"Nightmare" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the public librarian rises to protest. It is all very well, he says, for the private owner to have his literature in this concentrated form, but for himself, how is he to satisfy the eight readers who call for "Headlong Hall," "Nightmare Abbey," and the rest of Peacock's novels all at once? To be sure he can buy and catalogue eight single-volume sets of the author's works instead of one set in ten volumes, and when he has done this each reader will be sure to find the particular novel that he is looking ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... parody, everybody is the irrepressible caricature of himself. You are in a topsy- turvy world, enveloped in an atmosphere instinct with gaiety and folly, where burlesque is natural and only the extravagant is normal; where your Chimaera has grown frolic, your Nightmare is first Cousin to the Cheshire Cat, and your Sphinxes are all upon the spree; and where you have as little concern for what is real as you have in that hemisphere of the great globe of Moliere—that ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... move were countermanded, and we marched back again in joy. There were fewer volunteers for guard duty that night, and the natural rest of the sergeant of the guard was undisturbed save by the occasional nightmare of having overslept the hour for relieving the meek sentinels (not yet instructed in the art of awakening drowsy non-commissioned officers by stentorian alarms, and indeed not yet knowing accurately the measure of their 'two hours on'), or by some louder howl than ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... of triumph Badshah pursued. Dermot, left alone, could hardly credit the passing of the danger. The whole episode seemed a hideous nightmare from which he had just awaked. He could scarcely believe that it had actually taken place, although the trampled vegetation and the crashing sounds of the great animals' progress through the undergrowth were evidence of its reality. The need for action had not passed. The rogue might return, for ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... and Mary sat down, still in a daze. She had been so suddenly discharged and then employed again that it seemed a dream. Even the terrible hours of the night seemed some hideous nightmare rather than reality. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... earth in order to enforce faith. Flying from Don Pedro the Cruel, he had taken refuge in Avignon, where lived exiles even more illustrious than himself. There were the Popes driven out of Rome by a people who, in their mediaeval nightmare, tried to restore at the bidding of Rienzi the ancient republic of the Consuls. Don Gil was not a man to live long in the pleasant little Provencal court; like a good archbishop of Toledo, he wore the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... looking away from him. "No, there are not any dangerous—wild beasts on this key. It—it was just a morning nightmare." She laughed, looking up. "Perhaps I wasn't thoroughly awake yet." But she shuddered, and swiftly made pretense she was shaking herself. "There; I'm awake now. There are no dangerous wild animals here. There are only—people. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... my purpose is higher. In the breast of each human being is implanted an instinctive fear of Pain. It sits on us like a nightmare, from the time we first come to consciousness of our surroundings. It is a curse of humanity, like drink, and he who can lighten that curse is as much of a philanthropist as George W. Childs or Andrew Carnegie. I want ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them. One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind. It seems to have been a special nest of these vermins, and the slopes were alive with them, all writhing in our direction, for it is a peculiarity of the Jaracaca that he will always attack man at first sight. There were too many for us to shoot, so we fairly took ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... or other, notwithstanding the growing estrangement with his wife which had ended in their virtual separation, he had still believed in her, still had faith in her, still had hope of an ultimate reconciliation. And behind it all, he had loved her. It seemed at that moment that a nightmare was being formed around him. A new horror was creeping into his thoughts. He had felt from the first a bitter dislike of Draconmeyer. Now, however, he realised that this feeling had developed into an actual and ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... may not sound very bad out here in the daylight, but you ought to have had it. I yelled until Daddy shook me and told me I'd wake up the whole end of town with such a nightmare. If you'd have seen that old Chinaman's face like a dragon's, you'd understand why I feel that we've just got to find that pouch. It's going to get us into some kind of trouble, certain sure, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... very quietness seemed a menace. Desperately she tore herself from his hold, and turned to escape. But it was as though she fled in a nightmare. Whichever way she turned she met only the impenetrable ramparts of the hedge that surrounded her. She could find neither entrance nor exit. It was as though the way by which she had come had been ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... safe room on the Sagalac, with its four walls, but its unlocked doors—for Gabriel Druse said that he could not bear that last sign of his exile—here in the fortress of the town-dweller there was a strange trembling of her pulses in the presence of a mere hallucination or nightmare—the first she had had ever. Her dreams in the past had always been happy and without the black fancies of nightmare. On the night that Jethro Fawe had first confronted her father and herself, and he had been carried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... difficult to do this, for, on looking into her mind, she could discover neither desire nor love, nor any wish to see him. She was only conscious of a nervous agitation which she could not control, and through this waking nightmare she walked steadily, thinking with ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... to it; if it reaches out to any one three times that is taken as a sign that it is a good spirit from purgatory asking for help. For protection a thorn-stick is carried, with which the vampire is thrust through. The "Alp" (the nightmare) is an evil old maid who sits on the back or breast of sleepers, holds their hands and feet, and stops their mouth so that they cannot cry for help; therefore they never sleep on the back, but on the right side, and keep near the bed an open bottle-gourd, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... may laugh at his ruffianly bravado, but no one may laugh at a forty-four calibre bullet! Think what you are going to make me pay for your kindness! I must pay with memory of the sound of a shot and the fall of a body there in the streets of Little Rivers—a nightmare for life! Oh, I beg of you, though it is fun for you to be killed, consider me! Don't go down into that valley! I beg of you, go back ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... they hang in a string, a flint with a hole in it (naturally) by the manger; but best of all they say, hung about their necks, and a flint will do it that hath not a hole in it. It is to prevent the nightmare, viz. the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat all night. The flint ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... introspective, I lived in an epic of my own creation. My strength and my courage were wrapped up in dreams, and seemed to have no relation to the practical world. I could have faced the devil himself for an ideal, but to make my own living—that was the nightmare!... ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... without a word, to station herself at the door of the doctor's chamber, her ear on the alert, listening to the pestle, while Felicite, as if riveted to the spot by emotion, regarded the papers. At last, there they were, those terrible documents, the nightmare that had poisoned her life! She saw them, she was going to touch them, to carry them away! And she reached up, straining her little legs, in the eagerness of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... contrast to the storm without,—so the storm flinging itself against the windows, powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted—oh, how she wanted to believe in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cousin. He was, therefore, by no means at his ease. As to Richard, he did not dare to ask himself how things would end, neither did he know how to act. His mind was in utter confusion, and his breast oppressed as if by a nightmare. He cast one look towards the upper window, and beheld at it the white face of Mistress Nutter, intently gazing at what was going forward, but Alizon was not to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to denote that it was an instrument of death. I put it on the tray and walked with it towards the library without considering what I was doing. But suddenly in the passage I came to myself like awakening from a nightmare. I suddenly saw the blunder I was going to make, and I let the glass fall on ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... that queer little man was making some pretence at dusting or replacing chairs, still his eyes never left me for a moment, and at last, being somewhat drowsy, I had the sensation that one experiences in a nightmare, and thought I had better resort to my room and make up for a shortened night. No sooner, however, had I got up from my chair than the waiter was entreating me to remain, offering to heap coals on the fire, to bring me another ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... long day wore on,—the red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable chicken peering out, growing sharper and more real in the glare. Life was no morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it actual and near. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb hunger in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own loss, with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... a deep voice; and the effect was so great upon me, that I felt like one in a nightmare trying to speak, but no ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... The spirit was driving it. The demon with the whip was at work in the night. I looked till the dawn came. And only when at last my double crept, like a thief, into its house, did sleep take me for a little while—sleep that was alive with nightmare." ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... misfortunes, I now swallowed double my usual quantity and soon slept profoundly. But sleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams presented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my neck and could not free myself from it; groans and cries rang in my ears. My father, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... especially the Londoners, men of substance and position. The second is a list of cottagers resident in the village of Steeple Claydon in Bucks. Even a cursory perusal of these lists should Suffice to dispel all recollection of the nightmare "philology" which has been so much employed to obscure what is perfectly simple and obvious; while a very slight knowledge of Latin and French is all that is required to connect these names of men who were dead and buried before the ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... desire to snivel possessed him and could not be subdued. If only there had been a shoulder, some sweet, kind, soft shoulder to soak up the tired angry tears that fell and fell. A kindly shoulder, a gentle voice to drive away the horror of these nightmare days. Was all sweetness gone out of the world? Was the world no more than four square walls peopled with devils who asked and asked and asked? Was there nothing else but greed of money, hatred, want, and damnable persecution? A voice within cried aloud: "Why suffer it all? Why ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the acts to waste money on high-priced refreshments, and remain in their places to the bitter end—unlike the cash patrons, so many of whom bustle away brutally towards the close of the entertainment for fear lest they should miss the chance of earning a nightmare at a fashionable restaurant. Seeing what service they render to the managers the deadheads are perhaps entitled to the protection ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... are inclined to give way to certain morbid and sentimental exaggerations of sympathy, which do some injustice to the great Artificer whom we are for the moment assuming to be responsible for sentient life. Many of us are much concerned about "nature, red in tooth and claw." It is a sort of nightmare to us to think of the tremendous fecundity of swamp and jungle, warren and pond, and of the ruthless struggle for existence which has made earth, air, and sea one mighty battle-ground. In this we are again ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... sail itself to support me meanwhile. Just then the ship gave another sudden jerk, and, head-foremost, I pitched from the yard. I knew where I was, from the rush of the air by my ears, but all else was a nightmare. A bloody film was before my eyes, through which, ghost-like, passed and repassed my father, mother, and sisters. An utterable nausea oppressed me; I was conscious of gasping; there seemed no breath in my body. It was over one hundred ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... confessed that the worst, the most tiresome, and the most dangerous of errors hitherto has been a dogmatist error—namely, Plato's invention of Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. But now when it has been surmounted, when Europe, rid of this nightmare, can again draw breath freely and at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we, WHOSE DUTY IS WAKEFULNESS ITSELF, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered. It amounted to the very inversion of truth, and the denial of the PERSPECTIVE—the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... putting it from him like a nightmare that calls a man from his sleep by its false peril, wringing sweat from him in its agony. Let them bind in drink and sever in blood, for all that he cared. It was nothing to him, any way they might combine or clash. Joan ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... to my modesty? I had raised the pendulum to such a giddy height that when it slipped from my impotent hands it naturally performed a long oscillation, and touched the point Despair. That was a miserable time. I hope you have never suffered what I suffered then. I lived in a perpetual nightmare—like the stupor at intoxication." He paused, as he had done before, and then, with a painfully nervous laugh, be added, "Yes, like intoxication. I drank." Suddenly a spasm seemed to pass over his face, be looked serious and sad as before, and he said, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... Those were the words echoing within her heart, and her soul cried upon Christ to shorten time that she might reach him the sooner. Before the world was next awake, she would be upon her way; before another night fell, Mister Jan's arms would be round her. The long, dreary nightmare had ended for her at last. Then came tears of bitter remorse, for she saw how his love had never left her, how he had been true as steel, while she, misled by appearances, had lost faith and lapsed into forgetfulness. A wild, unreasoning ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... drafted out the substance of his own reply. He feels that much of the responsibility lies on his shoulder. It is such a joy to him—such a joy!—to feel that he has this chance to 'make good'. It's not a dream, darling—it's true! The long, long nightmare is over; read your letters ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... some youth's teasing, and the shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had been of the unexacting type of American lad who counts it a "good time" to sit in summer evenings on "porches" or "stoops" or "piazzas," joking with "the boys," flirting with "the girls," and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... during the hours of sleep. Bad dreams came at the instigation of the demons, and such a demon as the rabisu or the labartu appears to have been especially associated with the horrible sensations aroused by a 'nightmare.'[347] Again the utukku is represented at times as attacking the neck of man; the gallu attacks the hand, the ekimmu the loins, the alu the breast. But these distinctions count for little in the texts. Utukku becomes a general name for demon, and gallu, alu, and shedu are either ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... nightmare and usually seek its cause in a poor digestion and the doctors talk a great deal about improper circulation and suggest all kinds of remedies. But throughout a long life I have been a close observer ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... and valor of their officers, could have stood up against it. A statement by a driver of the Royal Field Artillery, published in the Evening News, gives a vivid impression of how the men felt. "I have no clear notion of the order of events in the long retreat," he says; "it was a nightmare, like being seized by a madman after coming out of a serious illness and forced towards the edge of a precipice." The constant marching, the want of sleep, the restless and (as it sometimes seemed to the men) purposeless backward movement night and day drove them into a fury. ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... hundred and sixty left, and ten of these were in bad condition. But I discovered that day, on having the frozen walrus meat ripped up on the forecastle, that we had a greater supply than we had believed, and the discovery drove away the nightmare which had been haunting us. From now on the dogs could be fed a little more generous allowance of the best kind of food. For, after we had tried practically everything, including our bacon, it was found that walrus meat agreed with them ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... mother's name was, but the Pony Engine was so bewildered it couldn't tell. And the Express kept gaining on it. On the plains it was chased by a pack of prairie wolves, but it left them far behind; and the antelopes were scared half to death. But the worst of it was when the nightmare ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... to free his mind from the influence of her passion and her eyes, from the nightmare of the room and the body, and to see things in a sane light. 'But—my good girl,' he said, slowly and not unkindly, 'I know nothing about it. Nothing. I am a ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the room slowly up and down, and my impulse was to part the curtains, to call him to me and comfort him, but I could not; I was too weak even to speak as yet, and bound as with a spell, a nightmare. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... World. The profound, blind, suffering expression of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes. In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper lying passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare, she stammered out ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... were a nightmare of frustration for Kielland as he observed with mounting horror the standard operating procedure of ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... believed, the victims of a stupid nightmare? Or could it be true that beneath all this peace boiled a volcano ready at any ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... and lapping over on themselves. That there is down where old mama Nature gave full swing to a morbid hankering after doing things unconventional. Result is, that it's about as ungodly a mixture of nightmare scenery as this old world can show up; and I've ambled around considerable and am in a ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... had told her to send for the detective if she were in trouble. Well, she was in trouble; she had sent for him; he would come, and somehow he would find a way of putting straight this hideous nightmare in which she found herself living. How happy, in comparison, had been her life in Belgium, in the household of her adopted father and stepmother! She could have found it in her heart to wish she had never left their roof; but that would have involved ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... scrambling with their adhesive, spongy feet over places which would have been impossible for horses. Among the broken rocks those behind could sometimes only see the long, undulating, darting necks of the creatures in front, as if it were some nightmare procession of serpents. Indeed, it had much the effect of a dream upon the prisoners, for there was no sound, save the soft, dull padding and shuffling of the feet. The strange, wild frieze moved slowly and silently onwards amid a setting of black ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... at first. Particularly since up until the time I was drafted into the Special Corps I wasn't even certain it really existed. It was too much like a con man's nightmare to be real. A secret worry. After a few happy years of successful crime you begin to wonder how long it will last. Planetary police are all pushovers and you start to feel you can go on forever if they're your only competition. What about the League though? Don't they ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... of the throttle and oil-can, car Naught-seven, in the gift of a hospitable receiver, shortly became a nightmare. Like most private cars, it was heavier than the heaviest Pullman; and the engineer who was constrained to haul it like a dragging anchor at the tail end of a fast train was prone to say words not to be found in any vocabulary ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... death; sunken cheeks, the bridge of the nose depressed, and the end turned up; the mouth puckered, and no chin whatever, or hardly any. The expression was not calm and happy; but rather as if he were in a perturbed slumber, perhaps nothing short of nightmare. I wonder that the family allow this cast to be shown,—the last record that there is of Scott's personal reality, and conveying such a wretched ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... begun to descend. But now he shared it. The two of them toppled forward together. Their arms were upon the flat surface, while their bodies dangled. The feel of gravity pulling them slantwise and downward was purest nightmare. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... me in the night—nothing, that is, except a nightmare in which Colonel Wragge chased me amid thin streaks of fire, and his sister always prevented my escape by suddenly rising up out of the ground in her chair—dead. The deep baying of dogs woke me once, just before the dawn, it must have been, for I saw the window frame against the sky; there was ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... "A huge nightmare of indigestion, insomnia, and fits of black impatience with myself and others,—self chiefly.... I am heartily sick of my dyspeptic bewilderment ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... Servitude—fourteen years." Or no, it was the Judge who fixed that. But the Judges were fools, too; they were too conceited, too puffed up with vanity, to take the trouble to understand. He groaned aloud in a nightmare of helplessness. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... him, trained reflexes worked, he summoned all that was left of his draining strength and fought the anesthetic. His wrestling with it was a groping in fog. Again and again he spiraled into unconsciousness and rose strangling. Dimly, through nightmare, he was aware of being carried. Once someone stopped the group in a corridor and asked what was wrong. The answer seemed to come from immensely far away. "I dunno. He passed out—just like that. We're taking ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... colour of the face, verging to duskiness; the expiration begins to be changed, the voice grows hoarse, the hairs become thinned and weaker, and the perspiration and breath incline to foetidity; the mind is melancholic with frightful dreams and nightmare; in some cases scabs, pustules, and eruptions break out over the whole body; disposition of the body begins to become loathsome, but still, while the form and figure are not corrupted, the patient is not to be adjudged for separation; but is to be ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... concluded to shake him gently; and at this the Emperor awoke with a loud cry, saying, "What is it? What is it?" then sat up and opened his eyes wide; upon which I told him that, seeing him tormented with a horrible nightmare, I had taken the liberty of waking him. "And you did well, my dear Constant," interrupted his Majesty. "Ah, my friend, I have had a frightful dream; a bear was tearing open my breast, and devouring my heart!" Thereupon the Emperor rose, and, while I put his bed in order, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of an overpowered imagination—the nightmare of a distempered fancy? Yet it would not be shaken off. It had bathed the whole world ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... Ross gazed at him with a face of despair. His misfortunes were accumulating; he had a sense of nightmare and oppression. Surely this hideous thing could not be true! no such disgrace could threaten him and his! If an earthquake had opened in the Woodcote grounds, he could ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the nightmare sounds he had heard from his cell in the police station, and Samuel listened appalled. There came a crash of breaking glass; and then suddenly, in the midst of the confusion, he heard his young master cry, "Get out of here!"—and the dining room door was flung ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... gone by then, only a few shining metal huts in the Siberian tundra giving mute evidence that they had been anything other than a nightmare. ...
— The Mightiest Man • Patrick Fahy
... graveyard, but she was forbidden to mention the subject to any one under threats of being carried away by a "bogey-man." The child became very frightened by this, to such an extent that one night she had a severe nightmare in which a "bogey-man" came to carry her away. At the end of two years a profound change had taken place in her which she now describes thus: "I was a changed child; I was separated from my mother and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... mill-ponds, with beautiful little cascades sluicing into them over dams. They stand, in imagination, on bridges, in the eddies beneath which they discern the wagging of silvery tails and rosy fins; and a very common form of nightmare with them is to fancy that the reel of the fishing-rod won't work, just as they are going to wind up ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... spend in a ring of camelhood, huddled together for warmth; and if they do not have nightmare or bite each other in their sleep, mere humans in neighbouring tents may hope for comparative silence in the desert, if not near a village full of pi-dogs. At sunrise, however, a change comes o'er their spirit. They are given food, and made as happy and contented as it is their ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... these people! Their animation was almost like the animation of a nightmare. Some were ugly, some looked wicked; others mischievous, sympathetic, coarse, artful, seductive, boldly defiant or boisterously excited. But however much they differed, in one quality they were nearly all alike. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... immigrants as had no money or too little, and fearful that she might be torn from the dear side of her beloved mistress in spite of all which she had done to follow her, shivered constantly and sometimes shook with a dry sob. The hours were hours of nightmare. ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... woke me at two with the news of a majority for the amendment (234 to 215)—the country spared from humiliation, the character of the House of Commons redeemed. But, privately, what will become of our victory? Lay awake with the nightmare of coming office upon me—went to sleep only to dream that John was going to the scaffold (being ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... there's nothing else for it. I should have to raise the money on the estate; it won't stand much more. I can't believe the fellow would be such a barbarian. Chimneys within three hundred yards, right in front of this house! It's a nightmare. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of self-interest bade it resist the beginnings of an intervention which, if confined to words, was certain to be useless, and, if supported by action, was likely to end in that alliance between France and Russia which had been the nightmare of English statesmen ever since 1814, and in a second occupation of Spain by the very generals whom Wellington had spent so many years in dislodging. Castlereagh replied to the Czar's note in terms which made ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the cabin began to shake beneath dancing feet. Hicks was fulfilling his word, and in the kitchen his wife had done her part. Everything known to the mountaineer palate was piled in profusion on the table, but Clayton and Easter ate nothing. To him the whole evening was a nightmare, which the solemn moments of the marriage had made the more hideous. He was restless and eager to get away. The dancing was becoming more furious, and above the noise rose Hicks's voice prompting the dancers. The ruder ones still hung about the doors, regarding Clayton curiously, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... Pain in the right little finger unconsciously shifted to the left little finger. He says he had nightmare continuously, but "had not slept a wink." Breakfast, of course, in bed. No appetite for anything save muffins, herrings, and marmalade on buttered toast. Unable to move until one o'clock, when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... winter weather, they toiled on, part of the way by boat, the remainder of the journey on foot, crossing snow-clogged forest, and tangled thicket and frozen morass, yet daring not to drop out for rest, since to lag might mean to die. It was as though after some frightful nightmare of suffering and despair that at length they reached the villages of the Five Nations, located far to the east, at the foot of the great waterway which Law and his family had ascended more than ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... run, but his feet would not rise from the ground; his limbs were numb as in a nightmare; he could not get there. His body would not obey his will. In reality he did move, but more slowly than when he walked. By degrees approaching the canoe his alarm subsided, for although it burned it was not injured; the canvas of the sail was not even scorched. When he got to it the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... few years is like a nightmare, so terrible is Bunyan's spiritual struggle. One day he feels himself an outcast; the next the companion of angels; the third he tries experiments with the Almighty in order to put his salvation to the proof. As he goes along the road to Bedford he thinks ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... impotence seized Ronald, in nightmare grip. Indignant and furious, he yet felt absolutely unable to contradict or ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... suffered, but nothing ever brought home to me so deeply, and with such cutting force, the hideous nature of war and the iron hand of discipline, as did that lonely death on the misty hillside in the early morning. (p. 215) Even now, as I write this brief account of it, a dark nightmare seems to rise out of the past and almost makes me shrink from facing once again memories that were so painful. It is well, however, that people should know what our men had to endure. Before them were the German ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... each day after lunch, Mac Tavish had been enabled to get back to the sanity of a well-conducted woolen-mill business; in the peace that descended on the office afternoons he put out of his mind the nightmare of the forenoons and tried not to think too much of what ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of * * *'s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third. I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please 'our puir ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... into the matting-lined corridor from which he had started upon that nightmare journey; Ho-Pin appeared at his elbow, but ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... ignorant, so he used the strap freely to hasten the truant's steps to school. The heder was the only beginning allowable for a boy in Polotzk, and to heder Joseph must go. So the poor boy's life was made a nightmare, and the horror was not lifted until he was ten years old, when he went to a modern school where intelligible things were taught, and it proved that it was not the book he hated, but ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... sickly, incredulous smile when they first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the new head-master was an escaped lunatic. A few gifted with more presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of dispelling the hideous nightmare by ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... railroad, in the winter and spring of 1858-9. I was doing some reporting, and a little lobbying, in the Senate, at the beginning of March, and, as I have said, ran down with a party of friends to see the Tomb of Washington, curse the neglect that hung over it like a nightmare, and execrate the meanness which sold off bouquets from the garden, and canes from the woods, at a quarter each, by the hands of a pack of dirty slaves, to the hands of a pack of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... was a dark day in the calendar of her life, when she made that escape; and I think there must have been times when a consciousness of this fact pressed upon her soul like a suffocating nightmare. ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... "It weighs one down. Last winter was a nightmare. The tales one heard, and the faces one saw!—though we seemed to be always giving. And in the middle of it Edward would buy me a new set of sables. I begged him not, but ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... write, was so set against God, thus rendered. He and his Hell were the nightmare of my childhood; I hated him while I still believed in him, and who could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, perpetually waiting to condemn ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Alfred Barton made his appearance. No truant school-boy ever dreaded the master's eye as he dreaded to appear before his father that Sunday morning. His sleep had been broken and restless; the teeth of Sandy Flash had again grinned at him in nightmare-dreams, and when he came to put on his clothes, the sense of emptiness in his breast-pocket and watch-fob impressed him like a violent physical pain. His loss was bad enough, but the inability to conceal it caused ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... passed by in ceaseless toil, under a perpetual menace, in the midst of an ever-growing fatigue which gave things the substance and aspects they take on in a nightmare. ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... an awful nightmare about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbor. The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I always sit in the galley?" He spoke haltingly at first, under ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the room cold. Each girl hoped the other was asleep. Lobelia hardly dared to breathe; she lay still as a mouse, feeling a delightful sense of comfort and security, such as she had not felt since she came to this nightmare of a place. Not to be alone any more, with the night and the terrible things it brought; to have this friend, so strong, so kind, so helpful, lying close beside the bed, ready to help, to comfort,—Lobelia's poor shrinking spirit ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... those brief moments, knowing that he ought to fire, but feeling as if he were suffering from nightmare, till the majestic beast before him gave vent to a tremendous roar, turned, ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... The candour of his mind made him grant its truth, but his new-born confidence was sadly dissipated. And he felt, too, the futility of his efforts. That one man alone in this precipitous wilderness should hope to wake the Border seemed a mere nightmare of presumption. But it was possible, he said to himself. Time only was needed. If he could wake Bardur and the north, and the forts on the passes, there would be delay enough to wake India. If George were at Nazri there would be ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... our trip seems like a nightmare to me. I can only remember parts of it here and there. We reeled like drunken men. We sobbed sometimes, and sometimes we prayed. There was no word from Jim now, not even a whimper, as we half dragged, half carried him on. Our eyes were large with fever, our hands were like ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled in a manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the letter. As he read, terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch of nightmare. He struck one hand upon his brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously, he crumpled the paper to a ball. "My gracious powers!" he cried; and then, dashing to the window, which stood open on the garden, he clapped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 30th; was beshouted, crowned, raised to the immortal gods by a repentant Paris world: "Greatest of men,—You were not a miscreant and malefactor, then: on the contrary, you were a spiritual Hercules, a heroic Son of Light; Slayer of the Nightmare Monsters, and foul Dragons and Devils that were preying on us: to you shall not we now say, Long life, with all our throats and all our hearts,"—and so quench you at last! Which they managed to do, poor repentant souls. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gloom prevailed. It was like a nightmare to the beleaguered household, a dream from which there seemed to be no awakening. Colonel Quinnox's first act after posting his forces in position to repel attacks from the now well-recognised enemy, was to make sure of the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dogs bark in Mackinac village, and leaves moving behind her, and the wash of water at the base of the island which always sounded like a small rain. Instead of feeling afraid, she was in a nightmare of sorrow. Pontiac had loved the French almost as well as he loved his own people. She breathed the sweetbrier scent, her neck stretched forward and her dark eyes fixed on him; and as his head turned back from St. Ignace his whole body moved with ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... those scenes in Webster's "Duchess of Malfy" where the Duchess is tortured by her brothers. The resemblance is interesting on many accounts, and serves to confirm us in a belief we have long entertained that Webster's peculiar power has been overrated, and that the tendency to heap one nightmare horror on another is something characteristic rather of the childhood than the maturity of genius. There is no modern story which renews for us the woes of the house of Tantalus so awfully as this of the Cenci, and it cannot fail to be of absorbing interest, especially ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to the accumulation of wealth and culture could the twentieth century hope in its second to make good some part of its utopic vision. Wealth was the first and absolute necessity: Socialism without money is a nightmare. To live well man must be able to buy some leisure, finery, and elbow-room. Anything is better than a poverty-stricken communism in which no one can afford to ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... that, in the vision, the light had disappeared. Here it was gleaming under her door as brightly as ever. "Pshaw! what a silly girl I am!" said she. "It was a nightmare. That's all." She raised her hands to her face. It was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to you, and I swear to you, by the wounds in the hands of Christ—I swear to you by the wounds in the body and feet of Christ, that this doctrine of eternal hell is a most infamous nightmare of theology! It never should ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... are we to do with that place? It gives me a nightmare. The extraordinary thing is the way that everything in it has gone to ruin. Did your mother really live here while ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... distinguish neither their persons nor movements. Cries of appeal, and moans as of wounded or dying, constantly reached me. I roused myself as well and quickly as I could from the oppression of my deathlike sleep, and tried to shake off the nightmare. The effort assured me that it was reality and not a dream! In an instant, that presence of mind which has seldom deserted me, suggested escape. I seized the gasket, and dropping by aid of it as softly as I could in the water, struck out for shore. It was time. My plunge ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... separation showed us what we were to each other. Yet I was letting her go—and there was no help for it, no way of preventing it. Resistance was as useless as the vain struggles in a nightmare. She was Trant's and not mine: part of his luggage when he travelled as she was part of his household furniture when he stayed ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... lightning-conductor; for it is said to open all locks. But perhaps the most precious of all the virtues of mistletoe is that it affords efficient protection against sorcery and witchcraft. That, no doubt, is the reason why in Austria a twig of mistletoe is laid on the threshold as a preventive of nightmare; and it may be the reason why in the north of England they say that if you wish your dairy to thrive you should give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that calves after New Year's Day, for it is well known that nothing is so fatal to milk and butter as witchcraft. Similarly in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Dear traitor, too much loved, why?—why?—Yet see, Before these kings we embrace you yet once more With all forgiveness, all oblivion, And trust, not love, you less. And now, O sire, Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him, Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it; Taunt me no more: yourself and yours shall have Free adit; we will scatter all our maids Till happier times each to her proper hearth: What use to keep them here—now? grant my prayer. ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... subsided and the servants were in their quarters, La Signorina went into the gardens alone. An hour earlier she had seen Hillard mount and ride away, the last time but once. There seemed to bear down upon her that oppression which one experiences in a nightmare, of being able to fly so high, to run madly and yet to move slowly, always pursued by terror. Strive as she would, she could not throw off this sense. After all, it was a nightmare, from the day she landed in New York up to ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... number of times in London, I came to the conclusion that the players on the different instruments improvise their parts, the only rule being the general character of the melodies to be played, and the finishing together. The effect of the music was that of a contrapuntal nightmare, hideous to a degree which one who has not heard it cannot conceive. Berlioz, in his "Soirees de l'orchestre," well described its effect when ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... complain—I explain. I want you to understand, if you can, that it was not your friend John Ross-Ellison who did that awful deed. It was a Pathan named Ilderim Dost Mahommed. And yet it was I." ["Poor chap is mad!" murmured the bewildered and horrified reader who had lived in a kind of nightmare since the woman he loved had been murdered by the man he loved. "The strain of the war has been too much for him. He must have had sunstroke too." He ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... so the kiln problem was a nightmare to me. When we started up the plant experimentally, and the long kiln was first put in operation, an output of about four hundred barrels in twenty-four hours was obtained. Mr. Edison was more than disappointed at this result. His terse comment ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... his forehead. Had he been dreaming, then? Was this merely the reaction from some bitter nightmare? He ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... interviews with War Office officials, with doctors, with nurses; the hundreds of letters that had to be written daily; the questions, necessary and unnecessary, that had to be answered; the estimates that had to be examined, would have proved a nightmare to anyone not possessed of the keenest intellect combined with the strongest will. It involved close and unremitting attention from morning till night, and this not for one week, but for many months; and yet no detail was ever momentarily shirked by one who loved an outdoor life. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. He made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to hand anything over when the first of the month came round—a date that had haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend it on himself, and he felt an. increasing ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... hours of the following morning he was yanked out of an embarrassing nightmare where he dreamed he went to a hoedown in his briefs. He was squeezed between two furtive men into a shade-drawn limousine with unillumined headlamps and after a frenzied ride the vehicle screeched to a halt. He heard a roaring and in the darkness he was dimly aware ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... he rose at once, and softly went Unto the cradle, as 'twas his intent, And to his bed's foot bare it, with the brat. The wife her routing ceased soon after that, And woke, and left her bed; for she was pained With nightmare dreams of skies that madly rained. Eastern astrologers and clerks, I wis, In time of Apis tell of storms like this. Awhile she stayed, and waxeth calm in mind; Returning then, no cradle doth she find, And gropeth here and there—but ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... with a burst of oratory that was obviously for the sole purpose of distracting attention from poor Jerry. And something in the good nature of his act, in his reckless wandering from the subject of the debate to gain his end, won everyone's admiration. As one wakes from a consuming nightmare so poor Jerry roused from her stupor of ignominy; she forgot Isobel, in the front row, and clapped with the others when ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... amid a hungry crowd of little piping fiends, was a veritable nightmare, and yesterday morning we rescued our mangled remains from the enemy, and, having paid off our boats, hurriedly clambered on to the ponies which had come—late, as usual—from Palhallan to convey what was left by ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... which he had first returned to consciousness after the accident. He was on the same couch. The same masked figure was at the same desk. Had he been dreaming? Was this then only some horrible, ghastly nightmare through which he ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... start. Perhaps without that fear upon us we might have reached the house, but as it was we felt as one feels in a nightmare, unable to run though in an agony of terror. Getting over the wall was the worst, for there Hugh stumbled badly, and I had to turn and help him, watching the man bounding ever nearer, signing to us to stay for him. A minute later, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... was not a part of some dreadful nightmare, Seth descended the iron ladder to the foot of the tower, dragged his faltering feet to the door, and slowly swung it open. The ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... only sensations of which I was aware. Slowly, very slowly, sense and memory returned to me, and with them a more vivid intensity of mental anguish, as detail by detail I recalled the weird horror of the night. Had it really happened,—was the thing still there,—or was it all a ghastly nightmare? It was some minutes before I dared either to move or look up, and then fearfully I raised my head. Before me stretched the smooth white coverlet, faintly bright with yellow sunshine. Weak and giddy, I struggled to my feet, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... whole night in one constant nightmare; in the heart of a volcano, and from the deepest depths of the earth I saw myself tossed up amongst the interplanetary spaces under the form of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... to old Marster to die. This is the picture of good slave holders, but sad to say all were not of that type. [TR: deleted: 'See next sheet for'] a picture of horror, which was also told me by my mother. [TR: deleted: 'The thought of it'] was like a nightmare to my childish mind. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... at having escaped from the miasmic atmosphere of that room of unholy memories. And a faint hope began to dawn within my bosom that, as I increased the distance between myself and it, I might shake off something of the nightmare helplessness which numbed and tortured me. I lingered for a moment by the window; then stepped over the short dividing wall into the street; and then ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... hungry lion of my nightmare, and Henriques' pistol was in the mud of the Klein Letaba! The only thing was a tree, and I had sprung for one and scrambled wearily into the first branches when a great yellow animal came ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... something diminishes us. This every one has noticed; for who ever suffered a nightmare awake, or felt in full consciousness those awful impotencies which lie on the other side of slumber? When we lie down we give ourselves voluntarily, yet by the force of nature, to powers before which we melt and are nothing. And among the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... walk'd, King Arthur panted hard, Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute. So sigh'd the King, Muttering and murmuring at his ear, 'Quick, quick! I fear it is too late, ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... based on superficial appearances, misleading analogies, arbitrary fancies, perturbed sensibilities, not on a firm hold of realities, insight of truth, and philosophical analysis. They are all to be brushed aside as phantoms of nightmare or artificial creations of fiction. Poetry has mostly rested, hitherto, on no veritable foundation of science, but on a visionary foundation of emotion. It has wrought upon flitting, sensible phenomena rather than upon abiding substrata of facts. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... courage to gather my limbs together and crawl out the way I had entered. The distance was but a few paces, yet to traverse these seemed an interminable nightmare of swaying and stumbling. I know only one other occasion upon which the liberal atmosphere of the open earth seemed sweeter to my senses when I reached it than ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... faintness overpowered Joyce, and the big tears rolled down her face. It had not, then, been all a hideous nightmare? Something sweet and real had remained after the terror and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... such could not be the case. He even thought he scented the sickening odor which he had now and then experienced in the Central Park Zoo. He knew, too, that this was purely imaginary, but the horror of a nightmare was on him, and for only an instant ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... wishes to know at breakfast, what were those dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in the night? Mr. Goodchild answers, Nightmare. Mr. Idle repels the calumny, and calls the waiter. The Angel is very sorry—had intended to explain; but you see, gentlemen, there was a gentleman dined down- stairs with two more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would drink a deal of wine, and in the night he 'took ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... anguish of the soul, came to calm my senses. Repose does not fly from the couch of the unfortunate. It only avoids those who are consumed by remorse. But how frightful was my awaking. I thought that I had had a dreadful nightmare. The fate of the persons who were compromised caused me the greatest grief and anxiety. I wrote to General Voirol, to say to him that his honor obliged him to interest himself in behalf of Colonel Vaudrey; for it ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... top of the rock now. The vast tortuous landscape spread out below him like a relief map in a mapmaker's nightmare. Far to his left, beyond Glaudot's spacesuited figure, he could see the projectile-shaped spaceship resting on its tail ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... he would hardly have revealed those wonderful vistas and perspectives of prose, which permit one to call him the first and most powerful of the decadents: those sentences that lengthen out like nightmare corridors, or rise higher and higher like impossible eastern pagodas. He was a morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic shadow ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... he wanted to think what his mother and "little sister" would say, but his misery was as nothing to that of the two who sat up there amid the ranks of the blue and white, holding each other's hands with a despairing grip. To Bud all of the rest of the contest was a horrid nightmare; he hardly knew when the three companies were marched back to receive the judges' decision. The applause that greeted company "B" when the blue ribbons were pinned on the members' coats meant nothing to his ears. ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... times, the past twenty-five years seemed like a long nightmare. This was Anthony Dexter—this boy with the quick, light step, the ringing laugh, the broad shoulders and clear, true eyes. No terror lay between them, all was straight and right; yet the realisation still enshrouded her like a ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... and deserted, put aside for the moment her nightmare, and started once more upon her ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... fear that the welcome admission of Mr. Clews's article to the pages of THE ARENA implies timidity or some possible weakness in the presence of that gigantic institution known by the name of Wall Street. The fact is, that the nightmare which that power has been able to spread, bat-like, over the souls of men for a quarter of a century has about been dissipated; it is already the beginning of the end. It is the dawn; the day is not very far in the future when the American people, roused at last to ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... Tunley obeyed the summons, and appeared before his guests in all the violence of rage, disorder, and fatigue: his nostrils were dilated more than one-half beyond their natural capacity, his eyes rolled, his teeth chattered, he snored in breathing as if he had been oppressed by the nightmare, and streams of sweat flowed down each side of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Room. It was eight pages long, and intolerably dry, and towards the end I nodded. Awaking with a start, I was about to hold up my hands for the adjustment of the thumb screws—for I had fallen on a nightmare—when he softened. The Imperial Government was now pleased to admit me to the Reading Room for such knowledge as might lie in ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... inclination to argue the point just then, and shuffled out of the room. The speedy clearance effected, Quilp locked the doors; and still embracing the case-bottle with shrugged-up shoulders and folded arms, stood looking at his insensible wife like a dismounted nightmare. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... such fragrant, well-tended flowers with the whistling horror out in the darkness. More, it was absurd, impossible. The girl decided that the whole thing was a bad nightmare which she must shake off. The explanation of it could only be that, half asleep, she had dreamed she heard the tapping and the whispers, and smelled the evil odour. Why should a Thing come and tell her to ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... cosmopolitan company, and listening to the many languages, whose clash gave a Babel air to the restaurant, Jennie fell to musing on the strange experiences she had encountered since leaving London. It seemed to her she had been taking part in some ghastly nightmare, and she shuddered as she thought of the lawlessness, under cover of law, of this great and despotic empire, where even the ruler was under the surveillance of his subordinates, and could not get a letter out of his own dominion in safety, were he so minded. In her day-dream she became conscious, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... tours in this new sector might well be described as a nightmare of H squaredO and H squaredS. It rained very hard, and all the trenches at once became full of water—in some places so full that the garrison, as the weather was warm, discarded trousers and walked about with shirts tucked ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... some terrible nightmare, and as he struggled against it he threw out his arms, half fancying that he was fighting to save himself from being suffocated in a flood that was not liquid but solid and hard. Then one hand came in contact with something soft, which he realised to be a human ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... that they followed a woman who was thought to have murdered her child, and point at me, and hoot, and groan, and cry "There goes the wretch that murdered the child?" I fell on my knees; it seemed as if there was a sound of footsteps behind me—a shout of execration in my ears. It wan a waking nightmare; I was growing delirious, and when I felt something touch me, and a warm breath on my shoulders, I gave a piercing scream, and fell with my face on the ground. A low moaning roused me from this state. I looked up and saw my great Newfoundland dog, who always slept in my room; he was licking my ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... slave of Germany to this hour. What a condition for a country! And now France is fighting not so much to recover her lost provinces, she is fighting to recover her self-respect and her national independence; she is fighting to shake off this nightmare that has been on her soul for over a generation, [cheers,] a France with Germany constantly meddling, bullying, and interfering. And that is what would happen if Russia were trampled upon, France broken, Britain disarmed. We should be left without any means to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... your blood, Philip," replied his wife, with a shudder. "It dripped like a stream from your shoulder as we carried you in last night. O Philip, it is dreadful! It seems to me like an awful nightmare. Let us move away from this terrible place. You will be killed if ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... the sunlight on Chestnut Street, with the girl by his side, it all seemed a nightmare. The son of Appleton Brice of Boston the owner of a beautiful quadroon girl! And he had bought hex with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and had recovered her nerve, but she still found it difficult to believe she was not dreaming. It seemed more like a nightmare than actuality that she should be sitting in a pitch-dark car, talking of love and Don Carlos to a Spanish outlaw who had captured her, and whose arm encircled her waist. She was not conscious of fear now, but Cojuelo's reply to her question scared ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... windows. Shadows which had sentience. I even thought there was sound, a faint sound as of the mew of a cat—the rustle of drapery and a metallic clink as of metal faintly touching metal. I sat as one entranced. At last I felt, as in nightmare, that this was sleep, and that in the passing of its portals all my ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... not readily find his tongue. Amazement broke over him in succeeding waves like a surf. Corinna! Corinna here! Corinna a member of the blackmailing gang! Corinna, the chief! Oh, impossible! He was in a nightmare! ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner |
