"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fight! He could no longer avoid it. What, then, possessed him? He wished to fight, he was 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
... recounting the facts in the foregoing chapters should cause one's thoughts to turn to the future. The Empire has passed through a period of great danger, during which its every interest was threatened, and it has come successfully out of the ordeal, but to those upon whom the responsibility lay of initiating and directing the nation's policy the serious nature of the perils which faced us were frequently such as to justify the grave anxiety which sprang from full knowledge of ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered another gown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and into her own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancer was talking. Her voice was loud, but rather agreeable. She smoked a cigarette. Scraps of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... place in their heads, and such natures as these will remain for a long while in the position that I have described. This was my own case. I became the plaything of two contending impulses; the desires of youth were always held in check by a faint-hearted sentimentality. Life in Paris is a cruel ordeal for impressionable natures, the great inequalities of fortune or of position inflame their souls and stir up bitter feelings. In that world of magnificence and pettiness envy is more apt to be a dagger than a spur. You are bound either to fall a victim or to become a partisan ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of George Meredith existed, where in it would The Shaving of Shagpat find its place? There is fear that in competition with the series of analytical studies of modern life that stretches from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel to One of our Conquerors, it might chance to be pushed away with a few lines of praise. Now, I would not seem so paradoxical as to say that when an extravaganza is held up to me in one ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... to have me come to visit you tomorrow?" suggested Elizabeth, who dreaded the ordeal almost ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... life's severest lessons have been learnt. Thus the young, who have just left the negative faith and innocence of the nursery behind them and stand inexperienced on the threshold of life, are not normally religious; whereas we naturally expect those who have passed through the ordeal, and been disillusioned, to begin to think about their souls, since there is nothing else left ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... awarded a bronze medal. He was extremely nervous and extremely jealous of other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy with an ebullient friendliness. It was his humour to have people know what an ordeal a concert was to him. Therefore when he saw Mr. Duggan he went ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... is sent for to discover the criminal. He pretends to be possessed by a spirit and in this state he names the wretch who has caused the death by sorcery. The accused has to submit to the poison ordeal by drinking a decoction of the red bark of the Erythrophloeum guiniense. If he vomits up the poison, he is innocent; but if he fails to do so, the infuriated crowd rushes on him and despatches him with knives and clubs. The family of the supposed culprit has moreover to pay an indemnity ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... her, he walked along the streets, thinking not of the court, but of his conversations with the prosecutor and the inspectors. That he was seeking an interview with her, and told the prosecutor of his intention, and visited two prisons preparing for the ordeal, had so excited him that he could not calm down. On returning home he immediately brought forth his unused diary, read some parts and made the following entry: "For two years I have kept no diary, and thought that I should never again return to this childishness. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... asked if he might see Mistress Corbet. No, that too was impossible; she was gone upstairs with the Queen's Grace and might not be disturbed. Anthony, in despair, not however unmixed with relief at escaping a further ordeal, was about to turn away, leaving the officious young gentleman swaggering on the stairs like a peacock, when down came Mistress Corbet herself, sailing down in her splendour, to see what was become of the gentleman ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... nerve-destroying practice, akin to suicide. Trevor had got his scholarship in the previous November. He was due at the headmaster's private house at six o'clock on the present Tuesday. He was looking forward to the ordeal not without apprehension. The essay subject this week had been "One man's meat is another man's poison", and Clowes, whose idea of English Essay was that it should be a medium for intempestive frivolity, had insisted on ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Lucia had been thrilled and delighted to know that Olga so much wanted to come in after dinner and see the tableaux, so he found it quite easy to induce Lucia to nerve herself up to an ordeal so passionately desired. Indeed he himself was hardly less excited at the thought of ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... Weissesaal, where the members of the Diplomatic Corps defiled before the throne and made our courtesy—one only—before the Emperor. All the suites and court gentlemen stood massed together opposite the throne. It was quite an ordeal to walk under the fire of so many eyes, as the parquet was without any carpet and very slippery, and the length of ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... troops would be marched back to their post; then, after a little while, a stretcher would be brought out with a body in civilian clothes, a cloth over the face. Some of the prisoners were women, and there were screams before the shots were fired. It must have been a dreadful ordeal to go through. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... passed through a very trying ordeal," he said, "and no man could have done his duty better; but forces beyond your control have proved too strong for you. I am ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... another man of the theft. This other man was a Mr. John Temple, who had once had an opportunity of examining the papers of the late Mr. Whately. Temple immediately challenged his accuser; a duel was fought, and as far as ordeal of battle went, Temple made good his innocence, for he wounded William Whately. At {156} this moment Franklin came forward. He admitted that the letters had come into his hands, and that he had despatched them to America. He declined to say how they did come into ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... good you are," Evadne cried, feeling fully for the first time how much she had in heart been dreading the ordeal of having perhaps to enter the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... eyes that centred on each speaker's face in turn had little of hope or animation in them. The conference began after the evening meal, and extended far into the night. All seemed to realize the hopelessness of pursuing the quest any farther, yet none cared to face the ordeal of turning the boats seaward again. They compromised the matter. A last attempt should be made to acquire guides and information. If the attempt failed, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... mean some dignitary of high rank connected with the imperial family. With this impression they had received us when we arrived, and had, poor fellows, done their very best to show us proper honour and respect. It had been a severe ordeal to us, but it had proved in the most unmistakable manner the loyalty of the Kamchadal inhabitants of Milkova to the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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
... map assured me that at length we had struck the main road from Malaga, and there seemed every reason to believe that the ordeal just over would be our last. Flying along at a good fifty miles an hour, under a tired moon that sought the west, presently a town rose grandly up before us, throned on rocks in a wide valley, and pallid in the strange light ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from it. At the same moment a swarm of horribly grotesque, swart objects, looking like imps, appeared amid the branches of the tree, and grinned and gesticulated at Wyat, whose courage remained unshaken during the fearful ordeal. Not so his steed. After rearing and plunging violently, the affrighted animal broke its hold and darted off into the swamp, where it floundered and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The ordeal of re-election having been passed, President Jackson and his supporters carried out the programme which had before been decided upon. The removal of the Government deposits from the United States Bank gave rise to stormy debates in Congress, and the questionable exercise ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... alone with the dead. She looked on the heaps of sea-weeds, and then along the line of breakers, that seemed even now gathering strength for a return movement. It was a trying ordeal for a child of ten, but the terrible novelty of the situation seemed to give her courage. She advanced towards the body, which she now saw was that of a woman dressed in black. She lay upon her back, the face only hidden by the tangled hair and sea-weed. Elsie noticed as she ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... her tired eyes and pressed her hand heavily upon the stone coping of the parapet. It was the supreme effort, and when she looked down at Inez again she knew that she should live to the end of the ordeal without wavering. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... not argue with him. At such times people do not want arguments or good counsel or correction. They want somebody to stand by in mute fellowship to watch and listen and suffer, too. So Mamise helped Davidge through that ordeal. He turned from rage at the Germans ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... as it was, was derived from such obsolete and antique commentators as a Lapide, Maldonatus, Estius, and the Triplex; and I was ashamed to produce such fossilized literature to the advanced thinkers of the present day. I did not like to face this ordeal:— ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... arrangement both Lady Westborough and Lady Flora were compelled, though with very different feelings, to be satisfied; and an agreement was established between them, to the effect that if Linden's name passed unblemished through the appointed ordeal Lady Flora was to be left to, and favoured in, her own election; while, on the contrary, if Lord Ulswater succeeded in the proof he had spoken of, his former footing in the family was to be fully re-established and our unfortunate adventurer ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said Rochester, a trifle unsteadily. "It has been a terrible ordeal; God help her to forget!" His voice failed and he swept his hand across his eyes as he held open the door into the corridor and followed McIntyre and his ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... end? To save his daughter from what, had he voluntarily renounced her, giving her into another's care, forswearing his paternal title to her love, refusing himself even the cold comfort of seeing her attain to the flower of her womanly beauty as another's child? What—finally—was the ordeal of the Gateway of Swords, and what could it be that made the Gateway of Death seem ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... and out towards the cloakrooms. Every one seized his own wraps with a practised snatch, and passed on, still in line, over the dusty wooden floors of the hall, down the ill-built, resounding stairs, out to the playground—out to Sylvia's ordeal. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her colour rose. Filippo, quite at his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled "Lucia" softly to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness, keeping her eyes unswervingly fixed on the two lions of the advertisement of Chinina Migone pasted on the glass over his head. At the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house farther down the street, and paused ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... next forty-eight hours this awful possibility darkened her delight. For it was a possibility. Grown people did such monstrous unaccountable things, there was no saying what they might not be up to next. And here, for once, was an ordeal Clem could not share with her. He was blind. Alone, if it must be, she ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... achievement. Enormous difficulties were faced with stout hearts, and the Royal Flying Corps spirit surmounted them. It was one long test of courage, endurance, and efficiency, and so triumphantly did the airmen come through the ordeal that General Allenby's Army may truthfully be said to have secured as complete a mastery of the air as it did of the plains and hills of Southern Palestine. Those of us who watched the airmen 'carrying on,' from the time when their aeroplanes ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... hands and knees I crawled farther in, and, to my great delight, shortly found myself in a high-ceiled cavern, safe from the storm, a place in which one might starve comfortably, if so be one had to pass through that trying ordeal. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... Philip Christian's ordeal: for Kitty discovers that she loves him and not Pete, and he that he loves Kitty madly. On the other hand there is the imperative duty to keep faith with his absent friend; and more than this. His future is full of high hope; ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and was thrown out for sale or destruction. Some of the college libraries did not suffer severely. Most of Grey's books survived in Balliol, although the miniatures were cut out. Queen's, All Souls, and Merton came through the ordeal nearly unscathed. But Lincoln lost the books given by Gascoigne and the Italian importations of Flemming; Exeter College was purged. The University library itself was entirely dispersed. One of the commissioners, ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... The poison ordeal is a necessary corollary to witchcraft. The plant most used by the Oganga (medicine man) is a small red rooted shrub, not unlike a hazel bush, and called Ikazya or Ikaja. Mr. Wilson (p. 225) writes "Nkazya:" Battel ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... thou; and to a doom so fell Thou walkest, that thy name from South to North Shall shine, a sign for ever!—Reach thou forth Thine arms, Agave, now, and ye dark-browed Cadmeian sisters! Greet this prince so proud To the high ordeal, where save God and me, None walks unscathed!—The rest this day shall see. [Exit DIONYSUS ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... auburn head, though her dimples were obscured, and a pinkness of complexion for which she had not paid betrayed the fact that her amour propre was writhing under this ordeal. Poor little woman, I really pitied her, for even with my slight knowledge of her character, I guessed that she had dreamed of the sensation the departure en automobile of a party so distinguished would create at the hotel. She had confidingly judged the charms ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The ordeal was ended. No touch of colour, no golden sunbeam or crimson shadow stained the ghastly surface of those snows, they were pallid as the faces ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... After we had been compelled to endure this stifling atmosphere for four or five minutes, the windows and doors were once more opened. A person of a consumptive habit could scarcely have survived this inhuman ordeal. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... The next ordeal through which I was to pass, was going into the dining-room and using knives and forks, but I avoided all humiliation by simply watching. I have made it a rule of my life to never be the first to try new things, nor the last to lay ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... why that spontaneous testimonial was welcome at the moment, for a curious and unaccustomed ordeal was impending for his claims as an art critic. On his return from Venice after months of intercourse with the great Old Masters, he found the Grosvenor Gallery just opened for the first time, with its memorable exhibition of the different extra-academical schools. ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... its close. London lay sweltering under a heat-wave which had robbed the trees in the Park of their fresh June greenness and converted the progress of foot-passengers along its sultry pavements into something which called to mind the mediaeval ordeal ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... history condemned criminals were put to death by being deprived of sleep, and the same method has been employed in China. Enforced sleeplessness, in fact, has been used as a form of torture by the Chinese, being more feared than any other. The men subjected to this frightful ordeal always die raving maniacs. ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... closed from the very beginning. The question now occurred to me, Would I not be justified by the law of nations in breaking the blockade? It was now or never. If they once commenced dressing, farewell to hope! Well, I did it. Heaven only knows how I got through the terrible ordeal. I only remember that desperation gave strength and speed to my limbs, and I ran with incredible velocity. A moment of terrible confusion ensued as I grasped at my scattered habiliments. There came a scream of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Day of Judgment. And each is his own judge. Now all his and her past life and inborn nature is being put to the test in a fierce ordeal—and the fiery ordeal of love is more searching even than the ordeal of war. Every smallest blot and blemish, every slightest impurity is shown up in startling clearness. Every flaw at once betrays itself. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... through the same ordeal as liberty in every other form. It can only dictate laws, after having first taken thorough possession of men's minds. If, then, it be true that a reform, to be firmly established, must be generally understood, it follows ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... honoured with a request so cordial, signed by five-and-twenty names, so distinguished in science, in literature, and in administrative position, that I at once resolved to respond to it by braving not only the disquieting oscillations of the Atlantic, but the far more disquieting ordeal of appearing in person before the ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Royal circle should be the object of such an attempt; the second that more care had not been taken by those responsible for his safety in travelling; and the third was admiration for the perfect coolness and obvious bravery which he showed during and after the ordeal. Everywhere tributes of sympathy were tendered in language of unstinted appreciation of the Heir Apparent's public services and character. Speaking at Acton, on the same evening, Lord George Hamilton, M.P., said: "What could have induced any foreigner to raise his hand against ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... mark for Lady Rythdale's eyes and tongue. She sat drooping a little with indignation and shame, when Mr. Carlisle came up. He had seen from a distance the tint of his lady's cheeks, and judged that she was going through some sort of an ordeal. But though he came to protect, he stood still to enjoy. The picture was so very pretty. The mother ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the blood of mortality. Now we can know the two sides of things. We understand the good, because we have been in contact with the evil. Our joy is perfect, because we have experienced pain and sorrow. We know what life is, eternal life, because we have passed through the ordeal of death." ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... spoke to her, and the presentation was then effected without a scene. This animal, which was a well-bred Australian, was a stranger to me, and had never carried a lady before that day. Nevertheless, she passed successfully through a terribly trying ordeal, and I am certain that she would not have made the great efforts she did in jumping, if I had not soothed and encouraged her with my voice. She was only 14-2 in height, and was competing against big horses, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... and face brought back to the Indian lad with a rush the memory of the recent ordeal he had been through. He gave one glance at the unconscious form on the other couch and his hand darted to the hunting-knife at his hip as he staggered, dizzily, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... exceedingly primitive. Very kind too, and a fine old-fashioned place; but, oh, so dull! All their ideas are of the seventeenth century. It will be a severe ordeal for poor Theodora, but if Lady Fotheringham, good old soul, is pleased with her, I shall ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 die, is ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... we find the command to practise the brutal and superstitious custom of the ordeal, the endorsement of the whole ordeal system of the Middle Ages. Deuteronomy xiii. is entirely devoted to commands of murder, and is the indulgence given beforehand to every persecuting priest. The prophet ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... the heroism of a hundred of our naval men who volunteered for the purpose at the risk of life, the Medical Authorities in desperation were enabled to try every possible method of infection with the alleged Influenza Germs, our boys submitting to inoculation and even to the repulsive ordeal of introduction into the nose and throat of diseased mucous from and close contact with coughing and spitting bed patients in the severest forms of the disease. The experiments were made simultaneously at San Francisco and Boston under the direction of Surgeons McCoy and Goldberger ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... many manuscript pieces with which he might have swelled the volume to a much greater size; but as this is his first attempt at authorship, in the shape of a volume, he offers it, tremblingly, at the ordeal of public opinion, merely as a sample ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... 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 ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... with many soft words, and then said, 'O king, thou hast completely subjugated the five organs of action and the five organs of knowledge with the mind as their sixth. Thou hast for this come out unscathed from the fiery ordeal I had prepared for thee. I have been properly honoured and adored, O son, by thee, O foremost of all persons possessed of speech. Thou hast no sin, not even a minute one, in thee! Give me leave, O king, for I shall now proceed to the place ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... past experience with other children what to 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 ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... through long usage was inured to this violation of a dark, uncreated, hostile world. But all the time her heart was crying, as if in the midst of some ordeal: 'I want to go back, I want to go away, I want not to know it, not to know that this exists.' Yet she must ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Monte-Leone and increased his excitement. He crossed the church, went 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 arms of the Monte-Leoni. The Count knelt at the tomb of his ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... wondering suitor, the independent reflection was beginning to do that for which he himself had come. In other words, there was a proposal going on there in the glass, and Jingleberry enjoyed the novel sensation of seeing how he himself would look when passing through a similar ordeal. Altogether, however, it was not as pleasing as most novelties are, for there were distinct signs in the face of the mirrored Marian that the mirrored Jingleberry's words were distasteful to her, and that the proposition he was making was not ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... to retire. The ordeal had strained his patience and had left his brain feeling the stress of unaccustomed exercise. Therefore, allowing Melvina to drive him before her much as she would have driven a docile Jersey from a cabbage patch, he made his way downstairs, ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... this goblet contained a vile poison, one drop of which on her tongue would cause death; so she hesitated, trembling and shrinking from the ordeal. ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... felt this influence very soon, and her second letter to Aunt Barbara was filled with praise of Clifton, where she had made so many friends, in spite of her evident desire to avoid society and stay by herself. She had passed through the usual ordeal attending the advent of every new face, especially if that face be a little out of the common order of faces. She had been inspected in the dining room, and bathroom, and chapel, both when she went in and when she went out. She had been talked up and criticised ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... with the Custom House officers here," laughed Ishmael, as he gave his arm to Judge Merlin and went on shore, leaving all the passengers who had not been shipwrecked, and lost their luggage, to pass the ordeal he ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that bold reformer who had assailed his throne. And it seems that a change took place in Florence itself in popular sentiment. The Medicean party obtained the ascendency in the government. The people—the fickle people—began to desert Savonarola; and especially when he refused to undergo the ordeal of fire,—one of the relics of Mediaeval superstition,—the people felt that they had been cheated out of their amusement, for they had waited impatiently the whole day in the public square to see the spectacle. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... and she may work him a little present; but it is all lifeless, passionless, and business-like. Among the peasantry there is more of the picturesque, and many quaint customs still survive. Marriage-brokers do a good trade, and get a percentage on each pair that they see through the ordeal of a wedding. In Frascati, parents with marriageable sons and daughters assemble on Sunday afternoons in the chief piazza. The men sit on one side and the women on the other. In the intervening space the candidates for matrimony ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... is blue, but to my eyes it is shrunk to the size of a bachelor's-button!" Miss Cooper was very reluctant in consenting to the amputation which prolonged her life for several years. Even after the surgeons stood ready in the operating-room she for a time declined to submit to the ordeal. There was a prolonged discussion which resulted at last, on the advice of friends, in obtaining her consent. The chief surgeon entering the room approached the bedside rubbing his hands and, grasping at something to say to reassure the patient, remarked in silken tones, "Well, Miss Cooper, I'm ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... like son," and I knew that she was thoroughly determined to make both of them pay dearly for their pleasant interlude. Breakfast the next morning was a rather trying ordeal. Grandfather once more resorted to his game leg with renewed vigor, referring several times to the defense of the Alamo, so I knew he was pretty low in his mind. Father withdrew at the sight of bacon. Mother laughed scornfully as he departed. My friend ate a hearty ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... all military, for we had a judge among us. I know it is equally easy and invidious to ridicule the peculiarities of appearance and manner in people of a different nation from ourselves; we may, too, at the same moment, be undergoing the same ordeal in their estimation; and, moreover, I am by no means disposed to consider whatever is new to me as therefore objectionable; but, nevertheless, it was impossible not to feel repugnance to many of the novelties ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... in the ceremony were also taking leave. Mr. Langhope, somewhat pale and nervous after the ordeal, had been helped into the Gaines landau with Mrs. Ansell and Cicely; Mrs. Amherst had accepted a seat in the Dressel victoria; and Westy Gaines, with an empressement slightly tinged by condescension, was in the ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... very moment that Chia Se felt unable, along with a company of actresses, to bear the ordeal of waiting on the ground floor of the two-storied building, he caught sight of a eunuch come running at a flying pace. "The composition of verses is over," he said, "so quick give me the programme;" whereupon Chia Se hastened to present the programme as well as a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... The ordeal began quickly for him, and he realized that there was no escape for him from the hands of his ruthless and revengeful enemies. It was impossible for John Berwick to help him; indeed, the engineer would be fortunate to escape ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... the hurried and condensed manner in which the sketch of 1842 is written; the style of the later Essay (1844) is more finished. It has, however, the air of an uncorrected MS. rather than of a book which has gone through the ordeal of proof sheets. It has not all the force and conciseness of the Origin, but it has a certain freshness which gives it a character of its own. It must be remembered that the Origin was an abstract or condensation of a much bigger book, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... not all, however," her friend said; "you have an ordeal before you which you will not find pleasant. You are going to think about your life, and all that was imperfect in it, and which might have been ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... scarcely believe was his. It was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched continually. She felt at once that this interview was a terrible ordeal to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull, gave him a criminal look which he had ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... to the ordeal from which I suffered. You shall follow my three friends into the room. According to Sinclair's description, the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... 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; ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... 