"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... filled with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, my old mechanic, when I directed him to put them in. I was dressed like an Arctic explorer, with two jerseys under my overalls, thick socks inside my padded boots, a storm-cap with flaps, and my talc goggles. It was stifling outside the hangars, but I was going for the summit of the Himalayas, and had to dress for the part. Perkins knew there was something on and implored me to take him with me. Perhaps I should if I were using the biplane, but a monoplane is a one-man show—if you want to get the last ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... raised, some height from the ground, which led from the Bishop's palace to the Church of Notre-Dame. It was hung with cloth of gold; and below it stood the people in throngs to view the procession, stifling with heat. We were received at the church door by the Cardinal de Bourbon, who officiated for that day, and pronounced the nuptial benediction. After this we proceeded on the same platform to the tribune which separates the nave from the choir, where was a double staircase, one leading ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... were in a panic at the new disease, which was fatal in many cases within six hours after the first attack. The Rector through that dark time was untouched by the contagious dread which overpowered his parishioners, and his presence carried confidence and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun, an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing at his gate, was overcome by it. In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and he began to feel what were called "premonitory symptoms." He carried a brandy flask ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... apparent that the serious and energetic part of her character was founded on deep passion, for after her sister's marriage with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister's companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and preserving an outward calm that had no ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... huge rock, and under cover of the sledges, lay the dogs. As usual, after a hearty meal, and hot tea—drunk perfectly scalding—the party retired to rest. About midnight all were awoke by a sense of oppression and stifling heat. Sakalar rose, and by the light of the remaining embers scrambled to the door. It was choked up by snow. The hunter immediately began to shovel it from the narrow hole through which they entered or left the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it too—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Into that stifling atmosphere—for the Administration of the Bains de Mer of Monaco seem as afraid of fresh air as of purity propaganda—the glorious afternoon sunlight struggled through the curtained windows, while over each table, in addition to the electric light, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... through the livelong day the Aguila lay motionless, as if held by some invisible cable. No ripple broke the glassy surface, no breath of wind fanned the idle sails, and the air we breathed was hot and stifling, as if proceeding ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... teacup and the only chance of exercise lies in climbing up its sides. But it must fairly be owned that these advantages are accompanied by some very serious drawbacks. If Capri is fairly free from the bitter east wind of the Riviera, the Riviera is free from the stifling scirocco of Capri. In the autumn and in the earlier part of the winter this is sometimes almost intolerable. The wind blows straight from Africa, hot, dusty, and oppressive in a strange and almost indescribable way. All ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Stifling his curiosity, Captain Dilke gave his orders, and soon the two vessels lay side by side, Shaky making the sloop fast to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... self-reliant under its influence; clever with their hands, shrewd with their heads, kindly and cheerful in their temper. But one can see now that all this had been bought very dear. To set against the good qualities that came to light there was a stifling of other qualities which were equally good, but had no chance of development at all under the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... began to give out odors which perfumed the rooms. I went about extinguishing the waning candles and stifling the dying fires, finished my work, and was going upstairs when I heard Veronica playing, and stopped to listen. It was not a paean nor a lament that she played, but a fluctuating, vibratory air, expressive of mutation. I hung over the stair-railing after she had ceased, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... A sermon-mongering herd about her death-bed, Stifling her with fusty sighs, as flocks of rooks Despatch, with pious pecks, a wounded brother. Cant, howl, and whimper! Not an old fool in the town Who thinks herself religious, but must see The last of the show and mob the deer to death. [Advancing] ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... summer is intense, while bitterly cold northern blasts sweep the plain in winter. Whirlwinds are not uncommon; and, in the intervals of the periodical inundations, the fine, dry, powdery soil is swept, even by moderate breezes, into stifling clouds, or rather fogs, of dust. Low inequalities, elevations here and depressions there, diversify the surface of the alluvial region. The latter are occupied by enormous marshes, while the former support the permanent dwellings of the present ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... refreshing to escape from the atmosphere of self-seeking faction, feverish intrigue, and murderous stratagem in which unhappy France was stifling into the colder and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... see that Cupid is thwarted in Australia not only by the natural stupidity, coarseness, and sensuality of the natives, but by a number of artificial obstacles which seem to have been devised with almost diabolical ingenuity for the express purpose of stifling the germs of love. The selfish, systematic, and deliberate suppression of free choice is only one of these obstacles. There are two others almost equally fatal to love—the habit of marrying young girls ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... woman," said Polly, with a choking sensation in her throat; "and you have something to say to me, Dr. George, or you would n't have asked me to leave mamma and come here this stifling day; you would have sent the ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... for the departure of Captain Magnus, I underwent torments in the stifling interior of the cabin. Aunt Jane wept piteously. I had almost a fellow-feeling with Miss Higglesby-Browne when she relapsed from her rigidity for a moment and turning on Aunt Jane fiercely ordered her to be still. This completed the wreck of Aunt ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... disappeared into the darkness. You can see fairly well up to one half of the tower, then pitch blackness surrounds you, and you begin to feel cautiously with hands and feet for that reason; also because just about here your head begins to whirl owing to the stifling atmosphere, and the architect's ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... "I am stifling," said the dying man, rolling round his ghastly eyes. "How hot it is! Open the window; I should like to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I was lying in; a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris—yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz—the regular fringed valance all round—the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... of stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its head and look at ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... upon reciprocal rapine. The only rational object of diversifying industry is to make people better and happier. Do men and women become better and happier by being huddled together in mills and factories, in a stifling atmosphere, on scanty wages, ten hours each day and 313 days each year, than when cultivating our free and fertile lands? Do they have equal opportunities for mental and moral improvement? The trades-unions tell us, No. Whatever may be the experience of other countries where the land ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... doing her own part, she felt at all events, in a manner utterly lifeless and mechanical. It was a stifling existence! ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... or "no" of mine. I hesitated, I know not why. In the little pause the fire burned low between us, and the shadows deepened in the burrow cavern until they strangled the eye as mephitic vapors scant a man of breath. The silence, too, was stifling. There was no sound to breach it save the gurgling murmur of the river, and this was subdued and intermittent like the death-rattle in the throat ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... had been produced by the firing of the rifle and which had hung for some time about the tree. Now we knew it could not be that, for it was growing thicker and thicker, and we noticed that it had a smell very different from that of burnt powder. Moreover, it produced a stifling, choking sensation, causing us to cough, and rub our eyes with the pain. On looking downward, I was unable to see either the ground or the peccaries; but I could perceive a thick cloud rising up all around the tree. I could hear the voices of the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... shouted themselves hoarse—even these exhilarating circumstances failed to reawaken the land baron's concern in the scene around him. His efforts at indifference were chafing his inmost being; the cloak of insouciance was stifling him; the primeval man was struggling for expression, that brute-like rage whose only limits are its ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... and August there was little activity around Memphis. In the latter month, I found the climate exceedingly uncomfortable. Day after day the atmosphere was hot, still, stifling, and impregnated with the dust that rose in clouds from the parched earth. The inhabitants endured it easily, and made continual prophesy that the hot weather "would come in September." Those of us who were strangers wondered what the temperature must be, to constitute "hot" ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... of a giant insect, the shrill whine came through the air, rising to an overwhelming scream. There was a deafening crash—a great hole was torn in the wall just by the window with the jagged pane, and the room filled with stifling black fumes. A sudden agonising stab, and the man, looking up, saw Molly in front of him. She was ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the falling flakes might ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... builders knew of no such thing as a chimney. Though neither cooking nor eating was done in their dwelling-houses, and offal of all kinds was carefully kept at a decent distance, the atmosphere in their dim, stifling interiors was as a rule unendurable by White noses and lungs. Even their largest tribal or meeting halls had but the one door and window; the Maori mind seemed as incapable of adding thereto, as of constructing more than ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... as much as five degrees north of the equinoctial line. But although there was not a breath of wind, the powerful equatorial current was quietly driving the ships, much faster than the Admiral could have suspected, to the northwest and toward land. By the end of that stifling week they were in latitude 7 deg. N., and caught the trade-wind on the starboard quarter. Thence after a brisk run of ten days, in sorry plight, with ugly leaks and scarcely a cask of fresh water left, they arrived within sight of land. Three mountain ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the next few hours was jumbled and hazy. He knew that the regiment went forward, and then the white smoke of musket-fire closed down before him. Now and then the summer breeze made rifts in this stifling cloud, and he saw it streaked with spouting fire. He aimed his old musket at that other foggy line beyond the rail fence, whose top was lined with men in coats of red and ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the Studio of the Blaney brother and sister, Patty blinked several times, before she could collect her senses. It was very dimly lighted, and a strange, almost stifling sense of oppression came over her. This was caused by the burning of various incense sticks and pastilles which gave out a sweet, spicy odour, and which made a slight haze of smoke. Becoming a little accustomed to the gloom, Patty discerned her host, amazingly garbed ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... parks are now becoming a serious menace to our young people. Shut up in a small room, hot and stifling, a girl gladly accepts the chance for an outing. All over these places Satan has ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... men who had been on the waggon—by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the thatch. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark, a nimble fellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed Oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bough in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Abb; the music was excellent, all things airy and tasteful, and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris. The Cathedral of St. Mary, which I afterwards visited, where the Irish attend, was a contrast indeed, and more like one of our stifling Irish Catholic churches in Boston or New York, with intelligence in so small a proportion to the number of faces. During the three Sundays I was in San Francisco, I visited three of the Episcopal churches, and the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... direct our longing gaze. Why should not a summer day be as lovely here? Ah, yes! it is lovely, pure as a dream, without desire, without sin; a poem of clear white sunbeams refracted in the cool crystal blue of the ice. How unutterably delightful does not this world appear to us on some stifling summer day ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... workers do not go to the fields. Retiring to the bottom of the house, they varnish the new cells, they make the round loaf that is to receive the egg. The grandmother is still upstairs, stopping the door with her bald head. For her, there is no siesta during the stifling hours: the safety of the household requires ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... look at them and could not help smiling. Manuel walked along in a rage, stifling, his hat pressing tightly against his forehead ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... rosy glow; his great chest still heaved with the labour of a stormy trail; his gray eyes flashed and twinkled in the soft light of Pale Peter's many lamps. Twinkled?—and with merriment?—in that long, stifling, roaring, smoky, fume-laden room? For a moment: then closed, a bit worn, and melancholy, too; but presently, with reviving faith to urge them, opened wide and heartily, and began to twinkle again. The bar was in festive array: Christmas greens, red berries, ribbons, tissue-paper and gleaming ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... breeze blow into its interior. It was a small building, with one door, opening to the south, and six windows, two on each of three sides, all darkened with tight board shutters. She threw all these open and raised the sashes for a fuller sweep of the air, for the school-roomish smell was stifling to one accustomed to wholesome, out-of-door air. As soon as she felt free to take a long breath she began to examine the room in which she was ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... dawn, and there was something very delightful in our unnoticed departure through the empty, echoing streets of the sleeping town where, the evening before, the whole population had been at our heels. And outside the stifling walls the joy of another day's ride through a ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... no staying with the past. The Earth was becoming too small for its expanding population. It was a stifling, dangerous little world that, if the pressures were not relieved, might puff into fire and fragments at any moment during any year. And the era of prospecting and exploration in the Asteroid Belt seemed destined soon to come to an end, in ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... added, meeting an amused look. "I know a good deal more about sheep farming than either of you gentlemen. I can ride anything but a buckjumper, and boss the shepherds, and I do love the life, no stifling in fields and copses! I only wish you would come too, Bear; it would do you ever so much good to get a little red paint on those white ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the house men—Mr. Moore recognized the fellow's voice. He came near to bursting a blood vessel in an endeavor to scream "come in" through the stifling gag. After a moment the man knocked again, quite loudly and again called the boy's name. Receiving no reply he turned the knob, and at the same instant a sudden recollection filled the tutor anew with numbing terror—he had, himself, locked the door behind him ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lord's. There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines; The grass beneath oar feet is Christian grass; The wayside weed is sacred unto him. Have we not groaned together, herbs and men, Struggling through stifling earth-weights unto light, Earnestly longing to be clothed upon With one high possibility of bloom? And He, He is the Light, He is the Sun That draws us out of darkness, and transmits The noisome earth-damp into Heaven's ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... of women and foreigners—at least so it seemed to me. I had evidently hit upon a shelter of a most cosmopolitan character. The place was packed with a frightened mob, trembling and groaning with terror, and expressing their fears in many tongues utterly unknown to me. The air was stifling with that distinctive odour that seems to emanate from the great unwashed; in this case garlic seemed to be the prevailing perfume. It was a mixed crowd, however, and women in silks rubbed shoulders with women in tattered gowns, all moved by the one thought—self-preservation. Most ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... Companies refused to lend the great highways of which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without a subvention, then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming. If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the sweater's den, or the stifling factory; if the seamstress could leave her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling, invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done, even if it did ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... was no fire. The interior was thick with smoke, but it speedily cleared and not a single bucket was used upon the floor or walls. The air was stifling, the heat fearful. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... uncommitted sin that gains upon him at each stride, Antony fled from the place, and sought the moors. The moon was near its setting, and soon the dawn would throw open the eastern doors of the sky. He walked on and on, waiting, praying for, stifling for the light; and, at last, with a freshening of the air, and faint sounds of returning consciousness ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... at once he forced his rebellious limbs to move on, and his trembling fingers to grasp the knife they had almost abandoned, and he stepped toward the regent, stifling a sob which was about ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... up to him with humble confidence, and hope in his goodness, and ever confess his justice; and where we "cannot unravel, there learn to trust." This wretched woman, pursuing the horrid dictates of a heart hardened and depraved, was scarcely confirmed in her recovery, when, stifling the dictates of honour, gratitude, and every natural affection, she again accused her husband, who was once more apprehended, and taken before Sir John Mordant, Knight, and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... for his plaid, and the little band galloped off toward Kunau. When they entered the forest they remarked how stifling the atmosphere was. Even the rapid pace of their horses brought with ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... nature of her sentiments which that indifference showed. Love, though rooted in the past, depends upon the surrounding atmosphere for the breath of continued life, and he had surrounded her with the stifling vapors of disgust until her love had succumbed and withered. She found that his exhibitions of conceit and insipidity did not affect her in the same way as before. Her sensations were no longer sharp and poignant, but chiefly a dull shame and sense of disgrace that ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... I had awakened in stifling darkness. Was I dreaming, or were there voices, English voices, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but well made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... throat and she toppled over on the bed. It seemed to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring her back. She said afterwards that she was not unconscious, that she knew all that was happening, but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later after one of her father's first unnatural outbreaks, she suffered a series of chills and her mother thought, of course, it was malaria; but many big doses of quinin did not break it up, and no matter ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... a stifling sense as of some great green tree bending down to crush her. She put out her hand ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... he mounts the high horse, from which he instantly is tumbled into the dirt; and in his angry ravings collects together all the foul trash of literary gossip to fling at his adversary, but which is blown stifling back upon himself with odium and infamy. But let him call to mind his own conduct, and talk not of Mr. Jeffrey. Many witnesses are yet living of his own egotism and malignity; and often has he heaped upon his "beloved ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... everywhere the air grew stifling, hot, filled with smoke and ash and cinder so that as she ran her lungs began to hurt her. But she kept on. Nearer were the herds coming; Steve and his men had not been able to stem the mad torrent; not yet had they succeeded ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... blows and one of the bars fell. The old Indian sniffed suspiciously, his ear close to the opening. Damp, stifling air greeted his nostrils, but still there was no sound. One after another he knocked off the remaining bars and thrust his head and shoulders inside. Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the darkness ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... was fine. We walked on, looking out for a disengaged hansom. I could hardly breathe: my heart seemed stifling me. What was in her mind? What would the next few minutes mean ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... him, intolerably bad. He stole a glance at his companion, wondering if she shared his feelings. Her rapt profile betrayed no unrest, but politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that she did not feel. He leaned back impatiently, stifling another yawn, and trying to fix his attention on the stage. Great things were going forward there, and he was not insensible to the stern beauties of the ancient drama. But the interpretation of the play seemed to him as airless and lifeless as the atmosphere of the theatre. The players ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... comrades took to such cursing and swearing, that it seemed incredible that this was a disciplined army. The men wanted to know why they had been dragged forward like animals in this burning heat and stifling dust, day after day, until they could walk no longer, if they were to have no reward—if there was to be nothing to take in this cursed country. In the hot air the sullen complaints of these sweating men rang out brutally. They wanted to loot; to break through all ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and stifling. The first sunbeams which chased the fog from bridge and street also drove the mists from the cool thickets of the Luxembourg Garden, and revealed groups of dragoons picketed in ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... Power, so successful in extending its dominion, and already the controlling influence in the government, was pressing its unholy and arrogant demands openly and without shame. It had destroyed civil liberty in the Slave States, and was fast destroying it in the Free. It was stifling the right of petition in Congress, and smothering free speech in the States. The Executive was recommending that the mails should be sifted for its safety. The question of the right of Slavery in the Territories and the Free States was taking form, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... refuge in a tomb, but the ashes had walled them tightly in. A soldier died bravely at his post, erect before a city gate, one hand on his spear and the other on his mouth, as if to keep from breathing the stifling gases. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... care, already, how that noble little band Toiled, and fought with man and nature that their sons might rule the land, Braving winter's cold and famine, summer's hot and stifling breath, Danger in unnumbered forms; and in each form a cruel death, Slain by skulking, coward foemen, now one moment in the corn Singing some sweet Norman ditty, and the next one overborne? Comrades, you have mothers, sisters, wives whom ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... which had been hired by St. Victor, at once spread her sails; Mrs. Labadie conversed with the captain while the countess took the Queen below into the stifling crowded little cabin. It was altogether a wretched voyage; the wind was high, and the pitching and tossing more or less disabled everybody in the suite. The Queen was exceedingly ill, so were the countess and Mrs. Labadie. Nobody ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of her words, hesitation or artifice, Damaris repeated that somewhat sinister tale of the sea. Of a sailing ship, becalmed through burning days and stifling nights in tropic waters. Of the ill-doings of a brutal, drunken captain. Of a fly-blown eating-house in Singapore. Of the spiritual deliverance there achieved through sight of Charles Verity's name and successful record in the columns of a Calcutta newspaper; ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was advancing, dropping down a step at a time, and her face was turned straight ahead. The pink of her gown was matched by the pink of her cheeks. I saw the little working of the white throat wherein some sobs seemed stifling. And so she went ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... it as no one of them was able to enjoy it. Here, in this atmosphere of bohemianism, I could not but contrast the scene with my scene of the day before, sitting at my machine, in the stifling, shut-in air, repeating, endlessly repeating, at top speed, my series of mechanical motions. And here I sat now, glass in hand, in warm-glowing camaraderie, with the oyster pirates, adventurers who refused to be ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... slaying the slain. See, by the living God! see those foot Charging down hill—hot, hurried, and mute! They loll their tongues out! Ah-hah! pell-mell! Horses roll in a human hell; Horse and man they climb one another— Which is the beast, and which is the brother? Mangling, stifling, stopping shrieks With the tread of torn-out cheeks, Drinking each other's bloody breath— Here's the fleshliest feast of Death. An odour, as of a slaughter-house, The distant ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... Spaniards stand up your accusers— That there's a storm collecting over you Of far more fearful menace than the former one Which whirled you headlong down at Regensburg. And people talk, said he, of——Ah! [Stifling ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the body. With the life about her pressing in too close there was something freeing and saving in that glimpse of herself as part of all the life there had ever been. Because the crowds had seemed the all—were suffocating her—something in that vastness of vision was as fresh air after a stifling room. It was not that it did away with the crowds—made her think they did not matter; they were, after all, the more vital—imperative—but she had more space in which to see them, was given a chance to understand them rather ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... gave for a couple who found each other's company pleasant to enjoy it without much interference. It rather made up for the loss of the staircase and the window-seats, or balconies, dear to English dancers. The rooms are generally kept in a stifling state of heat, a thick curtain always hanging over the door, and never an open window or any kind of ventilation; this, however, does not inconvenience the Spaniard in the least. It is usual to smoke during the intervals of the dances—cigarettes as a rule; ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... to their own prudent custom, it is with the utmost difficulty they can keep from laughing, when they see several French men or French women together, and always several of them speaking at the same time. I had observed them for two years stifling a laugh on those occasions, and had often asked the reason of it, without receiving any satisfactory answer. At length I pressed one of them so earnestly to satisfy me, that after some excuses, he told me in their language, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... six of the marines, including the sentinel, lying dead on the ragged pavement, and four others wounded, but stifling their groans, by the order of their commander, that they might not inform the enemy of his weakness. With the remainder of his command Manual had entrenched himself behind the fragment of a wall that intersected the vault, and, regardless of the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the hollow rock, I 1 Frosty and stifling in the seasons' change! How I seem fated never more to range From thy sad covert, that hath felt the shock Of pain on pain, steeped with my wretchedness. Now thou wilt be my comforter in death! Grief haunted harbour, choked ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the enemy was creeping up the dried bed of the diverted river, 'and in that night was Belshazzar slain' amidst his wine-cups, and the flowers on his temples were dabbled with his blood. No more insane way of curing the consciousness of sin and the dread of judgment than that of stifling the voice that evokes it was ever dreamed of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in hand, he pushed through the unlatched door into Collins's room. There was an acrid odor of dynamite fumes in the air, and when he pressed on to the third room of the suite the gases were stifling. His first act was to feel for the switch and cut in the electric lights. The third room, which had doors of communication with his own office and Collins's, was a wreck. Desks were broken open, and the safe-door had been ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... hand into the cheeping huddle in her hat, lifted out a chick and held it to her cheek. "Why, you're just imagining that Lance is different," she contended, stifling her own recognition of the change. "He'll settle right down ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... fit; and first I tried to put leeches on her temples, but they would not bite, and we resolved to carry her into the fresh breeze in the verandah, for the air of the room seemed laden with something close and stifling. When I threw back the covering of the bed, I perceived that the veins of both arms had been cut, and a few drops of blood stained her night-dress; also there was a small empty bottle in the bed with "Laudanum" on its label. The terrible truth was evident—she had taken poison ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in truth there is something of the murdered Abel about Shakespeare's Richard. The fact seems to be that he died of "waste and a broken heart:" it was by way of proof that his end had been a natural one that, stifling a real fear of the face, the face of Richard, on men's minds, with the added pleading now of all dead faces, Henry exposed the corpse to general view; and Shakespeare, in bringing it on the stage, in the last scene of his play, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... were reproached for stifling all culture and development and applying only correction and mortification of the flesh. Mme. de Maintenon opposed such a state of affairs, but her methods discouraged true independence. The happiness of her charges was her one aim, but they had no voice in the matter. When ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... this was a mere form. There was no system arranged beforehand for the employment of convicts, and indeed, till more light was admitted into the English prisons, it was too dark to work at anything, so they just sat with the other criminals in the dark, stifling dungeons, with nothing to do and nothing to ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... abominable inventions contrasted so strangely with the mildness of their demeanour where their religion was not concerned. It was pitiful to see the young birds, many of them not yet able to fly, flutter into the flames and the stifling smoke, and then fall, scorched, and twittering miserably. The young lambs and other domesticated animals were forced in without much resistance, but the great difficulty was to urge the wolves, antelopes, and other wild creatures, into the blaze. The cries of the multitude, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... him which suddenly clouded Betty's face and made her pretty mouth harden roused Jack MacRae to an intolerable fury. It was like a knife in a tender spot. He had been stifling the impulse to forget and bury all these ancient wrongs and injustices for which neither of them was responsible but for which, so far as he could see, they must both suffer. Something cracked in him at Betty's words. She jumped, warned by the sudden blaze in his eyes. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Arthur, stooping forward, carefully examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his nostrils, yet he lingers there and looks ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... be good sportsmen enough enjoying life throughout the country villages of Merrie England, but in my humble opinion the best sportsmen must be sought in stifling offices in London, or serving "their country and their Queen" under the burning sun of a far country, or maybe in the reeking atmosphere of the East End, or as missionaries in that howling wilderness the inhospitable land ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... young merchant left the lady, he drew the chest out of the pit, which he filled up with earth, laid her again in the chest, and shut it in such a manner, that it did not look as if the padlock had been forced off; but for fear of stifling her, he did not put it quite close, leaving room for the admittance of air. Going out of the burial-place, he drew the door after him; and the city gate being then open, soon found what he sought. He returned with speed to the burial place, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... whirling in a hot cloud over his head, at every pause he made to throw in a new but now unnecessary torch, in his rapid and constantly quickened run through the slash. And when, after running some distance into the open field, to escape the stifling smoke and heat by which he was even there assailed, he turned round to note more fully the surprising progress that the terrible element he had thus let loose was making, he beheld all that part of the slash which he had a moment before passed through already enveloped, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a hot summer day, in the infernal din of some great city; and—and I seem to recall it vividly—after a fashion— the blazing sun, the stifling odor of the pavements; I seem to remember that very hackman over there sponging the nose of his horse—even that pushcart piled up with peaches! Smith! What is this maddeningly elusive memory that haunts me—haunts me with the peculiar idea that it has all occurred ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... our tent, or enter, if you can bear the stifling smoke and the close atmosphere. There, wedged close together, you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their fashion. We were also infested by little copper-colored naked ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... to give it up. Slowly the night passed, and morning found the prisoners pale, tired and discouraged. They were brought up on deck again, for which they were thankful, as in that tropical climate it was stifling below. ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... not the punishment be far greater than the sin? Would there not rise from every human heart an outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by means of memory, transformed life into an endless torment, destroying all activity or initiative in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word, stifling the present beneath the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... converse and associate with him on confidential terms. With the Empress the case was different; even the highest officials were not admitted until they had waited a long time, and after a great deal of trouble. They all waited patiently every day, like so many slaves, in a body, in a narrow and stifling room; for the risk they ran if they absented themselves was most serious. There they remained standing all the time on tip-toe, each trying to keep his face above his fellow's, that the eunuchs, as they came out, ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... outcry Chester and Hal both leaped forward. The former's hands grasped the German by the throat, stifling the sound of his voice, and Hal quickly delivered two hard blows to the man's face. The German fell limply into Chester's arms, and the boy laid him ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... arose. The room felt stifling. "Will you tell me exactly what you meant? Who was the friend you mentioned?" he asked ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... car-fare and lunch, in the cloak-room with her coat and hat. But she did not stop to think of that. She was fleeing again, this time on foot, from a man. She half expected he might pursue her, and make her come back to the hated work in the stifling store with his wicked face moving everywhere above the crowds. But she turned not to look back. On over the slushy pavements, under the leaden sky, with a few ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... One hot, stifling night, a brilliant ball was held, arranged at the Princess's instigation, in the cause of charity. All the smart world attended, and dancing was almost at an end when Bindo met me alone out ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... had reason to expect that this proposal would have been embraced by a great majority; but several members, who in the preceding session had been loud in their demands of justice, now shamefully contributed their talents and interest in stifling the inquiry. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "Lord!" said Cara, stifling another laugh, "we didn't know you were around; we thought you were always 'tending your telegraph, didn't we, Lucy?" (to the child, who was convulsed with mirth and sheepishness). "Why, we've been taking a wash in the sea." She tried to gather up her long hair, which had been left ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... folks' pillows, and whispering sweet dreams into their ears; opening cottage casements, to let out the stifling air; coaxing little children away from gutters and foul pools where fever breeds; turning women from the gin-shop door, and staying men's hands as they were going to strike their wives; doing all I can to help those who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and the dull resonance of the locker to his voice, supplementing the stifling quality of the air, set going a new train of ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, and met an inflexible resistance. He was in a coffin, he thought! He had been buried alive! He gave way at once to wild panic. "'Elp!" he screamed. "'Elp!" and drummed with his feet, and kicked and struggled. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... increased, she felt suffocated. The livid dawn, the crimson sunset, changed to gray; the atmosphere around her grew thick; there was a smarting sensation in her eyes, a stifling sensation in her throat. Mechanically, not knowing what she did, she began to grope her way to the door. But in that thickening atmosphere she did not know which was the door—her outspread arms clasped ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... seat and looked haughtily at her son, her heart beating with great, stifling throbs. In all the years of their lives they had never before exchanged one cross word with each other, and in that moment she hated, with all the strength of her soul, the girl who had sown discord between them, and she wished that Heaven had stricken the ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... a dinner sufficient for a hundred persons is often satisfied by eating the thigh of a chicken. Hence the necessity for the many devices of art to reanimate that ghost of an appetite by dishes which maintain it without injury, and caress without stifling it. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... difference of opinion; and the general diffusion of correct knowledge is greatly retarded by the silly utterances of uninformed people. Yet to draw the line here is so difficult that we must probably tolerate this evil forever rather than run the risk of stifling some generally unsuspected truth.] rights are safely won; the danger now is rather of abusing them. We must not forget that liberty is only a means, not an end in itself, to be restricted in so far as may be necessary for the greatest happiness. From our discussion in Part II it should be clear that ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... they were a luxury. Every one went to bed when darkness came on, for there was nothing else to do. Windows were few, and to keep out the cold they were tightly battened down. The air within must have been stifling; but, as one writer has suggested, the habitant and his family got along without fresh air in his dwelling just as his descendant of to-day manages ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... boy opened his eyes he was lying in six inches of manure in a box car. One of his men was standing over him, keeping him from being trampled on. There was no air and no water. The ammonia fumes from the manure were stifling. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... slow, solemn; his voice trembled; the air in the room seemed stifling, spite of the open window; he felt something like terror, as he saw Felipe evidently sinking to sleep by reason of the notes of his voice. There had been nothing in Alessandro's healthy outdoor experience to enable him to understand such a ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... within him. They left the treasure chamber which was six times doubly locked after them. They went through the ancient empty rooms and out into the gardens. Kendric, looking up, saw the small ragged patch of sky and felt as though upon his own soul, stifling him, rested the weight of the hollow mountain. To him who loved the fresh, wind-swept world, the open sea with its smell of clean salt air, the wide deserts where the sunshine lay everywhere, this pleasure grove of a long ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... it as it passed my lips, for a black frown gathered on Robert's face, and his strong hands closed with an ugly sort of grip. But he did not touch the poor soul gasping there behind him, and seemed content to let the slow suffocation of that stifling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... next dance Jack and his friends remained in their seats. Then Hal, stifling a yawn ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... pleased if our Miss B. would let the cash go, and obey the dictates of her own heart; but these modern girls are all alike! All out for the stuff, they are! Oh, well, it's none of my affair," said Webster, stifling a not unmanly sigh. For beneath that immaculate shirt-front there beat a warm heart. Montagu ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... found some straw, and spreading it on a piece of plank, I prepared to pass the night sitting with my back to the driest piece of wall I could find, which happened to be immediately under the airhole, a fortunate circumstance, as the closeness was often stifling. I had probably been dozing for some time in a sitting position, when I felt something tickle the top of my head. The idea that it might be a large spider caused me to start, when stretching up my hand, it came in contact ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... part of the time. Deep down somewhere was a sense of unrest, a knowledge that I was neither getting nor giving all that I was meant to. But this I was accustomed to stifle—except at unhappy hours when stifling would not work, and then I was frankly miserable. Mostly, however, my time was so filled with diversion of one sort or another that I managed to keep such hours from over-whelming me; I worried through them somehow and forgot them as ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the end. He caught me full and fair in the side of the neck. A moist stifling filled my throat and the turf whirled up to meet the sky. I knew nothing but a mad surge of rage that he had cut me to pieces and I had never touched him once. As I went down I flung myself forward at him wildly. It is to be supposed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat: ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... a principle most mysterious, the undoubted object of religious awe, a perpetual witness of that God, whose image ([Greek: eikon]) it is; a principle utterly incomprehensible by the discursive intellect;—and moreover teaches us, that the surest plan for stifling and paralyzing this divine birth in the soul (a phrase of Plato's as well as of the Tinker's) is by attempting to evoke it by, or to substitute for it, the hopes and fears, the motives and calculations, of prudence; which is an excellent and in truth indispensable servant, but considered ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... health, always delicate, gave way altogether under his privations, and he could no longer do the tasks required of him. Even the comfort of his companions' presence was now denied him, and in his wretched cell he lay patiently through the stifling days, counting the hours until the tramp of feet and clank of chains told of the return of his friends from ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... gave the pitcher a great kick and broke it in pieces; when there issued from it a smoke thick and black, and so stifling that Coquette was obliged to use two bottles of essence to ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... which was very like sitting on the floor; but it was stifling down there among people's feet; besides, mine soon got "pins and needles"; so presently I popped up like a Jack out of his Box, and almost knocked off a man's nose with ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... found the universal as far as certain aspects of it in humanity are concerned, had confined it within a very narrow space, or particular envelope, in tone and temper: the fact that he has been called "stifling," though the epithet may not be entirely just, is almost sufficient evidence of this. Fielding had taken the novel into a far larger air and, as has been said already, there was hardly anything to which his method might not lead, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... chain. The light of the torches did not reach me. Both the boat from the right bank and the watch from the Tour de Nesle continued to move towards the same point. I approached the chain, took a long breath, dived, felt the stifling embrace of the waters for a season, rose to the surface, breathed the air of heaven again, and cast a look behind. The chain stretched between me and the distant boat and torches. I was ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the light reflected from the pages. Some few, as though to show what a farce the whole business could be, had got out a perfect library of books, bastions of them, and lay back in their chairs, snoring. I couldn't bear it. I had to get out. The air was stifling me after the open sea, so I left that subsidized lunatic asylum and took the steamboat up the river to Hammersmith. It was spring, late spring, and there was a whisper in the air that meant, if I read it rightly, love and romance and youth. It was all round me as I walked out to Ealing. It ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... He caught only snatches of the letter, just enough to know it was a description of a hunt in England, of a damp, cold, cloudy day, of an invigorating run—the contrast struck him forcibly—the stifling, hot little hut, and the jealous, half-savage woman standing there, her eyes aflame with anger at the slight she fancied ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... the teaching of this tommy-rot by instructors paid by taxation, they accuse us of stifling conscience and interfering with free speech. Not at all; let the atheist think what he pleases and say what he thinks to those who are willing to listen to him, but he cannot rightly demand pay ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... away between the tall slim poplar-trunks, and beyond the stream lay a strip of luxuriant country, from which the old Saracen towers stood out confusedly, like stone islets, in the dark. The air was full of the stifling emanations of mown hay, with now and then a whiff from putrefied silkworms in the bushes. Flights of swallows crossed this space with quick, scolding cries, trafficking between the river ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... other, destroyed there by suffocation, or, perhaps, by hunger. Arrius Diomed had tried to escape alone, abandoning his house and taking with him only one slave, who carried his money-wallet. He fell, struck down by the stifling gases, in front of his own garden. How many other poor wretches there were whose last agonies have been disclosed to us!—the priest of Isis, who, enveloped in flames and unable to escape into the blazing street, cut through ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... worked away from the fire, and Wildfire, free of the stifling smoke, began to break and lunge and pitch, plunging round Nagger in a circle, running blindly, but with unerring scent. Slone, by masterly horsemanship, easily avoided the rushes, and made a pivot of Nagger, round which the wild horse dashed in his frenzy. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... that soon I must have fainted from sheer excitement and terror, for I remember nothing more till I felt myself deposited on a hard floor, propped against the wall, and the stifling piece of sacking taken off my head ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... tenderness seemed to sweep from my mind everything in the world but her. Everything broke abruptly that had been checking me, stifling me, holding me gagged and bound since the night when our lives had come together again after those five long years. I forgot Cynthia, my ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... on, no one could deny that the child was puny, that his birthright of health was dwindling fast. And, while it dwindled, the heat came on, and then the stifling dog days. It was a season when the lustiest of children wilted with the damp, depressing heat; and the Brenton baby, never lusty, wilted with them. Katharine treated him with conscientious regularity; but dog days and consequent dysentery proved too strenuous a claim ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... railway station; and as soon as we were seated in the carriage there commenced a scene which baffles all description. Some of my fellow-prisoners commenced shouting, some screamed and laughed, others mocked and jeered, whilst above all curses loud and deep hurtled through the stifling air, and made night hideous with the sound. Their yells and oaths still ring in my ears, and that which was to my companions a scene of the utmost jollity and mirth was to me the nearest approach to ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... say about the change in the treatment of fever cases? I can myself remember the time when the patient was treated on the lowering system, and when every breath of air was excluded from the sick-room, doors and windows being listed lest the slightest change should take place in the stifling atmosphere of the bed-room. And now all is altered; we have the system supported by nourishments, and abundance of fresh air let in. Indeed, it is most amusing to see the change which has taken place as regards fresh air; many of us sleep ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and murdering your benefactor, for Spears well knew that in the present state of the public mind if once the truth were known, it would mean death to such as Thor. For with a fatuous ignorance of public feeling the interests had gone blindly on, conceding nothing, stifling competition and absorbing the wealth and energies ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect acquaintance with almost all men's circumstances—artfully inflaming irritable and vindictive clients, kindling, instead of stifling, family dissensions, and fomenting public strife—why, were they to do only a hundredth part of what it is thus in their power to do, our courts of justice would soon be doubled, together with the number of our judges, counsel, and attorneys; new jails must be built to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... uncertain light, or rather modified darkness, that seemed the sky. Alone and desolate! Alone and desolate and unhappy! Alone and desolate and unhappy, and for the first time! Was it a sigh, or a groan, that issued from the stifling heart of Venetia Herbert? That child of innocence, that bright emanation of love and beauty, that airy creature of grace and gentleness, who had never said an unkind word or done an unkind thing in her whole career, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... clothes we went into the fight, before I could realize it, or back out. Scared! I was so scared it is a wonder I did not die. That was more excitement than a county fair. Bullets whizzing, shells shrieking, smoke stifling, yelling that was deafening. It seemed as though I was crazy. I must have been or I could never, as a raw recruit, with no experience, have ridden right toward those guns that were belching forth sulphur and pieces of blacksmith shop. I didn't dare look anywhere ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... answers by signs. The five Spaniards, on seeing their captain wounded—so suddenly that the murderer appeared and the blow was heard at the same moment—fell upon Ubal and cut him to pieces. They informed Master-of-camp Xara of the general's death, who, stifling his resentment, withdrew his men, and built a fort in the most suitable place, near the river. He founded there his colony, with suitable arrangements, so that our people could settle it. He appointed regidors and ministers of justice, and called it ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... shaking Picton by the shoulder. Then Picton raised himself from his couch, and yawned twice; walked to the table, seated himself on a bench, thrust his fingers through his black hair, and instantly fell asleep again, after shaking out into the close atmosphere of the hutch a stifling ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... that the moon was being blotted out. By midnight its paling disk had become totally eclipsed, the clouds hung low over the city, a dense blanket imprisoning heat which was oppressive even in the open and stifling in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... westward-streaming troops of all arms. Every few minutes there would come a break in the flow, and our motor would wriggle through, advance a few yards, and be stopped again by a widening of the torrent that jammed us into the ditch and splashed a dazzle of dust into our eyes. The dust was stifling—but through ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... prayed: I cannot write the words I said, My words were slow, my tears were few; But through the dark my silence spoke Like thunder. When this morning broke, My face was pinched, my hair was gray, And frozen blood was on the sill Where stifling ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti |
