"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trials of this early period it is scarcely possible to convey any adequate idea. To one of a sensitive nature, the horrors, atrocities, and misery connected with war were a terrible ordeal. The embarrassment also of the times was considerable. With an income of only eighty pounds a year, I was compelled, upon moving into the Settlement, to give one hundred and twenty for rent, and sublet ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... an ordeal one has with girls," said Juffrouw Pieterse. "Take another piece, don't wait to be insisted upon; it's a cake from your ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... expression vaguely suggestive of admiration shadowed through the slightly flushed countenance, and the next instant it returned to its customary apathy, from which it was not again disturbed during the bitter ordeal to which the helpless ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... they were inflated beyond measure with pride in Joan, but nearly dumb, as to speech, they not being able to think out any way to account for her managing to carry herself through this imposing ordeal without ever a mistake or an awkwardness of any kind to mar the grace and credit of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the middle of the second century; that they were therefore an account of what was going on, by an onlooker, couched in these phrases of vision and prophecy. The people of Israel were passing through a terrible ordeal; they needed to be heartened and nerved for resistance and endurance. Their heroic leader, Judas Maccabeus, was urging them on to prodigies of valor in their conflict with the vile Antiochus; such a ringing manifesto as this, put forth ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... gladly escaped the ordeal of dining in the great salle-a-manger that night, but she could muster no excuse for so doing. At any other time it would have been an immense treat, and she dared not let Jack think that it was otherwise ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... that the Serbs know how to treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought like lions, and they suffered as none others suffered in Europe's terrible ordeal. A Serbian spark at Sarajevo fired the arsenal of European militarism, and a common ungenerous thought sometimes blames the spark instead of blaming the recklessness of those who allowed Europe to be enkindled. And there used to be some who could not forget Serbia's dynastic ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the presence of the public, the ceremonial character of the proceedings, and the conviction that the invisible powers were on the side of truth and justice that gave the trial by ordeal and the trial by battle a significance that neither the duello nor any other form of private vengeance ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... twice, and that in the presence of others. On these occasions he had bowed low, and passed on. But once she had caught his eyes on her, and had glowed for hours at what she saw in them. It braced her somewhat for the impending ordeal of a visit ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... knight accused the other of crime or dishonour, the latter might challenge him to fight with swords or lances; and, according to the superstition of the times, the victor was considered to be the one who spoke the truth. But this ordeal combat was far removed from ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... second meeting; their parting was formal, in the family circle. Mr. Athel displayed even more than his usual urbanity; Mrs. Rossall was genuinely gracious; the twins made many promises to write from Switzerland. Emily was self-possessed, but Wilfrid read in her face that she was going through an ordeal. He felt the folly of his first proposal, that she should play a part before Mrs. Rossall through the winter months. He decided, moreover, that no time should be lost in making the necessary disclosure to his father. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... region of the earth ever feels. Such heat would have been twenty-four times more than enough to melt rock-crystal. The overburdened sense experiences a feeling of relief in the mere knowledge, that the comet passed this fiery ordeal as the lightning's flash might have done. In two short hours, it had shifted its place from one side to the other of the solar sphere. In sixty little minutes, it had moved from a region in which the heat was forty thousand times ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... finally into a side passage to see something else, leaving your wife or your sister behind in one of the main galleries. You are gone only a minute or two, but returning you find her furiously, helplessly angry and embarrassed; and on inquiry you learn she has been enduring the ordeal of being ogled by a small, wormy-looking creature who has gone without shaving for two or three years in a desperate endeavor ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... a blind impulse. We have carefully counted the cost of this warfare, and are prepared to meet its consequences. It will subject us to reproach, persecution, infamy—it will prove a fiery ordeal to all who shall pass through it—it may cost us our lives. We shall be ridiculed as fools, scorned as visionaries, branded as disorganizers, reviled as madmen, threatened and perhaps punished as traitors. But we shall bide our time. Whether safety or peril, whether victory or ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... manner, and the process would in various ways be salutary. It is a nice question how many of the opinions formed on the first visit—and especially the most convinced and positive opinions—would survive the ordeal ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... new ordeal with the long-suffering patience which had become habitual to him by this time. The final issue was still involved in slight doubt, but he felt himself safe in the firm ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... imposed upon me by the Constitution I have thus submitted to the representatives of the States and of the people such information of our domestic and foreign affairs as the public interests seem to require. Our Government is now undergoing its most trying ordeal, and my earnest prayer is that the peril may be successfully and finally passed without impairing its original strength and symmetry. The interests of the nation are best to be promoted by the revival of fraternal relations, the complete ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... Breakfast was another ordeal, but not so bad as the tea of the night before; after breakfast came prayers, and then the class-room. Peggy found herself seated at a desk, beside one of her classmates, Rose Barclay, a pretty brunette, with rosy cheeks and bright dark eyes. In the brief pause before study-time, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... easier, it would seem that time makes it increasingly difficult for any but distinct successes to survive the ordeal by ballroom. Years ago a debutante was supposed to flutter into society in the shadow of mamma's protecting amplitude; to-day she is packed off by herself and with nothing to relieve her dependence upon whoever may come near her. To liken a charming young girl in the prettiest ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... preceding this eventful anniversary. There was so much to hope—so much to fear. "If I should fail," was repeated again and again; and their hearts throbbed wildly as the signal-bell was heard, which called them to pass the dread ordeal. Such a display of beauty—genuine, unadorned beauty—rarely greets the eye of man. More than a hundred young girls, from timid fifteen to more assured one-and-twenty, robed in pure white, with tresses untortured by the prevailing mode, decorated only by wreaths ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... few days of waiting and uncertainty were a severer ordeal to Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred than ever. Mr. Jocelyn, bent on gaining time, kept putting them off. His new duties upon which he had entered, he wrote, left him only the evening hours for his quest of rooms, and he had not succeeded in finding any that were suitable. Thus ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... just-married girl this would have been an ordeal, a nerve-wrecking event. But you've been as cool as a fish—I've been watching you. You might have been brought up in a vice-regal lodge and hobnobbed all your life with ambassadors. How do ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... looking very well. Your father wasn't there. I saw Philippa, by the way; but I suppose she didn't remember me. That was her husband with her, I take it. Stiff old boy." So he went on, letting bygones be bygones. It was after luncheon that her ordeal came. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... summer days grew shorter, and the hour of Anna's ordeal grew near, Mrs. Moore had but one prayer in her heart, and that was that her life might be spared till her child's troubles were over. Since Anna's illness in the early spring, she had utterly disregarded ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... When one of the neighbors spoke to him, asking him if he felt no grief, he cursed and stormed out of the house. Later, after the neighbors departed, his father came upon him in the stable and beat him unmercifully. He came, dry-eyed, through the ordeal, raging inwardly, but silent. And that night, after his father had gone to bed, he stole stealthily out of the house, threw a saddle and bridle on his favorite pony and rode away. Such had ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... myself placed in a most cruel dilemma if I refused to submit my case to the proposed ordeal, I stood an impostor confessed. If I consented to see these strangers, it was probable they would not recognise me, and possible that they might deny me in terms calculated to make my position even worse, if that might be. I hesitated ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... crowd; at the various corps de garde bodies of troops came out and presented arms; and on our arrival at the palace there was a presentation of arms and beating of drums which, for the moment, somewhat abashed me. It was an ordeal more picturesque than agreeable. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... popular prodding and goading, or perhaps to be severely and experimentally knocked about the head by his Privy Council, or perhaps to be dipped in a river full of crocodiles, or perhaps to drink immense quantities of something nasty out of a calabash—at all events, to undergo some purifying ordeal in presence ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... I can feel Each hour I live, While passing through death's stern ordeal, Wilt Thou Thy mercy still reveal, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... the sentimental, the self-confident, it was a welcome and uplifting exercise. To the timid and self-distrustful it was a terrible ordeal. To the intellectual it was a perpetual challenge to skepticism. Even Bunyan puts as his first and worst temptation, "to question the being of God and the truth of his gospel." To the prosaic and practical minds ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... hope for this man of strength. He could not humble himself to the brutal ordeal of being beaten ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... was necessary in the east, he had then taken the final and most hazardous step of going to Farnham's home. It was hardly remarkable, therefore, that he had seized the opportunity of escaping so trying an ordeal at once. It seemed to me impossible that he should intend returning to Denver, where, in the light of day, and among old business and domestic associates, he could not long hope to escape detection, perfect as the likeness seemed to be. What, then, would he do, ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... to this ordeal, it seems impossible to devise a mode of verification of their theories which does not rouse resentment in theological minds. Is it that, while the pleasure of the scientific man culminates in the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... make any statement, except in writing—in what you in England call an affidavit. You do not realise, although you doubtless know, what our legal procedure is like. Not even in order to secure the guillotine for Madame Wachner and her Fritz would I expose Mrs. Bailey to the ordeal of our ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... makes even the neighboring treetops invisible, while the mothers have their infants laid away under the bushes with only a shawl between them and the cold ground. In their ball plays also each young man, before going into the game, is subjected to an ordeal of dancing, bleeding, and cold plunge baths, without food or sleep, which must ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... who so proudly issued from the Boston barracks at sunrise for the suppression of pretentious rebellion. Knapsacks were thrown aside. British veterans stripped for fight. Not a single regiment of those engaged had passed such a fearful ordeal in its whole history as a single hour had witnessed. The power of discipline, the energy of experienced commanders, and the pressure of honored antecedents, combined to make the movement as trying ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... unsuspicious of the least danger. If any of us had thought of the matter at all, we probably imagined we were in the safest part of the ocean. But, at three o'clock, here we were, having undergone the trying ordeal of shell-fire in the interval, drifting helplessly in lifeboats in mid-ocean, all our personal belongings left behind in what we imagined to be a sinking ship, not knowing what fate was in store for us, but naturally, ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... reached Cairo at the end of September, and their substance was at once telegraphed to England. They showed that, while his success had made him think that after all there might be some satisfactory issue of the siege, he foresaw that the real ordeal was yet to come. "In four months (that is end of November) river begins to fall; before that time you must settle the Soudan question." So wrote the heroic defender of Khartoum in words that could not be misunderstood, and those words were ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... see the darkest horrors and yet remain flesh and blood. Those who believe in life and love, whose religion—or at least whose indomitable clinging to the beauty they have once descried—has taught them sufficient courage in dwelling upon these things, may come unscathed through any such ordeal. But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It came out of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are the daughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrow of the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound, looking ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... in the extreme, for the boat was now entering the Strait. The heavy seas that roll under the lash of a south-west gale in that quarter do not make for the felicity of those who face them on a well-found modern steamer. For the seven Englishmen in an open boat, groping along a strange coast, the ordeal was severe. But no doubt they wished each other a merry Christmas, in quite the traditional English way, and with hearty good ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Clavering's forehead; but it was not the man's contemptuous brusqueness which brought it there, though that was not without its effect. It was evident that the most he could hope for was Larry's clemency, and that would be difficult to tolerate. But there was another ordeal before him. Hetty was also coming back, and would see him a prisoner in the hands of the men he had looked down upon with ironical contempt. Had the contempt been assumed, his position would have been less intolerable; but it ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... down the nave, and approached a lateral chapel where a taper was burning with a flickering light. The Count entered the chapel. Those who had seen him amid the brilliant society of Naples, or amid the awful judicial ordeal to which he had just been subjected, and which he had undergone with such coolness and audacity, would not have recognized the humble and trembling man, who knelt before a sarcophagus of black marble surmounted with the coronet and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the reception of his confidences had I not been able at times to understand the pauses between the words. In this assault upon his fortitude there was the jeering intention of a spiteful and vile vengeance; there was an element of burlesque in his ordeal—a degradation of funny grimaces in the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to the obedience of the pious. This belief that justice and judgment were simply the will of God, to be ascertained, not by reason but by other means, was so general and deep that such crude devices as trials by ordeal and battle were often resorted to for determining guilt or innocence and other questions of fact. Indeed, resort to such expedients for determining questions of law, as well as questions of fact, was not unknown. In the tenth century ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... saw the brown walls of the cathedral not far away, and then went back to bed. A sudden and overpowering weakness came upon him which made the bed agreeable. Here he was to receive such friends as would call upon him that day. Anne Dillon looked somewhat anxious over the ordeal, and his own interest grew sharper each moment, until the street-door at last opened with decision, and his ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... healthy, bed-ridden under the following amazing circumstances. He accidentally discovered that his tailor, who had clothed him since boyhood, was an anarchist. After this he was afraid to have any further dealings with the man, while, on the other hand, he lacked sufficient courage to face the ordeal of being fitted by a fresh tailor. For some time he used to sit up at night and secretly sew patches into his trousers. Naturally this could not go on for ever, and at last, when his garments were dropping to pieces, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... began again; this time it was desperate. For we have no time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few days more, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a long ordeal.... ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... report, will have the advantage of real substantial personal knowledge. I esteem him highly, and regard him as a man of the most upright principles, who is not, and will not be swayed in his duty by any considerations whatever. I am glad we are to stand the ordeal of such ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... came the process of greasing him from head to foot and decorating his face with pigments, after which he was clad in breech-clout and moccasins. This done, he was seated upon the bank for a no less severe ordeal. ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... you who stand gazing down in sorrowful reproach upon what you regard as my unpardonable impiety, little dream of the fiery ordeal that consumed my childlike, beautiful faith, as flames crisp and blacken chaff. I am alone, and must ever be, while in the flesh; and I hoard my pain, sparing the world my moans and tears, my wry faces and desperate struggles. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... trunk and head of the little boy fall with a profusion of blood upon the ground at the foot of the rope. By means of an incantation these resume their natural positions, and the little boy gets up and walks off, apparently none the worse for his most trying ordeal. ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... of the daily townward tide—clerks, shop-girls, and stenographers, for the most part intent upon bread and butter in futuro. The jostling and crowding was like an old story to me; I went through the ordeal each morning with an indifference and ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... strong, but our economy is troubled. For too many of our fellow citizens—farmers, steel and auto workers, lumbermen, black teenagers, working mothers—this is a painful period. We must all do everything in our power to bring their ordeal to an end. It has fallen to us, in our time, to undo damage that was a long time in the making, and to begin the hard but necessary task of building a better future ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Frosticos, the Lady Fragrantia, and a prodigious crowd of nobility, and placed sitting upon the summit of the whale's bones at the palace; and having remained in this situation for three days and three nights, as a trial ordeal, and a specimen of my perseverance and resolution, the third hour after midnight they seated me in the chariot of Queen Mab. It was a prodigious dimension, large enough to contain more stowage than the tun of Heidelberg, and globular like a hazel-nut: in fact, it seemed to be ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... to a similar effect, and one of the gentlemen came out of the ordeal somewhat less shamefully than the first, the other worse, for he blubbered and wanted to kiss her. It is questionable whether many young ladies have made such a profound impression in a ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... ship than the merchant (who may be a usurer!) who only gives his money. Well, that is the view which was all but universal well into the period of what, for want of a better word, we call civilisation. Not only was it the basis of all such institutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... ordeal for her, after the hope that had excited her, and this time it was real tears that flowed down her cheeks. The sound of the sobs roused Philippe from his dream. He listened to it sadly and then began to pace the room. Moved though ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the breakfast table discussed the matter of the horse-thief pretty thoroughly. It was a hard ordeal for poor Ann, who could not take easily to deception. She had unexpected trouble too with Nabby. Nabby had ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the reason for this night sail. It is easy to seek danger, to ride at it with a shout, the pulses leaping—but to wait for it, to wait motionless in the still dark for an attack that may be delivered one knows not when nor from whence—that is the great ordeal. Garth clenched the stem of his pipe hard between his teeth; and with a resolute effort of his will, put down the hysteria that will at such a time ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... to meet, these rosy lips to kiss, Who would not hazard all to win such bliss? My senses reel, my veins are all afire! Good Barak, help me to my heart's desire. Her stern ordeal I'll undergo—to solve Her problems or to ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... earliest days, to be performed, with picturesque simplicity, in the sea on the Oddicombe beach, but to this there were, even in those quiet years, extreme objections. A jeering crowd could scarcely be avoided, and women, in particular, shrank from the ordeal. This used to be a practical difficulty, and my Father, when communicants confessed that they had not yet been baptized, would shake his head and say gravely, 'Ah! ah! you shun the Cross of Christ!' But that baptism ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... perhaps, be supposed that the snow-walls melted under this ordeal; nothing of the sort. Their tendency to do so was checked effectually, not only by a sharp frost, but by the solid backing of snow behind them; and the little that did give way in close proximity to the fire ran unobtrusively ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... fully determined to fight, and yet, in spite of all his mental effort, in spite of the exertion of all his will power, he felt that he could not even preserve the strength necessary to carry him through the ordeal. He tried to conjure up a picture of the duel, his own attitude, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... proposed antagonist, and a single glance into his eyes, aglow with pride and resolution, convinced me that whatever hope I might have cherished regarding Mapela's supposed desire for my escape from the ordeal to which I was about to be subjected had been utterly misplaced. His cupidity in respect of possible gifts, if indeed he had been animated by any such feeling, had evidently been swamped by his sense of duty ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the "Beagle," who saw him daily for five years on that memorable trip, wrote: "A protracted sea-voyage is a most severe test of friendship, and Darwin was the only man on our ship, or that I ever heard of, who stood the ordeal. He never lost his temper or made an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... on fire is a sublime spectacle, which those who have had the good fortune to see, in a place of safety, will not soon forget. But a horrible ordeal it is for those who are overtaken by the raging flame; for, if the grass is dry, with a slight breeze to fan the flame, it travels with ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... already of the coming ordeal. A letter from Armadale to Midwinter, which Midwinter has just sent in to me. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... expect: fretfulness and tears, if nothing worse. To my unbounded amazement she greeted me with a smile and said she was glad to see me; and, if you'll believe it, there was never so much as a whimper from her lips through the whole ordeal, though I knew I was ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Service in the general room of the Club to a congregation consisting mostly of ladies, while Jack Darling, usually flushed and breathless after tennis and a lightning change, went through the ordeal of reading ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... their rank and dates of commission as possible; but I was to do nothing until I heard further from him on the subject, as he explained that he would have to consult the Secretary of War before making final orders. General Buell and his officers had been subjected to a long ordeal by a court of inquiry, touching their conduct of the campaign in Tennessee and Kentucky, that resulted in the battle of Perryville, or Chaplin's Hills, October 8,1862, and they had been substantially acquitted; ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... lover, Richard, and asks her if she can resist his entreaties. The trial is very sore, as she gazes on that beloved form, seeming, by its passionate gestures, to implore her to assent, but she is firm, and the vision disappears. The ordeal is now over. Alizon has triumphed over all their arts. The spirit in my likeness resumes its fiendish shape, and, with a dreadful menace against the poor girl, vanishes ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... modern fashionable code of honour, when a man has seduced or carried off his friend's wife, the next thing he has to do is to fight the man whom he has injured and betrayed. By thus appealing to the ordeal of the duel, he may not only clear himself from guilt; but, if it be done with proper spirit, he may acquire celebrity and glory in the annals of gallantry, and in the eyes of the fair and innocent. In our ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... course, the killing him there and then, which wasn't so good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had—for my sins, I suppose—to go through the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it—I heard it. I saw the inconceivable ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... body, and ordered that everyone present should successively approach and touch it, declaring at the same time each his innocence of the foul murder. The cottar, who had retained his effrontery until now, shrank from the ordeal, and declined to touch the body, running at once out of the hall, through Bakewell village, in the direction of Ashford. Sir George, coming, as he well might, to the conclusion that the suspicions which had pointed to this man had been well founded, ordered his men to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... would seize me, and in their insane glee practise upon me some savage torture. Would they never cease? For nearly thirty minutes I sat still as death, where they had flung me. Safety lay in not attracting their attention; but a dreadful ordeal was in ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... ordeal of having her ticket scrutinized, commented upon and properly punched by the suave conductor. The little conventional figure had given over the contemplation of Parisian styles and betaken herself to the absorbing pages of a novel which she read through smoked glasses. The husband and father ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... an ordeal. Many were quite upset after a siege in the studio. One man annoyed the artist by saying at ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... flattering. We could hardly have been more asked to meet each other than before; but now there were entertainments in special recognition of our betrothal, which Eveleth said could not be altogether refused, though she found the ordeal as irksome as I did. In America, however, you get used to many things. I do not know why it should have been done, but in the society columns of several of the great newspapers our likenesses were printed, from photographs procured I cannot guess how, with descriptions ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... gives me the shivers," she had said. "I never can forget the ordeal I went through the day that Aunt Heppy died. I gave the house to 'Zekiel because I never could have lived in it. Maude and I are going ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... gone through this solemn function. So it is that the ministers, some of them nearly eighty years of age, march around the room perhaps a score of times; and it is very easy to understand that Bismarck preferred to avoid such an ordeal. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... them in the least. Yet the result is, he is already an influence. People who have braved the ordeal, and emerged successfully, go about with ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... as she departed, indicated such an air of irrepressible relief at having passed through a trying ordeal that all Merrington's ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... retreat. He had no staff to assist him, and was the only mounted officer on the Canadian side, so that he was at a disadvantage. Moreover, he had never previously manoeuvred a brigade, even on parade, and to handle one in battle was a trying ordeal to an inexperienced officer who had never before been ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... his stand in the street, with a roll of papers under his arm, supplied by the generosity of his new acquaintance. It was rather a trying ordeal for a country boy, new to the city and its ways. But Ben was not bashful. He was not a timid boy, but was fully able to push his way. So, glancing at the telegraphic headings, he began to call out the news in a business-like way. He ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... waited, it seems to me, till they came to a particularly bad-looking place to take his departure. At any rate, that was a long night for Powell, and whatever the main cause of Howland's leaving was, it was a trying ordeal for the leader. Howland's obligation certainly was to go on as if he were an enlisted soldier, and he evidently failed in this duty. When daylight finally came a solemn breakfast was prepared and eaten. No one had much ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... stay here was short. A bridge near the house made it possible to obtain a good view of the master, and it soon got to be the custom for people to station themselves on it and watch for his appearance. He stood the ordeal for three weeks, and then fled to his beloved Baden, where he appears to have been safe from ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... of cramping their daughters' feet: his reply was, "Very bad custom." On my inquiring further, whether he had any daughters, and whether their feet were treated in the same way, he answered in the affirmative, but asserted, that they had been subjected to the cruel ordeal by their mother, against his will. He added, that, in a China-man's house, where there were young girls, no peace could be had, night or day, for their cries, which lasted till they were six years old. He gave us a reason for the mother's insisting on her daughter's submitting ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... a terrible ordeal. Miss Prunty, anxious to divert the current of her friend's ideas, suggested that the girl should sing. Signor Graziano and madame insisted; they would take ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... before God. Self- scrutiny in the light of truth can do no harm to any one, least of all to the reformer and philanthropist. The spiritual warrior, like the young candidate for knighthood, may be none the worse for his preparatory ordeal of watching all night by ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... He walked to the window, but even the sunlight seemed to mock him—there was no light for him, no rift in the cloud darkening his path, and with a heavy sigh he turned away. The struggle was not yet over; this was to be a day of battle with himself, and he nerved himself for the coming ordeal. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... and breathlessly tried to remove the great drops which clung to him, feeling, to his surprise, anything but cold, and, by the time he was half dressed, that it was not such a terrible ordeal he had ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... consequence of the approaching event for which we are assembled at the Hall, that I confess I find my thoughts singularly exercised on the subject. Indeed, all the bachelors of the establishment seem to be passing through a kind of fiery ordeal; for Lady Lillycraft is one of those tender, romance-read dames of the old school, whose mind is filled with flames and darts, and who breathe nothing but constancy and wedlock. She is for ever immersed in the concerns of the heart; and, to ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... that ordeal was passed. The smoke lifted. It rolled away. There was air again for them to breathe. Frank roused himself before the smoke had all passed, and lifting Bob in his arms, carried him swiftly downward. He reached the place where Uncle Moses was standing, gasping for breath; and ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... in time had another. Being checked over for radiation burns which would mean that he'd die quite comfortably within three or four days, and then learning that no burns existed, was something of an ordeal. And Sally—of course her feelings shouldn't have been as vivid as his own, but the fact that she'd been scared for him held some significance. When, on top of all the rest, he went into the Space Platform for the first time, Joe was definitely ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... 1st to 4th century; against Yemishi; prime minister; great duke of the Presence; in conquest of Korea; succession to Jingo; ordeal for treason; grand-daughter, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... out, "Why, fellers, thet's the chap what's been workin' fer Hiram Tinch." This announcement was enough to make Archie an even greater object of interest than before, for the boys seemed to think that any person who could work for Farmer Tinch, and come out of the ordeal none the worse for wear, must be something wonderful. Archie was soon on good terms with them all, however, and told them of his plan of going to New York. The boys were all attention, and soon he was the hero of the occasion. When the bell rung for the afternoon service he was still telling them ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... not this Bill! Reject this Bill! He staggers through the ordeal: let him go, Strew no fresh fire before him! Plead for us! When Strafford spoke, your ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... without exception Unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify Nationalist Ireland generally with the rising: they did full justice to the valour and the sufferings of Irish troops—who, indeed, at that very moment were passing through a cruel ordeal. In that Easter week the Sixteenth Division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance. The ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... person to call expert witnesses, who give the court long lectures upon the significance of children's evidence, and upon the import of evidence in general. In our own experience one accused of such offences rarely escapes conviction. He is hardly ever spared the terrible ordeal of examination and cross-examination. On all hands we hear the loud complaints of such persons, declaring that they have been wrongfully condemned." My own experience in the law courts leads me to accept these statements without reserve, and I regard as one of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... of revenge, and a desire to make somebody else's hands as tired as his own. But one glance at his glowing, kindly face dispelling that idea, Barbara concentrated all her attention on the best way to free herself, and avoid going through a similar ordeal with all the others, which, she began to fear, might be ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... to state that to have passed the ordeal of so severe a cross-examination scatheless, needed no small amount of courage, intelligence, and ready shrewdness on the part of the witness. Nicholas Wood, who was present on the occasion, has since stated that the point on which Stephenson was hardest pressed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... a hole in the bulkhead and sees a row of heads with sad, patient eyes come swinging up together from the starboard side, whilst those on the port swing back; then up come the port heads, whilst the starboard recede. It seems a terrible ordeal for these poor beasts to stand this day after day for weeks together, and indeed though they continue to feed well the strain quickly drags down their weight and condition; but nevertheless the trial cannot be gauged from human standards. There are horses which never lie down, ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... ordeal Alden Lytton had to bear. For he knew he had written these foolish letters in his romantic boyhood, and in his manhood he felt heartily ashamed of them. Under any circumstances he would have been heartily ashamed of them. His ears tingled and his face burned to hear them read ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a voice of great sadness, "had he but listened to Mejnour,—had he but delayed the last and most perilous ordeal of daring wisdom until the requisite training and initiation had been completed,—your ancestor would have stood with me upon an eminence which the waters of Death itself wash everlastingly, but cannot overflow. Your grandsire resisted my fervent prayers, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... embarrassments of war, this was expected, and for a long time the result justified the expectation, extraordinary as it must appear when viewed by comparison with other people who have been subjected to a like ordeal. Much of our success was due to the much-abused institution of African servitude, for it enabled the white men to go into the army, and leave the cultivation of their fields and the care of their flocks, as well as of their ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... was dressing for the minister's party. She was laying out the prettiest of her pretty things and sighing as she did it. For what two months before would have seemed a joyous occasion was now nothing but a painful, trying ordeal, an ordeal that must, however, be ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds |
