"Distemper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should touch it; it was opened with the aid of the tongs and a thin iron rod; but as soon as they saw that it was a clean bill, certifying that at the date of our leaving Malta was free from plague and every other contagious distemper, the officers came on board with Colonel ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... half of the year 1792 was marked by the rapid progress in France of the political distemper, which was so soon to culminate in the worst excesses of the Revolution. The quick succession of symptoms, each more alarming than the other,—the suspension of the royal power at the tumultuous bidding of a mob, the September massacres, the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... affections to be resisted in my own strength [she was at that time nine years of age], and unfortunately I knew neither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where to gain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with violence; everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. The simplicity of truth was not sufficient for me; I must needs embroider imagination upon it, and the folly, vanity and wickedness which disgraced my heart are more than I am able to express. Even now [at the age of twenty-nine], tho' watched, prayed ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... said he; "you will but aggravate your distemper. Mistress Lucy Cludde will nurse you—in my letter; and your captain will think it most natural and commendable seeing that you are her guest, and that it may be regarded there is some slight relationship between you. And if you should happily recover, why, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... forgive; But when ye least expect, in sorrow's day, Vengeance shall fall more heavy for delay; 560 Nor think that vengeance heap'd on you alone Shall (poor amends!) for injured worlds atone; No, like some base distemper, which remains, Transmitted from the tainted father's veins, In the son's blood, such broad and general crimes Shall call down vengeance e'en to latest times, Call vengeance down on all who bear your name, And make their portion ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Carleton: "The King hath been at Theobald's ever since Wednesday, and came to town this day. I am sorry to hear that he grows every day more froward, and with such a kind of morosity, that doth either argue a great discontent in mind, or a distemper of humours in his body. Yet he is never so out of tune but the very sight of my Lord of Buckingham ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... improbable than this could well be imagined. And that Baker could have "died ... of that loathsome Distemper the Morbus Pediculosus" (sketch of him in Scanderbeg, 1747) does ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... heat, still to endure, And grew a seeting bath, which yet men prove Against strange maladies a sovereign cure. But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fired, The boy for trial needs would touch my breast; I, sick withal, the help of bath desired, And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest, But found no cure, the bath for my help lies Where Cupid got new fire; my ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... thus compelled to retrace our steps through this tedious and difficult part of our rout, obstructed with brush and innumerable logs of fallen timber which renders the traveling distressing and even dangerous to our horses. one of Thompson's horses is either choked this morning or has the distemper very badly I fear he is to be of no further service to us. an excellent horse of Cruzatte's snagged himself so badly in the groin in jumping over a parsel of fallen timber that he will evidently be of no further service to us. at the pass of Collin's ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... liver. He is a fair type of the fast man of intellect and culture, whose ambition is to figure in politics. He is in Congress and can command the ear of the House at any time. His great trouble is his Free-soil record. He took Free-soilism like a distemper and mounted the Buffalo platform. He is well over it now, however, with the exception of a single heresy—the homestead law. He is for giving homesteads to the actual settlers upon the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of canals and rail-roads—the broad and brilliant Spanish striped Valencias, which distinguish the savans or knowing ones of the stable—the cotton (must we profane the word!) velvet impositions covered with botanical diagrams done in distemper, and monopolized by lawyers' clerks and small professionals—the positive or genuine Genoa velvet, with violent and showy embellishments of roses, dahlias, and peonies, which find favour in the eyes of aldermen, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... the rest were adjudged to die. They walked cheerfully to the place of execution, and each of them gave exhortations to the people. Lucius, who was naturally mild and modest, was a little dejected on account of his distemper and the inconveniences of the prison; he therefore went before the rest, accompanied but by a few persons, lest he should be oppressed by the crowd, and so not have the honor to spill his blood. Some cried out to ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and wise to judge of what she saw, and she would not too hastily give up the man who had sought protection in her house; so she strictly questioned the wife about the story she told of her husband's madness, and she said, "What is the cause of this sudden distemper of your husband's? Has he lost his wealth at sea? Or is it the death of some dear friend that has disturbed his mind?" Adriana replied, that no such things as these had been the cause. "Perhaps," said the abbess, "he has fixed ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... it; at last he grew melancholy and discontented; which being carefully observed by his wife, she many times hearing him pronounce, 'I defy thee,' &c. she desired him to acquaint her with the cause of his distemper, which he then did. Away she went to Dr. Simon Forman, who lived then in Lambeth, and acquaints him with it; who having framed this sigil, and hanged it about his neck, he wearing it continually until he died, was never ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... though I could scarcely move I was minded diligently to persevere after Shanks. Thus we staggered on until near night time, when we again stopped and I fell into a deep sleep, but the enemy did not again come up. On the following day we got into Fort Edward, where I was taken with a distemper, was seized with very grevious pains in the head and back and a fever. They let blood and gave me a physic, but I did not get well around for some time. For this sickness I have always been thankful, otherwise I should have been with Major Rogers in his unfortunate battle, which has become notable ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... this, he retired into the country, and abandoned himself to debauchery; but he did not long survive his abdication; he was seized with a horrible distemper, and died a loathsome and mortifying object, and a melancholy proof of the futility ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... steadily until the end of January. While our usual death-rate is under three hundred it went to four hundred and seventy-four. Then the weather setting in very severe checked it till the end of February, and we all hoped that the danger was over, and that we should be rid of the distemper before the warm weather set in; but for the last fortnight there has been a rise rather than a fall—not a large one, but sufficient to cause great alarm that it will continue until warm weather sets in, and may then grow into terrible proportions. So far, there has been no case in ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... governed passion of youth had hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way, which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience, besides a continual risk to my health by distemper, which of all things I dreaded, though by great luck ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... But if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you—such is your distemper—that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of newt, and toe of frog," and you spy and poke upon your food. Bus boys bear off the crockery as though they were apprenticed to a juggler and were only at the beginning of their ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... indifference; but in France, where the bulk of the people do not believe that it secures the patient from a second attack; where the clergy in general consider it unfavourable, even in a religious light; and where the physical people, for want of practice, do not understand the management of the distemper, so as it is known in England; I may venture to say, without being charged with flattery, that it was an heroic resolution: add to this, the King knowing, that if his subjects followed his example, it must be chiefly ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... of whom a large number never performed quarantine; and notwithstanding this fact, no case is on record of the cholera having been transferred from Moscow to other places, and it is equally certain, that in no situation appointed for quarantine, any case of cholera has occurred. That the distemper is not contagious, has been yet more ascertained by the experience gathered in this city (Moscow). In many houses it happened, that one individual attacked by cholera was attended indiscriminately by all the relatives, and yet did the disease not spread to any of the inmates. ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... these proved to have become diseased. But whilst welcoming this protective quality, the danger must be remembered of eating an onion which shows signs of decay, for it cannot be told what may have caused this distemper. ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... that in my Receipt, you may adde Mellon seeds, and seeds of Pompions of Valencia, dryed, and beaten into powder, where there is any heat of the Liver or Kidnyes. And if there be any obstructions of the Liver, or Spleene, with any cold distemper, you may mixe the powder of Ceterach; to which you may adde Amber, or ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... As for you, kind-hearted woman, there was nothing in this bottle but pure water. The interval of reason returned this day, and having remembered glimpses of our conversation, I came to apologise to you, and to explain the nature of my unhappy distemper, and to beg a little bread, which I have not tasted for two days. I at times conceive myself attended by an evil spirit, shaped out by a guilty conscience, and this is the only familiar which attends me, and by it I have been dogged into madness through ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... very rare, and distemper among puppies is unknown. Pigs are the general scavengers in the Cypriote villages, and the flesh of these filthy feeders is much esteemed by the Christian inhabitants during the winter months. In the monasteries, which, from their great altitude among ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the swan, the lake and the greyhound, painted on the curtain, this picture vanished by degrees, with an exhilarating creaking of the rollers, and was succeeded by the representation of a room in a cottage. The scenery, painted in distemper and not susceptible to wind or weather, had manifold uses, reappearing later in the performance as a nobleman's palace, supplemented, it is true, by a well-worn carpet ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations of fair play, I now began to nurse a suspicion of this befousled little gimcrack; but I'd not thought that Tommy would grow a distemper of any magnitude until the professor, rubbing ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... day of Cronius, now called Hecatombaeon, he arrived at Athens, where he found the public affairs full of all confusion, and divided into parties and factions. Aegeus also, and his whole private family, laboring under the same distemper; for Medea, having fled from Corinth, was living with him. She was first aware of Theseus, whom as yet Aegeus did not know, and he being in years, full of jealousies and suspicions, and fearing everything ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... "and what was that to a woman's life?" There came up, however, a parcel of savage-looking fellows, butchers and graziers chiefly, among whose cattle there had been of late a very general and fatal distemper, which their wisdom imputed to witchcraft. They laid violent hands on Madge, and tore her from the carriage, exclaiming— "What, doest stop folk o' king's high-way? Hast no done mischief enow already, wi' ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... kind of mental stilt-talking I indulged in that day, seeing only the golden side. No doubt it seems very romantic and silly to the reader; but I have known young men, taken badly with that distemper called first love, just as romantic and excitable. In fact, many of us as we grow older recall our sensations, acts, and deeds, felt and performed during that strange delirium, with something like a smile upon ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... nights in the rainy season in March, the four-and- twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitariness; I was lying in my bed or hammock awake, very well in health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, nor any uneasiness of mind more than ordinary, but could by no means close my eyes; that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long. It is impossible to set down the innumerable ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... very Houshold Drudge.—Oh, faugh, come never grieve;—for, Madam, his Disease is nothing but Imagination, a Melancholy which arises from the Liver, Spleen, and Membrane call'd Mesenterium; the Arabians name the Distemper Myrathial, and we here in England, Hypochondriacal Melancholy; I cou'd prescribe a most potent Remedy, but that I am loth to stir the Envy of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the human body; wherein, from the case of a lady who was seized in an instant with a gutta serena, (that rendered her totally blind) on the night of the great storm which happened in 1703, he is led to give a distinct account of the cause and cure of that melancholly distemper. This work is also remarkably distinguished by many curious observations our author received from his ingenious preceptor in the art ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Newcastle, by Mr. Carrington, the king's messenger, to attend his grace the next morning, in Lincoln's-inn-fields, upon some business of importance; but I excused myself from complying with the message, as, besides being lame, I was very ill with the great fatigues I had lately undergone added to my distemper. ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... in the spring, And had the sun before him of respect; We, set in th' autumn, in the withering And sullen season of a cold defect, Must taste those sour distastes the times do bring Upon the fulness of a cloy'd neglect. Although the stronger constitutions shall Wear out th' infection of distemper'd days ..." ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... therefore a rare circumstance for any person to have a house-dog with him in the streets. It would be necessary to carry the creature continually, and even then a number of these unbidden guests would follow, barking and howling incessantly. Neither distemper nor madness is to be feared from these dogs, though no one cares for their wants. They live on carrion and offal, which is to be found in abundance in every street, as every description of filth is thrown ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... and ascertained that some unlicensed traders had, the preceding summer, carried up the small pox, which is fatal to the Indians; and that several of their warriors, as well as others, had fallen victims to the distemper. It was with some difficulty that he convinced the Indians that this was the real cause of the calamity. At the same time he assured them that such were the precautions and strict examination used, before any applicant for leave ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... entirely to his ancient habits. But the same decision served him in another and more distressing case of divided duty, which happened not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog, but the cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the distemper; and though he did not adore her as he adored my father - although (born snob) he was critically conscious of her position as "only a servant" - he still cherished for her a special gratitude. Well, the cook left, and retired some streets away to lodgings ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mesopotamian mud could be shipped to London and made up into tubes. Then all that would be necessary would be three distinctive labels. One could describe it as a wonderful lubricant and cheap substitute for machine oil. Another could proclaim to the world a new washable distemper. A third could laud it as a marvellous paste or cement that ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian," i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... exempted, by this means, from a little cavilling and ridicule, to which some of its enemies reckon it at present exposed, and the design could not in the least derogate from its divinity, as the instantaneous cure of a distemper cannot be considered less miraculous than the expulsion of the devil. At any rate, these possessions are all extraordinary; appeared on some most extraordinary occasion; and from them, therefore, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... big as a pony. You will permit me to send you one, warranted to have passed his distemper, which can rarely be done for our human species, though here and there I venture to guarantee my man as well ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unfailing companions of that subtle visitation. A sea voyage, native air, and all other expedients suggested by skill or affection, were tried in vain; and, in the fiftieth year of his age, the minister of Eccleshall returned to the bosom of his family, with a full anticipation that the distemper under which he lingered would, ere long, prove fatal. His eyes sparkled with more than wonted lustre—his benevolent and intelligent countenance glowed with the delicate hectic flush which so often marks the progress of consumption—and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... that this distemper proceeds from the womb; occasioned by the gross, vicious and rude humours arising from several inward causes; but there are also outward causes which have a share in the production of it; as taking cold in the feet, drinking of water, intemperance of diet, eating things contrary ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... What it is that now and then drives a wolf-pack mad in the dead of winter no man yet has wholly learned. Possibly it begins with a "bad" wolf; just as a "bad" sledge-dog, nipping and biting his fellows, will spread his distemper among them until the team becomes an ugly, quarrelsome horde. Such a dog the wise driver ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... from her sweet mansion fled, Say, what distemper gave thee to the dead? Has life's fair lamp declined by slow decays, Or swift expired it in a sudden blaze? Say, if my sire, good old Laertes, lives? If yet Telemachus, my son, survives? Say, by his rule is my dominion awed, Or crush'd by traitors with ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... oppressor, ended his days in Persia in degrading captivity. The Emperor Aurelian was assassinated. Diocletian languished for years the victim of various maladies, and is said to have abruptly terminated his life by suicide. Galerius, his son-in-law, died of a most horrible distemper; and Maximin took away his own life by poison. [308:4] The interpretation of providences is not to be rashly undertaken; but the record of the fate of persecutors forms a most extraordinary chapter in the history of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... be any stirrings of wisdom in the motions of their souls, my task is accomplished. For here were no factions to blind; no dissolution of established authorities to confound; no ferments to distemper; no narrow selfish interests to delude. The object was at a distance; and it rebounded upon us, as with force collected from a mighty distance; we were calm till the very moment of transition; and all the people were moved—and felt as with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... slowly brings it to one's knowledge. One hears a little bit every day from somebody, that has been reserved with great costiveness, or purposely forgotten; and by all such accounts I find that the present distemper has been very palpable for some time past, previous to any confinement from sickness; and so apprehensive have the people about him been of giving offence by interruption, that the two days (viz. yesterday se'nnight and the Monday following) that he was five hours ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... of cases and mounts is of two kinds—distemper and oil; that is to say, supposing paper, calico or sheeting is used for the back of the cases or mounts. Colour the paper or other material—if you wish to show a toned sky—with whiting in which a little glue-water or paste is dissolved, or with common flake-white and size ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... that must have connected them exist also? There is but one answer; we are ignorant what characters are of essential value to each species; we do not know why white terriers are more subject than darker-coloured ones to the attacks of the fatal distemper; why yellow-fleshed peaches in America suffer more from diseases than the white-fleshed varieties; why white chickens are most liable to the gapes; or why the caterpillars of silkworms, which produce white cocoons, are not attacked by fungus ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... establishment has a more commonplace name for the distemper. She calls it "scirocco." And certainly this pest of the south blows incessantly; the mountain-line of Gargano is veiled, the sea's horizon veiled, the coast-lands of Apulia veiled by its tepid and ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... had kept his Bed a while, his distemper began to abate, and he to feel himself better, so he in little time was so finely mended, that he could walk about the house, and also obtained a very fine stomach to his food: {146a} and now did his wife and her good friends stand gaping, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... dreamer of destiny. He yearned for no star. No instinct of his future achievements made him peculiar among his companions or caused him to hold himself aloof. He exhibited nothing of the young Napoleon's distemper of gnawing pride. He was just an ordinary American boy, with rather less boyishness and rather more sobriety than most, disposed to listen to the talk of his elders instead of that of persons of his own age, and fond of visiting strange places and riding and driving about ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... the middle. Something in the scene gave him a new sensation. The church was old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper and paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with hands folded so foolishly,—yet impressively too, brought him up with a quick throb of the heart. It was his first real contact with England; for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Primitive Man, cut the outline of the figure. At first only this cut was filled with color, producing what has been called the koil-anaglyphic. In the final stage the line was made by drawing with chalk or coal on prepared stucco, and the color, mixed with gum-water (a kind of distemper), was applied to the whole enclosed space. Substantially the same method of painting was used upon other materials, such as wood, mummy cartonnage, papyrus; and in all its thousands of years of existence Egyptian painting never ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... the treaty of Fort Prince George when the small-pox, which was raging in an adjacent Indian town, broke out in his camp. As few of his little army had ever gone through that distemper, and as the surgeons were totally unprovided for such an accident, his men were struck with terror, and in great haste returned to the settlements, cautiously avoiding all intercourse one with another, and suffering much from hunger and fatigue by the way. The Governor followed them, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... charm the wise? To lie in dead oblivion, losing half The fleeting moments of too short a life, Total extinction of th' enlighten'd soul! Or else, to feverish vanity alive, Wilder'd and tossing through distemper'd dreams? Who would in such a gloomy state remain Longer than nature craves, when every Muse And every blooming pleasure wait without, To bless the wildly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection, and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits, for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience, as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... class met at half-past eight. Precisely at that hour he reached a small doorway in High Street, Lambeth, and ascended a flight of stairs to a room which he had furnished as he deemed most suitable. Several rows of school-desks faced a high desk at which he stood to lecture. The walls were washed in distemper, the boarding of the floor was uncovered, the two windows were hidden with plain shutters. The room had formerly been used for purposes of storage by a glass and china merchant; below was the workshop of a saddler, which explained ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... murd'rers now their struggling victim tear From the lost object of her keen despair: The swelling pang unable to sustain, Distraction throbb'd in every beating vein: Its sudden tumults seize her yielding soul, 85 And in her eye distemper'd glances roll— "They come! (the mourner cried, with panting breath,) "To give the lost Alzira rest in death! "One moment more, ye bloody forms, bestow, "One moment more for ever cures my woe— 90 "Lo where the purple evening sheds her light "On blest remains! oh hide them, pitying ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... like doors—facing the morning sun and a country landscape. The previous tenants had used it for a box and lumber room, and left it cobwebbed, filthy and asphyxiating. Deb ordered a charwoman to clean it, and a man to distemper the grubby plaster and stain the floor, and then laid down rugs, and assembled tables and books, and basket-chairs, and girls' odds and ends; whereby it was transformed into a cosy boudoir and their favourite ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... may I not do for myself? But I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth. Besides, you are not sure what effect your telling him that he is in danger may have; it may bring his distemper to a crisis, and that may cure him. Of all lying I have the greatest abhorrence of this, because I believe it has been frequently practised on myself."—Boswell's ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart, she has few equals and no superiors; as a cousin, she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother with an incurable distemper, she is precious; as a wetnurse, she has no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fortune to see this man and his work, which is very famous. And he a very civil little man, and lame, but lives very handsomely. So thence to my Lord Bellasses, and met him within: my business only to see a chimney-piece of Dancres doing in distemper, with egg to keep off the glaring of the light, which I must have done for my room: and indeed it is pretty, but I must confess I do think it is not altogether so beautiful as the oyle pictures; but I will have some of one and some of another. So to the King's playhouse, thinking to have seen. "The ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... little air, being half-poisoned by the effluvia arising from so many contaminated carcases; which gave me no imperfect idea of the stench of gaols, which, corrupting the ambient air, gives what is called the prison distemper. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... ends. The stage is more active, the epic poem works at greater leisure; yet is active too when need requires, for dialogue is imitated by the drama from the more active parts of it. One puts off a fit, like the quinquina, and relieves us only for a time; the other roots out the distemper, and gives a healthful habit. The sun enlightens and cheers us, dispels fogs, and warms the ground with his daily beams; but the corn is sowed, increases, is ripened, and is reaped for use in process of time ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... cherries rather) are most refreshing, an excellent condiment, and do also well in tarts. But that is very old, which Mathiolus affirms upon his own experience, that one who has been bitten of a mad-dog, if in a year after he handle the wood of this tree till it grow warm, relapses again into his former distemper. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... that the cause of this strange distemper should not sometimes become a subject of discourse. It is a compliment due, and which I willingly pay, to those who administer our affairs, to take notice in the first place of their speculation. Our Ministers are of opinion ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... agitations of the body with which they were attended, naturally unhinge the whole frame. When by fasting and darkness the brain is distempered, they fancy they see spectres and hear voices. Thus they take pains to confirm the distemper which puts them ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... the painter, who was informed that he was a bad paymaster, thought proper to devise a mode of being revenged should Achilles play him any trick; he therefore painted the figure in oil, the shield excepted, which was in distemper. The likeness was acknowledged to be great; but the actor, that he might pay as little as possible, pretended to find many faults, and declared 'he would only pay half the sum agreed upon. "Well," replied the painter, "I must be ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... the scheme of things. Mrs. Yorba fell ill. The sudden and complete change from a personage to a nobody, the long confinement,—she rarely put her foot outside the house lest her shabby clothes be remarked upon,—and a four years' course of sensational novels induced a nervous distemper. Magdalena, hearing the sound of pacing footsteps in the hall one night, arose and opened her door. Mrs. Yorba, arrayed in a red flannel nightgown and a frilled nightcap, was walking rapidly up and down, talking to herself. Magdalena persuaded her to go to bed, and the next morning sent ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... my love? Oh, how have I deserv'd This language from the sovereign of my joys? Stop, stop, these tears, Monimia, for they fall Like baneful dew from a distemper'd sky; I feel 'em chill me ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... sprightly influence you shed, Bright constellation! makes Parnassus gay. Apollo droops and hangs his head, His frozen fingers know not how to play; And we his sons the sad distemper find, Which chills the fancy, and benumbs the mind, When cruel you withdraw your magic ray. You finely paint on ev'ry rhyme Features most noble and sublime, Resplendent all the images, In rich immortal draperies. ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... obedience to the stern commands of his benefactor. The frequent disappointments of his ambitious views, the experience of six years of persecution, and the salutary reflections which a lingering and painful distemper suggested to the mind of Galerius, at length convinced him that the most violent efforts of despotism are insufficient to extirpate a whole people, or to subdue their religious prejudices. Desirous of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... water cleared out the dregs of his distemper. You couldn't be peevish swimming in that jolly, shining sea. We raced each other away beyond the inlet to the outer water, which a brisk morning breeze was curling. Then back to a promontory of heather, where the first beams of the sun coming ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... sorry to inform you that your Sealyham has contracted distemper. There is at present no reason to think that he will be seriously ill, and, the veterinary surgeon is quite satisfied with ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... night of fretful passion may consume All that thou hast of beauty's gentle bloom, And one distemper'd hour of sordid fear Print on thy brow the wrinkles of a year. [Footnote: These four lines, as I have already remarked, are taken—with little change of the words, but a total alteration of the sentiment—from the verses which he addressed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... he saw in Mindanao fits here: "This Distemper runs with a dry Scurf all over their Bodies, and causeth great itching in those that have it, making them frequently scratch and scrub themselves, which raiseth the outer skin in small whitish flakes, like the scales ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... to put a sly indignity upon me by misusing one who has been entertained at my house. That's the point, sir. He heard that I had given you countenance at my board, and what his sister afterward told him was an excuse for the exercise, sir, of his distemper. But, by—I came within one of swearing, sir. I used to curse like an overseer, but I joined the church not long ago, and I've been walking a tight rope ever since. But as I was about to say, you are not going to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... steam-engines, for the reason that fuel is less costly than horse feed. An interesting instance to show how far mechanical inventions have taken the place of horsed wagons in the work of civilized communities was afforded by the horse distemper which swept over the country in 1872. During the week or more in which this epidemic was at the worst, the State of Massachusetts was practically unhorsed, yet the greater part of the necessary business, that required to bring provisions to the town, was effected ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of it, and all the Court was concern'd at this Misfortune: Don Pedro was truly afflicted at it, but Agnes more than all the World beside. Constantia's Coldness towards her, made her continually sigh; and her Distemper created merely by fancy, caus'd her to reflect on every thing that offer'd it self to her Memory: so that at last she began even to fear her self, and to reproach her self for ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... further of the matter, and decided to remain at home for another year at least. That year however proved a very unfortunate one; his crops were scanty; and toward the spring he met with some severe losses, by a distemper which broke out among his farm stock. As the season advanced, he became so disheartened by his gloomy prospects, that he decided to carry out his former plan of emigrating to Canada; where he hoped by persevering industry ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... Rumors began to spread regarding the crown jewels. One of the best known hotel-keepers in the city was said to have a mortgage on them. The royal carriage was presently dragged by only one horse. The other, a magnificent bay gelding, was reported to have the distemper, a trifling ailment, which would last but a few days. The animal did not reappear, however, until a reporter discovered it months after among the blooded stock of a New York banker. So it went from bad to worse. Soon the ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... this sad distemper, The Doctor's self could [21] hardly spare: Unworthy things she talked, and wild; Even he, of cattle the most mild, 240 The Pony ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... trap for him, and procured his habit, in which I passed upon your servants, and was conducted hither. I pretended a fit of the colic, to excuse my lying down upon your bed; hoping that when she heard of it, her good nature would bring her to administer remedies for my distemper. You know what might have followed. But, like an uncivil person, you knocked at the door before your ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... strife; to watch the elder woman, the strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim, who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished by her own distemper, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... touch the most prosperous affairs are blasted. They work their malicious sorceries in the dark, collect herbs of baleful influence; by the help of which, they strike their enemies with palsy, and cattle with distemper. The males are called maissi, and the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a clear September day that the Marquis of Falmouth set out for France. John of Bedford had summoned him posthaste when Henry V was stricken at Senlis with what bid fair to prove a mortal distemper; for the marquis was Bedford's comrade-in-arms, veteran of Shrewsbury, Agincourt and other martial disputations, and the Duke-Regent suspected that, to hold France in case of the King's death, he would presently need all ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... letters, and I despised my own poems. Tell me how you was affected; could you speak any? could you fix your thoughts upon anything but the dreary way you was in? and would not the sight of me have made you very miserable? I have lately had the epidemical distemper; I don't mean poverty, but that cold which they call the influenza, and which made its first appearance in London;[52] whether it came to Scotland in the wagon, or travelled with a companion in ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... will, doubtless, throw a number of deserving persons out of employ. The writers, whose stock in trade consists of words rather than ideas, will find their way to Basinghall Street, prose will be at a discount, and long-windedness be accounted a distemper. A great variety of small Sapphos must turn seamstresses*, at three-halfpence a shirt instead of a penny a line; while the minor poets will have to earn a livelihood by writing invoice, instead of in verse. But this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... thereof, it punishes even the governors." No such inebriety has resulted from the moderate draughts of that nectar in which this new Western race has indulged; and only the southern and more passionate portion of it is in any danger of converting its acute "State-Rights" distemper into chronic despotism. The nation in its childhood needed a paternal Washington; but now it has arrived at manhood, and it requires, not a great leader, but a magistrate willing himself to be led. Such a man is Mr. Lincoln: an able, faithful, hard-working citizen, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... them beside the still waters!... Better for me, if I cannot lead, to leave them; to go away and dwell alone! to seek in solitary places, as others have done, some wild bitter root to heal their distemper; to come back with something in my hands;... to consider by what symbols to address them; to send them from time to time a message, to be scoffed at by most and heard with kindling hope by those whose ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... ask what mystery lowers On Tallien's darken'd brow. Thou dost me wrong— Thy soul distemper'd, can ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... faithfully and perseveringly to this his spiritual monitor, he fell into the snares of Satan, or gave way to the temptations of sin. From this moment his condition became changed. For in the same manner as distemper occasions animal life to droop, and to lose its powers, and finally to cease, so unrighteousness, or his rebellion against the divine light of the spirit that was within him, occasioned a dissolution of his spiritual feelings and perceptions; ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... right Method of bringing up Young Children: To which is added, An Essay on preserving Health, and prolonging Life. With a Treatise of the Gout, and Receipts for the Cure of that Distemper. By an Eminent ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... illness for a week, he was suddenly seized with an increase of his distemper. Three years before, he had received a blow on the breast from a tennis ball, from which, or from a subsequent fall, he often felt great pain. Exhausted by the cough, he cried, "Je sens la mort," and died in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... wind-broken, two have the distemper, and if you don't watch out your whole herd will be getting it. I shall be rather afraid to buy any stock of you on that account. How long have they had ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... when, she had seen Neale with different eyes. A few words, a touch, a gift, and a pledge—and life had been transformed for Allie Lee. Like a flower blooming overnight, her heart had opened to love, and all the distemper in her blood and all the blackness in her mind were dispelled. The relief from pain and dread was so great that love became a beautiful and all-absorbing passion. Freed then, and strangely happy, she took to the life around her as naturally as if she had been born there, and she ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... dat's how I commence fer ter suffer, an' den er koff got straddle er de col'—one dese yer koffs w'at look like hit goes ter de foundash'n. I kep' on linger'n' 'roun' sorter keepin' one eye on the rheumatiz an' de udder on de distemper, twel, bimeby, I begin fer ter feel de trestle-wuk give way, an' den I des know'd dat I wuz gwineter gitter racket. I slipt inter bed one Chuseday night, an' I never slip out no mo' fer mighty ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... Boileau—'strong, heavy, useful, like pairs of tongs,'—he found them alexandrines with the leap and sparkle of sea waves and the sound of clashing swords and the colours of sunset and the dawn. They were tired of whitewash and cold distemper; and he gave them hangings of brocade and tapestries of price and tissues stiff with gold and glowing with new dyes. He flung them handfuls of jewels where his rivals scattered handfuls of marbles. And they paid him for his gifts with an intemperance ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, would not be satisfied with what was reported of her, but would needs see her himself, and was preparing to enjoy her; but God put a stop to his unjust inclinations, by sending upon him a distemper, and a sedition against his government. And when he inquired of the priests how he might be freed from these calamities, they told him that this his miserable condition was derived from the wrath of God, upon account ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... famous sect that its rise and institution are owing to such an author as I have described Jack to be, a person whose intellectuals were overturned and his brain shaken out of its natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a distemper, and call by the name of madness or frenzy. For if we take a survey of the greatest actions that have been performed in the world under the influence of single men, which are the establishment of new empires by conquest, the advance and progress of new schemes in philosophy, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... unawares. Young men are often stupid, and do not recognise their distemper till it is very ripe. He ought to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... themselves, who were once so populous, and such renowned warriors, are now reduced to less than 200 since the European settlements have circumscribed the territories which their ancestors had reserved. Three years before the arrival of the Europeans at Cape Cod, a frightful distemper had swept away a great many along its coasts, which made the landing and intrusion of our forefathers much easier than it otherwise might have been. In the year 1763, above half of the Indians of this island perished by a strange fever, which the Europeans who nursed them never caught; they appear ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... was in the utmost degree recluse and solitary. His features were scarcely ever relaxed in a smile, and the distemper which afflicted him with incessant gloom had its paroxysms. None of the domestics, except myself and Mr. Collins approached Mr. Falkland but at stated seasons and then only for a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... him; "upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. Let us accept the situation with dignity. Let us pit the honest frankness of the played-out Caucasian against the cunning of the successful Mongol." Then, addressing the Turanian ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... perceive that this letter is dated at the residence of my fathers. Fourteen days ago I was summoned hither by the particular request of my brother, who had been seized with a violent epidemical distemper. It was extremely sudden in its operation, and before I arrived he was no more. He had confessed however to one of the friends of our house, before he expired, that he had forged the will of my father, instigated by the surprize and disappointment ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... alas, indefinable; I was going to say indefensible. Perhaps it is an attitude—a mental attitude that finds physical expression in the voice, the gesture, the behaviour. Oxford, not conduct, is three-fourths of life to those who acquire the distemper. Without becoming personal it is not easy to discuss purely social aspects, and we must seek chiefly in literature for manifestations of the phenomenon: in the prose of Matthew Arnold for instance—in the poems of Mr. Laurence Binyon, typical examples where every thought ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... dim close of day, The Captive loves alone to stray Along the haunts recluse and rude Of sorrow and of solitude; When he sits with moveless eye To mark the lingering radiance die, And lets distemper'd Fancy roam Amid the ruins of his home,— Oh give to him the flowing bowl, Bid it renovate his soul; The bowl shall better thoughts bestow, And lull to rest his wakeful woe, And Joy shall bless the evening hour, And make ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... public, which was promptly accepted, and the execution of which was confided into Fielding's hands. "I had delayed my Bath-journey for some time," he proceeds, "contrary to the repeated advice of my physical acquaintance, and to the ardent desire of my warmest friends, tho' my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice; in which case the Bath-waters are generally reputed to be almost infallible. But I had the most eager desire of demolishing this gang of villains and cut-throats." After some weeks the requisite funds were placed ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... undoubted— that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. [Footnote: 4] Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation—a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... don't count too much on that, for the year we had that strange epidemic in the Kennel, something like distemper, they seemed perfectly well till almost the day of the race. And that was the race," grimly, "when the dear little Fuzzy-wuzzy Lap Dogs, as you call them, made the record time, and we ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... Proprietors had shown, in several instances, a disposition to support the servants of the Company against the just coercion and legal prosecution of the Directors. Instead of applying a corrective to the distemper, a change was proposed in the constitution. By this reform, it was presumed that an interest would arise in the General Court more independent in itself, and more connected with the commercial prosperity of the Company. Under the new constitution, no proprietor, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hardly anywhere shows a keener and juster insight of nature than in the behaviour of this man while the distemper is upon him. He is utterly reason-proof, and indeed acts as one literally insane. For the poison infects not only his manners, but his very modes of thought: in fact, all his rational and imaginative forces, even his speech and language, seem to have caught the disease. And ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... heaven, he said, to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in Germany; but having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all; and made a vow, if heaven would not take him from him also, he would go in gratitude to St. Iago ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... letter telling me of Trenar's death." (Trenar was a borsoi dog which Nelka had and left in Cazenovia. This was before she had her poodle Tibi.) "Mrs. Lockman wrote me some time ago that he was very sick with distemper but had not written me since. Useless to say how I feel. Everyone does not feel the appeal of a dog's affection in the same degree, and with me it is as strong as anything I know. Trenar in his devotion was exceptional, ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... Peterborough on his couch, where he gave me an account of the excessive sufferings he had passed through, with a weak voice, but spirited. He next told me he had ended his domestic affairs through such difficulties from the law that gave him as much torment of mind as his distemper had done of body, to do right to the person to whom he had obligations beyond expression (Anastasia Robinson). That he had found it necessary not only to declare his marriage to all his relations, but since the person who married them ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall |
