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More "Smother" Quotes from Famous Books



... the rock, and the waters gushed forth; but if Moses had found a spring in the desert and then toiled mightily to smother it with a mountain of arid sand, I doubt me much whether the name of Moses would now live as one of the saviors of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with all the incombustible ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle. Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her punished, deeming it rather too bad that such ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... time watching thee, for thy sweet face had been pale as death all the morning, and I feared that the heat would be too much for thee. Thus I saw much of what went on. I saw the traitor advance toward the Caesar, trying to smother him with a cloak. I saw the Caesar—whom may the gods protect—stab the traitor in the breast, and then leave the Amphitheatre hurriedly, followed by a few among his faithful guard. But my thoughts ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... so cwold below the darksome cloud Soon the night-wind roar'd, Wi' rainy storms that zent the zwollen streams Over ev'ry vword. The while the drippen tow'r did tell The hour, wi' storm-be-smother'd bell, An' over ev'ry flower's bud Roll'd on the flood, 'ithin ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... to them had the appearance of a sedate and pious turkey-cock. As he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—I mean his bill—the laughter again came over me, and I had to stoop down in the pew and smother my merriment. An old chum of mine, who was a famous sportsman and a great favorite with the ladies, turned out to be a bull-dog, and as he adjusted his neck-tie and pulled up his collar around his thick, hairy neck, I had once more to hide my face in order to preserve ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... that we men are to blame for most of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted daughters of the better classes; but we keep it down and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it discreditable to themselves not to give their daughters and sisters the means of living in idleness; and any adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupation whereby she may ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat, both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and foam. The decided spat, spat, spat of the reversing blows from the caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of boxing, nor could I distinguish ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... but the warning came too late. The young man flung the bag into the torrent, where it disappeared in a smother of foam. He rose to his feet ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... in the dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... said Johnny Stout (Mabel her laugh must smother), As he straightened himself in his roundabout, And said, "I'll sing you another." He sang and whistled with might and main, Till Mabel's ears were a-ringing, And she stopped them up, and exclaimed again "Why, Johnny, what are ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the city, Wide and dazzling shone the sea, When the gods set hand to smother Ys, the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... detecting the truth behind the monstrous accumulation of impieties with which they veil it, is proclaimed by the Church as condemned to perdition. The guiding light of this Church, which they are not ashamed to smother or to procure the smothering of, by which nevertheless they hold their authority, to be plain, the word of God, should at least teach them, if they set any value on the Spirit of Christ, that their Papal Bulls would be better directed ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... completely, having jumped at the conclusion that the captain had bought her. It was an expensive blunder, and a practical lesson in the chemistry of colours. A large quantity of white paint had to be bought to smother the black coat, and another lot of black paint for his own ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Sometimes, in a thicker press, an animal wheeled close to the tires and, stemming the current, sounded a protest. But the young horses, less playful now, divided the great herd and came at last safely out of the smother. The road began to lift, as they rounded the first rampart of the range, and Tisdale's glance fell to her hands. "Those gloves are done for, as I expected," he exclaimed. "I'll wager your palms are blistered. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... "Smother him!" laughed D'Arcy; "we shall have the rabble here in a minute. Be quiet, my dear fellow; I warrant D'Artagnan is no ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... care for hearts full of false tenderness, for those women with the laudable and fine talent of knowing how to smother their husbands with caresses in order to make them oblivious of the ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere

... Briscoe, "that we'd better go ashore and sleep there after making up a good smother on the fire with green stuff that will ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... reassuringly, passing his arm unchidden about her slight waist. "Don't be frightened, dear! It wasn't a man cut in half. It was the upper half of a man who was wiggling down into a tunnel hidden by that smother of underbrush .... And here I was just wondering why people should bother to come all the way through this path, instead of skirting the woods! Answers furnished while ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... hits our atmosphere? Don't you realize that today they're going to open that satellite, that other one, in Washington? Suppose this is what happens when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays or whatever is up there. Don't you see what could happen?" Bill was hoarse from fright and shouting. "Smother everything, grow and ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne

... invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come a-toppling down and smother her—and she didn't care much if they would; but they never did. She was the mother of two children—the boy Robert, born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a daughter came, and this closed the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... a message from her Lord: "Manfred cannot support the sight of his own family. He thinks you less disordered than we are, and dreads the shock of my grief. Console him, dear Isabella, and tell him I will smother my own anguish ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... was the reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself in my pocket-handkerchief." ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... saw Captain Shirril start forward to smother the fire, by throwing one of his heavy blankets over it, he lifted the heavy bolt from its place, and leaned it against the wall at the side of the door. Having decided on the step, he was wise in not permitting a ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... the laborers' camp, skirting the railroad at the edge of town, looking for Carson. He found the big Irishman in one of the larger tent-houses, talking with the cook, who was preparing breakfast amid a smother of smoke and the strong mingled odors of frying bacon and coffee. Corrigan went only to the flap of ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... his word to himself? Who has not said to himself at the very moment of his own delinquency, "Now,—it is now,—at this very instant of time, that I should crush, and quench, and kill the evil spirit within me; it is now that I should abate my greed, or smother my ill-humour, or abandon my hatred. It is now, and here, that I should drive out the fiend, as I have sworn to myself that I would ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... face in her mother's breast and tried to smother her sobs. Charles sat mumbling blasphemous oaths. At the expiration of half an hour, a page announced the Bishop of Cambrai and other gentlemen. The duke signified that they were to be admitted; and when the bishop entered the room, Charles, who ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... 'Tis not so very long Since other voices blended With the carol and the song! If we could but hear them singing, As they are singing now, If we could but see the radiance Of the crown on each dear brow; There would be no sigh to smother, No hidden tear to flow, As we listen in the starlight To the bells ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... and the heat will surround the oven instead of passing up the chimney; also, before too much of the first supply of coal is burned out, add a new supply, but be sure that the coal is sufficiently ignited before the new supply is added so as not to smother the fire. If only a thin layer is added each time, this danger will be removed. Experience has proved that the best results are secured if the fire is built only 4 inches high. When hot coals come near the top of the stove, the lids are likely to warp ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... small number of slave-holders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection, unless we break down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of emancipation, or confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day. Omit to do it, and it ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... It forewarns the traveller of his approach to the habitations, the business, and the comforts of his civilized fellow-creatures. It gives an air of grandeur, and importance, and mystery, to the scenes: it conciliates our respect. We know that there must be some fire where there is so much smother.—While, in those bright, shining, smokeless cities, whenever the sun shines upon them, one's eyes are put out by the glare of their white walls; and when it does not shine!—why, in the winter, there's no resource left for a man but hopeless and shivering resignation, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... bitter life, but not death in fieri, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, more so than if the suicide's own ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... within her tent—and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... canvas-flap a front-door," I said, "but I think it would be better to leave it open; otherwise we should smother. You need not be afraid. I shall keep my gun here by my bedside, and if any one offers to come in, I'll bring him to ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through or around ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... my soul, like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by thee ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... baby from him and throws it into the cellar] Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! [Pushes Nikta down] It's your doing, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... world. Robert will tell you, and all your family, how many women are as scarlet as I am—virtue wears it at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in public: that's the only difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet roses! throw them into the coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them; bury me down deep; in the dark, quiet street—where there's a broad door-step in front of a house, and a white, wild face, something like Basil's, that's always staring on the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... then lean across the table and speak to some of the distinguished guests that surrounded him. The thing which puzzled me was his grave, sedate demeanor, dignified, almost austere at times. A man, I thought, might grow a beard and dye it, but how could he grow a different set of manners, how smother his jollity, how ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Bob reflected, dizzily—quite clearly he remembered marrying her. It was plainly as necessary, therefore, to shield her as to remove Jarvis Hammon and smother this accident. Or was it an accident, after all? Perhaps Lilas had shot the fellow. If that were true, then she ought to be arrested— certainly. But somebody had said, "She'll saddle it onto Lorelei to save herself." After all, it couldn't be murder, for hadn't ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... which was not so encumbered with troops, so that they might remain on the main-deck; but they replied, that the invoices were made out and could not be altered. But now to act. My idea is to keep the hatches on, so as to smother it if possible." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Margery as it passed: sprang to her feet and across the road in the noise and smother. Choking with dust and anger I followed, almost ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... presentiment he would fall on this very day. First, that sin he committed in Liverpool, when, in an evil hour, yielding to the advice and example of wicked companions, he took to drink in order to smother the thought of it; and drink caused him to rob the widow, and to shun further the thought of these crimes he enlisted in the army; but yet, here, in the very ranks, with drums beating, and music playing, amid the shouts of Indians ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... is the only best thing to do. Whether the bite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put the quilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. To smother them out-and-out you should, before the madness ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... carpet slippers. Rogers got up and, opening the window wider than before, put out his head. The sunshine caught him full in the face. He tasted the fresh morning air. Tinged with the sharp sweetness of the north it had a fragrance as of fields and gardens. Even St. James's Street could not smother its vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his lungs, making such a to-do about it that a passer-by looked up to see what was the matter, and noticing the hanging tassel of a flamboyant dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... off the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... and I went under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first man that draws I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet on the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... by the giant forefinger. There was little consolation in the thought that a mile lay between him and shelter, but it was a relief to know that he would have the wind at his back. Darkness was settling over the land. The lofty hills seemed to be closing in as if to smother the breath out of this insolent adventurer who walked alone among them. He was an outsider. He did not belong there. He came from the lowlands and he ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... Mrs. Eyrecourt interposed, "I am afraid I fail to follow you. My silent son-in-law looks as if he longed to smother me, and my attention is naturally distracted. You were about ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... it? I have taken care that he who gave it to me should run the same danger as myself, and he knows it. There's nothing to fear from that quarter. I've paid him enough to smother ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... and his associates planted dwarf pine with the spruce. Strangely, it not only grew itself, but proved to be a real nurse for the other. The spruce took a fresh start, and they grew vigorously together—for a while. Then the pine outstripped its nursling, and threatened to smother it. The spruce was the more valuable; the other was at best little more than a shrub. The croaker raised his voice: the black heath had turned green, but it was still heath, of no value to any ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... sick and lay down upon his crooked old bed. Somehow, his crooked old money-box got upon his breast and seemed to smother him. Then his crooked account-books piled themselves upon him, and it seemed impossible for him to breathe. He tried to call out, but his voice died to a whisper, and the only answer he received was a ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... things to be kept in mind about hand-weeding which will reduce this work to the minimum. First, never let the weeds get a start; for even if they do not increase in number, if they once smother the ground or crop, you will wish you had never heard of a garden. Second, do your hand-weeding while the surface soil is soft, when the weeds come out easily. A hard-crusted soil will double and treble the ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... once into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... man who would back any other Appears but a gander to be, For the horse that all comers will smother Is certainly Tanderagee! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various

... broiler and then place the plank in the oven. Cook the steak until quite rare in the broiler and then lift to a hot plank. Prepare a border of mashed potatoes and put them in a pastry bag, forced out around the edge of the plank. Garnish and smother with onions and minced green peppers. Place in a hot oven for ten minutes. Use the tenderloin for minute steaks. Hamburg the flank ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... Seventy-six, Bradlaugh lectured throughout the United Kingdom to large audiences of highly cultured people, who came and gladly paid admission to hear him speak. Newspapers that had tried either to smother him with silence or else denounce him without reason began to report his speeches. Of course there was a little unkind comment, too, but this became less frequent, and was mostly the work of insignificant journals. One semi-religious paper of very small caliber, in a suburb of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... I know not, Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,— 30 Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 35 The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. 40 But if that I am I, then ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... rejected. Quite naturally he assumed the part of a man on the verge of the grave, which increased the impressiveness of his words. He spoke for three hours. The members of the House listened with feverish attention; the crowds in the balconies could not smother their emotion. One witness reports that Vice-President John Adams sat in the gallery, the tears running down his cheeks, and that he said to the friend beside him, "My God, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... to at last was, that I could not do better than smother my impatience for a whole week; taking, the while, excursions in every other direction so as, if possible, to blind any one who made a study of my movements. Then my journey to the cavern must be made by ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... this announcement a senseless anger swelled the young man's breast. To smother it he laughed. "Well, what of it? I knew she ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... exclaimed Andrew Zane. "As long as that tigress accompanies him he has expiation to make. Voluptuous, jealous, restless, and, like a snake in the tightness of her folds and her noiseless approach, she will smother him with kisses and sell ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... case," the youth said solemnly, and Nancy's old happy laugh rang out as he flung the plaster Psyche in a smother of white ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris

... manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and surely ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, which she then pressed to her lips to smother her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... is as it may be, but if you do, mind what I tell you—do not say any thing to anybody, but—put an end to me! it does not matter how; smother me with bolsters; run your bodkin up to its ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... been lost—for ever so long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clean and rested; of safety and yet freedom; of love that was always there, warm like sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed—a love that didn't irritate and didn't smother. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... came to us in war, once, long ago. Now you want peace. What would you do, clasp us to your bosom, smother us in your idiotic music? Or have you ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse

... the Irishman who apes the Englishman, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were? 'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at large, Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, And lose himself in his unbounded home? By nature's hand magnificently fed, His meal is on the range of mountains spread; As in pure air aloft he bounds along, He sees in distant smoke the city throng; Conscious of freedom, scorns the smother'd train, The threat'ning driver, and the servile rein. Survey the warlike horse! didst thou invest With thunder his robust distended chest? No sense of fear his dauntless soul allays; 'Tis dreadful to behold his nostrils ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... combined were altogether too much for him. One sprig of seedling manhood remained to him, and only one—the will to smother emotion that he could not control a second longer. He buried his head in my lap, stuffing his mouth with the end of the abiyi to choke the sobs back. I covered his head completely and, like the fabled ostrich, in ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... seen great possessions excite to great alacrity. Usually they enfeeble the sympathies, and often overlie and smother them. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... my honorable friend, the Chairman of the Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... such as these, who die without contrition, Must go to—beg your pardon, sir—perdition, The sons of light, you tell me, can't be gay, But count it sin of the sort called omission The groan to smother or the tear to stay Or fail to—what is that they live by?—pray. So down they flop, and the whole serious race is Put by divine compassion ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the fresh air which there always be up there, sir,—it du always be fresh up there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... balanced there, her hand on his shoulder, ready for a leap, lest the heavy canoe, rolling over in the froth, strike her under the smother of foam and water. . . . How marvellously pretty she was. . . . Her hand on his ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... land in the west, sent out a five-page letter— enough to smother whatever interest might have been attracted by the advertisement. Here is the third paragraph ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... time Tommy Thompson awoke with a little gasp. She had been dreaming that Buster, in the guise of a pirate, was trying to smother her with a sofa pillow. Tommy had been skirting the edge of one of the "pleathant nightmareth" she had prophesied for the girls on retiring. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Suddenly she ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair, righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraid to move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me in the darkness and smother me. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the yoke, Brown as the sweet-smelling loam, Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke The two great ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... origin of the forms of life peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural processes ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... in the storm. A wilder day would be hard to imagine; a hurricane was raging, the rain was whirled ahead of it like charges of shot. The mountains behind Kyak were invisible, and to seaward was nothing but a dimly discernible smother of foam and spray, for the crests of the breakers were snatched up and carried by the wind. The town was sodden; the streets were running mud. Stove-pipes were down, tents lay flattened in the mire, and the board houses were shaking as if they might fly to ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... come from the dun of Cruachan to view them. The people in the dun smother one another, so that sixteen men ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... go before a magistrate and tell how you tried to poison your own child—how, when that failed, you tried to smother it. And, Jonas," she added—as she saw his face grow ashen, and a foam bubble form on his lips—"and, Jonas," she stepped forward, and he backed—his glassy eyes on her face, "and, Jonas," she said, "look here, I have this stone. With the ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... role jealousy may have played in the remote ages (I doubt that it has), it is now an utterly useless, utterly vicious, utterly anti-social and anti-individual emotion. It is opposed to social life and it destroys individual happiness. And everything possible should be done to smother it, to strangle it, to eliminate it entirely ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... hope remains? what force, what place Made good? But, sighing, he replies, 'Alas! 310 Trojans we were, and mighty Ilium was; But the last period and the fatal hour Of Troy is come: our glory and our power Incensed Jove transfers to Grecian hands; The foe within the burning town commands; And (like a smother'd fire) an unseen force Breaks from the bowels of the fatal horse: Insulting Sinon flings about the flame, And thousands more than e'er from Argos came Possess the gates, the passes, and the streets, 320 And these ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... to swoop from 3500 feet this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the balloon bumping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously to and fro. The millionaire screamed and bumped about the car, and bumped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine into the teeth of the wind, switched down the planes, and tried to drive her down. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things which ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... when he should have been out howling at the stars. He was not lonely, because one night he prowled about until he found a certain door, and when the girl opened that door in the morning she found him curled up tight against it. She had reached down and hugged him, the thick smother of her long hair falling all over him in a delightful perfume; thereafter she placed a rug before the door for him to sleep on. All through the long nights he knew that she was just beyond the door, and he was content. Each day he thought less and less of the wild places, and ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... found that abuse had no effect upon the stout boatswain, he drew back, and made a desperate plunge at his heavy opponent. Peaks caught him by the shoulders, and lifted him off his feet like a baby. Taking him in his arms, with one hand over his mouth, to smother his cries, he bore him to the waist, where his yells could not be heard by ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... required to supply a population of thirty- five thousand people. Upon inquiring what they do in case of a fire, I learn that they don't even think of fighting the devouring element with its natural enemy, but, collecting on the adjoining roofs, they smother the flames by pelting the burning building with the soft, crumbly bricks of which Angora is chiefly built; a house on fire, with a swarm of half- naked natives on the neighboring housetops bombarding the leaping flames with bricks, would ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. To allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. To develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. It is by an absolute knowledge of yourself, the proper estimate of your ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden

... the trees and drew her importunately beneath them for the kiss that had burned on her troubled lips all day! How, girl-like, knowing his caresses were all her own—knowing she could at an instant call forth enough to smother her—she tyrannized his importuning and, like a lovely miser, hoarded her responsiveness under calm eyes and laconic whispers until, when she did give back his eagerness, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... As its care produces labor, activity, abundance, and health, its neglect and its injustice produce indolence, discouragement, famine, contagion, vices, and crimes. It can bring to light, or can smother talents, skill, and virtue. In fact the government, distributing rank, wealth, rewards and punishments; master of the things in which men have learned from childhood to place their happiness, acquires a necessary influence on their conduct, inflames ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... kept on every now and then putting in a word of caution to restrain the rector from admitting too much; for little by little he was yielding to me. I spoke of letting down the nets for a draught, and catching men, not to smother and kill them in some Church system, or by some erroneous teaching, but to keep them alive. "This," I said, "is the meaning of the word in the original;" and we looked it out in the Greek. It was very interesting. We then talked over the difference between the Church system ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... birch bark, or pine-knot slivers. As the tinder begins to burn, add kindling-wood of larger size, always remembering that the air must circulate under and upward through the kindling; no fire can live without air any more than you can live without breathing. Smother a person and he will die, smother a fire and it ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... Deep drifts smother the paths below; The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb, And all the air is dizzy and dim With a whirl ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... said Gethin, bringing his fist down with a thump on the table, "take care what you are doing. I tell you it has taken me three long years to smother the hopes which awoke in my heart when I was last at home. Don't awake them again, lest they should master me; unless you have some gleam ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine

... the way, if that's what you're thinking of. I'm not that kind of man at all, and I am particularly fond of the child. I scarcely ever complain when she keeps me awake at night, though many men I know would want to smother her. She and my wife are stopping with my mother-in-law in Rathmines. I'm going down for a fortnight's yachting with the Major. I might persuade him to give you a day's sailing, perhaps, if he doesn't find out who you are, and we succeed ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... Arrow's achievement, a little torpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles an hour. The little craft seemed to disappear in the white smother of her wake, and those who watched the speed trial marvelled at the railroad speed she made. The Turbina—for that was the little record-breaker's name—was propelled by a new kind of engine, and her speed was all the more remarkable on that account. ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... Democrats who could only be held by party claims would not respect a mere indorsement. Southern delegates argued that if Democrats hoped to defeat their opponents they must encourage the revolt by giving it prestige and power rather than smother it by compelling Liberals to choose between Grant and a Democrat. The wisdom of this view could not be avoided, and after adopting the Cincinnati platform without change, the convention, by a vote of 686 to 46, stamped the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... death-rate of most fevers fifty to seventy-five per cent already. Plenty of pure, cool water internally, externally, and eternally, rest, fresh air, and careful feeding, are the best febrifuges and antipyretics known to modern medicine. All others are frauds and simply smother a symptom without relieving its cause, with the exception of quinine in malaria, mercury, and the various antitoxins in their appropriate diseases, which act ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... but with faces and hands intensely smarting from their burns, the boys replenished the cans of water—for they still had a two miles' run through the smother of smoke—and lifted the car onto the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,—but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... beautiful; the glow of the roses on her cheeks and throat, the sun in her hair, and the shadows in her eyes. To smother the rush of words which were gathering at his lips, he raised his cup and drank. Ten days! It was something. But the battle was wearing; the ceaseless struggle not to speak from his full heart was weakening him. Yet ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... herself at his side, he must be fearfully alone in England. Hour after hour she felt as if she were waiting; yet she couldn't have said exactly for what. There were moments when Mrs. Beale's flow of talk was a mere rattle to smother a knock. At no part of the crisis had the rattle so public a purpose as when, instead of letting Maisie go with Mrs. Wix to prepare for dinner, she pushed her—with a push at last incontestably maternal—straight into the room inherited from Sir Claude. She titivated ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... that I had to smother down in my heart was one of the good things that come in a person's life and leave a mark on their natures for always. I think it is a fine plan to save little happinesses and put them up on a spirit shelf to take down to feed your remembers on in days when pleasures are scarce. I can't believe ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Jack, whirling lean arms in an ecstasy of irritability, her shrill voice mounting from scream note to scream note. A sickness of soul cried from her restless over-taxed body. She was but one unit of a whole rowdy company. Even this night was used by them to grab at something to fool men—to smother God in their hearts. Just a play, a pretense, yes, a pretense of power, especially that; they had no thought beyond excitement, and that to me seemed only the first step. I could not believe that ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... I start for this delightful monastery of Valdemosa. I shall live, muse, and write in the cell of some old monk who may have had more fire in his heart than I, and was obliged to hide and smother it, not being able ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in order to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage. My men covered their heads with their blankets, but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to smother me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only could I breathe more freely, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by the Tibetans. My men moaned and groaned and their teeth chattered during the night. I woke ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... particles changed to dry, powdery snow dust that whirled and eddied about them so thickly that Connie could not see the dogs from the rear of the toboggans. Covering their noses and mouths, the two bored on through the white smother—a slow moving, ghostly procession, with the snow powder matted thick into the hairy coats of the dogs and the clothing of the mushers. Not until darkness added to the impenetrability of the storm did 'Merican Joe halt. In the whirling blizzard, without protection ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... had regret we sought not to smother— Kind Earl, dear Countess were called to depart; But thoughtfully, kindly, the fair Queen our mother, Sends the son of her choice, the child of her heart. There is a stir, a bustle, a humming, The tartans ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... mercy! Just look at it this way! Talk it this way! He's turning on his own, if he does what he threatens! He played the sneak, he, a mill-owner, getting on to that commission! And he proposes to shove in a report that will smother development by outside capital. Play up the reason for his interest in the thing along that line! A hog for himself! It's easy to turn public sentiment by the right kind of talk! If I really start out to go the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... bowl awaits; trouble shall smother in the cup. We shall make this night one for memory. I have a chateau in the Cevennes, and it shall be yours till all ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... happened to Nan!" cried Walter. "She and that other girl are perhaps overcome with the smoke. They'll smother!" ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... station, and the nurse scarcely liked to ask Suzanne for the child, who was holding it against her heaving bosom, and kissing it as if she intended to smother it, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... success, unfortunately so rare in man's life as to seem paradoxical, is its whole achievement. Spirituality ought to have been a matter of course, since conscious existence has inherent value and there is no intrinsic ground why it should smother that value in alien ambitions and servitudes. But spirituality, though so natural and obvious a thing, is subject, like the lilies' beauty, to corruption. I know not what army of microbes evidently invaded from the beginning the soul's physical basis and devoured its ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... battleship. She was riding head to wind, and apparently steaming ahead dead slow, or, at all events, merely at a speed sufficient to give her steerage-way. She was making positively frightful weather of it, diving deeply into every sea, as it met her, and literally burying herself in a perfect smother of whiteness which had no time to flow off her decks ere she plunged into the next sea. And, strangely enough, within the hour they fell in with and passed a small gun-boat, undoubtedly British. She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... deem Came forth from the shade, of the fearful dream; His cheek, though pale, was calm again. And he spoke in peace, though he spoke in pain "Not mine! not mine! now, Mary mother. Aid me the sinful hope to smother! Not mine, not mine!—I have loved thee long Thou hast quitted me with grief and wrong. But pure the heart of a knight should be,— Sleep on, sleep on, thou art safe for me. Yet shalt thou know, by a certain sign, Whose lips have been so near to thine, Whose eyes have ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... (they indeed are best;) but even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statua, or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... set off, North laughing uproariously at the thought of being late. Frere observed with some astonishment that the chaplain wrapped himself in a boat cloak that lay in the stern sheets. "Does the fellow want to smother himself in a night like this!" was his remark. The truth was that, though his hands and head were burning, North's teeth chattered with cold. Perhaps this was the reason why, when landed and out of eyeshot of the crew, he produced a pocket-flask of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKTA down.) It's your doing, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... what I have done. But what can I? the same concession to the levity of the times, the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... to engage men to expose themselves to the awakened fury of a whole people; for, in the present state of general agitation, whoever disbelieves the least tittle of the enormous improbabilities which have been accumulated by these wretched reformers, is instantly hunted down, as one who would smother the discovery of the Plot. It is indeed an awful tempest; and, remote as we lie from its sphere, we must expect soon to feel ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... interest, I should not be afraid to ask concessions in favor of our West India trade. It would produce a great change of opinion as to us and our affairs. In the Assemblee des Notables, hard things were said of us. They were induced, however, in committing us to writing, to smother their ideas a little. In the notes, now gone to be printed, our debt is described in these words. "The twenty-first article of the account, formed of the interest of the claims of his majesty on the United States of America, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... danger in him: I observed him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion, which he could not smother. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; he remains Yet in our power; I, for my own part, wear ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... guide raised the rifle, took quick but careful aim, and fired. There was no puff of smoke, for the new high-powered, smokeless powder was used. Following the shot, there was a commotion in the water. Amid a smother ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... smother of flakes whirled down into the deserted streets and cutting short Grandfather Harling's story, the visitors bundled themselves into ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... Helen, run next door and see if you can borrow a large snow shovel," called Mrs. Brown. "Don't stop to tell them what it's for, or Bunny may smother." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... I distinguished, yet as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, As who beholds two ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... interesting, the doctor as much as the barber, the clergyman as much as the farmer. All men were children of God and citizens of the world. If he had a choice in the matter it was discrimination against the literary world itself with all the fads that tended to smother its essential humanity. Nothing would have induced him to discriminate against the suburban. In the last year of his life he wrote in the Autobiography: "I have lived in Beaconsfield from the time when it was almost a village, to the time when, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... hands shall do the deed—in gloves, however, for I know those books of old, and shall smother myself in sheets before I begin. I don't object to a few days' charing for a change," said Nan briskly. "I love rushing about in an apron, using my muscles instead of my brain, gathering all the ornaments together, and washing them in ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... attack is to smother the defense with a torrent of explosive shells, kept up incessantly for one or more days, and shatter the defense so they will offer but slight resistance to the infantry; then rush forward with the infantry and seize the positions while the enemy is demoralized, and consolidate them before reenforcements ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... shadow of a woman we cannot talk of, but who stands eternally between us two. Even in the first days of our passionate delirium I felt this viperous truth creeping under the roses with which we madly hoped to smother it. The thought grew and grew, like a parasite upon the heart. It clung to mine, bound it down, made it powerless. Oh, would to God the memory of that one night could be lifted from my soul! The presence of your brother here has brought ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

... but no power Had she the words to smother; And with a kind of shriek she cried, "Oh Christ! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... face turned to it? There was a steady pressure on Nathaniel's arm now, a warning, frightened pressure, and the hand that made it trembled. Jeekum feared the worst—but his fear was not greater than the chill of disappointment that came to smother the excited beating of Nathaniel's heart. What had the jailer meant to say? What did he know about Marion and Winnsome, and why had he given birth to new hope in the same breath that he ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... looked to see you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to "slay them in ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... Lord Fairholm said, "Master Holliday is a friend of mine, and will give you an honourable meeting when you will; but I should advise you to smother your choler. It seems he proved himself with a stick your superior, although armed with a sword, and Master Dalboy will tell you that it is better to leave ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... I can't help it—what would you do, Matthew? It blows like thunder: I can't tell how fast she's going,—I don't want to over-shoot the light, and then have to thrash back through such a smother of a sea." ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... widowed heart may love another— For living without love, it soon would die— There will be moments when it cannot smother Thy sweet remembrance with a passing sigh. Amidst the ashes of its dying embers For thee there will be found one deathless thought; Yes, dearest lady! while this heart remembers, Believe me, thou shall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... across Brook Cedron on the road from Shechem," the speaker replied, circumstantially, intending to smother doubt. "Each one of them rode a camel spotless white, and larger than any ever before ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... both dock and mooring—and all but the gables of the hotel, as well—but she soon espied the motor-boat standing away on a straight course for the mainland: driven at a speed that seemed to her nearly incredible, a smother of foam at its stern, long purple ripples widening away from the jet of white water at the stem, a smooth, high swell of dark water pursuing as if it meant to catch up and overwhelm the boat and its occupants. These latter occupied ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... gentleman of great fertility of imagination. Othello, we know, was actually performed, and went off tolerably well until the final scene, but then the nerves of the Frenchmen were put to a trial they could not by any possibility endure. The sight of a Moor and an Infidel, endeavouring to smother a lady and a Christian, so completely aroused all the gallant and religious sensibilities of the audience, that shouts of terrible, abominable, resounded from every part of the house, and Monsieur Othello was (theatrically) damned for his wickedness. As far as we know, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... this mysterious camp visitor I suddenly realized that in place of moccasin footprints I was following bear tracks, my heart ceased to beat for a moment or two before I could pull myself together and smother the prehensile footed superstitious old savage in me with the practical philosophy of the up-to-date ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... oil or grease fire, shut off the supply of whatever is burning. Then smother the flames with sand, earth, rugs, or other heavy materials. Don't ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... heedless of the gentleman's threatening look and wondering at his very evident perturbation; and now I saw that he grasped something half-hidden in the fold of his coat that bulked remarkably like a pistol. But all at once, as he peered at me through the rolling smother of dust, his apprehensive expression vanished and, next moment, his head also, and as I drew level with the chaise, I saw him leaning back in one corner, the pistol upon his knees, and in the other corner the form of a woman wrapped in a pelisse and heavily ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... Dan Hicks, will you leave that steamer alone? You've had your chance and failed to smother it. Now let me have ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris—she did not care if they were in Paris—if only the baby wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... felon's not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... food? Sleeping upon the snow-drift on the hill! Who heard him chide the blast, or say 'twas cold? His wounds are freezing! is the anguish told? Tell him his child was murdered with its mother! He seems like carved out stone that has no woe to smother. ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... the house, with a roar that shook the whole remaining fabric of the building, crashed to earth in an avalanche of stone and brick and flying slates, whilst the stairway upon which he had been standing gave a sickening lurch, rocked, and fell out sideways into the hall in a smother of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... always—Monsieur George with 'is big whip and 'is silly soft 'eart—ze gay dinners after we 'ave 'ad full 'ouse and ze no dinners at all when things go bad—and then ze journeys from town to town—sometimes it rain all day and sometimes it is so hot and the dust rise up and smother us. But always when we come near ze town we brighten up, we pretend we are not tired at all. We make jokes and wonder what it will be like 'ere. Always new faces—new streets—new policemen—and always ze same too—ze long procession and ze torchlights and ze music ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... may befall. Beware of looking back, but go on steadily, holding in mind the teaching that has been given thee. Be sure to enter every day anew into the garden of thy soul with the light of faith to pull up every thorn that might smother the seed of the teaching given thee, and to turn over the earth; that is, every day do thou divest thy heart. It is necessary to divest it over and over; for many a time I have seen people who seemed to have divested themselves, whom I have found ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... sha'n't be scolded. Mother, dear, if you only knew how sweet home looks after the Sheen Valley! Don't smother me any more, girls. I want to tell you something that will surprise you;" and Bessie, still holding her mother's hand, but looking at Hatty, gave a rapid and somewhat indistinct account of her meeting ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to recognise the misdeeds of his daughter," which signifies that at a given moment, Augustus could no longer feign ignorance of her sins, because the proofs were in the power of irreconcilable enemies, who would have refused to smother the scandal. These mortal enemies of Julia could have been no other than the friends of Tiberius. Julia had violated the law on adultery made by himself; Augustus could doubt it ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... from the other Indians. Some began frantically to recharge their muzzle-loading trade-guns; others dashed toward the spot as rapidly as paddle or moccasin could bring them. Haukemah himself roused valiantly to the defence, but was promptly upset and pounced upon by the enraged animal. A smother of spray enveloped the scene. Dick Herron rose suddenly to his feet and shot. The bear collapsed into the muddied water, his head doubled under, a thin stream of arterial blood stringing away down the current. Haukemah and his steersman ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... I find that holy writ in many places Hath semblance with this method, where the cases Do call for one thing, to set forth another; Use it I may, then, and yet nothing smother Truth's golden beams: nay, by this method may Make it cast forth its rays as light as day. And now before I do put up my pen, I'll shew the profit of my book, and then Commit both thee and it unto that Hand That pulls the strong down, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan

... My mother actually wanted him to stay on in the house—in her pink chintz room. Think of it! But he says houses smother him. I take it he's lived for years in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... pie, then?" cried Joel, trying to smother his disappointment, and finding it hard ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... same. The case was that, for all her headlong passion for deliverance, she could not help discovering now and then, through an occasional self assertion of that real good sense which her rampant and unsubjected benevolence could but overlay, not finally smother, that she was either doing nothing at all, or more evil ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out, for God's sake, take hur out where ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... communicated to the crown of the plant, and that means failure. Of late years I protect my plants by inverting small boxes over them. The sides of these boxes are bored full of holes to admit air, which must be allowed to circulate freely about the plant, or it will smother. I invert a box over the plant after filling it with leaves, and draw more leaves about the outside of it. This prevents water from coming in contact with the soft, sponge-like foliage, and the plant comes out in spring almost as green as it was ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... revolver, and I went under a bunk. There was going to be trouble; but that monstrous Holmes rose up, wobbling his double chins, and says he, 'Order, gentlemen; the first man that draws I'll lay down on him and smother him!' All quiet ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Thou of mine ancient kin! Thou of the swift will that no ponderings smother! The dumb life in me fumbles out to the shade Thou lurkest in. In vain—evasive ever through the glade Departing footsteps fail; And only where the grasses have been pressed, Or by snapped twigs I follow a fruitless trail. So—give ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... answer was a very faint one; for he thought of another warm, bright home that he knew very well; and that there was some one there, sitting in the old chair, and that the rug at her feet was empty, and he had to smother a bitter sob that arose, and hold himself very still, as a shivering feeling ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... cover Gwendolyn's mouth. But not to smother mirth. A startled cry had all but escaped her. A little bird! She knew of that bird! He had told things against her—true things more often than not—to Jane and Miss Royle. And now here he ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... women, if over-sentimental, and had transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... More and more and more. This is only a beginning. The insect world will rise on us, the plant world, the very fishes in the sea, will swamp and drown our ships. Tremendous growths will obscure and hide our houses, smother our churches, smash and destroy all the order of our cities, and we shall become no more than a feeble vermin under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its own begetting! And all for ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... or months. One evening on the threshold of December, Lisconnel was lying roofed over by a massy livid-black cloud, which came lumbering up and up interminably, and which the weatherwise estimated to contain as much snow as would smother the width of the world. The north wind moaned and keened dismally under the toil of wafting on this portentous load, and its breath was bitingly sharp, so that when the lads came in from the forge, their grandfather said, "Ah, Dan, shut over the door, for there's a blast ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... fruit so generously yields? Take of a pear all that is mellow, of a peach all that is luscious, of a strawberry all that is fragrant, of a plum all that is kindly, of an apricot all its aroma, of cream all its smoothness. Commingle with musk and honey, coriander and aniseed, smother with the scent of musk roses, blend with cider, and the mixture may convey a dim sense of some of the delectable qualities of one kind of mango. To do justice to the produce of the very next tree another list of triumphant excellences might be necessary. A first-class mango ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... for its seat at St. George's and for its glass of champagne and crumb of cake with gifts of gold and silver and precious stones enough to smother the tiny bride; but for once in a way it paid with a good heart, not merely in obedience to convention, but for the sake of participating in a unique and delightful scene, a touching ceremony, the plighting of ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... Mdlle. C—— C—— as an honest man nor as a libertine. I could not hope to obtain her hand, and I almost fancied I would stab anyone who advised me to seduce her. I felt that I wanted some diversion: I went to the gaming-table. Playing is sometimes an excellent lenitive to calm the mind, and to smother the ardent fire of love. I played with wonderful luck, and I was going home with plenty of gold, when in a solitary narrow street I met a man bent down less by age than by the heavy weight of misery. As I came near him I recognized ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... own peace of mind she had tried to smother her dislike of him and he was very careful to avoid any topic that would rekindle it. They washed the dishes together, and from that hour their relations, to all outward appearance, were friendly or at least ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... that little boy of his that they have in the house, and treat no better than if he were a dog, knows he is there, and goes and looks at him, and calls to him, and cries about him whenever he dares. And you sit here, in your great house, with your carpets and chairs, that half smother you, and your looking-glasses and your fine clothes, and don't start to your feet when I tell you this. I tell you if God doesn't damn everybody who is responsible for this wickedness, then there is no ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... trying to smother broke out then, and was so infectious, Prue could not help joining her, even before she knew the cause of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... cracks till it spread over the solid ice, forming pools and sheets covered with treacherous ice-skins. Wet feet are fatal to man and beast, and they made laborious detours, wallowing trails through tangled willows waist deep in the snow smother, or clinging precariously to the overhanging bluffs. As they reached the river's source the sky blackened suddenly, and great clouds of snow rushed over the bleak hills, boiling down into the valley with a furious draught. They ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... roused and jealous, that he was compelled to abandon Spain, and reluctantly to sign a treaty of amity with France and England. A general armistice was agreed upon for seven years. The King of Spain, thus abandoned by the emperor, was also compelled to smother his indignation and to roll back his artillery into the arsenals. Thus this black cloud of war, which threatened all Europe with desolation, was apparently dispelled. This treaty, which seemed to restore peace ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... to a woodlouse—"Thou art certainly my brother; I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole; And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother, In the colours shaded off thee, the suggestions ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Carthage to keep comradeship with that terrible fellow, Decius Magius? Have care! have care lest the gods strike through me, their servant. Nevertheless the gods are merciful to those who bring offerings—peace-offerings of gold and jewels and raiment and spices. Come, what will you give me that I smother their wrath—I, Iddilcar, your friend, whom you speak ill of behind his back—whom you hate—-yes, both of you;" and his eyes flashed at Marcia with a strange recklessness that she had ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... no use," they screamed. "We did not know soon enough, and now it is too late; we should smother if we ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... him justice, seemed trying to smother his grief; and, in the meanwhile, the two girls had been spreading a pure white cloth on a neighboring rock, cutting fruit plates out of the thick mangoe leaves, cooling the Rockhouse malaga in the brook, and giving to the repast an air of elegance and refinement which had the effect of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... has a slight headache," Mary answered, giving me a warning look. "I am delegated to be lady of the manor this evening." She looked so adorable as she curtsied to us that I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to grab her in my arms and smother her with kisses, but remembering what she had done to me once when I yielded ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... to Katie that what life needed was a saner gardener. Not a gardener who would smother new shoots with a lot of dead things telling how shoots ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... woman, whom my father has chosen for me; whom I expect here to-morrow? And must I, then, be told 'tis criminal to love my poor, deserted Mary, because our hearts are illicitly attach'd? Illicit for the heart? fine phraseology! Nature disowns the restriction; I cannot smother her dictates with the polity of governments, and fall in, or out of love, as the ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... Gregor[vc]i['c] and A[vs]kerc, both of them priests. The former, being of a mild disposition, bowed before the storm; but A[vs]kerc wrote a cutting satire on his critic. The Austrians, disapproving of his religious and patriotic activities, thought they would smother him by this appointment to a rather out-of-the-way diocese. But his influence spread far beyond it, and in the islands he was so solicitous for the people's material welfare that, for example, he founded savings-banks, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... with every circumstance of time and place and incident; and openly proclaiming, with no reserve, suppression, passion, or concealment; all the truth. The truth, which nothing would keep down; which blood would not smother, and earth would not hide; the truth, whose terrible inspiration seemed to change dotards into strong men; and on whose avenging wings, one whom he had supposed to be at the extremest corner of the earth came swooping ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... to us by the watermen, who then shoved off. There was a nice little off-shore breeze a-blowing, and soon after nine we were clear of the harbor and sailing quietly along, the sea smooth and the moon rising red out of a smother of mist. Mr. Robinson came on deck and looked aloft to see what sail was made; I was at the tiller, and stepping up to me, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... does in this happy form of words, 'Mourir d'amour me font belle Marquise vos beaux yeux'. I defy anybody to say more; and yet I would advise nobody to say that, and I would recommend to you rather to smother and conceal your passion entirely than to reveal it in these words. Seriously, this holds in everything, as well as in that ludicrous instance. The French, to do them justice, attend very minutely to the purity, the correctness, and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another: Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whizzing through the air: Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... "They have everything but the kitchen sink in them, including enough oxygen to sustain combustion even under water or in a vacuum. Not enough oxygen to make wax explode, like powder, but enough to keep it burning. Chemical extinguishers are all smothering agents, and you just can't smother a wax fire. And water's worse ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of mere scepticism, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... starless, with a darkness so enveloping that it seems to possess palpability. As we reel westward in a smother of water the miracle of how any human being equipped with but five senses can find and keep his course in the chartless void that envelops ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... into knots of tens, twenties, thirties, gesticulating and speaking aloud, like freemen in anger. And ere William, with all his prompt dissimulation, could do more than smother his rage, and sit griping his sword hilt, and setting his teeth, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... present, what do you do? You buy us a sealskin or a diamond-ring. Is that what you think we want? Perhaps some of you have a wife who only wants such things, and who cares for nothing else so much. If so, give them to her. If her higher nature is satisfied with plush, let her have it. Smother her in sealskins, weigh her down to earth with jewels. But the rest of us? What are ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thundrous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... God; and I choose deliberately to expose myself to those severe censures which the haughty but empty scorn of infidelity, or principles nearly approaching it, and effectually doing its pernicious work, may very probably dictate upon the occasion, rather than to smother a relation, which may, in the judgment of my conscience, be like to conduce so much to the glory of God, the honour of the gospel, and the good of mankind. One thing more I will only premise, that I hope none who have heard the colonel himself speak something of this wonderful scene, will ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... this is Hell—and in this smother All are damnable and damned; Each one damning, damns the other; They are damned by one another, 220 By none ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... you sat on his feet, the other on his head. At that moment the lady, you know who, in a black dress, who had arranged with you beforehand the part she would take in the crime, came in from the passage. She picked up the pillow, and proceeded to smother him with it. During the struggle, the light went out. The woman took a box of Swedish matches out of her pocket and lighted the candle. Isn't that right? I see from your face that what I say is true. Well, to proceed. . . . Having ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... of the task had suddenly become increased, for the pad seemed to become an animate thing. Now it appeared to retreat into the distance, and again it came floating back until it seemed about to smother her. There was a droning note in her ears; the words spoken by the other two ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... example, the practical affairs of life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the light of common day; and then comes Theseus with his dogs to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... thing, what a sad fate has yours been; do not hide your face again from your poor little boy and us; dear me, what a weight it is; one would almost smother beneath its folds." ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... ought to go out in some vessel which was not so encumbered with troops, so that they might remain on the main-deck; but they replied, that the invoices were made out and could not be altered. But now to act. My idea is to keep the hatches on, so as to smother it if possible." ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the most withering denunciations as wrongheaded sceptics who won't even believe what is printed—and in a Dutch history too! As the captain dispenses the pie, however, at dinner, I have found it advisable to smother my convictions as to the veracity of his Teutonic historian, and join him in denouncing that pernicious heretic Bush, who is wise beyond what is written. Result—Bush gets only one small piece of pie, and I get two, which of course is highly gratifying to my feelings, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... position, moving himself clear of his shelter. A hell of suffering was endured in the process, and the sweat poured out afresh upon his forehead. He gritted his teeth with superlative determination and flung back the dreadful faintness seeking to smother his powers. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... tried to comfort her; she would not hear even the soothing words of Sigurd, whom Gudrun had sent to her, saying scornfully, however, as he went: "Give her red gold, forsooth, and smother up her grief ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... the wires on poles and roof-tops. They had done this, not because it was cheap, but because it was the only possible way, so far as any one knew in that kindergarten period. A telephone wire required the daintiest of handling. To bury it was to smother it, to make it dull or perhaps entirely useless. But now that the number of wires had swollen from hundreds to thousands, the overhead method had been outgrown. Some streets in the larger cities had become black with wires. Poles had risen to fifty ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... "were my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed all my plans, and instigated her husband ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, they hand yuh your check, an', ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... swear first and covenant on thy part That speaking, acting, thou wilt stand prepared To give me succor; for I judge amiss, Or he who rules the Argives, the supreme 95 O'er all Achaia's host, will be incensed. Wo to the man who shall provoke the King For if, to-day, he smother close his wrath, He harbors still the vengeance, and in time Performs it. Answer, therefore, wilt thou save me? 100 To whom Achilles, swiftest of the swift. What thou hast learn'd in secret from the God That speak, and boldly. By the son of Jove, Apollo, whom thou, Calchas, seek'st in ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... fact, of all weeds, is to prevent their leaves from growing and making starch and digesting food for them. This is accomplished by constantly cutting off the young shoots as soon as they appear above the soil, or by growing some crop that will smother them. The constant effort to make new growth will soon exhaust the supply of stored food and the weed ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... becomes of acts of holy fear, and of the virtue of hope? If a mother were to abuse the doctor who had restored her child to life, would it not excite a strong suspicion that it was she herself who had attempted to smother it? Did not she who said to Solomon: Let it be divided,[2] show herself to be the false mother? They who are so much attached to servile fear can have no real desire to attain to that holy, pure, loving, reverent fear which leads to everlasting ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... fingered tenderfoot, you couldn't find your way five hundred yards in this country without a guide or a compass. Now, sir, I'm running this outfit and if you have any protests against my cowardly inhumanity I advise you to smother them in your manly breast, or, by hell! I'll ship you out on the first wagon to-morrow morning and let you report to Greenfield that you were fired because you didn't know your work yourself and hadn't intelligence enough to ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... as thy tip-toe steps the mazes rove, A laugh, half-smother'd, thy pleas'd ear shall meet, And, sportive in the charming wiles of love, Betray the artifice ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... fallen on my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It was a miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the forebits. It's clear that I meant business, because I was holding him by the throat still when they picked us up. He was black ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... battery and shock the devil. Another said he believed that devils had an aversion for blue lights, and thought that if they would let a blue light shine on him, he would leave. Another said, give the woman a bath of mud, let her be covered all over with soft mud, and this will smother the devil. Still another suggested that the woman be sent away from home to another climate, he thinking the devil might not like the change, and so leave the woman. Hundreds of other suggestions were offered and tried, but none of them succeeded in driving this devil ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter

... barricades. She has courage and force, and the need of some big thing in her life to bring out her best. And Porter doesn't need that kind of wife. He doesn't want it. He wants to worship. To kneel at her feet and look up to her. He would require nothing of her. He would smother her with tenderness. And she doesn't want to be smothered. She wants to lift up her head and face the ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... country people inclined to shield the murderer. The best of them would have sold his own father to the guillotine for half the reward offered by Livingstone, for he lavished as much gold in trying to clear up that crime as in old days the Cenci or Colonna did to smother theirs. At length we were forced to give it up, and returned home in the Petrel. I own I despaired of ever being more successful; but my companion evidently had not done so, for I heard him, more than once, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... disliked hastening its victory at the expense of bad feeling. He was shrewd, practical—maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the distrust of the conservative, he would appear to retract and try to smother the flames in a cloud of conciliatory smoke. Only the restraining hand of Lincoln prevented him from committing fatal blunders at the outset of the Civil War, yet his handling of the threatening episode of the French in Mexico showed a wisdom, a patient tact, and a subtle ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... flowers;—sapient end to a life of sapience! 'Of their doings in this world,' said he, 'you may form some idea from their injunctions with reference to the next. These are they who will pay a long price for an entree; whose floors are sprinkled with wine and saffron and spices; who in midwinter smother themselves in roses, ay, for roses are scarce, and out of season, and altogether desirable; but let a thing come in its due course, and oh, 'tis vile, 'tis contemptible. These are they whose drink is of costly essences.' He had no mercy on them here. 'Very bunglers ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... reader! The lifeboat, close reefed, flies to the rescue on the wings of the storm into the furious seas which revel and rage on the Goodwins. Her fifteen men dauntlessly face the wild smother. She sinks ponderously in the trough of a great roller, and the anchor fluke is driven right through her bottom and holds her to the place—for hold her it would, long enough to let the breakers tear every ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... appraise her lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know." She chuckled, uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him, always, a desire to smother it with kisses. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... cannot do without you—that's the discovery I made. I have been lonely—lonely for this broad prairie and you. The Old Country seemed to stifle me; everything is so little and crowded and bunched up, and so dark and foggy—it seemed to smother me. I longed to hear the whirr of prairie chickens and see the wild ducks dipping in the river; I longed to hear the sleighs creaking over the frosty roads; and so I've come home to all this—and you, Martha," He came nearer and ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... became deeply attached to her. But as soon as Sir Stewkley became aware of this love affair, he gave it his decided disapproval. Lieutenant Sharp was forbidden the house, and Miss Shuckburgh resolved to smother her love in deference to her father's wishes. It was accordingly decided between the young people that their intimacy should cease, and that the letters which had passed between them should be returned. ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... they are "of the order Diptera," "sub-order Nemocera," and chiefly "of the family Culicidae," and he also goes so far as to tell us that they "annoy man." As we bump along in the muskeg and the creatures surround us in a smother, he ventures to assert that "the life of the adult insect is very short" and that it is the female who stings. The Doctor is a born instructor. We learn that "the natural food of the mosquito is a drop or two of ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... moulder in the cave is proof enough, of itself, that none survived to bury the dead. I am inclined to believe, from the appearance of the place, that smoke could scarcely have been the real agent of destruction; then, as now, it would have taken a great deal of pure smoke to smother a Highlander. It may be perhaps deemed more probable, that the huge fire of rafter and roof-tree piled close against the opening, and rising high over it, would draw out the oxygen within as its proper food, till at length all would ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... mouth, then backed slowly out of the way of the team. Sometimes, in a thicker press, an animal wheeled close to the tires and, stemming the current, sounded a protest. But the young horses, less playful now, divided the great herd and came at last safely out of the smother. The road began to lift, as they rounded the first rampart of the range, and Tisdale's glance fell to her hands. "Those gloves are done for, as I expected," he exclaimed. "I'll wager your palms are blistered. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... awaits; trouble shall smother in the cup. We shall make this night one for memory. I have a chateau in the Cevennes, and it shall be yours till all ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... planted his two feet on his breast while he lowered his head, licking the boy's face all over with his tongue. This made the boy furious but he could do nothing as the goat was heavy, and with his weight on his chest he thought he would smother. ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... he whispered, reassuringly, passing his arm unchidden about her slight waist. "Don't be frightened, dear! It wasn't a man cut in half. It was the upper half of a man who was wiggling down into a tunnel hidden by that smother of underbrush .... And here I was just wondering why people should bother to come all the way through this path, instead of skirting the woods! ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... girl staring at her through the railings stopped a minute to laugh, covering both hands over her mouth to smother the sound. "The perlice can go everywheres they want to. I guess some of 'em's ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... most commonly used word has therefore been chosen; for instance, "mercury", "tranquil", "diaphanous", "suffocate", "salve", "renown", "fiddle", are not to be found, but "quicksilver", "calm", "translucent", "smother", ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... chief item in a system of poultry keeping that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly proven, but most poultrymen ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... the baby from him and throws it into the cellar] Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! [Pushes Nikta down] It's your doing, and you ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... how he managed to smother the cry that sprang to his lips, but smother it he did. In a second he was at the door, his knees trembling, his mind in ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... It was rather slow work sitting in the dark for a couple of hours, not speaking a word or daring to move a toe. The fire got low, but we dared not make it up; and of course we both had awful desires to sneeze and cough—you always do at such times—and half killed ourselves in our efforts to smother them. We could hear the cabs and omnibuses in Fleet Street keeping up a regular roar; but no footsteps came near us, except once when a telegraph boy (as we guessed by his shrill whistling and his smart step) came and dropped a telegram into the box. I assure ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... me with a sense of helplessness. I like to see a race when it is possible, and I can always keep a kind of picture of a horse in my eye. Well, I have known a very enthusiastic gentleman say, "The Bard, sir, The Bard; the big horse, the mighty bay. He'll smother 'em all." I modestly said, "Do you think he is big enough?" "Big enough! a giant, sir! Mark my words, sir, you'll see Bob Peck's colours in triumph on the bay." I mildly said: "I thought The Bard was a very little one ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... there is even an interest about them that makes my feelings bound joyfully when I recur them. Can it be aught but the fruit of natural affection? I think not; and yet I am compelled to disown them, and even to smother with falsehood the rancour that might find a place in Franconia's bosom. Clotilda loves Annette with a mother's fondness; but with all her fondness for her child she dare not love me, nor I ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... large, and it refused to see the good results which could be reasonably expected from such a system of self-denial. As the older members, also, of Friends' Society were opposed to all exciting discussions, and to popular movements generally, while the younger ones could not smother a natural interest in the great reforms of the day; it followed that, although all were opposed to slavery in the abstract, there was no fixed principle of action among them. In their ranks were all sorts: ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... speak of the good people, of course. With the bourgeoisie it's different. They work and take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If I hadn't money—they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment—Anne Marie de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any wonder that I look upon what's done for my own ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... shorten sail, and they had to run to their stations; and as they did so, I crawled out and succeeded in reaching my bunk, into which I tumbled unperceived. I was far from comfortable, however, fearing that that very night they might smother me—the mode I fancied they would take to put me out ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... were disastrous. The whole island was strown with volcanic ashes, which, where they did not smother the grass outright, gave it a poisonous taint. The cattle that ate of it were attacked by a murrain, of which great numbers died. The ice and snow, which had gathered about the mountain for a long period of time, were wholly melted by the ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not moved; ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... eaves o'erbrim,— Deep drifts smother the paths below; The elms are shrouded, trunk and limb, And all the air is dizzy and dim With a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... in a deep trough, the wind struck at her, bows on. With the gale suddenly spilled out of them, the topsails lashed and shivered, and the fore broke loose with the sharp report of a gunshot and disappeared aft in the smother. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... our way, scarcely occurs to our thoughts; and when some secret misgivings begin to be felt on this head, company soon drowns, amusements dissipate, or habitual occupations insensibly displace or smother the rising apprehension. Professional and commercial men perhaps, especially when they happen to be persons of more than ordinary reflection, or of early habits of piety not quite worn away, easily quiet ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... the maids?" while Miss Pert opposite was labouring with all her might to smother the laugh she dared ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... of that tangle, all of you," ordered Tom Craig, after pulling himself out of the squirming heap of boys. "It's against the rules to smother the referee to death. He has ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... The strange egg was only just perceptibly larger than the others, yet, in three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature in which she would seem ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... of the smother of snow Sucatash came driving, head bent and hat brim pulled down to avoid the snow. The road was easy enough and he thought of nothing but getting along with all the speed possible. He did not notice that his horse, when emerging onto the bench, broke its stride ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... but many another spring must pass before the ambitious ivy climbs to smother the gray granite walls, before the stripling trees grow stately, before the lawn is sturdy enough to withstand the crab grass and the students. Anecdote and apocrypha have yet to evolve into hallowed tradition. The walks ways are bare of bronze plaques because there ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... lived," murmured Harvey, unable to smother his feelings, "there was one who read my heart, and oh! what a consolation to return from my secret marches of danger, and the insults and wrongs that I suffered, to receive his blessing and his praise; ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... to say was never finished. Falkner's powerful arms had gripped his head and throat in a vise-like clutch from which no smother of sound escaped, and three or four minutes later, when the second man came through the door, he found his comrade flat on his back, bound and gagged, and the shining muzzles of two short and murderous-looking revolvers leveled ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... an iron coffin, from which all escape was impossible. An angel drew near, and laid her soft, fine hand upon my coffin, my wounds were healed, my youth revived, and I dared hope in happiness and a future. At first, I would not confess this to myself. At first, I thought to smother this new birth of my heart in the mourning veil of my past experience; but my heart was like a giant in his first manhood, and cast off all restraint; like Hercules in his cradle, he strangled the serpents which were hissing around him. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... came down the gangway again, half followed by some one who seemed to be ordering him. His boat then shoved off for the barquentine. The man-of-war got under way again by swinging her great mainyard smartly about. The smother at her bows gleamed whiter at the very instant, as she gathered way. It was a blessed sight to me, after my suspense, I assure you; but I did not understand it till later. I learned later on that Captain Barlow was one of a kind of men very common in those troublous times. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... not death in fieri, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, more so than if the suicide's own ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... that whilst all these things are true, there is yet a solemn possibility that men—even good men—may stifle and smother and shroud their light. You can do, and I am afraid a very large number of you do do, this; by two ways. You can bury the light of a holy character under a whole mountain of inconsistencies. If one were to be fanciful, one might say that the bushel or meal-chest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... surprise and delight, even to the most experienced voyager. It is an extremely beautiful and varied coast. In the foreground, only a rifle-shot away across the blue undulating floor of the Caribbean, rises a long terraced mesa, fronting on the sea, with its rocky base in a white smother of foaming surf, and its level summit half hidden by a drooping fringe of dark-green chaparral and vines. Over the cyclopean wall of this mesa appear the rounded tops of higher and more distant foot-hills, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... forward, (as is always the case in pulling,) and the captain, who was steering, was not looking ahead, when, all at once, we heard the spout of a whale directly ahead. "Back water! back water, for your lives!" shouted the captain; and we backed our blades in the water and brought the boat to in a smother of foam. Turning our heads, we saw a great, rough, hump-backed whale, slowly crossing our fore foot, within three or four yards of the boat's stem. Had we not backed water just as we did, we should inevitably have gone smash upon him, striking him ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali, and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her eyes shone. Ali looked at both, and ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... will cover you; overcoat, blanket, rug, wrap it tightly around you at the neck first to prevent flames from burning the face and lie down and roll over and over. This will smother the flames quickly. If you can get nothing to wrap around you, lie down and roll slowly over and beat the fire with your hands covered by some part of your ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... the girl urged him on. It was the time of night when she had started to run away, and the same apprehension that filled her then came upon her with the evening. She longed to be out of the land which held the man she feared. She would rather bury herself in the earth and smother to death than be caught by him. But, as they rode on, she told her companion much of the habits of the curious little creatures they had seen; and then, as the night settled down upon them, she pointed out the dark, ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... and much esteemed, Di's ankles, that the clover seemed Inclined to smother: It twitched, and soon untied (for fun) The ribbons of her shoes, first ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... ranch was an island of stillness. Within the high guarding fence, the long low buildings lay quiet and were [illegible] brushed periodically by the light from the watch-beacon high overhead as it swept its shaft over the jungle smother and then around over the black glassy surface of the Great Briney Lake, bordering the ranch enclosure on the fourth side. And, vigilantly, the eyes of three ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... into the very jaws of the sea. A shuddering pause . . . and then, with a stunning crash, the whole devouring mass bursts full on deck. The stricken Victoria reels under the terrific shock, and then lies dead another anxious minute, utterly helpless, her {124} deck awash with a smother of foaming water, and her crew apparently drowned. But presently her stern emerges through the dark, green-grey after-shoulder of the wave. She responds to the lift of the mighty barrel with a gallant effort to shake herself free. She rises, dripping from stem to stern. Her sails refill and draw ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... poet to a woodlouse—"Thou art certainly my brother; I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole; And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother, In the colours shaded off thee, the suggestions ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... passage aged sixteen, a cruel young monster filled with rebellion and immorality, not educated at all, but full of the sense of vague failures, having in common with those of my years, all the levels of puerile understanding, stung with patronage and competitive strife, designed to smother that which was ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... was one of the loveliest children on whom human eye ever rested. Did it ever cross the minds of that father and mother that the kindest deed they could have done to that darling child would have been to smother him in his cradle? Had the roll of his life been held up before them at that moment, they would have counted only thirty-seven years, written within and without in lamentation, and mourning, ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... hotel table, to the private gentleman's choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that gifted place at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the morning. It is good: it is superabundant—and there is nothing to pay. Find me speaking ill of such a country! When I do, pone me pigris campis: smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me! At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a better was never eaten at Marseilles: and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word; on the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of my burning breast, Break out at length and to the clouds aspire, Urging the heavens to afford me rest; But let my body naturally descend Into the bowels of our common mother, And to the very centre let it wend, When it no lower can, her griefs to smother! And yet when I so low do buried lie, Then shall my love ascend ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... who was literally "without a single real," was forced at last to smother his pride in the matter of the tenth penny. On the 24th June, he summoned the estates of Holland to assemble on the 15th of the ensuing month. In the missive issued for this purpose, he formally agreed to abolish the whole tax, on condition that the estates-general of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... devil Thy melancholy. The fire burns well; What need we keep a stirring of 't, and make A greater smother? Thou wilt kill Antonio? ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... hesitated, then she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... spectacle of such incredible labour. Suddenly a column of fire, deep orange at the core, raying through paler yellow to a palpitating white brilliancy, shot up through the torn vapours, the massed and shuddering smoke, to the clouds, and was sharply withdrawn in a coppery smother pierced by a rapid, lance-like ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... they are not convincing, because they appear to be—what they have a doubtful right to be in reality—studied. Have you ever seen a speaker use such grotesque gesticulations that you were fascinated by their frenzy of oddity, but could not follow his thought? Do not smother ideas with gymnastics. Savonarola would rush down from the high pulpit among the congregation in the duomo at Florence and carry the fire of conviction to his hearers; Billy Sunday slides to base on the platform carpet in dramatizing one of his ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... fry as Faguets, Marinetti, e tutti quanti. They are people who have something for their own age and nothing for any other, and their own age is pretty sure to prefer them to any great man it may produce but fail to smother: they are adored and duly forgotten. They must come forward as the critics and guides of society; whether they declare their messages in prose or verse, in novels, histories, speeches, essays, or philosophical treatises is of no consequence. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... regret we sought not to smother— Kind Earl, dear Countess were called to depart; But thoughtfully, kindly, the fair Queen our mother, Sends the son of her choice, the child of her heart. There is a stir, a bustle, a humming, ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... not so very long Since other voices blended With the carol and the song! If we could but hear them singing, As they are singing now, If we could but see the radiance Of the crown on each dear brow; There would be no sigh to smother, No hidden tear to flow, As we listen in the starlight To the bells ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... first he was regarded with aversion, as an intruder upon their sanctuary and love. The dislike was mutual, for, though Price concealed his feelings, there rankled in his breast an enmity which he could not smother. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... of tons of ice underfoot, it could be so hot. But we took the loads right through to the head of the glacier that day, rising some four thousand feet in the course of five miles, and cached them there. On other days a smother of mist lay all over the glacier surface, with never a breath of wind, and the air seemed warm and humid as in an Atlantic coast city in July. Yet again, starting early in the morning, sometimes a zero temperature nipped toes and fingers and a keen wind cut like a knife. Sometimes it was bitterly ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... "and, Miss Leavenworth, it is this thing which makes your cousin's position absolutely dangerous. It is a fact that, left unexplained, must ever link her name with infamy; a bit of circumstantial evidence no sophistry can smother, and no denial obliterate. Only her hitherto spotless reputation, and the efforts of one who, notwithstanding appearances, believes in her innocence, keeps her so long from the clutch of the officers of justice. That key, and the silence preserved by her in regard to it, is sinking her ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... well-learned is his mother, but that e'en her feet are blind Down the path that she cannot escape from: nay oft is she nothing, he saith, Save a staff for the foredoomed staying, and a sword for the ordered death; And that he will be wiser than this, nor thrust his desire aside, Nor smother the flame of his hatred; but the steed of the Norns will he ride, Till he see great marvels and wonders, and leave great tales to be told: And measureless pride is in him, a stern heart, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... He knows; he understands, little as he says. He grew up on a farm himself; he told me once that he could never smother the longing to get back to one. Poor Uncle Thomas, chained to a mahogany desk, with a Persian rug under his feet! That one little trip across the water, when the family went last year, was the only vacation he had taken in five years. And he came ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... be shaken? THE PASSION OF FREEDOM is one of the rarest of spiritual flames, and it can not be quenched. Make your appeal to history. Again and again militarism has sought to crush it, but it has seemed to share the very life of God. Brutal inspirations have tried to smother it, but it has breathed an indestructible life. Study its energy in the historical records of the Book or in annals of a wider field. Study the passion of freedom amid the oppressions of Egypt, or in the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... to him by degrees. He shifted himself uneasily, as though he would have been glad to smother himself beneath the bedclothes, was it not for lack of resolution. A whipped hound never presented a ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... you shall, and this very day," cried the maiden, cheerfully. "Why, there's that dress. I can't make up my mind whether to have magenter or liliac, both being suited to my complexion. Not that it's cream of the valley smother in rosebuds as yours is, my angel, but a dress I must have, and your pa can't deny ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... comes along and closes her wicket with a bang and cuts her off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come only as shrieks from a lost soul in an underground dungeon. He also threatens to cut us off and smother us if we don't shut up. I wonder whether they've got her in ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... who the next moment passed from the enjoyment of the beautiful in nature to the grotesque; for he covered his lips with one hand to smother a laugh, and pointed with the other to a huge square patch of drugget laboriously stitched upon the back of the solid-looking trousers to strengthen them for sitting upon the thwart of a boat, a rock, or a bush of furze, which, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... dry and tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless medium that would smother it. And just beyond the edge of the hard sand, following the long curves of the wash, lay a dark, narrow line of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... addicted to uncontrollable fits of laughter at improper seasons, was so tickled at some sotto voce remark of Frederick Delaval's, that she burst into a hearty ringing laugh, which, ere she could smother its noise with her handkerchief, had startled the watchful ears of the monarch ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... brother denied me art to contemplate: I have strength to perform any honorable exploit, but no liberty to accomplish my virtuous endeavors: those good parts that God hath bestowed upon me, the envy of my brother doth smother in obscurity; the harder is my fortune, and the ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... show their heads, break in the leaves upon them to keep off the sun and rain; it will both harden and whiten them.—NOVEMBER. Weed the crops of spinach, and others that were sown late, or the wild growth will smother and starve the crop. Dig up a border under a warm wall, and sow some carrots for spring; sow radishes in a similar situation, and let the ground be dug deep for both. Turn the mould that was trenched and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... table and speak to some of the distinguished guests that surrounded him. The thing which puzzled me was his grave, sedate demeanor, dignified, almost austere at times. A man, I thought, might grow a beard and dye it, but how could he grow a different set of manners, how smother his jollity, how ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "The standard smother-out technique," Verkan Vall grinned. "I only heard a little talk about the 'Flying Saucers', and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... that laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might so easily conceal itself from us, or ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... while the Posy Lass was drivin' off shore before an easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the fo'mast, ex-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes. And five raw potaters was all they had to eat ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... But the Marchesa! She will now receive her child—she will press it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's arms have taken it from the stranger—another's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyes—those ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the baby from him and throws it into the cellar). Be quick and smother it, and then it won't be alive! (Pushes NIKITA down.) It's your doing, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... to take command of that capital. He received also instructions to undertake, either by himself or by his captains, the conquest of the countries towards the south, forming part of Chili. Almagro, since his arrival at Caxamalca, had seemed willing to smother his ancient feelings of resentment towards his associate, or, at least, to conceal the expression of them, and had consented to take command under him in obedience to the royal mandate. He had even, in his despatches, the magnanimity to make honorable ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... tumultuous With song. The woodpecker knocks, And the song-sparrow trills, Every fir, and cedar, and yew Has a nest or a bird, It is quite absurd To hear them cutting across each other: Peewits, and thrushes, and larks, all at once, And a loud cuckoo is trying to smother A wood-pigeon perched on a birch, "Roo—coo—oo—oo—" "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! That's one for you!" A blackbird whistles, how sharp, how shrill! And the great trees toss And leaves blow down, You can almost ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... speechless amazement at this revelation of his supreme conceit, his reckless vanity. Anxiety alone prompted me to smother my resentment, hoping thus ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... Marry'd are, invited be To Labours, Christnings, where the Jollitry Of Women lies in telling, as some say, When 'twas they did at Hoity-Toity play; Whose Husband's Yard is longest, whilst another Can't in the least her great Misfortune smother, So tells, her Husband's Bauble is so short, That when he Hunts, he never shews her Sport. Now I, because I have my Maiden-head, Mayn't know the Pastimes of the Nuptial Bed; But mayn't I quickly do as Marry'd People may, I'll either kill my self, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various

... tent—and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep at last, and undressing, waded into the ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... conversation at such a momentous crisis would have riveted the attention of the most indifferent. And the fact really was that I dared not speak now, so intense was the excitement for fear lest my uncle should smother me in his first joyful embraces. But he became so urgent that I was at last ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... was up at last. We recognized that. When smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke out in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... while Nan loitered on the bridge, gazing at the wild beauty of the scene—the sombre cove where the inrushing waves broke in a smother of spume on the beach, and above, to the left, the wind-scarred, storm-beaten crag rising sheer and wonderful out of the turbulent sea and crowned by those ancient walls about which clung so much ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... voice." Vergilius could hear its owner moving away in the darkness. Fearful possibilities had begun to suggest themselves to the new convert. Now had he the flinty heart and the cunning mind of his fathers. The darkness had begun to smother and ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... hardly call this canvas-flap a front-door," I said, "but I think it would be better to leave it open; otherwise we should smother. You need not be afraid. I shall keep my gun here by my bedside, and if any one offers to come in, I'll bring him to a full ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... thats a fresh air feend. His name is Angus MacKenzie. Hes Scotch. Hes so close himself that he has to have lots of air or hed smother. Every nite he pulls up the side of the tent by his bed. No one likes fresh air in its place better than me, Mable, but when its as fresh as this air is its place ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter

... Atlantic water came aboard. She was a sound ship, though, and Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands. Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray. From the binnacle amidships to the weather wing of the bridge was his dominion, while the watch officer straddled down to leeward; both with eyes boring at the darkness ahead and on either beam, where there came and went ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... cool our parched tongues. Anxiety was depicted in every visage, and our spirits were clouding like the heavens over them. Capt. Hilton, whose sickness and debility had been increased by fatigue and hunger, could no longer smother the feelings that were struggling within.—The quivering lip, the dim eye, the pallid cheek, all told us, as plainly as human expression could tell, that the last ray of that hope which had supported ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... forefinger. There was little consolation in the thought that a mile lay between him and shelter, but it was a relief to know that he would have the wind at his back. Darkness was settling over the land. The lofty hills seemed to be closing in as if to smother the breath out of this insolent adventurer who walked alone among them. He was an outsider. He did not belong there. He came from the lowlands and he was an ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... and deeper. Opponents of Rome who had risen up against her in other quarters, on other grounds, and with other weapons, now ranged themselves upon his side. Among all alike the ardour of battle grew the more powerful and violent, the more it was attempted to smother them with edicts of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... these rumours calls for a report from the minister, on the state of the kingdom." M. d'Argenson was not only defeated in his object, and interrupted in his speech, but he was expressly called to order for having alluded to facts unfortunately too certain, but which the Government wished to smother up by silencing all ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the old nurse, stood behind her chair; the oil was richly scented that she burned; the single light illumined only her, and covered with her shadow the low ceiling,—a shadow that seemed to hang above her like a pall ready to fall from ghostly fingers and smother her in its folds; the others lounged about the room and waited on her pen, in gloom they, their faces gleaming from that dusk demoniacly. It was a concealed room, entered by secret ways, unknown to others ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... years, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probability of a collapse intensified. I knew indeed now, even as Willersley had prophesied five years before, that I was entangling myself in something that might smother all my uses in the world. Down there among those incommunicable difficulties, I was puzzled and blundering. I was losing my hold upon things; the chaotic and adventurous element in life was spreading upward and getting the better ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... violent glare disclosed a body, entangled in a cloak, rolling about helplessly between land and water, as it were. I dashed on in the dark; a wave went over my head as I stooped, nearly waist-deep, groping. His rotary motion, in that smother, made it extremely difficult to obtain any sort of hold. A little more, and he would have knocked my legs from under me, but it was as if my grim determination were by itself of a saving nature. He submitted to being hauled up the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... something else it hadn't ought to. It was a 'now you see it, and now you don't see it,' kind of a room; and I seemed to be foldin' and unfoldin' most of the time. Then the ceilin' was so low that you could hardly get the cover off the soap dish. I felt all the while as if I should smother. My! but I was glad to get home and get ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... narrowest home relations. On top of this, an empty and hollow formality, meant as a substitute for education and culture, turned existence, that of woman in particular, into a veritable treadmill. Thus the spirit of the Reformation degenerated into the worst pedantry, that sought to smother the natural desires of man, together with his pleasures in life under a confused mass of rules and usages that affected to be "worthy," but that ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... and intellectually impotent man from May 1 to May 5, 1863. Loyalty to Hooker, so-called, is disloyalty to the grand old army, disloyalty to the seventeen thousand men who fell, disloyalty to every comrade who fought at Chancellorsville. I begrudge no man the desire to blanket facts and smother truth in order to turn a galling defeat into a respectable campaign; I begrudge no man his acceptance of Hooker's theory that Chancellorsville was not a disaster; I begrudge no one his faith in Hooker as a successful battle-field commander of the Army of the Potomac. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... I.iii.40 (415,8) function/Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is,/ But what is not] All powers of action are oppressed and crushed by one overwhelming image in the mind, and nothing is present to me, but that which is really future. Of things now about me I have no perception, being ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... wind raged on and the snow piled its drifts. Joshua Ward sat silent by the fire, his head in his hands, or stood in the "dingle," gazing mournfully out into the smother of snowflakes. It would be a mad undertaking to venture abroad. He realized it and needed no ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... time should an infant remain in the bed with its mother after it has finished nursing; at night this rule must be rigidly enforced, for mothers have been known to fall asleep and smother the baby, an accident known as over-lying. Infants can frequently be trained to go without feeding in the middle of the night even when a month old; and such training is always advisable, since it affords the mother opportunity for six or ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior Nilaus ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous

... obtained from a thermal spring whose temperature throughout the year is about 70 deg. F. This temperature is particularly favorable to the growth of "frog spawn." After the cress was cut for market, the algae frequently developed so rapidly as to smother the life out of the weakened plants. When this occurred, the practice was to rake out both water cress and algae and reset the entire bed. This was not only expensive; half the time it failed to exterminate the pest. It was, therefore, most desirable to devise a method of ridding the bed of algal ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... (about, one-half pound) or one large one cut in half. Lay in a bed of light coals and cover with same and smother with ashes. Do not disturb for 30 or 40 minutes, when they ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... have as much respect for our mother's memory as you have, but if she had not died now, I don't know how far my sacrifices might have gone. Have you noticed in the springtime, brother, how the fallen leaves of yesteryear cover the ground as if to smother all the young; things that are coming out? What do these do? They push aside the withered leaves, or pass right through them, because they ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... live in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them from starvation. The hunting will be mighty poor next ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... said, screaming together: "Who ever has taken the eye and the tooth from the Graiai, the ancient daughters of Phorcys, may Mother Night smother him." ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... morning, and sleep in the afternoon. Sounds elderly, doesn't it? But I do enjoy that sleep. The hour after lunch is the most trying of the school day. It's all I can do sometimes to smother my yawns, and not upset the whole class. It's part of the Sunday rest to be able to let go, lie down hugging a hot bottle, and sleep steadily till it's ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... it! I've got so I believe I should sleep right through the racket, but he kicks me out of bed and howls for me to smother the thing. So you see I am bound to get up at the proper time. Once I am out of bed, I stay up. The first morning after I bought the clock the thing went off just as it was beginning to break day. I got up and stopped it and then ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... character was most amenable to strong impressions, that the policy of the mighty outlaw was in many respects pure and lofty. It was this same influence, though, which won for Father Claude his only enemy in Torn; the little, grim, gray, old man whose sole aim in life seemed to have been to smother every finer instinct of chivalry and manhood in the boy, to whose training he had devoted the past ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... young lady from behind and placed his hand upon her mouth. Uttering a piercing scream, the young lady attempted to escape from the grasp upon her, and with her teeth she inflicted several severe wounds upon the ruffianly hand that attempted to smother her cries. In a moment she was knocked down, a gag was placed in her mouth, and she was tied helplessly hand and foot. While this had been transpiring, the other intruder had advanced to the assistant cashier, and in a few moments he too was overpowered, bound and gagged. ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... supper with a relish, smoked his pipe, and, declining a bed in the hotel, saying it would smother him to sleep in between walls, took an ax and hatchet, with a few nails, and, going up on the hillside where there was a thicket, soon built for himself a wickiup that would keep him sheltered even in ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

... Made good? But, sighing, he replies, 'Alas! 310 Trojans we were, and mighty Ilium was; But the last period and the fatal hour Of Troy is come: our glory and our power Incensed Jove transfers to Grecian hands; The foe within the burning town commands; And (like a smother'd fire) an unseen force Breaks from the bowels of the fatal horse: Insulting Sinon flings about the flame, And thousands more than e'er from Argos came Possess the gates, the passes, and the streets, 320 And these the sword o'ertakes, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... that the walls will be cool enough; but there was a lot of woodwork about it. When the roof fell in it would smother the fire for a time, but it might ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... the hills yourself, old mother," says Dan, and put an arm round the withered old neck, "and I'm kissing you for that," and we went out into the smother of the snowstorm. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... she hold her way long enough to cant in the proper direction? And, as luck would have it, just then there came hissing and foaming down upon us a particularly heavy sea, into which the frigate dived until she was all a-smother for'ard. Yet, notwithstanding this, her head continued to sweep round—slowly, it is true; still—"Mainsail haul!" bellowed the first luff through his trumpet, and round swung the after yards, the men bracing them well up and rounding ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... dread of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... her, it would not have been many weeks before she had a first correct account to show him. Convinced, at length, that accuracy was not to be had from her, and satisfying himself with dissatisfaction, he one morning threw from him the little ruled book, and declared, in a wrath which he sought to smother into dignified but hopeless rebuke, that he would trouble himself with her no further. She burst into tears, took up the book, left the room, cried a little, resolved to astonish him the next Monday, and never set down another item. When it came, and breakfast was over, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town's life was still rolling on through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have. But it doesn't help them. It won't help you. For that thing in your heart—the thing that is fighting for air—the thing you won't own—the thing that drove you to Grange for protection—will never die. That is why you are miserable. You may do what you will to it, hide it, smother it, trample it. But it will survive for all that. All your life it will be there. You will never forget it though you will try to persuade yourself that it belongs to a dead past. All your life,"—his voice vibrated suddenly, and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... broke through the wet turf, and in one place a chasm cleft the hill. He could not see the bottom, for it was filled with mist, but the height of the rock wall hinted at its depth. A transverse ravine ran into the chasm, and he could hear the roar of a waterfall. Then the mist rolled up in a white smother ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... crook-backed Mars! Ere long all Rimini will be ablaze. He'll kill me? Yes: what then? That's nothing new, Except to me; I'll bear for custom's sake. More blood will follow; like the royal sun, I shall go down in purple. Fools for luck; The proverb holds like iron. I must run, Ere laughter smother me.—O, ho, ho, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry up, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... of news, that should smother all the rest, seemed now to take a terrible time in coming. All the gaffers were waiting who had waited to see the result of Mr. Cheeseman's suicide, and their patience was less on this occasion. At length the great Captain unfolded his broad sheet, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... Lit., our professor worked off a lot of quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!): 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... to see them make up an hypocrite's face, and fall to dancing, when their hearts are like to break. Why, sweeting! thou lovest rather to see Frank happy than woeful; but dost thou therefore desire her to smother her tears, and force a smile, rather than come and lodge her little troubles with thee? Nay, rather do I believe that to do such were to insult God. I could tell thee of that I have seen, where I do verily believe that pride, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... Through the whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them with far-reaching lash, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... people will smother me with sweets and perfumes," she protested, touching her cheek with the beautiful flower; then, as she was about to smell it, they were astonished to see it flung from her with a faint cry, followed by a little laugh at the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... dark to leeward, She struck—not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock; And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel: The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock; And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... theory of the origin of the forms of life peopling our globe, with which Darwin's name is bound up as closely as that of Newton with the theory of gravitation, nothing seems to be further from the mind of the present generation than any attempt to smother it with ridicule or to crush it by vehemence of denunciation. "The struggle for existence," and "Natural selection," have become household words and every-day conceptions. The reality and the importance of the natural ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... memento. He put the key into the lock and half turned it. Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked about him. Was that a sound at the back of the room? It was just as though someone had laughed and then tried to smother the laugh with a cough. A slight shiver ran over him ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood

... how many women are as scarlet as I am—virtue wears it at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in public: that's the only difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet roses! throw them into the coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them; bury me down deep; in the dark, quiet street—where there's a broad door-step in front of a house, and a white, wild face, something like Basil's, that's always staring on the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I marry ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... Let us try it again!" He stooped to the lantern, and in an instant it was as if an invisible hand was squeezed tightly over each of Kennedy's eyes. Never had he known what such darkness was. It seemed to press upon him and to smother him. It was a solid obstacle against which the body shrank from advancing. He put his hands out to push it ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not know a great man's power and might In spite of innocence can smother right, Colour his villainies to get esteem, And make the honest man the villain seem? I know it, and the world doth know 'tis true, Yet I protest if such a man I knew, That might my country prejudice ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)

... a crisis at last. To smother a cough successfully, you must be able to escape at intervals. On one occasion the smothering was tried too long, and after the aggravated outburst which ensued, the doctor was called in. The Bush House family practitioner being absent, a new man came for him, who, after a few ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... by a couple of men, and it became clear to her in an instant that she had just been lifted from that pit below where she could see the glint of flame and the blinding smother of smoke, and from which came such heartrending cries that she instinctively tried to cover her ears. In the movement she realized that beside the hold which her rescuers had of her, she was grasped by other arms; that she was in the embrace of a man apparently ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... more, save to make the road sloppy. The thick, brick party walls of the houses adjoining saved them, but Mr. Furze's house was gutted from top to bottom. It was surrounded by a crowd the next day, which stared unceasingly. The fire-engine still operated on the ashes, and a great steam and smother arose. A charred oak beam hung where it had always hung, but the roof had disappeared entirely, and the walls of the old bedchamber, which had seen so much of sweetness and of sadness, of ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... of the ballad, she could not smother it down, to break forth, by and by, defying the "burden of life," in sweet bright vision, grown to a ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... separate room. While waiting for him, Griffith introduced Blake to the engine-driver of the bridge-service train, two or three foremen, and several of the bridge workers. But the moment McGraw reappeared in arctics and Mackinaw coat, Griffith hurriedly led the way out of the smother of smoke ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... stronger and more massive of brawn; the other more adroit and resourceful. But the teeth of the conspirator closed on the angle of the jawbone instead of the neck—and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... delight; they flung themselves upon me, so as nearly to smother me; they kissed my face and hands; they laid hold of my legs; they clambered about my arms and shoulders, embracing my head and neck. I came to the ground at last, overwhelmed with ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... fire. For a while there was the danger of a general conflagration and explosion, as the gas-tank was floating in kerosene. Throwing water over everything would have made matters worse, so blankets were used to smother the flames. As this failed to extinguish them, the whole plant was pulled down and carried into the tunnel, where the fire was at last put out. The damage amounted to two blankets singed and dirtied, Jones's face scorched and hair singed, and Kennedy, one finger ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... sackcloth about her wound, Unclothed as the primal mother, With limbs that trembled and eyes that blazed With a fire she dare not smother. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the fifth ball, this time striking him in the face, and passing out, just missing the jugular vein. Falling, he lay unconscious with his face in his cap, into which poured the blood from his wound until it threatened to smother him. It might have done so but for still another ball, which pierced the cap and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, and ask her to substitute it in her memory for the inharmonic lines which he had used in order to smother the degenerate melody of a foreign lay. The other poem was intended for use in case his interview should not be successful. But on the way home Mr. Locker experienced an entire change of mind. He came to believe that it would be unwise for him to arrange ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... a muffled report, a blinding smother of dust just in front of us, a crack, the noise of rent boughs, and about ten yards of the cliff-side—pines, undergrowth, and all—slid down into the road below, completely blocking it up. The uprooted trees swayed and tottered for a moment like drunken giants in the gloom, and then fell ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... of seeing his loved little lad so changed was too much for even his man's courage, for, with a cry he in vain strove to smother, he sunk on his knees with his ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand

... "It's the ninth wave," he shouted presently. "Kayak'll take her in on that one. . . . By thunder!" he broke out as the boat rushed toward the shore in a smother of foam, and landed well up on the beach, "if that old cuss could rope a steer as well as he can land a boat in a surf, I wonder that they ever let ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... of making our land clean, than the liberal use of expensive manures. It depends, doubtless, on the land and on circumstances. It is well to know that manure on grass land, will so increase the growth of the good grasses, as to smother the weeds. Near my house was a piece of land that I wanted to make into a lawn. I sowed it with grass seed, but the weeds smothered it out. I plowed it, and hoed it, and re-seeded it, but still the weeds grew. Mallows came up by the thousand, with other weeds too numerous to mention. ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Stopp'd in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smother'd it within my panting bulk, Who almost burst to belch it ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the piper, and the hobby-horse, he yawned ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... Spread each pancake thickly with the mixture and roll or make into little pockets or envelopes with the end tucked in to hold the filling. Cook in foil till golden-brown and serve at once with sufficient sour cream to smother them. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... lifted off the pan, choking in the smother of smoke. She came right-about face swiftly enough. The man had not moved; ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... a mask of quiet dignity. The tragedy in the woman's heart made the more pathetic the comedy of the half-drunken husband. Besides, he was philosopher enough to know that more than half the drunkenness of the world was the pitiful effort to smother a heartache. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... around the point like a wild bird, amid a smother of spray, appeared the advance canoe. As it disappeared I could distinguish De Artigny at the stern, his coat off, his hands grasping a paddle. Above the point once more and in smoother water, I was aware that he turned ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... in silence, and the last of their line had vanished under the horizon before the Indians could smother the indignation and resentment which the strangers had excited within their hearts. Days, however, passed away, and with them the recollection of the event. Afterwards, I chanced to meet, in the Arkansas, with the Colonel who commanded; ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... skins of wild beasts, and thus exposed to be devoured by dogs. They were covered with pitch and set on fire to serve as lamp-posts to the streets of Rome. To justify such atrocities, and to smother all sentiments of compassion, these persecutors accused their innocent victims of the most ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... the freshly cut root tap. Then again these roots may be starved out by never allowing the top or leafy part to form. You will remember that it is the leaf which makes the food. And if there is no food then there will be none to store away in the root for new root formation. Some farmers smother roots. This is done by planting such crops as hemp, clover or cowpeas. These crops choke out the weeds. They cover the ground very completely, and so the weeds have less ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... damned Scarlet Pimpernel League has been at work, when a score or so of valuable prizes have been snatched from under the very knife of the guillotine, then, there is much gnashing of teeth and useless cursings, but nothing serious or definite is done to smother those accursed English flies which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... tell—" Her voice broke in a half-sob she tried to smother. "No one can ever know what it meant to me, but I knew she understood, and suddenly the something that had been tight and cruel snapped, and for ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... rise, but poor Susy had hurt herself, and although she strove to keep back her tears and smother her sobs, Tom saw that she had ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... selling land in the west, sent out a five-page letter— enough to smother whatever interest might have been attracted by the advertisement. Here is the third paragraph ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... arguments by which I strove to blind myself to my rising passion for another, and to smother the self-reproaches which assailed me when I first conceived the fatal project of imposing upon the world by the supposed death of my wife, and of seeking your hand in marriage. How often did the better feelings of my nature recoil from such an act ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... to a prolonged yawn, Pedro rose and stretched himself. Then he went up to the sleeping Quashy and took him by the nose, at the same time putting his hand on his mouth to smother the inevitable yell in its birth. When sufficiently awake to be released with safety, the amiable negro was permitted to raise himself, and when aware of who had grasped him, he beamed with good-will, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... up with the yoke, Brown as the sweet-smelling loam, Thro' a sun-swept smother of sweat and smoke The two great ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... amazement, the renegade awoke from his trance, and became aware of the notice which his emotion had excited. He felt ashamed that a token of weakness should have betrayed him before man, and with a strong exertion strove to smother the commotion which swelled his breast. He dashed away the drop that fain would soften the lurid expression of his eye. His pride succeeded in the conflict: soon that lip recovered its sardonic curl, and his features relapsing into their calm ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... his mouth to smother a laugh and his eyes fairly sparkled with mischief. "Who is Conkey?" I ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... tears may smother Smiles, for all that joy or sorrow saith: Joy nor sorrow knows not from each other ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... as you are to see them," came from Mrs. Tom Rover, as both of her sons gave her a warm hug. "There, there! don't smother ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer

... irksome and so little to his taste. Only the public interest involved forced him to breathe for a time the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour could not be saved; but disaster might perhaps ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... Swelling with a smother'd sigh, Rose the snowy bosom high Of the blue-eyed lassie. Fleeter than the streamers fly, When they flit athwart the sky, Went and came the rosy dye On the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... with a tired little gasp, looking apprehensively up the long stretch of rough ground rising right in front, and the now gloomy hilltop, above which heavy black clouds hung, like the curtain of night about to descend and smother them in ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... outstretch'd necks, And laughter which no threats can smother, And tell the horror-stricken ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... time—I—I have done things—I have scorned all restraint, all laws except those of my desires, and so, perhaps, I am a vandal. Make sure of this, however—I shall not injure you. Christ is no more sacred to me than you, my heart's treasure. You accuse me of indelicacy because I lack the strength to smother my admiration. I adore you; my being dissolves, my veins are afire with longing for you; I am mad with the knowledge that you are mine. Mad? Caramba! I am insane; my mind totters; I grope my way like a man blinded by a dazzling light; I suffer agonies. But see! I refuse to touch you. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... indicating his opinion that he was another example of the ingratitude of republics. The gentle temper and sense of justice of Othello resisted the insidious wiles of Iago; but ignorance and inexperience yielded in the end to malignity and craft. President Grant was brought not only to smother the Desdemona of his early preferences and intentions, but to feel no remorse for the deed, and take to his bosom the harridan of radicalism. As Phalaris did those of Agrigentum opposed to his rule, he finished by ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... that she would not call Susan. Oh, was she dreaming? Was it really she, Rilla Blythe, who had got into this absurd predicament? She did not care if the Germans were near Paris—she did not care if they were in Paris—if only the baby wouldn't cry or choke or smother or have convulsions. Babies did have convulsions, didn't they? Oh, why had she forgotten to ask Susan what she must do if the baby had convulsions? She reflected rather bitterly that father was very considerate of mother's and Susan's health, but what about hers? Did he think she could continue ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Menie Gray, whose picture you will see in the drawing-room, a distant relation of my father's, who had, however, a handsome part of cousin Menie's succession. There are none living that can be hurt by the story now, though it was thought best to smother it up at the time, as indeed even the whispers about it led poor cousin Menie to live very retired. I mind her well when a child. There was something very gentle, but rather tiresome, about poor ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... different. They work and take care of their families like other people. Only they don't count. If I hadn't money—they'd slam the door on me like that." She indicated the violence of the act by gesture. "As it is, they smother me. There are three of them at Melcourt-le-Danois at this present moment—Anne Marie de Melcourt's two boys and one girl. They're all waiting for me to supply the funds with which they're to make rich marriages. Is it any wonder that I look upon what's done for my own niece ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... cauliflower plants sown early in summer; and as they now begin to show their heads, break in the leaves upon them to keep off the sun and rain; it will both harden and whiten them.—NOVEMBER. Weed the crops of spinach, and others that were sown late, or the wild growth will smother and starve the crop. Dig up a border under a warm wall, and sow some carrots for spring; sow radishes in a similar situation, and let the ground be dug deep for both. Turn the mould that was trenched ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... respective blankets in order to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage. My men covered their heads with their blankets, but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to smother me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only could I breathe more freely, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by the Tibetans. My men moaned and groaned and their ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... the first place, the smoke will smother us. Then suppose we reached the spot? We might be nearer the rebels than our friends. They know where we are. If they are not taken, they will come back for us. If they are taken, we must do our best to get to our lines and send out a scouting party. Be guided by me, youngster. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... Numidian prince, With how much care he forms himself to glory, And breaks the fierceness of his native temper, To copy out our father's bright example. He loves our sister Marcia, greatly loves her; His eyes, his looks, his actions, all betray it; But still the smother'd fondness burns within him; When most it swells, and labours for a vent, The sense of honour, and desire of fame, Drive the big passion back into his heart. What! shall an African, shall Juba's heir, Reproach great ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison

... and following days Hippolyte threw himself into his work, and to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. Study consoled him, though it could not smother the memories of so many tender hours ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... preferred his former condition, and wished himself again a watchman. "That was an ugly dream," said he, "but droll enough. It seemed to me as if I were the lieutenant up yonder, but there was no happiness for me. I missed my wife and the little ones, who are always ready to smother me with kisses." He sat down again and nodded, but he could not get the dream out of his thoughts, and he still had the goloshes on his feet. A falling star gleamed across the sky. "There goes one!" cried he. "However, there are quite enough left; I should very much ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... began it looked as though the veteran Marshall players meant to smother their lighter opponents by means of the sheer force of their attack. They immediately carried the ball over into Chester's side of the field, and there was danger of a touchdown before the game had been in progress ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... Sure enough! A thick smother of flakes whirled down into the deserted streets and cutting short Grandfather Harling's story, the visitors bundled themselves ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... were somewhere out in the storm. A wilder day would be hard to imagine; a hurricane was raging, the rain was whirled ahead of it like charges of shot. The mountains behind Kyak were invisible, and to seaward was nothing but a dimly discernible smother of foam and spray, for the crests of the breakers were snatched up and carried by the wind. The town was sodden; the streets were running mud. Stove-pipes were down, tents lay flattened in the mire, and the board houses were shaking as if they might fly to pieces at any moment. The ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... us, Mr Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry up, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... Napoleon, angrily, "were my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed all my plans, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... were like awakened Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming. On one side the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach. Beyond the beach, green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests, drenched with tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds. At any rate, it was a most beautiful ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... Mother! Daughter, they're shouting for you! Let me hold your flowers, darling; they'll smother you!... You mean the one with the yellow curls, madam? The valedictorian? ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a more ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. You may ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... relighted the gas and went downstairs to stand at the parlour window to scan more clearly every face that might pass, and—yes, she would be honest with herself now—to spring into his arms the moment he entered, smother him with kisses and beg him to forgive the bitter words she ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... though it meant business," she muttered. "I'm liable to have to break trail to get them out to feed to-morrow." Then, with a look of anxiety as the thought came to her, "If they ever 'piled up' in a draw they're so fat half of them would smother." ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... avenging guardian of the everlasting element of good in nature's dualism. Yet, strange enough, each of the two kept his and her own secret. Their hearts burned, even as the fire which consumes the wicked, under the smother of a forced silence—itself a torment and an agony; yea, neither of the two would mention the name of Jenny Dodds for the entire world. And there was more than a mutual fear that one should know what the other thought. Each was under a process of exculpation and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... lover can wish to raise in a mistress—these were, esteem and pity—for sure the most outrageously rigid among her sex will excuse her pitying a man whom she saw miserable on her own account; nor can they blame her for esteeming one who visibly, from the most honourable motives, endeavoured to smother a flame in his own bosom, which, like the famous Spartan theft, was preying upon and consuming his very vitals. Thus his backwardness, his shunning her, his coldness, and his silence, were the forwardest, the most diligent, the warmest, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the tails were cropped, And home each philotadpole hopped, In faith rewarded to exult, And wait the beautiful result. Too soon it came; our pool, so long The theme of patriot bull-frogs' song, Next day was reeking, fit to smother, With heads and tails that missed each other,— Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts: The only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... slow progress. The creeping pace, the languid warmth of the afternoon, the scent of flowering trees, the ceaseless singing of redbird, catbird, robin, and thrush, made it drowsy in the forest. In the midst of an agreeable dissertation upon May Day sports of more ancient times the Colonel paused to smother a yawn; and when he had done with the clown, the piper, and the hobby-horse, he yawned ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... a spy-glass. Sure enough, there was a boat on the water. It was moving ever so slowly. It seemed to stop, and we saw something lifted and waved, and then all was still again. I got a boat's crew together, and away we went in that deadly smother. An hour's row and we got within hail of the derelict—as one of the crew said, 'feelin' as if the immortal life was jerked out of us.' The dingey lay there on the glassy surface, not a sign of life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... received also instructions to undertake, either by himself or by his captains, the conquest of the countries towards the south, forming part of Chili. Almagro, since his arrival at Caxamalca, had seemed willing to smother his ancient feelings of resentment towards his associate, or, at least, to conceal the expression of them, and had consented to take command under him in obedience to the royal mandate. He had even, in his despatches, the magnanimity to make honorable mention of Pizarro, as one anxious to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so little, that the Parisian public ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... place in her Affections than my self, for there was no Male kind belonging to the Family, her Father and Brother, as she told me at other Times, being in Spain, to take care of some Effects they expected by the Flota from the West Indies. However, I endeavour'd to smother this Impression of Jealousy, attributing the Mistake to the Circumstances of Night, Candle Light, or some other false Medium that might ground it, so I was resolv'd to take no notice of it at my next Visit. But it was not long before I met with another ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... often the good destroyed, we wish to believe no more in it as inherent in our being, and rather than suffer repeatedly from its disappearance, we prefer to smother ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... wonder what they're doin' home ternight?" Says Jim— An' some of us felt, well—as if we'd like Ter smother him! An' some of us tried hard-like not ter choke, Th' smoke Was pretty thick an' black! A-thinkin' back, Across th' ocean I could sort of see A little house that means just all ter me And, though nobody said a word I knew Their thoughts was goin' on th' self-same track— Thoughts ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... send you a formal entry blank to-morrow," said Mr. Stone, as his companion started the motor, and a moment later they were rushing off in a smother of foam thrown up by the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! I received, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a cut-cut ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... obstinacy was large, and her opposition strong, as several well-directed thrusts which reached me in vulnerable places made me aware, but I smiled as if they were flattering compliments. Several times I mentally framed replies only to smother them, for I was the stranger within her gates, and if she saw fit to offend a guest she ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... knew it to be true. But what could be done? There had grown up something for her, holier, greater, more absorbing even than a mother's love. Happily for most young wives, though the new tie may surmount the old one, it does not crush it or smother it. The mother retains a diminished hold, and knowing what nature has intended is content. She, too, with some subsidiary worship, kneels at the new altar, and all is well. But here, though there was abundant love, there was no sympathy. The cause of discord was ever present to them both. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and stifle like a rat walled in its hole in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... with impunity, to the enrichment of a few knaves, and the ruin of many thousands, till more effectual laws are framed to meet the evil. As they net thousands a night, a few hundreds or even thousands can be well spared to smother a few actions and prosecutions, which are very rarely instituted against them, and never but by ruined men, who are easily quieted by a small consideration, which, from recent judgments, will not be withheld; therefore we shall see recorded but very ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... which he had been obliged to make use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, and ask her to substitute it in her memory for the inharmonic lines which he had used in order to smother the degenerate melody of a foreign lay. The other poem was intended for use in case his interview should not be successful. But on the way home Mr. Locker experienced an entire change of mind. He came to believe that ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... of potions and incantations they are able to arouse the pangs and to soothe them at will; they can make those bear who have a difficulty in bearing, and if they think fit they can smother the embryo in ...
— Theaetetus • Plato

... possessed my heart, I did not feel my dwelling's dreary void; But now, returning home, my rage appeas'd, Their kingdom wasted, and my son aveng'd, I find there nothing left to comfort me. The glad obedience I was wont to see Kindling in every eye, is smother'd now In discontent and gloom; each, pondering, weighs The changes which a future day may bring, And serves the childless king, because he must. To-day I come within this sacred fane, Which I have often enter'd to implore And thank ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... man could live in it, we'd make the attempt without ye, sir," declared Long Jerry, warmly. "But neither dogs nor men could find their way in this smother It looks like it had set in for a big blizzard. You don't know jest what that means up here in the backwoods. Logging camps will be snowed under and mules, horses and oxen will have to be shot to save them ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... that I buried him on the border of the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as well ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... relieved the tension, and for the first time that day men in that post-office joked and laughed. It even lifted from my heart the gloom that threatened to smother me, and I went home and told the story to my mother and sisters, and they too smiled, so closely akin are tears ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... telescope without a word, and at another time we should all have had to turn away to smother the desire to burst out laughing, as we recalled the irritable remarks about the idiot to whom the glass belonged, and the wretchedness of his eyesight, coupled with an opinion that he ought ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... together: "Who ever has taken the eye and the tooth from the Graiai, the ancient daughters of Phorcys, may Mother Night smother him." ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... what's the matter? What is't that ails young Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Of waistcoats Harry has no lack, Good duffle grey, and flannel fine; He has a blanket on his back, And coats enough to smother nine. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... bad—really in its essence it is not bad at all. If we only give the other man a real chance. It is the pushing and pulling and demanding of one human being toward another that smother the best in us, and make life a fearful strain. Of course there is a healthy demanding as well as an unhealthy demanding, but, so far as I know, the healthy demanding can come only when we are clear of personal ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... way to him by degrees. He shifted himself uneasily, as though he would have been glad to smother himself beneath the bedclothes, was it not for lack of resolution. A whipped hound never ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... echo at the wheel. The Commander glanced aft through the trail of smoke at the next astern swinging round in the smother of his wake. "Well, we shan't be long now before we tie up to the buoy—curse these fellows! Here come all the drifters with mails and ratings ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... the man who such doings would smother!— On, Luther of Bavan! On, Saint of Kilgroggy! With whip in one hand and with Bible in t'other, Like Mungo's tormentor, both ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... some fine morning that the street in which you live is blockaded with furniture vans, all endeavouring to deliver furniture you don't require and never heard of before, while your staircase is a mass of flowers and fruit constantly increasing upon you and threatening to smother you with their amount no less than with their scent. It would gradually appear that the deliveries both of the flowers and the furniture were being executed in accordance with the orders of one of your friends, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various

... the open space of moonlight toward the trees. Who called, or why, I did not question. But I must smother the noise. "Singing Arrow!" the call came again, and the roar of it in the quiet night made my ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... his that they have in the house, and treat no better than if he were a dog, knows he is there, and goes and looks at him, and calls to him, and cries about him whenever he dares. And you sit here, in your great house, with your carpets and chairs, that half smother you, and your looking-glasses and your fine clothes, and don't start to your feet when I tell you this. I tell you if God doesn't damn everybody who is responsible for this wickedness, then there is no such thing as ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... wind—something of small fashion, but long and indubitably capacious—something with a hood. A little cloak, possibly: I don't know. But I am sure that it could envelop, that it could boil or roast, that it could fairly smother—a baby! It was lined with golden-brown, crackling silk, which Pattie Batch's mother had left in her trunk, upon her last departure, poor woman! from the sordid world of Swamp's End to regions which were now become ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... 'Alas! 310 Trojans we were, and mighty Ilium was; But the last period and the fatal hour Of Troy is come: our glory and our power Incensed Jove transfers to Grecian hands; The foe within the burning town commands; And (like a smother'd fire) an unseen force Breaks from the bowels of the fatal horse: Insulting Sinon flings about the flame, And thousands more than e'er from Argos came Possess the gates, the passes, and the streets, 320 And these the sword o'ertakes, and those it meets. The guard nor fights nor flies; their fate ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... fieri, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, more so than if the suicide's own mother ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... attempted to reach the scene of the fire, but were driven back by the dense and suffocating smoke, impregnated with vapours. Endeavours were made to smother the fire, but though the mine remained closed for five weeks, no sooner was it re-opened than the fire burst forth more furiously than at first. The howling of the flames ascending from the lowest depths of the pit ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... has not met the Irishman who apes the Englishman, and who forgets his country and tries to forget his accent, or to smother the taste of it, as it were? 'Come, dine with me, my boy,' says O'Dowd, of O'Dowdstown: 'you'll FIND US ALL ENGLISH THERE;' which he tells you with a brogue as broad as from here to Kingstown Pier. And did ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... what wonder you do hit of mine,— 30 Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not Than our earth's wonder; more than earth divine. Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit, Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak, 35 The folded meaning of your words' deceit. Against my soul's pure truth why labour you To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me, ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... a smother of white dust; the weeds beside it drooped powdered heads; evil odours reeked through the little place; but when Shade and Johnnie had passed its confines, the air from the mountains greeted them sweetly; the dusty white road ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... purpose. The surest way to get rid of such weeds, in fact, of all weeds, is to prevent their leaves from growing and making starch and digesting food for them. This is accomplished by constantly cutting off the young shoots as soon as they appear above the soil, or by growing some crop that will smother them. The constant effort to make new growth will soon exhaust the supply of stored food ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... "make this way. Here is the pier," but the splashing continued, and a smother of sound came to me, as if the swimmer were under water, and his voice stifled. Almost without thinking, I gripped the thick, tarry rope and let myself over the basin, until I had reached the surface ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... for a considerable time, utterly refused to raise another, and devoured all the eggs which were given to them for that purpose! This colony was afterwards supplied with an unimpregnated queen, but they refused to accept of her, and attempted at once to smother her to death. I then gave them a fertile queen, but she met with no better treatment. Facts of a similar kind have been noticed, by other observers: thus it seems that bees may not only become reconciled, as it were, to living without ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... he quickly had a little blaze. The others fed this in a cautious manner, so as not to smother it by too much fuel. As a result the fire was in a short time burning freely, and diffusing a genial warmth around that proved very ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... Rogers got up and, opening the window wider than before, put out his head. The sunshine caught him full in the face. He tasted the fresh morning air. Tinged with the sharp sweetness of the north it had a fragrance as of fields and gardens. Even St. James's Street could not smother its vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his lungs, making such a to-do about it that a passer-by looked up to see what was the matter, and noticing the hanging tassel of a flamboyant dressing-gown, at once modestly ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... distinguished guests that surrounded him. The thing which puzzled me was his grave, sedate demeanor, dignified, almost austere at times. A man, I thought, might grow a beard and dye it, but how could he grow a different set of manners, how smother his jollity, how wipe ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... those that smother griefe too secretly, May wast themselves in silent anguishment, And bring their bodies to so low an ebb, That all the world can never make it flowe, Unto the happy hight of former health. Then be not [so] iniurious to thy selfe, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... would make a mist and smother Some swain beset, and screen him from the crowd, I prayed for vapours; but his mind was other: Yet was I answered, though the god was proud, For, anyhow, I trod on Miss Pritt's mother And left beneath ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... nothing whatever unnatural or wrong or shocking in this fact; and there is no harm in it if only it be sensibly faced and provided for. The mischief that it does at present is produced by our efforts to ignore it, or to smother it under a heap of sentimental ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... second term of President Diaz commenced. The success of the church party would simply throw Mexico back half a century in her march of improvement towards a higher state of civilization. It would check all educational progress, all commercial advance, and smother both political and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... the Miller he shook For fear his strange cook Should, indeed and in truth, prove successful; But feeling ashamed That his pluck should be blamed, Strove to smother his heart-quake distressful. ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... breast while he lowered his head, licking the boy's face all over with his tongue. This made the boy furious but he could do nothing as the goat was heavy, and with his weight on his chest he thought he would smother. ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... (only I can't say just exactly the words!): 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... unromantic mind, Hal. You just like to write newspaper articles, and type letters, and smother your imagination under ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... is an oil or grease fire, shut off the supply of whatever is burning. Then smother the flames with sand, earth, rugs, or other heavy ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense

... laughing all the while like to choke himself. As for his bronze candlestick, I thought she would have expired on the spot, with her white teeth glancing like ivory, and the tears running down her cheeks, as she every now and then clapped a handkerchief on her mouth to smother the uncontrollable uproariousness ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... of poultry keeping that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... would it? I want you to trust me about this. There's no question of newspaper enterprise involved; but there is a chance for you to serve the community. The very fact that you have never been friendly to the Holtons will give additional weight to what you print to-day. I'm not asking you to smother this talk as a favor to me, but for the good of the town—all of us. And I believe you're big enough and broad ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... rug. If nothing can be obtained in which to wrap up, lie down and roll over slowly at the same time beating out the fire with the hands. If another person's clothing catches fire, throw him to the ground and smother the fire with a coat, blanket, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... captain; "he's as anxious as you and I to smother things up. This is a tiff; he'd soon talk 'em out of it if he had the chance, and what I propose to do is to give him the chance. Let's allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why we'll fight the ship. If they none of them go, well then, we hold the cabin, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for balls and dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... snow-drift on the hill! Who heard him chide the blast, or say 'twas cold? His wounds are freezing! is the anguish told? Tell him his child was murdered with its mother! He seems like carved out stone that has no woe to smother. ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas

... would have been back before now, otherwise, eh?" Meighan seemed to be communing with himself, rather than talking to Kenleigh. "Wouldn't make such an awful noise—didn't need much juice on that safe—pretty slick with the smother ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158] into leathern thongs to yoke ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... influence of Antonina's presence and Antonina's words over the Goth, they had not yet acquired power enough to smother in him entirely the warlike instincts of his sex and nation, or to vanquish the strong and hostile promptings of education and custom. She had gifted him with new emotions, and awakened him to new thought; she had aroused all the dormant gentleness ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... after the year 1824, to make due allowance for the terrible strain upon his mind which disposed him to give violent and hyperbolical expression to the mood of the moment. The unhappy passion which he could at times smother, but never subdue, went boring away into his heart like a subterranean fire, consuming his vitals, and occasionally breaking forth into a wild blaze. The following reference to it, in his letter to Franzen (November 13, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... To attempt to smother the passions is vain, to controul them difficult; besides, it is from energy, arising from passions or propensities, that all good, as well as all evil, arise. The business, then, will neither be to curb nor to crush, but to give a proper direction. This is to be done ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... sheep will always jump from the outer circle of the band to the center, where it is warm; they always huddle together in cold weather, and herders are frequently compelled to remain right with them, nights at a time, working hard every minute separating them so they will not smother. One of the men, owner of the sheep, I presume, met us and said he would show me where to go so I could see everything that was being done, which proved to be directly back of a man who was shearing sheep. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... said the little Half-Chick. "I have no time to bother with you. I am going to Madrid, to see the King." And he went off, hoppity-kick, hoppity-kick, leaving the Wind to smother. ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... brambles, wild and disorderly. What we could see of the garden was a very wilderness. Tall rank grass flourished on every side, carriage-way and borders alike had been blotted into a springing waste, and the few sprawling shrubs which we could recognize hardly emerged from beneath the choking smother of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... Paradise (perhaps because few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads, flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the man. "Well, as I was saying, it's all a trick," he went on. "Strong alum solution in your mouth, just a dash of alcohol to make a blaze that flares up but goes out quickly if you smother it right. You know the game," and he looked ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... cherished sentiments of loyalty for the exiled family; these were transmitted to Alaster Dhu. The gallant Lochiel and the chief of Glengarry were therefore disposed to smother in their feelings of loyalty the feuds which too often raged between clans nearly approximate. They therefore formed a compact to promote, in every way, the interest of the royal exiles; and in this vain attempt at restoration which ensued, the fate of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... found it necessary to pause. The measures which they had already tried to smother the discontents of the people, and to repress those violent and illegal consequences of it, had not only proved ineffectual, but had aggravated, to a most alarming height, the mischiefs which they were sottishly ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds my heart and me in durance, Hath life, death, love and all in ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... the lake. Appalled, I whirled on my heel, just in time to see another huge jet of water rise high in the starlight, another, another, until the entire lake was but a cluster of gigantic geysers exploding a hundred feet in the air, while through them, falling back into the smother of furious foam, great silvery bulks dropped crashing, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... the bed), let his face be turned to the opposite side. (3.) Let him lie fairly either on his side, or on his back. (4.) Be careful to ascertain that his mouth be not covered with the bed-clothes; and, (5.) Do not smother his face with clothes, as a plentiful supply of pure air is as necessary when he is awake, or even more so, than when he is asleep. (6.) Never let him lie low in the bed. (7.) Let there be no pillow near the one his head is resting on, lest he roll to it, and thus bury his ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... himself, half to Heaven. He rambled on from a petition for forgiveness into a broken thanksgiving for the mercy he already regarded as granted. His labours, the glamour of the present achievement, and the previous long strain upon his mind and body, united to smother reason for one feverish hour. Will walked blindly forward, now with his eyes upon the window under Newtake's dark roof below him, now turning to catch sight of the grey cross uplifted on the hill above. A great sweeping sea of change was tumbling ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... much longer staid, The perfume would have seal'd his obit; For he had a nicer nose than the wench, Who cared not a pin for the smother and stench, In the arms of the Son ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... says my letter must be short, so I smother what remnant of modesty I have, covering nothing with the veil of circumlocution, but telling you plainly what I know you want to hear. I love only you and am true to you in every thought, word, and deed. I long for ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... again, and the fearful heat of midsummer came, too. Red Creek baked in a smother of dusty heat, the trees in the dry orchards, beside the dry roads, dropped circles of hot shadow on the clodded, rough earth. Farms dozed under shimmering lines of dazzling air, and in the village, from ten o'clock until the afternoon began to wane, there ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... whole people; for, in the present state of general agitation, whoever disbelieves the least tittle of the enormous improbabilities which have been accumulated by these wretched reformers, is instantly hunted down, as one who would smother the discovery of the Plot. It is indeed an awful tempest; and, remote as we lie from its sphere, we must expect soon to feel ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... this Gloom I see in every Face? These smother'd Groans and stifled half-drawn Sighs; Does it offend ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... bit of a bandbox or so were chucked up to us by the watermen, who then shoved off. There was a nice little off-shore breeze a-blowing, and soon after nine we were clear of the harbor and sailing quietly along, the sea smooth and the moon rising red out of a smother of mist. Mr. Robinson came on deck and looked aloft to see what sail was made; I was at the tiller, and stepping ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... gifts confer, in proof Of hospitality and unfeign'd love, Judging, with all wise men, the stranger-guest And suppliant worthy of a brother's place. 670 And thou conceal not, artfully reserv'd, What I shall ask, far better plain declared Than smother'd close; who art thou? speak thy name, The name by which thy father, mother, friends And fellow-citizens, with all who dwell Around thy native city, in times past Have known thee; for of all things ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... so big I should have taken a chance and pitched into him. He is strong enough to eat me alive. I could handle the fellow, Bob, all right, but not Sully. So I have got to stay here all night? Fine, fine! I hope I don't smother." ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... was not good, and this soon gave him cause for additional alarm. If he could not get any fresh air, he might smother before anybody came ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... got up a plan to do what I want to do without using much coal; I smother the fires, all except the one in the hotel, with stove griddles laid on them, and it makes a great smoke without much fire. The guns and ammunition I have disposed of here and there, in good places for me in case of attack, but hard to ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... ever so long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clean and rested; of safety and yet freedom; of love that was always there, warm like sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed—a love that didn't irritate and didn't smother. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... to expose myself to those severe censures which the haughty but empty scorn of infidelity, or principles nearly approaching it, and effectually doing its pernicious work, may very probably dictate upon the occasion, rather than to smother a relation, which may, in the judgment of my conscience, be like to conduce so much to the glory of God, the honour of the gospel, and the good of mankind. One thing more I will only premise, that I hope none who have heard the colonel himself speak something of this wonderful scene, will be surprised ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge

... my heart capable of such a change, I should tear it with my own hands from my breast in order to smother its desires. Though she were the most beautiful woman in the world, and offered her love to me, I should turn away from her, and hurl my contempt and hatred into her face. She has offended me too grievously, for it is she who has destroyed all my plans, and instigated ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... better sort of the inhabitants have enter'd into a resolution of injoying free liberty in Love, without being Troubled or disturbed by its consequences. These mix and Cohabit together with the utmost freedom, and the Chilldren who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smother'd at the Moment of their Birth; many of these People contract intimacies and live together as man and wife for years, in the course of which the Children that are born are destroy'd. They are so far from concealing it that they look upon it as a branch of freedom upon which ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... the market classes Had slimy hands upon England's rod, And sword in hand upon Afric's passes Her last Republic cried to God. For the men no lords can buy or sell, They sit not easy when all goes well. They have said to each other what naught can smother, They have seen each other, our ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... not aware of any class of recollective remarks or inquiries which now and then break forth, and which you invariably smother with a thick blanket ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... that oft would make a mist and smother Some swain beset, and screen him from the crowd, I prayed for vapours; but his mind was other: Yet was I answered, though the god was proud, For, anyhow, I trod on Miss Pritt's mother And left beneath ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... I had to smother a chuckle when that came out, for I'd already recognized some of the symptoms of a motion picture mind while Ellery was ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... to see you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... of arrest or imprisonment for any decent expression of opinion, the platform is not without its hindrances; and some of these will never be cured, while babies cry, architects sacrifice acoustics to style, young people do their courting in public, janitors smother thoughts in foul air, and milliners persist in building up artistic barriers between speaker ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... Harry Gill? That evermore his teeth they chatter, Chatter, chatter, chatter still. Of waistcoats Harry has no lack, Good duffle grey, and flannel fine; He has a blanket on his back, And coats enough to smother nine. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... trials! At last, the mother was made acquainted with her son's new mode of life, by the treasured 5s. which the poor boy thrust into her hand one evening, with a strange shy pride that brought all the blood into his face, while he kissed her with impetuosity to smother her reproaches. She asked him how he had got so much money—so much! and then he told her how, self-taught, he had learned to cut out figures—dogs and landscapes—in coloured paper, which he had taken to the bazaars and stationers' shops, and there ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... whole mass of humanity began to writhe and swell, as a frightened crowd does in the dark, so that every one feels as if all the other people were growing hugely big, as big as elephants, to smother and crush him; and each man makes himself as broad as he can, and tries to swell out his chest, and squares his elbows to keep the weight off his sides; and with the steady strain and effort every one breathes ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... guided by my host and hostess, and the second time rather adventurously alone. Forests of koa, sandal-wood, and ohia, with an undergrowth of raspberries and ferns clothe its base, the fragrant maile, and the graceful sarsaparilla vine, with its clustered coral- coloured buds, nearly smother many of the trees, and in several places the heavy ie forms the semblance of triumphal arches over the track. This forest terminates abruptly on the great volcanic wilderness, with its starved growth ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the Mary Sinclair had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, to tell of the terror which is past. Allardyce, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... your bridle, my boy, we'll soon be out of this smother." It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it lightly over my eyes, and patting and coaxing he led me out of the stable. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shouted, "Here somebody! ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell

... like thine, was pure, And all its rising fires could smother; But, now, thy vows no more endure, Bestow'd by ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... turns to smoke, and the terrene and grosser parts remain in the ashes. Fire only preys upon the moisture, which is its natural nourishment. Indeed, water, wine, and other liquors, having abundance of earthy and heavy parts in them, by falling into fire part it, and by their roughness and weight smother and extinguish it. But oil, because purely liquid, by reason of its subtility, is overcome by the fire, and so ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... and drawn the whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them down again in a smother ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... the storm broke in all its fury—being little short, in violence, of a West Indian hurricane. On through the mist, through the smother of foam, over the big greenish-blue waves scudded the Tartar, the lieutenant, in oilskins, standing in the bows, peering ahead for a ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... our hunger or one drop of fresh water to cool our parched tongues. Anxiety was depicted in every visage, and our spirits were clouding like the heavens over them. Capt. Hilton, whose sickness and debility had been increased by fatigue and hunger, could no longer smother the feelings that were struggling within.—The quivering lip, the dim eye, the pallid cheek, all told us, as plainly as human expression could tell, that the last ray of that hope which had supported him during the day, was now fading away before the coming night. I had seen much ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins

... 'he is past rendering help to any. It was mightily suspected,' said he whisperingly, 'that he died of the Plague; but your great rich folks can smother these matters up. This is certain, that he had secret and hasty burial, and all his family are fled and gone, without so much as locking the door behind them, as it is said; but I think none have been so bold as to try that; men love their ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... him on the border of the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... do what isn't reight, But conscience will keep prickin; He dreeads far mooar his mother's grief, Nor what he'd fear a lickin. Her trubbled face,—her tearful een, Her sighs shoo tries to smother, Are coals ov foir on the heead Ov th' lad ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... thoughts were they, Eliza, tell, Nor seek from me the truth to smother."— "O I remember very well, I ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... worked with our shirts off. To withstand the heat we stripped to the waist. We didn't want to wear a shirt. It would have clung to our flesh and hampered our moving muscles. We were freer and cooler without any cloth to smother us. It was a privilege to go shirtless. Adam enjoyed that blessing in the Garden of Eden. And when he sinned they punished him by putting a shirt, collar and necktie on him. And yet this theorist in the mills demanded ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He felt himself unaccredited, a man of no station. Again there swept over him the feeling of his own insufficiency, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France, except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half of the population silently letting on that they were not aware ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... mother, and to me she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen," and Peggy found herself in an embrace which threatened to smother her. She blushed with pleasure. To be like her mother whom she scarcely remembered, for eight years had passed since that beautiful mother slipped out of her life, was the highest praise that could ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... murder at the beginning of September; and, since that time, what with Maroto's disaffection and Turkish news, we have had leisure to forget Monsieur Peytel, and to occupy ourselves with [Greek text omitted]. Perhaps Monsieur de Balzac helped to smother what little sparks of interest might still have remained for the murderous notary. Balzac put forward a letter in his favor, so very long, so very dull, so very pompous, promising so much, and performing so little, that the Parisian public gave up Peytel and his case altogether; nor was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... them seized him by the shoulders, and dragging him into a long, dark, cell-like room, threw him violently upon the floor. Then returning to the room, the officer took Tommy by the arm, and marching him into the same room, shut the door to smother his cries. The little fellow was so frightened, that he burst into an excitement of tears. The room was dark, and as gloomy as a cavern. He could neither lie down, sleep, nor console himself. He thought of Manuel, only to envy his lot, and would gladly have shared his imprisonment, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... myself, such as bodies half eaten by the rats; of two dogs last Wednesday being shot by Mr. O'Callaghan whilst tearing a body to pieces; of his mother-in-law stopping a poor woman and asking her what she had on her back, and being replied it was her son, telling her she would smother it; but the poor emaciated woman said it was dead already, and she was going to dig a hole in the churchyard for it. These are things ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... beholding her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he had to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and by the last stile but one, what do ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... her Miss Adair saw a boy in a top hat, with white gloves upon his hands, smother in an eager and unabashed embrace a white-shouldered girl, whose arms went around his neck regardless of "mother" assiduously looking the other way. In a car on the other side a richly garbed gentleman dozed upon his ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the time he had a heart of gold and they feel free to say now that once the money has passed he won't be let to go off the place till he has heard all about the new enterprise and let in on the ground floor, and they hope he won't ever forget this moment when the money begins to roll in fit to smother him in round numbers. So Safety says he knows they're a good square set of boys, as clean as a hound's tooth, and he'll be over to-morrow to take over the stock and hear the ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... result seemed doubtful, so doubtful that Nick finally threw Cervera heavily to the floor, the better to press the matting closely around her and so smother the flames. In this he presently succeeded, but not before she was so severely burned as to be rendered ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... heavier Weight upon a Man, or hinders Him more from shewing Himself to Advantage, and employing his great Abilities for the Service of Others; than the Quarrels and Contentions of Parties. Many have their Talents imprison'd, by being of the hated and sinking Side. Their Light is wholly smother'd and suppress'd, that it may not shine out with a Lustre on the Party to which they belong, whether it be in Politicks or Religion. And all Struggles of a Genius are vain, when a Man is born down at once by Clamour ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... martyrs, and secretly reproached themselves with cowardice, as living like soldiers who passed their time in softness and ease, while their brethren and fellow-warriors bore all the heat of the battle. They could not long smother these warm sentiments in their breast; but expressed them to one another. "What," said they, "while the secure gate of heaven is open, shall we shut it against ourselves? Shall we be so faint-hearted as not to suffer for the name of Christ, who died for us? Our brethren invite ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... unremitting, upon them, hard-handed, stoop-shouldered, dull-eyed and awkward. These were the daughters of rich farmers. Good girls they were, too, conscientious, careful, unselfish, thinking it a virtue to stifle every ambition, smother every craving ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... Maurice de St. Genis, who was never absent from her side, and who seemed to hover over her with an air of proprietorship and of triumphant mastery which caused poor Bobby to grind his heel into the oak floor, and to smother a bitter curse which had risen ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... banished the architect do we see masonry of any merit. The engineers, who have at least a scientific problem to solve, create, in factories and railway-bridges, our most creditable monuments. They at least are not ashamed of their construction, or, at any rate, they are not allowed to smother it in beauty at thirty shillings a foot. We shall have no more architecture in Europe till architects understand that all these tawdry excrescences have got to be simplified away, till they make up their minds to express themselves ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... at the feet of the young soldier, could not have startled or paralyzed him more. He was actually struck dumb by it Here was the chalice dashed from his lips at last. He turned away in despair; but as he was for duty, he was constrained to smother the tumultuous feelings within his breast. When alone, however, and pacing his lonely round with his musket on his shoulder, he had time to measure, with sufficient calmness and accuracy, the length, breadth and depth of the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... "being given more to religious exercises than reigning," says the historian. He would often exhibit his piety in order to draw attention away from His Royal Incompetency. He was not the first or last to smother the call to duty under the cry of Hallelujah. Like the little steamer engine with the big whistle, when he whistled the boat stopped. He did not have a boiler big enough to push the great ship of state and shout ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... Jacynth of course was your servant; And if she had the habit to peep through the casement, How could I keep at any vast distance? And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence, The Duke, dumb stricken with amazement, Stood for a while in a sultry smother, {310} And then, with a smile that partook of the awful, Turned her over to his yellow mother To learn what was decorous and lawful; And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct, As her cheek quick whitened through all its quince-tinct. Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... loveliness and ladylike conduct will command. Those who are most pleasing will receive the most attention, and those who desire more should aspire to acquire more by cultivating those graces and virtues which ennoble woman, but no lady should lower or distort her own true ideal, or smother and crucify her conscience, in order to please any living man. A good man will admire a good woman, and deceptions cannot long be concealed. Her show of dry goods or glitter of jewels cannot long cover ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... sorrows of too enthusiastic love, and the tortures of ungoverned passion. Here, too, you will witness, not without a shudder, the interior economy of vice; and from the stage be taught how all the tinsel of fortune fails to smother the inward worm; and how terror, anguish, remorse, and despair tread close on the footsteps of guilt. Let the spectator weep to-day at our exhibition, and tremble, and learn to bend his passions to the laws of religion and reason; let the youth behold with alarm the consequences ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Mr Lestrange!" said he, when the dinghy was alongside; "we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it's overcrowded; she's better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast. Ahoy!"—to the quarter-boat, "hurry up, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... the reply, "I abhor peppermint; but I have got some lozenges, if that will satisfy you. And when I smell ghosts, I can smother myself in my pocket-handkerchief." ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... said the widow; "I tell you I don't like it. You neither of you know Barry Lynch, as well as I do; he'd smother her av it come into ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... fumbles the pen. "I never learned how," he explains, "to write the letters"; and on the instant feels the hand at his shoulder tremble and clutch, looks up a moment to see two great tears roll down her cheeks—and curses with a mighty smother in the breast ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... told her exuberantly. "If I could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... for the opposite course, a little boldness, a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenne outflanked Montecuculli, and Society will sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... arms and back as best I could, and then lay down, but not to sleep. No, I could not sleep, for I was suffering mental as well as bodily torture. My spirit rebelled against the unjustness that had been inflicted upon me, and though I tried to smother my anger and to forgive those who had been so cruel to me, it was impossible. The next morning I was more calm, and I believe that I could then have forgiven everything for the sake of one kind word. But the kind word was not proffered, and it may be possible ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... glimpses of bellying sails towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to the heaving seas or plunged in a white smother of foam. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... caravan of household stuff, which they crammed through the gaping doorway as nuts into a goose's maw. The stuff was all royal, of royalty's absolute necessities. There were soft rugs, and finely spun tapestries, and portieres to smother a whisper. There was a high-backed chair, and a velvet-covered dais for the high-backed chair. There were brushes, whose stroke caressed gently and purringly the Hapsburg whisker. There was a Roman poet, fastidiously bound, and then—there was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... in that damned grey-and-yellow uniform. I can't stand it, I tell you. I can't stand the sight of any more of these uniforms. Like a blight on the human landscape. Like a blight. Like green-flies on rose-trees, smother-flies. Europe's got the smother-fly in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... so soon should waste! Or so sweet a bliss As a kiss Might not for ever last! So sugar'd, so melting, so soft, so delicious, The dew that lies on roses, When the morn herself discloses, Is not so precious. O rather than I would it smother, Were I to taste such another; It should be my wishing That I might ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... just can't spend half a dollar here if you try. The flossiest kind of thing they got is only ten cents a order. They'll smother you in whipped cream f'r a quarter. You c'n come in here an' eat an' eat an' put away piles of cakes till you feel like a combination of Little Jack Horner an' old Doc Johnson. An' w'en you're all through, they hand yuh your check, an', say—it says forty-five cents. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... to my heart Thy boasted passion, pure; Dreamed thy affection, void of art, For ever would endure. Alas! in vain my woe I smother! I find thee very much ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... said; "all a sweet, wholesome, gentle woman. See her now with her arms around the child; the little creature clings to her as if she were the mother it never knew. Ah! she is telling them. No need to smother her, children. I never really meant to separate you; no, indeed. I only wanted you to find out for yourselves, as I have found out for myself. No more solitude at Fernley, please God; from now on, young faces and hearts, and sunshine, ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... topsail halliards whilst calling to the men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea, and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twenty seconds I stood in a horrible fury and smother of frothing water, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every faculty in me so numbed and dulled by the wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew not whether in that space of time I was in the least degree sensible of what had happened ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... account whether the bones of those who were so dear to us, be exposed with the remains of malefactors, or laid in the sacred grave. To the dead all places are alike; and to the slave what signifies who is master. Let us therefore forget the past,—let us keep open the door of reconciliation,—smother all the wrongs we have endured, and kiss the proud foot of the trampler. We have our lives; we have been spared; the merciless blood-hounds have not yet reached us. Let us therefore be humble and thankful, and cry to Charles Stuart, O King live for ever!—for he has but cast us ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... your pardon," Mrs. Eyrecourt interposed, "I am afraid I fail to follow you. My silent son-in-law looks as if he longed to smother me, and my attention is naturally distracted. You were ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... as tone which veils confuse and smother, Amid this voice two voices, one commingled with the other, Which did from off the land and seas even to the heavens aspire; Chanting the universal chant in simultaneous quire. And I distinguished them amid that deep and rumorous sound, As who beholds two currents thwart amid ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... aboard the ship; There's feud no force can smother; Their blood is up to fever-heat; They're cutting down each other. Buchanan here, and Douglas there, Are belching forth their thunder, While cunning rogues are sly at work In ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... with the yardmaster and walked over to the Silver Dollar saloon, where, in order to smother his distress, he played game after game of solitaire. Here, shortly after his arrival, he had learned of Borax O'Rourke's latest move, and when the latter entered the saloon an hour later, Harley P. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... of the runners, so that there were intervals of rest for each two times an hour. Quickly the red glow over the southwestern forests faded away; the gloom grew thicker; far ahead, like an endless sheet losing itself in a distant smother of blackness, stretched the ice and snow of Lake Nipigon. There was no tree, no rock for guidance over the trackless waste, yet never for an instant did Mukoki or Wabigoon falter. The stars began burning brilliantly in the sky; far away the red edge of the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... Hungarian Rhapsody, impetuous and brilliant as ever. How she hated it now—this symbol of the hurried, unheeding, relentless, hollow gaiety of the world! Yet she longed for the magic fingers of the player, that she, too, might smother ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... came to at last was, that I could not do better than smother my impatience for a whole week; taking, the while, excursions in every other direction so as, if possible, to blind any one who made a study of my movements. Then my journey to the cavern must be made by night, armed with spades, and ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... perceptibly larger than the others, yet, in three days after, when I looked into the nest again and found all but one egg hatched, the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them. That the intruder should fare the same as the rightful occupants, and thrive with them, was more than ordinary potluck; but that it alone should thrive, devouring, as it were, all the rest, is one of those freaks of Nature ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... Bunny, he seemed to think them quite wonderful—for a time. He stood as near the edge as his father would let him, looking up the rapids down which the waters rushed, to fall over the rocky edge, dropping in a smother of foam to the blue lake below. Silently he watched the smooth waters glide down like some ribbon, and then, turning to his father, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope

... the launch nosed her way cautiously south-westwards, through the wet smother. Most of the time she kept fairly close under the Asiatic shore. There were fewer forts that side, and less ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... of ashes came a shower of blazing stones, which fell uninterruptedly, setting fire to all parts of the city and blocking up the streets with burning masses. And then a fresh storm of ashes sweeping down would partly smother the flames, but, blocking up the doorways, would stifle those within the houses. And to add to the horror, the volumes of smoke that poured from the mountain caused a darkness deeper than night to settle on the doomed city, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... colder and colder, we huddled together under our respective blankets in order to sleep. We had made a protecting wall with our baggage. My men covered their heads with their blankets, but I never could adopt their style of sleeping, as it seemed to smother me. I always slept with my head uncovered, for not only could I breathe more freely, but I wished to be on the alert should we at any time be surprised by the Tibetans. My men moaned and groaned and their ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... and even to recognize this perfection requires men who are not always to be found, and never in numbers sufficiently great to make themselves heard; whereas envy is always on the watch and doing its best to smother their voice. But with moderate talent, which soon meets with recognition, there is the danger that those who possess it will outlive both it and themselves; so that a youth of fame may be followed by an old age of obscurity. In the case of great merit, on the other hand, a man may remain unknown ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... they screamed. "We did not know soon enough, and now it is too late; we should smother if we tried to ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann

... waistcoat as fine as a peacock; and when I gave the bottle-screw to my father, begging him to take it as a token of my affection for him, my dear mother burst into such a fit of tears as I never saw, and kissed and hugged me fit to smother me. "Bless him, bless him," says she, "to think of his old father. And where did you purchase it, Bob?"—"Why, mother," says I, "I purchased it out of my savings" (which was as true as the gospel).—When I said this, mother looked ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rug before the fire, and not far from the crib where Willie lay sleeping. In an instant, however, the thought "What shall I do?" was followed by the remembrance of what her mother had often said, "If in any way your dress should ever take fire, you must try to smother it at once; never run away, but throw yourself down, or wrap yourself ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... post of guardian to the throne it is seeking to usurp; it protects the house of Valois which it means to destroy. We have decided to take up arms because the liberties of the people and the interests of the nobles are equally threatened. Let us smother at its birth a faction as odious as that of the Burgundians who formerly put Paris and all France to fire and sword. It required a Louis XI. to put a stop to the quarrel between the Burgundians and the Crown; and to-day ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... center, where it is warm; they always huddle together in cold weather, and herders are frequently compelled to remain right with them, nights at a time, working hard every minute separating them so they will not smother. One of the men, owner of the sheep, I presume, met us and said he would show me where to go so I could see everything that was being done, which proved to be directly back of a man who was shearing sheep. They told me that he ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... sat, with a contented mind, smoking my pipe, and staring out at the falling summer rain. And presently, chancing to turn my eyes up the road, I beheld a chaise that galloped in a smother of mud. As I watched its rapid approach, the postilion swung his horses towards the inn, and a moment later had pulled up before the door. They had evidently travelled fast and far, for the chaise was covered with dirt; and the poor horses, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... in him. I observ'd him; During the time I took for explanation, He was transported from most deep attention To a confusion which he could not smother; His looks grew full of sadness and surprise, All which betray'd a wavering spirit in him, That labour'd with reluctancy and sorrow. What's requisite for safety, must be done With speedy execution; ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... it in Tracy has satisfied my appetite: and even in that, the preliminary discourse of the analyzer himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between fact and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... next door and see if you can borrow a large snow shovel," called Mrs. Brown. "Don't stop to tell them what it's for, or Bunny may smother." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... ahead when Joe sprang out of his concealment and followed him, for he wanted to give Ollie time to pass beyond ear-shot of the orchard. As Joe made no attempt to smother the sound of his feet, Morgan heard him while he was still several yards behind him. He turned, stopped, and waited for ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... proper. I had a most amazing lot of prayers at the tip of my tongue when I wasn't no more'n knee-high to a grasshopper. But when a man has got a fire in him, they ain't no use trying to smother it. You either got to put water on it or else let ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... cried Mrs Belfield, who during this time had been busily employed in sweeping the hearth, wiping some slops upon the table, and smoothing her handkerchief and apron, "why the girl's enough to smother you. Henny, how can you be so troublesome? I never saw you behave ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!): 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... areas. Let a moist place be burned over and the aspen will quickly take possession, and soon establish conditions which will allow conifers to return. This the conifers do, and in a very short time smother the aspens that made it possible for them to start in life. The good nursery work of aspens is restricted pretty ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... coolness, and yet there was naught to show me that she had passed an anxious night. Ah, love, we demand that you shall not only be happy, but miserable at our wish. We would dim your eye when our own is blurred; we would smother your heart when our own is heavy, and would pierce it with a pain. Upon her children this old world has poured the wisdom of her gathered ages, and could we look from another sphere we might see the minds of great men twinkling like the stars, but the human heart is yet unschooled, yet has no range ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... suppressed desire, Raked up in ashes of my burning breast, Break out at length and to the clouds aspire, Urging the heavens to afford me rest; But let my body naturally descend Into the bowels of our common mother, And to the very centre let it wend, When it no lower can, her griefs to smother! And yet when I so low do buried lie, Then shall my love ascend unto ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... the power which these various substances possess to combine with oxygen. We open the draft of a stove that it may "draw well": that it may secure oxygen for burning. We throw a blanket over burning material to smother the fire: to keep oxygen away from it. Burning, or oxidation, is combining with oxygen, and the more oxygen you add to a fire, the hotter the fire will burn, and the faster. The effect of oxygen on combustion may be clearly ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... at opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and had talked magisterially to smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... what mournful grace, For a lost parent, sits on Chudleigh's face Fair virgin, weep no more, your anguish smother! You in this town can never want ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... turned to Drake bruskly to smother the sob of sheer happiness I felt rising in my throat; and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly forebore ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... actual, including the mean bread-and-cheese question, dissipated the phantasmal for a while, and compelled Jude to smother high thinkings under immediate needs. He had to get up, and seek for work, manual work; the only kind deemed by many of its professors ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal characters; ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... Captain Price knew her as he knew the palms of his hands. Screened behind the high weather-cloths, he drove her into it, while the tall seas filled her forward main deck rail-deep and her bows pounded away in a mast-high smother of spray. From the binnacle amidships to the weather wing of the bridge was his dominion, while the watch officer straddled down to leeward; both with eyes boring at the darkness ahead and on either beam, where there came and went ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... young physician was called at night to the peon quarter, and to his amazement found that his patient was a lady, a girl whose patrician manner was proof against all her terror and suffering. She utterly refused to look at her child and threatened to smother it if he left it within her reach. He took it to the Hospicio to be cared for temporarily, and a few days later, going as usual to attend the young mother, he found her vanished. There was a lavish fee left for him, and a note, bidding him insolently to banish the whole ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... world is abhorrent to the marrow of us. Stevenson, with his delightfully irresponsible audacity, sighs for an occasional "furlough from the moral law"; and there are times for most of us when it seems as if we should choke and smother under the everlasting "Thou shalt not!" But the daring rebel, the defiant Titan, comes creeping back to the shelter of morality with a headache or something worse, and discovers that his Promethean boldness was but childish petulance; that it is futile and foolish to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... John and then following the directions of Trevor's eyes, he descried a blue-clad, golden-haired young lady lolling against the window, trying with a giant chiffon muff to smother a fit of hilarious laughter. One arched and smiling eye showed above the muff and the whole figure was instinct with Bacchanalian mirth. "Why that's," he began to explain, but young Trevor had vanished into ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... the crown of the plant, and that means failure. Of late years I protect my plants by inverting small boxes over them. The sides of these boxes are bored full of holes to admit air, which must be allowed to circulate freely about the plant, or it will smother. I invert a box over the plant after filling it with leaves, and draw more leaves about the outside of it. This prevents water from coming in contact with the soft, sponge-like foliage, and the plant comes out in spring almost as green ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... as I the threshold cross'd, The nuns could not their fury smother; They vow'd by God and all His Host, The Prior Nilaus ...
— The Verner Raven; The Count of Vendel's Daughter - and other Ballads • Anonymous

... Guillette's fireside. The huge spit was twisted like a screw in the powerful hands that struggled for possession of it. A pistol-shot set fire to a small store of hemp in skeins that lay on a shelf suspended from the ceiling. That incident created a diversion, and while some hastened to smother the germ of a conflagration, the grave-digger, who had climbed to the attic unperceived, came down the chimney and seized the spit, just as the drover, who was defending it near the hearth, raised it above his head to prevent its being snatched from him. Some time before the assault, the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... the noise of America comes again. I have even run on wrong topics for my parsimonious Muse, and waste my time from my true studies. England I see as a roaring volcano of Fate, which threatens to roast or smother the poor literary Plinys that come too near ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... made the husband willing, like a vanquished enemy, to compound for small matters, in order to preserve something. At least the poor man does not care to let his friends see his case; and so will not provoke a fire to break out, that he sees (and so do his friends too) the meek lady has much ado to smother; and which, very possibly, burns with a most comfortable ardour, after we ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... almost drew her off her balance as amazed, stunned, nerveless, she halted. She caught a glimpse of Randerson's profile as he swept into a circle and threw his rope. There must be no missing—there was none. The sinuous loop went out, fell over the steer's head. Thereafter there was a smother of dust in which the girl could see some wildly waving limbs. Outside of the smother she saw the pony swing off for a short distance and stiffen its legs. The rope attached to the pommel of the saddle grew taut as a bow string; there was an instant of strained ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer









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