"Benumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the wide old Arkansas; that the quick turns to follow the water and the need for speed gave no consideration to the helpless rider. The image of six pairs of snaky black eyes came to help the benumbed brain, and I knew with whom I was again captive. But there was no question about the friendly motive now, for there was no friendly motive now. And as we pushed on east, Jondo and Bill Banney were hurrying toward the northwest, and the space between ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's hell. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose. Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded glass. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... run even higher than in the morning, the fatigue of baling became very great; the boat was necessarily kept before the sea. The men were constantly wet, the night very cold, and at daylight their limbs were so benumbed, that they could scarcely find the use of them. At this time a teaspoonful of rum served out to each person was found of great benefit to all. Five small cocoa-nuts were distributed for dinner, and every one was satisfied; and in the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... valley it melted off our clothes, but higher up on the open, windy heights it froze to a cake of ice, and before long our clothes on the windward side were converted into a thick cuirass which prevented every movement. At last we were practically frozen fast in the saddle. Our hands were benumbed, the reins fell on the horses' necks, our eyes were sore from the snowstorm which dashed straight into our faces. I was so stiff that I lost all feeling in my arms and legs, tumbled off my horse, and went on foot, but I had to hold on to the animal's tail lest I should ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... various; but no one thought of the possible arrival of a stranger at such an hour on such a night, until Serena suggested that it would be a good plan to open the door. Then the unbidden guest was discovered lying benumbed ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... outside. The gallant captain instantly divined its cause, seized, loaded, and cocked his gun, and ordered the tent door to be opened, upon which a huge bear was seen outside. Captain Ommaney fired at the animal, but, whether from the benumbed state of his limbs, or the dim glimmering light, he unfortunately missed him, and shot away the rope that supported the tent instead. The enraged monster then poked his head against the poles, and the tent fell upon its terrified inmates, and embraced them in its folds. Their confusion ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... was west, a very light breeze, just enough to put a bright twinkling into the long, smooth folds of the wide and weighty swell that was rolling up from the north-east. I tried to stand, but was so benumbed that many minutes passed before I had the use of my legs. Brightly as the sun shone there was no more warmth in his light than you find in a moon-beam on a frosty night, and the bite in the air was like the pang of ice ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... hive or a row of hives suspended, or standing on a bench, two or three feet from the earth, when approached by the bees on a chilly afternoon, (and we have many such in spring,) towards evening, even if there is not much wind, they are very apt to miss the hive and bottom, and fall to the ground, so benumbed with cold, as to be unable to rise again, and by the next morning are "no use" whatever. On the other hand, if they are near the earth, with a board as described, there is no possibility of their alighting under ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... reached Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... with a dumb sense of something wrong, as if we had suffered a personal tragedy, and then as we came to clear consciousness we said, "O yes, the War!" The days have passed into weeks, the weeks into months and years: inevitably we become benumbed to the long continued disaster. It is impossible to think deaths and mutilations in terms of millions. Even those who stand in the immediate presence of it and suffer most terribly become calloused to it: much more must we who stood so long apart and have not yet ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... With senses benumbed by sudden terror, he stood, with outstretched neck, looking after her, his eyes fixed as though they had just been witness to a miracle. Then, giving himself a shake, he seized his oars, and began rowing after her with all the strength he had, while all ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... over the dying man, and with the promptitude of one to whom time was of the utmost value passed his hand rapidly over his benumbed and paralyzed body. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... elements of a religious life. A book of poems, breathing faith and worship at all points, and in all attitudes of heavenward contemplation, within the circle of the Christian Year, would, he hoped, restore in many minds to many a benumbed ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... my limbs were entirely benumbed; and I lay helpless for a long time. Meanwhile I ruminated on my singular course. The events of the past years rose one after another with clearness in my mind; particularly those of my exaltation and fame. ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... had to continue in a cramped position, there being no room to stand up, for four or five days more. His hostess, however, managed to bring him food, and moments were seized during the latter days of the search to get him out that he might warm his benumbed limbs by a fire. While these things were going on at Harrowden, another priest, little thinking into whose hands the well-known sanctuary had fallen, came thither to seek shelter; but was seized and carried to an inn, whence it was intended he ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... directed to economy in the raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years—when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the consciousness—that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... has got along better in the world than I have done." If getting along well with the world consists only in hoarding up dollars and cents till every feeling of tenderness and benevolence toward the rest of mankind becomes benumbed and deadened, then truly Mr. Judson had got along remarkably well. His door was but a sorry place to ask charity, as every one could testify who ever tried the experiment. It was reported that a poor woman once called at the house and asked for ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... done by the overspreading of the same Spirit also. For the Spirit, as I may so say, sitteth and broodeth upon the powers of the soul, as the hen doth on cold eggs, till they wax warm and receive life. The Spirit, then, warmeth us, and bringeth the dead and benumbed soul—for so it is before conversion—to a godly sense and understanding of states, of states both natural and spiritual; and this is the beginning of the work of the Spirit, by which the soul is made capable of understanding what God and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Snow was falling fast, and he was ten miles from camp, when discovered by four Indians, outlying members of a large party of Shawnees under Munseka and Black Fish, who had taken the war-path to avenge the murder of Cornstalk (see p. 172, note. 2). Benumbed by cold, and unable easily to untie or cut the frozen thongs which bound on the pack, Boone could not unload and mount the horse, and after a sharp skirmish was captured, and led to the main Indian encampment, a few ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... call, and judging from the chorus of yelps and howls from our dogs, it was not a welcome visit. Above the medley rose one big, deep, full voice that I knew at once belonged to Sounder. Then all was quiet again. Sleep gradually benumbed my senses. Vague phrases dreamily drifted to and fro in my mind: "Jones's wild range—Old Tom—Sounder—great name—great ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... raucous yell of the New York press, his imagination too long over-strained by Broadway drama and now flaccid and incapable of further response to its leering or shrieking appeal, the din of twentieth-century art fell on nerveless ears and on a brain benumbed ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... dare," said he, with a guttural and foreign accent, and thereupon, without waiting for a reply, came forward and knelt down beside the dead man. After thrusting his hand into the silent and shrunken bosom, he presently looked up and fixed his penetrating eyes upon our hero's countenance, who, benumbed and bedazed with his despair, still stood like one enchained in the bonds of a nightmare. "He vas dead!" said the stranger, and Jonathan nodded his head ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... much more during the second winter than I did during the first. My limbs were benumbed by inaction, and the cold filled them with cramp. I had a very painful sensation of coldness in my head; even my face and tongue stiffened, and I lost the power of speech. Of course it was impossible, under the circumstances, to summon ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... MEADOW-SAFFRON.—Baron Stoerch asserts, that on cutting the fresh root into slices, the acrid particles emitted from it irritated the nostrils, fauces, and breast; and that the ends of the fingers with which it had been held became for a time benumbed; that even a single grain in a crumb of bread taken internally produced a burning heat and pain in the stomach and bowels, urgent strangury, tenesmus, colic pais, cephalalgia, hiccup, &c. From this relation, it will not appear surprising that we find ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... very far, however. In a moment or two he had recovered himself, and crept out gasping and laughing, just below Mercy. Ian did not move. He was so benumbed that to change his position an inch would, he well knew, be ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the flannel around the icy feet, she untied the long-sleeved apron which covered her own naked arms, and laying it over her mother's shoulders, tucked in the thin bedclothes; and then, herself all shivering and benumbed, she sat down to wait and watch, singing softly a familiar hymn, which had sometimes lulled her ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... the terrible hunger that tormented her. But could she not stoop and break off a piece of the loaf on which she stood? No, her back was too stiff, her hands and arms were benumbed, and her whole body was like a pillar of stone; only she was able to turn her eyes in her head, to turn them quite round so that she could see backwards: it was an ugly sight. And then the flies came up, and crept ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... to thoroughly remove the tumor but to treat the diseased membrane at the point from which the polypus springs; otherwise another tumor may develop at the same point. The nasal passage having been thoroughly anaesthetized, or benumbed, by the use of cocaine, the nasal speculum is introduced, and by means of reflected light from the head mirror worn by the operator, the interior of the nostril is brought into view. (See Fig. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... smaller degree of heat produces pain and inflammation in our hands, after they have been for a time immersed in snow; which is owing to the accumulation of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the cutaneous vessels during their previous quiescence, when they were benumbed with cold. And we feel ourselves cold in the usual temperature of the atmosphere on coming out of a warm room; which is owing to the exhaustion of sensorial power in the moving fibres of the vessels of the skin by their previous increased activity, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... profound faith, in which each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... point and below; the French, wearied with long and difficult marches, destitute of artillery, provisions, and military stores, with a wide and deep river in front, and a powerful enemy on their flank and rear, benumbed by the rigors of a merciless climate, and dispirited by defeat—every thing seemed to promise their total destruction. "General Eble," says an English general officer, in his remarks on this retreat, "who, from the beginning of the campaign, had made all the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... out to them the advantages of neutrality for their aggrandisement: they promised them the patronage of France after victory. Not daring to hope for allies, the minister at least contrived for France secret understanding: he corrupted by ambition the states that he could not move by terror: he benumbed the coalition, which he ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the inferior classes, in the days when there were classes, where are now equal citizens in various callings. I never starved in the People's famine; I never groaned, personally, in the People's miseries; I never sweat with its sweat; I was never benumbed with its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I hunger in its hunger, thirst with its thirst, warm under its sun, freeze under its cold, grieve under its sorrows? Why should I not care for it as little as for that which passes at the antipodes?—turn away ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to meet the procession. But he did not use that revolver. Benson took quick aim and fired, and coincident with the report the nickel-plated weapon left his hand, whirling high in air before falling overboard. Billings whinnied in pain, and, rubbing his benumbed hand, backed ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... inert,—that we are now marshalling, arming, and drilling our raw recruits; let us concede that the giant of the North has not yet put forth his energies,—that, although roused from his torpor, one of his arms is still benumbed, and that his lithe and active opponent is for the moment pommelling him on every side, and has a momentary advantage; let us admit that our go-ahead nation is indignant at the idea of one step backward in this great contest: still it is safe to predict that within sixty days our new ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... share with them the cooked, sacrificial, and other meats, reeking to the sky. The child, who was concerned for the sorrows of one of [200] those Northern captives as he passed by, and explained to his comrade—"There's feeling in that hand, you know!" benumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain, seemed, in a moment, to transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel. Yes! these Romans were a coarse, a vulgar people; and their vulgarities of soul in full evidence here. And Aurelius himself seemed to have undergone the world's coinage, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... work assigned to him, and earning a trifle of wages which helped to keep bread in the little home at Lockwood Scarr. He went out early in the morning, and came home late at night, with the men who wrought in the same pit, his little hands and feet often benumbed with cold and wet, and he so tired with his toils that many a time his poor mother has had to lift him out of bed of a morning, and put his little grimy suit of clothes on him, and send him off with the rest almost before the child was awake. Many a time he was so weary on coming out of the ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... Beth felt strangely benumbed. She thought of rousing Harriet to fetch the doctor, but she could not move. All feeling was suspended except the sensation of waiting. This lasted awhile, then a lump began to mount in her throat, and she had to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... would never become necessary, he had put off the evil moment till the postponement had become cruel. But he had lived through it so often in thought, he had so acutely suffered with her in imagination the staggering humiliation of it all, that now, when the time had come, his feelings were benumbed. As he turned into his own grounds that day it seemed to him that his deadness of emotion was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room he might ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... administered portions of them all, that she might see which were sudden and which were slow in their effects, and also learn which produced the greatest distress and suffering, and which, on the other hand, only benumbed and stupefied the faculties, and thus extinguished life with the least infliction of pain. These experiments were not confined to such vegetable and mineral poisons as could be mingled with the food ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... perish from sudden changes in our whimsical spring weather of which they had no foreboding. More than thirty years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my window, was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. It should seem that their coming was dated by the height of the sun, which ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... Douglas squirrels, and are thus given opportunities for shooting; but the larger animals retire at their approach and seldom are seen. Other gun people, too wise or too lifeless to make much noise, move slowly along the trails and about the open spots of the woods, like benumbed beetles in a snowdrift. Such hunters are themselves hunted by the animals, which in perfect safety follow ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... this heroic man was yielding to a sleep more powerful than that which had overcome his companions. While trying to save those who were weaker than himself, he had been literally freezing. Sightless, benumbed, moving half unconsciously about his work, he staggered, staggered, staggered, and finally sank in the snow. All slept! As he put no more fuel upon the fire, the flames died down. The logs upon which the fire had rested gave way, and ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... since, if death-feigning is simply a cunning habit, the animal could not suffer itself to be mutilated without wincing. I can only believe that the fox, though not insensible, as its behaviour on being left to itself appears to prove, yet has its body thrown by extreme terror into that benumbed condition which simulates death, and during which it is unable to feel the tortures practised on it. The swoon sometimes actually takes place before the animal has been touched, and even when the exciting cause is at ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... steamer's side, deep in the waves. He goes down suddenly, cold, frightened, benumbed. He feels that some one is trying to pull the rope out of his hands. It must be Lockwin. The drowning man clutches with a hundred forces. The tug increases. The struggling man will lose the rope. Lockwin is striking Corkey with a bludgeon. That is unfair! There is a last ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... "I was benumbed that day," she said; "I was frozen. My brother's face came between us.... Oh, my brother!... Since that day I have ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... thou wilt surely give the victory to my country!' cries the chieftain, as he carries the benumbed and half-lifeless form of the bride within the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... face peril, risk their lives. This aged Chinaman for whom there was no future except to join his ancestors in another life, was now a pauper notwithstanding all his quest for the treasures of the mines; and his chief solace, if it be comfort indeed to have the senses benumbed periodically, or daily, and then wake up to the consciousness of loss and with a feeling of despair betimes, was in his opium pipe, which he smoked fifty times a day at the cost of half a dollar, the offering of charity, the dole received from his pitying countrymen or the interested ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... magistrates? Who, of such men, is willing to bury himself in the arrondissements, where the good to be done is without glory? If, by chance, some ambitious stranger settles there, he soon falls into the inertia of the region, and tunes himself to the dreadful key of provincial life. Issoudun would have benumbed Napoleon. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love and sympathy had been denied. Unconsciously his heart had become chilled, benumbed and overshadowed by his intellect. The actual world gave him little and seemed to promise less, and, as a result not at all unnatural, he became something of a recluse and bookworm even before he had left behind ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... and the road, which was uphill all the way, ran between woods where the wolves, descending from the vaster forests of Black Prigord, often howled in winter. She told me it frequently happened when she reached the market that her arms and hands were so benumbed with the cold that she could not take the basket of fish from her head. As a widow, she had lived for a while with a married son, but the young woman soon turned the old one out. Poor Suzette told the story without bitterness; she recognised the law of nature in this ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... but her words sounded like scolding. She halted again under the lantern which stands not far from our house, and leaned against, almost hung over, the fence, and began to fumble for something among her skirts, with benumbed and awkward hands. Again they shouted at her, but she muttered something and did something. In one hand she held a cigarette bent into a bow, in the other a match. I paused behind her; I was ashamed to pass her, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... watch-gun, the camp presented a most distressing spectacle. The Arabs and negroes of the convoy were lying motionless in the open air, rolled in their burnooses. Many of these poor creatures were but lightly clad, and had the lower limbs entirely naked. They were so benumbed and stupified with cold, that they refused to rise and load the camels; they begged to be allowed to lie still and die in peace. The cattle also were in a sad condition, not only from cold, but hunger; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... in angry questioning, but Randalin was too fear-benumbed to understand what they said. Norman's keen eyes were turned upon her, and recognition was dawning ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... out on his great mission, this wandering patriot of the wilderness found the minds of his countrymen we cowed with fear, or so benumbed with indifference as to their fate, that there was scarcely a man among them all, outside his own near kindred, to lend him an ear, or join him in his self-imposed, herculean labor. But toward the end, when every hill and valley, plain and forest, river ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the nature of another kind of fish. Perhaps the crews of the aforesaid ships have been benumbed into idleness by the touch of a torpedo, by which the right hand of him who attacks it is so deadened—even through the spear by which it is itself wounded—that while still part of a living body it hangs down benumbed without sense or motion. I think some such misfortunes must have ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... not in the sea nor in the strife We feel benumbed and wish to be no more, But in the after silence on the shore, When all is lost, except a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he was very very nearly too late; so nearly, that perhaps in a week or two more Eden might have lost hopelessly, and for ever, all trace of self-respect—might have been benumbed into mental imbecility by the torpedo-like influence of helpless grief. Walter felt as if he had been selfishly looking on while a fellow-creature was fast sinking in the water, and as if it were only at the last possible moment that he ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... immediate reply, I was about to bid her begone and shut the door, when she said, in a faint, yet earnest tone—'Oh, sir, for God's sake, as you hope for mercy yourself hereafter, let me come in for a moment—only a moment—that I may warm my benumbed and freezing limbs!' I paused a moment; I am not naturally hard-hearted, unless there is something to be gained by it; and besides, I felt a kind of curiosity to see what sort of a creature it was who wandered the streets that awful night, destitute and houseless; so I ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... With knit brows and quaking heart, she read it again and again, until its significance was, so to speak, forced upon her; then the letter dropped from her hand, her arms fell limply to her sides, and she looked straight before her in a dazed, benumbed fashion, every word burning itself upon her ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... in dull silence, as if her sensations were suddenly benumbed. She felt nothing but a horrible surprise. Her lover—her platonic lover—that other half of her mind and heart—with whom she had been in such tender sympathy, in unison of spirit, so subtle that the same thoughts sprang up simultaneously in the minds of each, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... found a long rail, which she placed against a window; then climbing up, she raised the sash, and in a moment was in the schoolroom. The atmosphere of the room was still comfortable and she stopped for a moment at the stove to warm her benumbed fingers, then groping her way to her desk, she easily found her books and made her way out of the house in the same ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... cattle, the deafening and wild hum of confused noises—all, when added to the roaring of the sweeping blast, the merciless pelting of the rain, and the inclement character of the whole day, presented a scene that was tempestuous and desolate beyond belief. Age, decrepid and shivering—youth, benumbed and stiffened with cold—rich and poor, man and woman, all had evidently but one object in ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... for some time, I came to a barn. Benumbed, fatigued, and ready as I was to drop from the saddle, I entered it as joyfully as a shipwrecked sailor climbs a barren rock. I scarcely could dismount, and it was with great difficulty I could unbuckle ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... engaged,' said I, 'for months together in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day; harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded there; resting this night upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, he must say his prayers how and when he can, I believe,' said I, for I was piqued," quoth the corporal, "for the reputation of the army. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... for the steel-spring in her nature. That was something for her imagination, something for her benumbed senses. To think what he meant to do when she should come! To imagine what he would do if she should not come there ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... old home was painful, for to me everything suggested the one for whom it had been established. The piano I had bought for her, the chair in which she had loved to sit, her spectacles on the stand—all these mute witnesses of her absence benumbed me as I walked about her room. Only in my work-shop was I able to find even momentary relief from my sense of irreparable ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in vain. The conjuror was possessed by a silent devil; and whether it was that the shock of his last paroxysm had left his mind benumbed and stupefied, whether his courage had failed at last, leaving him plunged in despair, or whether, indeed, his frigid indifference was not altogether assumed to serve a peculiar purpose, it was nevertheless certain that he bestowed not the slightest attention upon ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... But which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth; And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... rouse her. Her mother was in despair. Richard Gardner was too ill to come to see the girl he loved, and he did not write. The blow that had fallen upon his promising and prosperous life seemed to have shattered his nerves and benumbed his initiative. He had no words of hope for Rosalie; so he said nothing. Thus, in silence and apart, the two were suffering their young agony of wrecked hopes and love laid ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed, and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge in this room also, yet I could not keep out the wind and rain.... Afterwards I hired a soldier to fetch me water and ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... into the nearest chair, bereft of future speech, which is a deal of emphasis to put on the phrase. Picard, a duke, and only that morning his hands had been yellow with the stains of the donkey-engine oil! And by and by the question set alive his benumbed brain; what was a duke doing on the yacht Laura? "Holleran, we go t' the commodore. The devil's t' pay. What's a dook doin' on th' ship, and we expectin' to dig up gold in yonder mountains? Look alive, man; they's ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... destruction sallied forth. Leaving Montreal, the first party passed down the frozen St. Lawrence, and into the wintry ravines of the Richelieu, and after a march of terrible hardship, now plunging through snow-drifts, now benumbed by frost, wading knee-deep through the melting swamps, they came at last to the unguarded palisades of the Dutch settlement of Corlaer, or Schenectady. It was midnight as they stole through the streets of the sleeping village, now suddenly wakened ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... eyes. This, a sad certainty told him, was love, the love that is unthinking. She was suffocated by the pure desire to give the earth to him and herself with it. What disaster might come from it to her or to the earth, her lulled brain did not consider. The self-immolation of passion had benumbed her. And now she looked at him beseechingly, as if to beg him only not to scorn her gift. Her emotion transferred itself to him. He must be the one to act; but disappointingly, he knew, with the mind coming in to school disastrous feeling and warn it not ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... dumb under the surging confusion in her brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... its authour, and began to read it while he was standing with his arm leaning against a chimney-piece. It seized his attention so strongly, that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed. The rapidity with which this work was composed, is a wonderful circumstance. Johnson has been heard to say, 'I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... temperature suggests the following question: what would happen if I were to chill the creature in its immobile posture? I foresee a more prolonged inertia. The chill, of course, must not be great, for it would be followed by the lethargy into which insects capable of surviving the winter fall when benumbed by the cold. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... passages and dark ways, to the wash-house at the back of the kitchen again. Arrived here, he pumped away for a good half-hour on my hands, in spite of all my entreaties to the contrary; but, at the end of that time, although they were almost benumbed, the pain from the Doctor's pandies had passed away, and the palms, which had been previously almost rigid, had regained ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hand? And what is one tot of them from another? And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a scrawny brood ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find that he was not so gay. There had been a sort of mercy in the suddenness of the shock; it benumbed him, and the real stress and pain came during the long weeks that followed, when nothing occurred to vary the situation in any manner; he did not hear a word about Alice from Boston, nor any rumour ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her hands between her knees, her head thrown back and resting against the wall behind. What was the good of getting up or going to bed now? When she was thoroughly exhausted she threw herself, dressed, upon her bed. Otherwise she remained in the same position, chilled and benumbed; in her quiescent state, only her teeth chattered with the cold; she had that continual impression of a band of iron round her brows; her cheeks looked wasted; her mouth was dry, with a feverish taste, and at times a painful hoarse cry rose ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... wind knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... leave the wreck unless they saw him before them in safety. Calmly he renewed his orders, saying that his life was the last and least consideration, and they were obliged to obey, leaving the ship in as orderly a manner as if they were going ashore in harbor. But they were so benumbed with cold that many were unable to climb the rock and were swept off by 5 the waves; ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... able to work out her future under the shelter of institutions which unquestionably possess one supreme merit, that of durability. But while the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that great movement were benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... myself, "farewell to life; these accursed, arrant sorcerers will bear me to some nobleman's larder or cellar and leave me there to pay penalty by my neck for their robbery, or peradventure they will leave me stark-naked and benumbed on Chester Marsh or some other bleak and remote place." But on considering that those whose faces I knew had long been buried, and that some were thrusting me forward, and others upholding me above every ravine, it dawned upon me ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... stood before the piazza, she could not have managed the little step had he not virtually lifted her up. He took her directly to the library and laid her on the sofa. The fire, owing to the absence of McVay, had gone out. It took Geoffrey some time with his benumbed hands to build a blaze. When he turned toward her again she was sleeping like ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... him that it certainly was tough. He was glad they were to land, being very sure that if an Indian did shoot him he would not feel it, so thoroughly benumbed was he with cold. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... daylight our limbs were so benumbed, that we could scarcely find the use of them. At this time I served a teaspoonful of rum to each person, from which we all found great benefit. Just before noon, we discovered a small flat island, of a moderate height, bearing west-south-west ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... plucked him out of the saddle and placed him on the ground, but his legs buckled under him, and he fell forward on his face. Any of the three could have saved him, but the spectacle of the terrible old man's helplessness benumbed their ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... gave to the level country the appearance of a blue lake. Striking Hungry Creek, which Captain Clark had very appropriately named when he passed that way, the previous September, they followed it up to a mountain for about three miles, when they found themselves enveloped in snow; their limbs were benumbed, and the snow, from twelve to fifteen feet deep, so paralyzed their feet that further progress was impossible. Here the journal should ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... subdue the Scythians, and the soldiers were oppressed with thirst, hunger, fatigue, and despair, so that a great number died on the road, or lost their feet from congelation; the cold seizing them, it benumbed their hands, and they fell at full length on the snow to rise no more. The best means they knew, says Q. Curtius, to escape that mortal numbness, was not to stop, but to force themselves to keep marching, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... night seemed endless, but at last a pale illumination appeared in the air, and they knew that day had come. The spectacle of the skyey deluge was now so terrible that it struck cold even to their already benumbed hearts. The atmosphere seemed to have been turned into a mighty cataract thundering down upon the whole face of the earth. Now that they could see as well as hear, the miracle of the preservation of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... state of the world, my lords, when all the powers of the continent appear benumbed by a lethargy, or shackled by a panick, to what purpose should we lavish, in hiring and transporting troops, that wealth which contests ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... straps around her waist. She obeyed without a word. Indeed, she seemed to have lost the power of speech. Everything had suddenly assumed such a crystal clear aspect that her eyes were gifted with unnatural vision though her remaining senses were benumbed. The blue and white of the sky, the emerald green of the water, the russet brown and cold gray of the land—these shone now with a beauty vivid beyond any of nature's tints she had ever before seen. She ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... serenity of Tahoe, I have remained here sketching, reveling in the view from the veranda, and strolling in the forest. At this height there is frost every night of the year, and my fingers are benumbed. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... to be expected therefore that those splendid legions—the famous Neapolitan tercio of Trevico, the veteran troops of Sultz and Hachicourt, the picked Epirote and Spanish cavalry of Nicolas Basta and Guzman—would be hurled upon the wearied, benumbed, bemired soldiers of the republic, as they came slowly along after their long march through the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... moaned but Ramsey stared at him benumbed. She caught no rational grasp of his meaning; only stood and with immeasurable speed and a kind of earthquake sickness, in the space of one long breath, dreamed his words over and over. She felt neither fright nor horror, as she would as soon as thought could clear. Yet one word ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... seemed to be conscious of anything; her head seemed vacant, her ears buzzed, and she felt benumbed, like one does when one goes to sleep ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... on, the icy tooth of the winter grew feller in the bite, and I became in a manner almost helpless. The mind within me was as if the faculty of its thinking had been frozen up, and about the dawn of morning I walked in a willess manner, the blood in my veins not more benumbed in its course than was the fluency of my spirit in ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... nightfall, and I was taken to the keeper's cottage to warm myself, whilst the luggage was being conveyed across the bay to the house. Though it was the end of May, the weather had been so cold all the way that I felt almost benumbed after the drive; for, being accustomed to the climate of France, I had taken but scanty precautions in the way of wraps, believing them to be superfluous at that time of the year. My husband, having begged the keeper's wife to take ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... The hard, benumbed look in Ralph's face thawed in the warmth of her presence, and her words, though stern, touched a secret spring in his heart. He made two or three vain attempts to speak, then ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... hard-driven, acrid spray of the ocean in a wintry storm, it stung yet calmed with its grateful, stern menace. A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall, and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated traffic. The clangor of the overhead trains—almost incessant at this hour—benumbed the ear, and every side-street rang with the hideous clatter of drays and express-carts, each driver, each motor-man, laboring in a kind of sullen frenzy to reach his barn before six o'clock, while truculent pedestrians, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... people were arriving on foot, and in carriages, hastening in to witness the happy scene. She only, with her poor blind brother, was rudely pushed back by the guards. Poor Raphael began to feel the cold painfully, and Madelaine perceiving that his hands were benumbed, untied her apron, and rolled them up ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... ladies of England who have in so good a spirit expressed their views of the question will not be discouraged by the strong abuse that will follow. England is doing us good. We need the vitality of a disinterested country to warm our torpid and benumbed ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... dull eyes, and nervously twitching his lips, pulled toward the letter v. The general frowned at the interruption, and, after a moment's silence, took the card, put on his pince-nez and, groaning from pain in his loins, rose to his full height, rubbing his benumbed fingers. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... spirit he rose benumbed, yet calmed, as one who feels that he has made his last effort and can do no more. He opened the door of his study and listened. There was no sound. The children had all gone to bed. He turned back to the old table to work until midnight on his sermon for the morrow. The text was: "As ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... with Griffith. His love got benumbed, and the sense of his wrongs vivid. He nursed a bitter hatred of his wife; only, as he could not punish her without going near her, and no punishment short of death seemed enough for her, he set to work to obliterate her from his very memory, if possible. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... is there any heart so sheathed in worldliness, or benumbed by sorrow, or hardened in its very nature, as to feel no gentle thrill responding to these terms? Surely, in some way these little ones have "touched the finer issues" of our being, and given us an unconscious benediction. Some ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... the wind howled, and whirled the snow into huge heaps. In the hope that he might possibly meet a traveler, the child forced his way for awhile through the snow; but at last, exhausted, benumbed with the cold, and discouraged, he fell upon his knees, joined his hands devoutly together, and cried, as he raised his face, bathed in tears, toward heaven, 'O my God! have mercy on a poor child, who has nobody in the world to care for ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... de Ganys began to bare back before him, and to give ground, holding his shield low for weariness. This Sir Tristram perceived, and, running in suddenly upon Sir Blamor, he struck him so terrible a blow upon the right shoulder that Sir Blamor's arm was altogether benumbed thereby, and he could no longer hold his sword ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... had only six quarts of rum, and six bottles of wine, for nineteen people, who were driven by storms about the south-sea, exposed to wet and cold all the time, for nearly a month; each man was allowed only a tea-spoon full of rum a-day, but this tea-spoon full refreshed the poor men, benumbed as they were with cold, and faint with hunger, more than twenty times the quantity would have done those who were warm, and well fed; and had it not been for the spirit having such power to act upon men, in their condition, they never could have outlived ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... Could it be that Europe of the twentieth century was to be thrust back into the ancient barbarism of a general war? It was like a dreadful nightmare. There was the head of the huge dragon, crested, fanged, clad in glittering scales, poised above the world and ready to strike. We were benumbed and terrified. There was nothing that we could do. The monstrous thing advanced, but even while we shuddered we could not make ourselves feel that it was real. It had the vagueness and the horrid pressure ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... often happens that the mercury falls below freezing point, even in Babylonia. At daybreak the waters of the marshes are sometimes covered with a thin layer of ice, and the wind increases the effect of the low temperature. Loftus tells us that he has seen the Arabs of his escort fall benumbed from their saddles in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... allowances for her piano, as none of her instruments were in good order, but I might at least try it. I said that I would most gladly play something, but at this moment it was impossible, as my fingers were quite benumbed from the cold, so I asked her at all events to take me to a room where there was a fire. "Oh! oui, Monsieur, vous avez raison"—was her answer. She then seated herself, and drew for a whole hour in company with several gentlemen, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... failure. Then some whisper in his consciousness told him that it was over. He felt the laying of hands upon his head. He heard the old minister saying, "Behold, even from the lowliest God taketh His workers," and he felt a flash of resentment, but it was only momentary. He was benumbed. Something seemed to be saying in his mind, "Will the old fool never have done?" But it did not appear to be himself. It was afar off and apart from him. The next he knew, a wet cheek was laid against his own. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... confused, sense-benumbed state, he felt that after all he had done his duty, and he recalled the calm, trusting look directed at him by Miss Linton as he passed her that morning. Then the water above him grew lighter, and he rose to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... master, however, was puckered with reproach and bewilderment. The whip bit deep; it drew blood and raised welts the thickness of one's thumb; nevertheless, for the first few moments the victim suffered less in body than in spirit. His brain was so benumbed, so shocked with other excitations, that he was well-nigh insensible to physical pain. That Evangelina, flesh of his flesh, had been sold, that his lifelong faithfulness had brought such reward as this, that Esteban, light of his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... it follows that the Soul does not see well thro' purblind Eyes. The Ears hear not clearly when stopped with Filth. The Brain smells not so well when oppressed with Phlegm. And a Member feels not so much when it is benumbed. The Tongue tastes less, when ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... the spy's benumbed brain. "Why is Mrs. Whitney wearing these finger tips?" and he held up the limp right hand. Each finger was fitted with a wax tip, and on the index finger, distinct and plain, was the scar shaped like ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... time of the "grand climacteric," the ninth septennial period, the sixty-third year. More and more freely she gives it, as the years go on, to her grey-haired children, until, if they last long enough, every faculty is benumbed, and they drop off quietly into ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it was in that dark water! Hardy though the pair were, it seemed impossible to live in that fearful cold; but they struck out valiantly into midstream, and presently the exercise of swimming brought a little life into their benumbed limbs. But glad indeed was Paul to reach the side of the little wherry which they intended to purloin, and it was all that their united efforts could do to clamber in and cut the cord which ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which I would have avoided. I darted out of the cabin windows into the sea, whereas had I gone upon deck I should have been safe: for a little reflection might have told me that a vessel laden with oil could not have sunk—but reflection came too late, and benumbed with the coldness of the waters, I could have struggled but a few seconds more, when I suddenly came in contact with a spar somewhat bigger than a boat's mast. I seized it to support myself, and was surprised at finding it jerked from me occasionally; as if there was somebody ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cantharidae. Moreover, ants and flying ants, when swallowed by men, cause discomfort and colic; but the bear, on the contrary, whatever sickness he may have, becomes stronger by devouring them. The viper is benumbed if one twig of the oak 58 touches it, as is also the bat by a leaf of the plane-tree. The elephant flees before the ram, and the lion before the cock, and seals from the rattling of beans that are being pounded, and the tiger from the sound of the drum. Many other ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... trouble that he could not move the bolt. Little Meggie sat down on the door-step and waited patiently till she was almost frozen. At last, after getting nearly exhausted in tugging at the heavy bolt, Archie succeeded in shoving it back. He found his little cousin so benumbed that he was obliged to carry her in his arms all the way to the nursery. Then he sat her down by the fire, chafed her hands and feet, and put on her stockings and shoes, saying many times, "I am sorry, Meggie, dear; I am ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... us and bar the enjoyment of a mutual correspondence? We are not shapen out of the common, heavy, methodical clod, the elemental stuff of the plodding selfish race, the sons of Arithmetic and Prudence; our feelings and hearts are not benumbed and poisoned by the cursed influence of riches, which, whatever blessing they may be in other respects, are no friends to the nobler qualities of the heart: in the name of random sensibility, then, let never the moon change on our silence any more. I have had a tract of had health most part of this ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his friend Tom. Two or three of the others followed his example, though not from the same motive, and thus, when the fire burnt low, the prisoner found himself lying in deep shadow. By that time he had freed his benumbed hands, chafed them into a condition of vitality, and was considering whether he should endeavour to creep quietly away or spring up and make a ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... hampered as I was with snow-shoes and great-coat, impossible to get out. As sure as I tried to raise myself by the treacherous support at the sides, so sure was it to give way, and precipitate me back into the water. But still I struggled on, till chilled to the vitals, so benumbed that I could scarcely move a limb, and growing weaker and weaker at every effort, I could do no more; and I saw myself gradually sinking for the last time. O heavens! who can describe my sensations—who conceive the thousand thoughts that flashed through my mind at that ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... strong inclination to lie a little where he fell and rest, but his benumbed brain told him that to stop walking meant death, and urged him ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... forgotten Stephen Grattan's letter; but he said to himself that it would be time enough to present it when he had found work and a settled place of abode. But now, weary in mind and in body, and nearly benumbed with the cold, when he found himself in the neighbourhood of the great hardware establishment in which Stephen's friend was employed, he determined to deliver it ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... hands enormous blocks of ice, which would have submerged and sunk them with their weight; in a word, warring even to the death with cold, the greatest enemy of life. This marvelous feat was accomplished by our French pontoon corps. Many perished, borne away by the current or benumbed by the cold. The glory of this achievement, in my opinion, exceeds in ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... resolution to wait, as long as he could keep alive, the end of an adventure which had such an uncomfortable beginning. All this was to no purpose; for though he used every effort to keep himself warm, and though muffled up in a thick cloak, yet he began to be benumbed in all his limbs, and the cold gained the ascendancy over all his amorous vivacity and eagerness. Daybreak was not far off, and judging now that, though the accursed door should even be opened, it would be to no purpose, he returned, as well as he could, to the place from whence ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre |
