ruling ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, smiting the palms of offenders with the same diabolical ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... altogether; and the perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones at the top, or ploughing through the wet foundation, was hardly an improvement on the music arising from the jolts and jerks along the causeway. Men's minds got confused in the immensity of the uproar, and deafness became epidemic. In winter, the surface of Macadam formed a series of little lakes, resembling on a small scale those of Canada; in summer, it formed a Sahara of dust, prodigiously like the great desert. Acres of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust. But except for the felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything. I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange and unnatural ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Truth in Verity Are people of a harsh and stammering tongue! The hedge-flower hath its song; Meadow and tree, Water and wandering cloud Find Seers who see, And, with convincing music clear and loud, Startle the adder-deafness of the crowd By tones, O Love, from thee. Views of the unveil'd heavens alone forth bring Prophets who cannot sing, Praise that in chiming numbers will not run; At least, from David until Dante, none, And none since him. Fish, and not swim? They think ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... one foul act, than the leper in his whole stricken life. The twin shames of venereal disease, blinked by every health board in the country (Detroit possibly deserves a partial exception) are, in their effect upon the race, in blindness, deafness, idiocy, and death so dreadful a menace to-day, that consumption alone can march beside them in the leadership of the destroyers. Typhoid, so easily conquerable, claims its annual thousands of sacrificed victims. And the slaughter ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... seems to me to be a heavy misfortune. But to possess, as most of us do, our share of all these qualities, and then at no time, in no fitting mood or proffered opportunity, to read poetry—this can only be regarded as deafness by habit and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... rascally lawyer, you! and whence does an ostler like you get your shilling to pay withal? Answer me." The examinate found it so difficult to answer the question, that he suddenly became afflicted with deafness. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... off by Miss Kate Lansdale, who appeared around the corner and paused politely before us, with a look of trained and admirable deafness. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... singular and extraordinary in her look, as well as I could discern by the imperfect light of the apartment. I put a few unimportant questions to her, to which she replied, but seemed to be afflicted to a slight degree with deafness. Her hair was becoming grey, and I said that I believed she was older than myself, but that I was confident she had less snow ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... seventeen or eighteen.[172] In another case a father and his four children all became blind at twenty-one years old; in another, a grandmother grew blind at thirty-five, her daughter at nineteen, and three grandchildren at the ages of thirteen and eleven.[173] So with deafness, two brothers, their father and paternal grandfather, all became deaf ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... Doctor Benoit, Mrs. Lamotte; Doctor Heath's tardiness will furnish sufficient excuse, and Doctor Benoit's partial deafness will ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 'Voyage d'Egypte,' on large paper, and many other fine books. It was also rich in natural science, topography, and antiquities. Dibdin describes her as 'at the head of all the female collectors of Europe.' Miss Currer, who suffered from deafness, was an intimate friend of Richard Heber, and it was rumoured at one time that this distinguished bibliomaniac was engaged to be married to Miss Currer, but the event did not transpire. Miss Currer's books were sold at ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... tale almost as I have written it. The slipping oysters and the game of blind man's buff made the princess burst with laughing, in spite of her deafness. She agreed with the cardinal that I had acted with great discretion, and told me that I should be sure to succeed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... impress the Tanners with the importance of his late charge in the East as Margaret came down-stairs. His pompous tones, raised to favor the deafness that he took for granted in Mr. Tanner, easily reached ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... — N. deafness, hardness of hearing, surdity^; inaudibility, inaudibleness^. V. be deaf &c adj.; have no ear; shut one's ears, stop one's ears, close one's ears; turn a deaf ear to. render deaf, stun, deafen. Adj. deaf, earless^, surd; hard of hearing, dull of hearing; deaf-mute, stunned, deafened; stone deaf; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... particularly when the noise in the House was so great through the excitement on the Home Rule question. I find a note made then upon this point, alluding to a little incident a propos of Lord Randolph Churchill's deafness: "It is really dangerous, considering the high state of feeling in the House, that Members antagonistic to each other should have to sit side by side. During the stormy scene to which I have just alluded, I was sitting in one of the front boxes directly over the Speaker's chair, and, although ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... deafness, the Duke of Wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life. The doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... smoking a cigar, and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook. Beethoven both my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that he always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones remarked that before the end of dinner he had ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... we have, and not labouring in the use of means to attain more. Much neglect of pressing after peace and reconciliation with him, through a Mediator, and of living up to the profession which we make of him. Despising of his holy ordinances and means of worship; deafness and stupidity under the calls of his Word. Profanation of his holy sacraments, neglect of secret prayer (wherein much of the life of religion lies), and of prayer in families, or a negligent, careless and superficial performance thereof; many ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... India-ink brushes. Bless me! it gave you a lesson, gentlemen snobs, to sustain the honor of the special army, and taught you to respect the black velvet plastron and double red bands on the trousers. In spite of his appearance of absence of mind and deafness, the Colonel had just before heard murmured around him the words "old Lantz," and "old dolphin." Very well, gentlemen officers, you know now that the old army ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ten minutes," shouted Mr. Polly, "and you'll pop like a roast chestnut. Don't understand me? Roast chestnut! Roast chestnut! POP! There ought to be a limit to deafness. Come on round to the front and see if we can find an attic window. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 'Now, my deafness,' said Mr. Swancourt impressively, 'is a dead silence; but William Worm's is that of people frying fish in his head. Very remarkable, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... been a few minor hitches; for example, the food and the manner of serving it and the proper method of consuming it had furnished a bad moment or two; and once Monsignor had been obliged to feign sudden deafness on being asked a question on a subject of which he knew nothing by a priest whose name he had forgotten, until Father Jervis slid in adroitly and saved him. Yet these were quite unnoticed, it appeared, and could easily be attributed to the habit of absent-mindedness for which, Monsignor ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... originally a part of his case. Even in the last two years of his parliamentary life, when his sight had so failed that he read nothing, printed or written, except what it was absolutely necessary to read, and when his deafness had so increased that he did not hear half of what was said in debate, it was sufficient for a colleague to whisper a few words to him, explaining how the matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporize a long and ingenious argument, ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... more potential than the one preceding Mr. Squire's peroration ensued. It was broken this time by Uncle Dad Simms, who proceeded to further glorify his deafness by squeaking: ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... will receive it so, that has fallen for the time—ugh, ugh, ugh—upon my lungs, and renders it a good deal troublesome to me to speak loud; so that the nearer you sit—and it has affected my head a little, only with a slight deafness, though, which—were you speaking, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... story well, does the old gentleman, and but for his deafness would be a brilliant talker. When I gave his health, with a few complimentary verses on his marvellous youth, the old fellow in a gracious reply called me his dear colleague. My master Astier corrected ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the other attributes"; and that natural selection cannot develop any one superiority when animals are equally preserved by "other superiorities." But as natural selection will simultaneously eliminate tendencies to slowness, blindness, deafness, stupidity, &c., it must favour and improve many points simultaneously, although no one of them may be of greater importance than the rest. Of course the more complicated the evolution the slower it will be; but time is plentiful, and the amount of elimination ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... 'Corp'el' Tullidge, Christopher Coney, John Upjohn, Robert Creedle, Martin Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and Sammy Blore,—men so denominated should stand for comic things, and these men do. William Worm, for example, was deaf. His deafness took an unusual form; he heard fish frying in his head, and he was not reticent upon the subject of his infirmity. He usually described himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and protested that he would never pay the Lord for his making,—a degree of self-knowledge which many ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... flash of beauty, the same average number of over-dressed women, the same paint, the same feathers, the same jewels. She saw opposite to her Madame Mayer, with the elderly countess whom she patronised for the sake of deafness, and found convenient as a sort of flying chaperon. The countess could not hear much of the music, but she was fond of the world and liked to be seen, and she could not hear at all what Del Ferice said in an undertone ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... 1719-1800), a Co. Limerick man, was educated in Dublin and called to the English bar, but owing to deafness was more successful as a chamber counsel than as a pleader. Emigrating to India in 1782, he became joint proprietor of a newspaper in Calcutta, and there he died. He wrote several satirical romances, such as Chrysal, or the Adventures ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Swinburne never married. His deafness caused him to pass much of his long life in comparative retirement. His last thirty years were spent with his friend, the critic and poet, Theodore Watts-Dunton, at Putney on the Thames, a few miles southwest ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wast with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and Thou broke through my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale fragrance and I drew in my breath and I panted for Thee. I tasted, and did hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... striped and mottled with grey, although it was perfumed with the sweets of Araby, and oiled with as pure and undefiled an unction as that which flowed from the horn of the ancient Samuel upon the head of the youthful David. His stateliness provoked her mirth—his deafness her impatience; and when she compared him with the joyous cavaliers, the brilliant and captivating men who graced the court of the gay and luxurious Louis, for whose gallant plumes and glittering armour she ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... with this deafness coming on!" she shouted, her usually soft voice ringing like a ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... said, more than once ruined the performance of his symphonies; which he would conduct, even at the time when his deafness had become almost complete. The musicians, in order to keep together, agreed at length to follow the slight indications of time which the concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to Beethoven's ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... gazing on this splendor, suddenly I heard a shriek. Shrill, ringing midst the woods In piercing clearness, through my ears it cut, And left a sense of deafness. Startled, round I gazed. Again the horrid sound thrilled past. I knew it then as the terrific cry Of the fierce, bloody panther. In our woods Naught fiercer, bloodier dwells, when roused by rage Or hunger. Oft our hunters had of late Marked the huge foot-prints ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the opportunity to relieve himself from the affliction with which he had afflicted others. Like an impostor who has established the claim of deafness, and mankind bawls in his ear, the hatted spectre was made to feel uncomfortable when he put off his tile—his consistency was at once on trial. He was like a boy who had pricked a cross upon his hand in India ink, and, growing to be a man with taste and position, sees the indelible ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the age of signals; whistlings outside the windows, rattling of the railings, comes through letter-boxes and ventilation grids, even—on occasions of special deafness—pebbles thrown against the panes! A broken window, and a succession of whoops making the air hideous during the progress of an extra special tea party, evoked the displeasure of the mistresses in turns, and a second verdict went forth against signals in all forms, whereupon the Garnetts and ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in allusion to the guitars, for the astronomer had now placed both hands over his ears in the vain endeavour to exclude "The Gipsies." Deafness, perhaps, rendered him yielding. In any case, he permitted Lady Enid to detach him from Mrs. Bridgeman and to lead him through the rooms in ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... commands, whose love warms, whose truth makes fair, our whole being. God speaks for the most part in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling noises, His voice is little likely to be heard. As in some kinds of deafness, a perpetual noise in the head prevents hearing any other sounds, the rush of our own fevered blood, and the throbbing of our own nerves, hinder our catching His tones. It is the calm lake which mirrors the sun, the least catspaw wrinkling the surface wipes out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... enlarged tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the wearing of glasses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... cigars, little dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, and came shouting after me into the street. I hurried on, however, pretending not to hear him, so he, with a curse at my deafness, went back at ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... floor, and Adams secured, he instantly laid hold on Fanny, and, with the assistance of the poet and player, who, hearing the battle was over, were now come up, dragged her, crying and tearing her hair, from the sight of her Joseph, and, with a perfect deafness to all her entreaties, carried her downstairs by violence, and fastened her on the player's horse; and the captain, mounting his own, and leading that on which this poor miserable wretch was, departed, without any more consideration of her cries than a butcher hath of those of a lamb; ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... young men, with mustache, who smoke bad cigars, and cultivate as elsewhere the charm of each others' classical conversation. Montaigne was here in the 15th century, and Fallopius, he of the trumpets, came here to be cured of deafness—which is one of the infirmities which the Latin inscription declares to have yielded to the use of the waters. Lorenzo di Medici came to talk platonism and the fine arts at a place which will never know either any more; and, from a Latin letter extant, was summoned from the Bagni to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... means to be very neighborly." The director turned, with a smile, to include that lady in the conversation. But the local deafness had engulfed her. She was sitting peacefully by the window, with the air of one retired within herself, to think her own very remote thoughts. The visitor mentally improvised a little theory, and ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... fortune, which as they wound the soul of man, produce this melancholy, and many great inconveniences, by that antidote of good counsel and persuasion may be eased or expelled. Deformities and imperfections of our bodies, as lameness, crookedness, deafness, blindness, be they innate or accidental, torture many men: yet this may comfort them, that those imperfections of the body do not a whit blemish the soul, or hinder the operations of it, but rather help and much increase it. Thou art lame of body, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... looks!—Did you ever hear an alto voice singing in the candle-light? Well, it felt the way that sounds! The last vision you would like to glut your eyes on before blindness smote you! The last sound you would like to glut your ears on before deafness dulled you! The last touch—before Intangibility! Something ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... newspaper standards are so different from those of a college. On a newspaper it is a case of get the story and no questions asked. It isn't honor that counts. It is shrewdness, determination, dogged persistence, hardness of head, and deafness to personal ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... it rest upon her shoulders, but owing to the inexperience of her assistants, most of the nursing devolved on her as well. One patient who was critically ill she was obliged for six weeks to nurse entirely both by night and day. Nervous debility was the natural consequence of such overwork, and a deafness from which she had suffered at Kaiserswerth so much increased that the doctor ordered her to rest. That was not immediately possible, as there was no one to take her place, and when at last a successor had been found, and she was able to return home, she was so weary both in body ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... very genial and sociable disposition, was highly intelligent and well informed, and in spite of an infirmity of deafness was a charming companion. His business qualifications are proven by the success of the establishment he founded, in spite of the succession of unforeseen and unavoidable disasters with which it had to contend. He was a man of very ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... is the child suffering from enlarged tonsils and adenoids, which prevent proper nasal breathing and compel him to keep his mouth open in order to breathe. Perhaps one of his troubles is deafness. He is soon considered stupid. This impression is strengthened by his poor progress in school. Through no fault of his own he is doomed to failure. He neglects his studies, hates his school, leaves long before he has completed ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... his later years, when deafness saddened his lot, deserted the halls of fame and the palaces of royalty, where he had been prominent, and retired with his wife to the little Italian village where he had been born of the peasantry. And there he spent years founding schools and doing ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with a good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music in the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... deafness, Boileau had great difficulty in fulfilling his Academic duties. He was a member of the Academy of medals and inscriptions, founded by Colbert in 1662, "in order to render the acts of the king immortal, by deciding the legends of the medals ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... liberty, as well as those of the neighbourhood, have lived with me in great amity for near twenty years; which I am confident will never diminish during my life. I am chiefly sorry, that by two cruel disorders of deafness and giddiness, which have pursued me for four months, I am not in condition either to hear, or to receive you, much less to return my most sincere acknowledgements, which in justice and gratitude I ought to do. May God bless ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... 'Be sure it is all true. I see it every day in my Jane'—her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not, I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the girl professed, at the third seance, to be able ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... said about no man knowing? Bartow knows. In his dumbness, his deafness, he has surprised my secret, and shows that he has done so by his peering looks, his dissatisfied ways, and a jealousy at which I could shout aloud in mirth, if I were not more tempted to shriek aloud ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... Boissy tried to talk politics to me and to reiterate the famous phrase "Be strong." But whenever anybody began to talk to me about questions of home politics, with which I had nothing to do, my partial deafness ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... is a frequent cause of both slight and aggravated deafness. Of 156 deaf mutes examined 59 per cent had adenoids, while only 6 per cent of the general run of the children in the neighborhood had this trouble. In mouth breathing, the current of air entering the mouth ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... about the arrival of the Messiah. But if you began to speak to him about distilleries, taxes, estates, and things in connection with them, he would open his eyes widely and would listen to you like a man struck with deafness, because these things are to him like a sealed letter. For him, beyond his sacred books, the world is like a ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... in whom He finds an obstacle: so that the cause of grace being withheld is not only the man who raises an obstacle to grace; but God, Who, of His own accord, withholds His grace. In this way, God is the cause of spiritual blindness, deafness of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... to an extent that makes ours look almost like deafness," Ayesha Keithley said. "I wish I could design a sound-detector one-tenth as good ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... life, he was afflicted by deafness, which made him feel exceedingly uncomfortable in mixed society. Thanks to a healthy constitution, unimpaired by excess and invigorated by active occupation, his working powers had lasted longer than those of most men. He was still cheerful, clear-headed, and skilful in the arts of his ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... a stuttering quarrel between the two parties, each one finding it more and more difficult to express himself as his anger rose. Thiemet, who besides his role of stammering was also playing that of deafness, addressed his neighbor, his trumpet in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the "Baptist Watchman" of Boston explain by what phenomenon of logic or elasticity of ethics he accepts the lucubrations of Dr. Bye, of Oren Oneal, of Liquozone, of Actina, that marvelous two-ended mechanical appliance which "cures" deafness at one terminus and blindness at the other, and all with a ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Bartley Fallon was gone, and Mrs. Fallon's basket upset, and all in it strewed upon the ground—the tea here—the two pound of sugar there—the egg-cups there. Look, now, what a great hardship the deafness puts upon me, that I didn't hear the commincement of the fight! Wait till I tell James Ryan that I see below; he is a neighbor of Bartley's; it would be a pity if he wouldn't hear ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... degree of enlargement of the tonsils occasions deafness from pressure on the passage leading to the internal ear, and is also apt to give rise to a troublesome hacking cough which sometimes excites apprehension lest the child's lungs should be diseased. When still more considerable the enlarged tonsils block up the passage ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... so that the man that taketh the powders so sent, by tongue or skin, is, without doubt, speedily deprived of life. Women have sometimes caused dropsy and leprosy, decrepitude and impotence and idiocy and blindness and deafness in men. These wicked women, ever treading in the path of sin, do sometimes (by these means) injure their husbands. But the wife should never do the least injury to her lord. Hear now, O illustrious lady, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... ignorance, vice, or folly. And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... that he seems to have excused his "hollering" by the habits consequent upon his mother's deafness. The "hollering" consisted of unusually heavy thumping, I suppose. But the second point is of far greater interest. George intimates that he has changed his "sect," and become a woman! For this important alteration his good mother had prepared his mind. This style of thing ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Travers, then a young girl of nineteen, was suffering from partial deafness, and was recommended by her own doctor to go to Dr. Wilde, who was the chief oculist and aurist in Dublin. Miss Travers went to Dr. Wilde, who treated her successfully. Dr. Wilde would accept no fees from her, stating at the outset that as she was the daughter of a brother-physician, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... which it refers have supplied the poet with an example of the "glory" which may "arise" from "defect," the power from limitation. It needs, he says, the obstructing prism to set free the rainbow hues of the sunbeam. Only dumbness can give to love the full eloquence of the eyes; only deafness can impress love's yearnings on the movements ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... morning—especially if she had eaten anything rich the day before—she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest pretext Belova's deafness. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to let it be seen that he had heard these words; like the ostrich, he feigned deafness and blindness in order not to seem aware of the looks and murmurs of his guests, which all went to prove that he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of in this letter, Frances treasured greatly. She showed them to me, in a book which opens with a very touching prayer in her own writing. In a later chapter I quote the lines in which Gilbert writes of his own tone-deafness, and of how he saw what music meant as he watched his wife's face. Something of the same effect is produced on me by these verses. Gilbert was not of course tone-deaf to this tragedy, yet it was chiefly in its effect on Frances that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's left. Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue. He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear. "Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe? I have it noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet." He glanced ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to life-long pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened. Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but even waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from the voice of friendship and love? How little do we realise the sufferings of others! Even your brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... banish the light. It envelops him, and pours its splendors around him, regardless of his wilful blindness. Millions are so engrossed with selfishness, or animalism, that they catch the accents of no spiritual message, but those appeals are never hushed. The deafness of the multitudes who will not hear does not prove that no ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... become deaf, so to speak, to undesirable circumstances; most frequently, of course, to undesirable circumstances in the way of parental direction; so that fathers, mothers, nurses, or governesses, not comprehending that this mental deafness is for the time being entirely genuine, are liable to hoarseness both of throat and temper. Thirteen is an age when the fading of this gift or talent, one of the most beautiful of childhood, begins to impair its ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... friendly, white-haired old gentleman, and he made them very much at home under the impression they had come to get married. A slight deafness was in part ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... once more blotting out the dog, and blackening all the mountain; while the stillness was so still, deafness might have forgot itself, or else believed that noiseless ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... With what vigor and faithfulness this labor was pursued, the Roman and Venetian note-books testify. "For the studies he made from Raphael," writes Leslie, "he paid dearly; for he caught so severe a cold in the chambers of the Vatican as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the redskin, Laura, official laundress of the Arrowhead, had lately attended an evening affair in the valley at which the hitherto smart tipple of Jamaica ginger had been supplanted by a novel and potent beverage, Nature's own remedy for chills, dyspepsia, deafness, rheumatism, despair, carbuncles, jaundice, and ennui. Laura had partaken freely and yet again of this delectable brew, and now suffered not only from a sprained wrist but from detention, having suffered arrest on complaint of the tribal sister ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any lady of them all,—how often he said all these things, we need not enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... desire only to say that I know from my travels all over the country, conferring with the intelligent women to bring before them this great principle, that the good work is going on. It may be deafness yesterday and partial hearing to-day, but it will be full hearing to-morrow. To-day we may be blind to the truth; to-morrow we shall see the whole truth. We may not have another centennial before we shall see ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... DEAFNESS.—Take ant's eggs and union juice. Mix and drop them into the ear. Drop into the ear, at night, six or eight drops of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... an elderly man, very careful of the pounds, shillings, and pence. He was affected with an incurable deafness, which he never thought proper to acknowledge, but catching at a word or two in the sentence, would frame his answer accordingly, occasioning frequent mirth to his mess-mates, whom he imagined were ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... by the Way," describing his interview with Charles and Mary Lamb, says,—"Nothing could be more delightful than the kindness and affection between the brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most singular gravity upon every topic that was started. 'Poor Mary!' said he, 'she hears all of an epigram but the point.' 'What are you saying of me, Charles?' she asked. 'Mr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the best meal in the week for her because all her children were sure to be at home, it was apt to be pure purgatory on a hot day, with Sheba dawdling and grumbling and Rosalind spilling pea-soup on her Sunday dress, and Aunt Elsie's deafness increased by the weather to the point of ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... is obvious. Persons suffering with serious congenital defects, as natural blindness, deafness, deformity of the limbs, or defective development of any part, will be more or less likely to transmit the same deformities or deficiencies to their children. There are, of course, cases of natural blindness, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... same divine issue, my poor friend," said Beethoven; "why, just see here—I'm stone-deaf, and can't hear a note of what I'm singing to you! But it is not about that I weep, when I am weeping. It was terrible when it first came on, my deafness, and I could no longer hear the shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... virtuoso of his day. He was remarkably deft in connecting the full chords, in which he delighted, without the use of the pedal. His manner at the instrument was composed and quiet. He sat erect, without movement of the upper body, and only when his deafness compelled him to do so, in order to hear his own music, did he contract a habit of leaning forward. With an evident appreciation of the necessities of old-time music he had a great admiration for clean fingering, especially in fugue playing, and he objected to ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... especially of the scalp. 3. Severe injuries of the bones of the head; convulsions. 4. Impaired vision, from whatever cause; inflammatory affections of the eyelids; immobility or irregularity of the iris; fistula, lachrymalis, etc., etc. 5. Deafness; copious discharge from the ears. 6. Loss of many teeth, or the teeth generally unsound. 7. Impediment of speech. 8. Want of due capacity of the chest, and any other indication of a liability to a pulmonic disease. 9. Impaired or inadequate efficiency of one or both of the superior extremities on ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... hearing. For caps, by the heat they produce to a part which cannot safely endure an increase of temperature, greatly expose children to catarrhal affections; and many a catarrh has laid the foundation for dulness of hearing, if not of actual deafness. ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... my ears and shook my head violently to intimate my temporary deafness; and the figure disappeared, leaving the placid candle to watch me as it seemed with ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... of a white colour and blue eyes in male cats with deafness, and of the tortoise-shell marking with the female sex of the same animal, are two well-known but most extraordinary cases. Equally remarkable is the fact, communicated to Darwin by Mr. Tegetmeier, that white, yellow, pale blue, or dun pigeons, of all breeds, have the young birds born naked, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... supposing total deafness to be an indispensable qualification in a candidate for the position of prompter to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... an attorney's office the bar was the object of his hopes, a constitutional deafness soon convinced him that he was not adapted for the duties of an advocate; and his thoughts, from conscientious motives, became ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... us here. We set out post haste," which remark showed the hostility which had for a long time reigned between the households. Then, just as the old woman reached the last steps, he pushed forward quickly and rubbed his hairy face against her cheeks, shouting in her ear, on account of her deafness: "How well you look, mother; sturdy as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... The outer door stood wide open. It was through this door that Benedetto had fled. Sanselme heard the priest utter an exclamation of surprise, and then he went to his servant's door, and knowing her deafness knocked and called loudly to her to awake. This was Sanselme's salvation. He leaned from the window and caught a branch from the tree by which Benedetto had clambered to the upper room. This done, it was easy for Sanselme ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... now plied the conductor-pianist with the contents of the mysterious phial, and placing a long, white ostrich plume in his hand, he made a signal for the orchestra to begin. The conductor, despite his deafness, appeared to comprehend what was going on and feebly waved the plume in air, and the first gloomy chords of the Marche Funebre a la Tartare were heard. Of all the funeral marches ever penned this composition certainly outdid ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... darkened stair, where his feet shook A sad blind echo. He kept up Slowly. 'Twas a chill sway of air That autumn noon within the stair, Sick, dizzy, like a turning cup. His brain perplexed him, void and thin: He shut his eyes and felt it spin; The obscure deafness hemmed him in. He said: "the air is ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the rest of the family, I soon discovered the gulf by which she, as well as myself, was separated from her mother and husband. While the husband, who was a handsome young man, was away the greater part of the day attending to his business, and the mother's deafness excluded her to a great extent from our conversations, we soon discovered by a rapid exchange of ideas that we shared the same opinions on many important matters, and this led to a great feeling of friendship between us. Jessie, who was at that time about twenty-two, bore little resemblance to her ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... wot he meant, but 'is deafness come on ag'in. Henery Walker 'ad an extra dose o' gin put in, and arter he 'ad tasted it the old gentleman seemed to get more amiable-like, and 'im and Henery Walker sat by theirselves ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... there need be no compulsory examination. Men and women will, of their own accord, desire to know if their marriage will jeopardize the race. There will be questions of heredity to elucidate, questions of inherited insanity, poison taints, of blindness and deafness, or it may be ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... no, John!" What a blessing deafness is sometimes! The ear cannot detect the delicate tremolo which might tell the story too plainly. And in the darkness of ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond
... in the Upper House. He was a most successful Viceroy in Ireland at the difficult period of the "'45," and a judicious "Secretary for the North" after it. He conducted the reform of the Calendar through Parliament, and only gave up active participation in home politics because of his increasing deafness. In foreign affairs he was an adroit and successful diplomatist, and made an early and remarkably clear-sighted anticipation of the French Revolution. It is not extravagant to say that, if he had had ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... I added, "we didn't want to enter upon an indissoluble union with them for the rest of the day. Ma tante's deafness is not entertaining, and la petite Marie has nothing ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... country like this, traversed by a labyrinth of valleys and ravines, and so we accepted the soldier. As we were about leaving, an old Turcoman, whose beard was dyed a bright red, came up, saying that he knew Mr. H. was a physician, and could cure him of his deafness. The morning air was sweet with the breath of cedar and pine, and we rode on through the woods and over the open turfy glades, in high spirits. We were in the heart of a mountainous country, clothed with evergreen forests, except some open upland tracts, which showed a thick green turf, dotted ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... an irresolute expression; he saw he was jammed up in the wind, so at a venture he determined to sham deafness. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... but by his Creator, and depends, probably, upon conditions of organization in his cerebral system as much beyond his control as any thing abnormal in the features of his face, or blindness, or deafness, or any other physical disadvantage. The child who shows any indications of inferiority to others in any of these respects should be the object of his parent's or his teacher's special tenderness and care. If he is near-sighted, ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... of the discourse, when the precentor rose to read the remembering prayer, old Ebenezer Muir, then upwards of fourscore and thirteen, who had been brought into the church on a barrow by two of his grandsons, and was, for reason of his deafness, in the bench with the elders, gave him a paper, which, after rehearsing the names of those in distress and sickness, he read, and it was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of his smothered resentment against the new chef at the club; his worry over the house in Wigmore Street, where the rascally tenant had gone bankrupt through helping his brother-in-law as if charity did not begin at home; of his deafness, too, and that pain he sometimes got in his right side. She listened, her eyes swimming under their lids. He thought she was thinking deeply of his troubles, and pitied himself terribly. Yet in his fur coat, with frogs across the breast, his top ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sensitiveness, which was suddenly jarred when the wife in the corner, rocking the cradle with one foot while she turned a hoe-cake baking on the hearth with a dextrous flip of a knife, and feeling secure in his deafness, cast a witty fling at his fastidious apparel. With that frequent yet unexplained phenomenon of acoustics, her voice was so strung that its vibrations reached his numb perceptions as duly as if intended for his ears. He made no sign, in his ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... herself by his side, she gave him a number of messages from her father, and then caught up his youngest child, a dirty, ugly little thing, the joy of his old age, and kissed it. I wish you could have witnessed her attention to this old man,—how she raised her voice on account of his deafness; how she told him of healthy young people, who had been carried off when it was least expected; praised the virtues of Carlsbad, and commended his determination to spend the ensuing summer there; and assured him that he looked better and stronger ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... that Queen picture!" he burst out impulsively and went bounding to meet her half way. And Mary Fortune heard him, in spite of her deafness; and understood—he meant the Empress Louise. He had seen that picture of the beloved Empress tripping daintily down the stairs and, for all she knew, those expensive marble steps might have been built to give point to ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in his past had turned him into a silent, brooding man, seldom coming out of his thoughts until it came to a bargain, when he woke up like a giant from sleep. His deafness helped to fasten this silent habit deeper upon him. Also he was touchy about his deafness: didn't like at any time to be reminded of it; and was apt to fly into a sudden rage if anyone brought up a reminder, even by a chance hint. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... We would have required a porter for the sole purpose. Then we had stolen interviews of two hours' duration each, for several successive nights, at the old horologer's back-door, during which, besides a multiplicity of small-talk—thanks to his deafness—I tried my utmost to entrap her affections, by reciting sonnets, and spouting bits of plays in the manner of the tragedy performers. These were the happy times, sir! The world was changed for me. Paddington canal seemed the river Pactolus, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... admirable poems; and, as if that were not enough, have memorialized a painful feature of weakness in Wordsworth's judgment. If ever on this earth there was a man that in his prime, when saluted with contumely from all quarters, manifested a stern deafness to criticism—it was William Wordsworth. And we thought the better of him by much for this haughty defiance to groundless judgments. But the cloak, which Boreas could not tear away from the traveller's resistance, oftentimes the too genial Phoebus has filched from his ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of the Chamber of Peers, but excused from attendance on account of his deafness, had a handsome head, chilled by age, but with enough gray hair still to be marked in a circle by the pressure of his hat. He was short, square, and shrunken, but carried his hale old age with a free-and-easy ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... It is not needful here to tell the story of his brilliant life and the big events it crowded into the four and seventy years between 1685 and 1759. His friend Mattheson, like Beethoven, spent his later years in the dungeon of deafness. Haendel, like his great rival Bach (who was born the same year), spent seven years in almost total blindness, three operations having failed. In almost every other respect the careers of these two men were unlike, particularly in the obscure ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... afflicted with a total deafness for so considerable a portion of his life, as never to have heard the sound of his son's voice; and was thus rendered incapable of communicating to him that instruction which he might otherwise have ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the Bath, for a deafness, which I have been plagued with these four or five months; and which I am assured that pumping my head will remove. This deafness, I own, has tried my patience; as it has cut me off from society, at an age when I had no pleasures but those ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... at Hampstead and afterwards at Brighton were among our youthful resorts; and my aunt remains in my memory as a gentle, kindly old lady, much afflicted by deafness. Mr. Garratt died in 1858, aged 77, and his wife at the same ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... who draws the breath of life—nay, must be in him; not necessarily in his heart, as we say, but still in him. May not then one day some terrible convulsion from the centre of his being, some fearful earthquake from the hidden gulfs of his nature, shake such a man so that through all the deafness of his death, the voice of the Spirit may be faintly heard, the still small voice that comes after the tempest and the earthquake? May there not be a fire that even such can feel? Who shall set bounds to the consuming of the fire of our God, and ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... intelligent and cultivated person. The dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only a careful anatomist ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the sick person; he healed the servant of the centurion by absent treatment, and restored sight by spitting on the eyes[15] or anointing them with clay made with spittle[16], or by requiring faith.[17] He healed a withered hand, cured impediments in speech and deafness, all without medical applications, even replacing an ear severed ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... mercurial ointment externally, with calomel internally, are principally recommended in this fatal disease. When the patient cannot bear to be raised up in bed without great uneasiness, it is a bad symptom. So I believe is deafness, which is commonly mistaken for stupor. See Class I. 2. 5. 6. And when the dilatation of the pupil of either eye, or the squinting is very apparent, or the pupils of both eyes much dilated, it is generally ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin |