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 ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the ordeal had been severe, and for the thirty hours following the robbery she had kept her bed. Berry had contracted a slight cold, and I was not one penny the worse. Jill was overcome to learn what she had missed, and the reflection ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... it was, and a serious condition of affairs confronted Skipper Ed. He gave up his fishing and devoted his whole attention to his four patients, and he thanked the Lord that he himself had passed through the ordeal as a child, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... ever bore up under it is more than I can now tell," said Mrs. Darlington, with an involuntary shudder. "And the toil, and suffering, and danger through which we have come! I cannot be sufficiently thankful that we are safe from the dreadful ordeal, and with so few marks of the fire ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... due time, heard what had happened, and helped Sophie to collect her various small belongings. The other teachers had already dispersed, so the ordeal ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... perfectly to the time and the scene, as a little daughter of Daniel Boone. As it was, she felt no less foreign than she looked, for the strangeness of the land and of the people still possessed her so that her native shyness had sunk to depths that were painful. She had a new ordeal before her now, for in her sinewy little hands were a paper bag, a first reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school. Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into a little ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... of the embarrassments of the marriage proposal. To all who are not borne along by an impetuous impulse it is a trying ordeal. Barwood was too self-conscious ever to be transported ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... growled the major. "Haven't done anything. Bless my soul, Chief, take my word for it, haven't done a thing to be thanked for. Here's your hotel. Get some coffee to brace your nerves up with, for I can assure you, boy, a wedding is a trying ordeal, even if there is but a handful of folks to see it through. Be a good boy, now—good-bye until eleven—St. Swithin's, remember, and God bless you!" and the big-hearted, blustering major was whisked away in his carriage, leaving the young Indian ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... saying that in this world gentle methods have effected more than harsh, and added this beautiful thought: "In the ordeal by laundry the ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... that, in a representative government, there is no absurdity or contradiction, nor any arraying of the people against themselves, in requiring that the statutes or enactments of the government shall pass the ordeal of any number of separate tribunals, before it shall be determined that they are to have the force of laws. Our American constitutions have provided five of these separate tribunals, to wit, representatives, senate, executive,[2] ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... imagine that if Filmer had seen fit at this stage to define just what he was feeling, and to take a definite line in the matter of his ascent, he might have escaped that painful ordeal quite easily. If he had had it clearly in his mind he could have done endless things. He would surely have found no difficulty with a specialist to demonstrate a weak heart, or something gastric or pulmonary, to stand in his way—that is the line I am astonished he did not take,—or ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... was conscious of being justly condemned. How many men must be sitting yonder in those cells who lacked the moral consolations that I had! The thought sharpened my perception of the horror of all imprisonment, but at the same time stiffened my fortitude; for if these men could live through their ordeal, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... had washed him horribly, and had taken him into the big, red school-house, so familiar from the outside, but so full of unknown terrors within. After his dusty little shoes had stumbled over the threshold he had passed from ordeal to ordeal until at last he was torn in mute and white-faced ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... Gudrun in the English edition, has a simple plot. The subject is the calumny which was brought against Gudrun by Herkja, the cast-off mistress of Attila (that "she had seen Gudrun and Theodoric together") and the ordeal of water by which Gudrun proved her innocence, while the falsehood was brought home to Herkja, the bondwoman. The theme is slighter than all the rest, and this poem, at least, might be reckoned not unfit to be taken up as a single scene in a ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... we are "for it." It is that heavy hour between five and six when the vitality is all too low for the ordeal that awaits us. On either side the far-flung battle line of clustering figures stretches away into the gloom. It is an inspiring sight, this tense silent crowd of men of every class and vocation, united by a common purpose, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... an empty truck in which was a bench with a green cloth, emblematic of Ireland. This was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal, begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. All this happened on my journey from Westport to Newport, but now the truck promised Sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he never had expected to be there. In all his visits to the house Rosalie never had been met on any other day than Saturday. This dinner was on the Monday, and arriving to face and carry through his ordeal, he was startled, he was utterly shaken to see her there. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... silence, but drank a good deal of champagne to keep his courage up for the coming ordeal, which he knew he must go through. Vandeloup, on the other hand, ate and drank very little, as he talked gaily all the time about theatres, racing, boating, in fact of everything except the thing the ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... does George Meredith (1828-1909) belong to our own day that it is difficult to think of him as one of the Victorian novelists. His first notable work, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was published in 1859, the same year as George Eliot's Adam Bede; but it was not till the publication of Diana of the Crossways in 1885, that his power as a novelist was widely recognized. He resembles Browning not only in his condensed ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that morning, but had carried in his subconsciousness all day this visit to the footman's child. In one manner or another that inconvenient locality had been compassed in his circuit for the past three weeks. From it he passed to his daily ordeal, another rich patient, a nervous wreck, whose primary ailment—the lack of anything to do—had passed into the advanced stages of an inability to do anything, with its sad Nemesis of melancholia—the registered protest of the dying soul. It was a case which took more out ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... elections, served on committees, opposed tooth and nail all projects of university reform, and talked jovially over his glass of port of the ruin to be anticipated by the Church and of the sacrilege daily committed by the Whigs. The ordeal through which he had gone in resisting the blandishments of the lady of Rome had certainly done much towards the strengthening of his character. Although in small and outward matters he was self-confident enough, nevertheless in things affecting the inner man he aimed at a humility of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... over at last. Case had acquitted himself well, and Ransom tolerably. Bart was mortified and disgusted. This was the extent then of the ordeal; all his labor, hard study, and anxiety, ended ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... handkerchief. Several French officers dashed towards them at full speed, and reached them in time to save them from the clutches of the Indians, whose camps were near at hand. They were kindly treated, recovered from the effects of their frightful ordeal, and were afterwards exchanged. Pringle lived to old age, and died in 1800, senior major-general of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... under the Ordeal by General was more sustaining to her, and made her more grateful than to a less devoted and affectionate spirit, not habituated to her struggles and sacrifices, might appear quite reasonable; and, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... survives the ordeal and lives it bears the same relation to the herd as the maverick and has no lawful owner until it is branded. If an unbranded calf has left or lost its mother it has lost its identity as well and finds it again only after being branded, although it may have swapped owners ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... leaving her alone in Paris, with a few pounds to pay for her journey home, if she should have courage to go back to the friends who had sheltered her. In this hour of abandonment and shame, she chose death rather than such an ordeal, and ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... regrets, and was strangely calm, strangely uplifted. He could look back without shame, and forward without fear. Now he was thankful that in these days of his ordeal he had been true to himself and to his trust. He had done his best. There was little more to do. That little should be done as became the son of ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... to buoy herself up by a hope of the still-expected great arrival—for she knew that the hero would show himself only at a very late hour if it were to be her good fortune that he showed himself at all—Mr. Sowerby walked up the stairs. He had schooled himself to go through this ordeal with all the cool effrontery which was at his command; but it was clearly to be seen that all his effrontery did not stand him in sufficient stead, and that the interview would have been embarrassing had it not been for the genuine good-humour of the lady. "Here is my brother," said Mrs. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... really asleep. Yet as things are I dare not treat him as if he were either. To-morrow he must do a little scouting for us. He shall feel for the enemy, and if they fire upon him—well and good, then he has not brought the enemy down upon us. But because of his past, he must undergo the ordeal by fire ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... "We had the ordeal of the custom-house to pass again; but once passed, and told that we were free to go on, it was like going into a clear atmosphere from a fog. We crossed the custom-house threshold into another room, and we found ourselves in Russia, and in an ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... great Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel's message. Now He wants to speak again in a way that will compel attention. He needs these three young men. They consent to be His messengers. It meant going through a terrible ordeal. They simply remained true in their personal devotion to God. This was the thing God needed, and used. Everything of use to God roots down in the life. The personal plea of the great king, and the prospect of a horrible death fail alike ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... mother is responsible for the existing school system, nor could she alter it, if she wanted to. Even if she has a little pinch of the heart at the thought of subjecting her sensitive boy to such an ordeal, how can she dare to do otherwise? Among people of all classes, it is considered proper and necessary, for children ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... 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
... late employer, Mr. Clinch, found that I had some knowledge of arithmetic and accounts, he used to set me at work on his bills, to see if they were cast up correctly. This experience had prepared me for precisely the ordeal I was at present undergoing. I wrote the bill as handsomely as I could, though without straining over it, and figured up the prices, extending them and adding them. The examiner seemed to be very much pleased, and wanted to know where I had learned so much about the lumber business. ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... was poisoned through an ordeal of her life when it should have run at its purest and sweetest. That the man who had promised to marry her, had exhausted the vocabulary of love for her, should thus cast her off, struck her into a frantic calenture which, for a season, threatened her existence. The surprise of his ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... a hurry to get the ordeal over. Instead of hanging back she walked briskly out of the cloak-room before those who had entered ahead of her finished patting their hair or putting powder ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson |
