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More "Spasmodic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vast party of the Insurgents, or Confederates, including the whole Roman Catholic population of the island, both the old Irish natives, who had mainly begun the Rebellion, and the Catholics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually the mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed into something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals Preston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of the Rebellion and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... into a counterfeit inspiration, but to alleviate bodily pain. It became, gradually and reluctantly, a necessity of his life. Like the serpents around Laocoon, it confirmed its grasp, notwithstanding the wild tossings of his arms, the spasmodic resistance of every muscle, the loud shouts of protesting agony; and, when conquered, he lay like the overpowered Hatteraick in the cave, sullen, still in despair, breathing hard, but perfectly powerless. Its effects on him, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... men set to deal with heartbreaking perplexity. All weakness comes to the surface. We are homeless in a jungle of machines and untamed powers that haunt and lure the imagination. Of course our culture is confused, our thinking spasmodic, and our emotion out of kilter. No mariner ever enters upon a more uncharted sea than does the average human being born in the twentieth century. Our ancestors thought they knew their way from birth through all eternity; ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... Spasmodic Tragedy,' written to ridicule the style of Bailey, Dobell, and Alexander Smith, and published in 1854, had so many excellent qualities that it was received as a serious production instead of a caricature. Aytoun introduced this in Blackwood's Magazine as a pretended review ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of the preceding year the Midlands, after several spasmodic struggles, appeared prostrate and helpless at the feet of the Conqueror, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to build strong castles everywhere, and to garrison them with brave captains and trusty soldiers. Warwick Castle was given to Henry de Beaumont, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... delicate health as the reason for assuming them, as he did; though I used to think, that for a man in poor health, he was very swift on the legs; at least when a good place was to be jumped to; though that might only have been a sort of spasmodic exertion under strong inducements, which every one knows the greatest invalids will ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... instant, he was seen to turn over in the water; his limbs moved only with a spasmodic action; he gave a feeble kick or two with his long hind legs; and then his carcass floated along the surface, like a ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... gradually pressed down on my inflamed Prick. The long slow insertion into that furnace of love was delicious, and as she felt the head at last reach the very entrance to her longing womb, her sperm came in a flood. Mine also had been so put up that the spasmodic contractions of the folds of the innermost parts of her vagina at the moments of emission drew an equally copious ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... mine does," he said with a sigh, laying her little hand on his heart. He could do so in all confidence, for its spasmodic throbbing threatened to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... word for it, and munched at tongue and biscuits. As for muscle, we were both in hard condition. He was fresh, and what distress I felt was mainly due to spasmodic exertion culminating in that desperate spurt. As for the fog. it had more than once shown a faint tendency to lift, growing thinner and more luminous, in the manner of fogs, always to settle down again, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... against the black night sky, flashes of gunfire showed now and then, the following thunder establishing the fact that the front was within three or four hours' marching time. The gunfire, however, was not heavy, being merely the spasmodic firing incident to such nights as ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... existence she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the secret sentiment had been chiselled into the face in the betrayals of the sculpture ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... disposition may change, she may want to be alone, and she may be more or less melancholy. She will be dissatisfied with the things that previously interested her. She will tire easily, and she may have many spasmodic pains from time to time. The wise mother will tactfully see that she takes plenty of nourishing food and systematic exercise, and that she gets enough sleep in a well-aired room. There are other physical changes which are observable ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... animated only by frenzied brute instinct to find the throat of his tormenter, and ever and ever failing; till at length he crumpled and lay crushed and writhing, then subsided into insensibility, was quite still but for heaving lungs and the spasmodic clutchings of his broken and ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... had them. She had arrived at no decision whatever; she had embraced in intention no particular course. She drifted on, shutting her eyes, averting her head and, as it seemed to herself, hardening her heart. This admission will doubtless suggest to the reader that she was a weak, inconsequent, spasmodic young person, with a standard not really, or at any rate not continuously, high; and I have no desire that she shall appear anything but what she was. It must even be related of her that since she could ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... a hiatus here. One cannot write of what one does not know. I lost all trace of Shelby during the intervening years, except that I saw spasmodic productions of his in various periodicals, and guessed that he must be working in those same bachelor quarters probably still surrounded with the pictures of Miss Davis. There were rumors, also, that he went frequently to the opera with very grand people, and dined and supped ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a short time and means to get animals, farm implements, etc., will end the present conditions and put the people of the island on the road to prosperity. Spasmodic issues of army rations give only temporary relief and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... and the French Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare for war; Brunswick was summoned to form plans of a campaign; and appeals for help were sent ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... good purpose and noble aspiration caused by our reticence at a time when it is of primary importance to turn to account all the forces which make for the elevation of mankind? How much intellect and zeal runs to waste in the spasmodic effort of good men to cling to the last fragments of decaying systems, to galvanize dead formulae into some dim semblance of life! Society will not improve as it might when those who should be leaders of progress are staggering backward and forward with their eyes passionately reverted ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... perspiration, caking with dust, slithering in the slippery, impalpable powder of the road, groggily staggering in a red dusty dream, coughing, snorting, head-tossing; becoming suddenly dejected, with slouching haunch and limp legs on easy slopes, or wildly spasmodic and agile on sharp acclivities, Blue Lightning began to have ideas and recollections! Ah! she was a devil for a lark—this lightly-clinging, caressing, blarneying, cooing creature—up there! He remembered her now. Ha! very well then. Hoop-la! And suddenly leaping out like a rabbit, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of our age, both young and old, should know that that God-consciousness of the Jew, that wondrous sense of eternity in his mission, is not a laboriously acquired conviction, not the result of some spasmodic effort of grasping the innermost meaning of our history, but the natural pervading spirit of Jewish life, the air which the Jew breathes, when he lives with Torah as his guide and Mitzvah as his ladder ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... Every doctor will tell you that he is more afraid to give tobacco, | | even as an enema, than any other poison in the Materia Medica: he | | never gives it by the stomach. Sometimes, in violent spasmodic colic, | | or strangulation of the bowels, or spasmodic croup, tobacco is used | | externally as a poultice, and if you are not very careful, it will | | kill your patient even in this form. Many a colt and ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... the patella is a condition wherein the articular portions of the femur and patella assume abnormal relations whether such displacement of the patella be momentary and capable of spontaneous reduction, or fixed and requiring corrective manipulation. Spasmodic contraction of the crural muscles which sometimes retains the patella in such position that the leg is rigidly extended, does not in itself constitute luxation of the patella; and unless this bone becomes lodged on the upper portion of a femoral ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... see how much trouble a woman was spared when she was constructed on that system. Adeline's "affairs," as I have intimated, her social relations, her views of Newton's education, her practice and her theory (for she had plenty of that, such as it was, heaven save the mark!), her spasmodic disposition to marry again, and her still sillier retreats in the presence of danger (for she had not even the courage of her frivolity), these things had been a subject of tragic consideration to Olive ever since the return of the elder sister to America. ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... prophetess professionally, that she had witnessed a scene of consternation and unaffected maternal grief in this Hungarian lady upon the sudden seizure of her son, a child of four or five years old, by a spasmodic inflammation of the throat (since called croup), peculiar to children, and in those days not very well understood by medical men. The poor Hungarian, who had lived chiefly in warm, or at least not damp climates, and had never so much as heard of this complaint, was almost ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Galway peasants had passed away, and though she kept pictures before her mind of a redeemed district, and children brought up in health and cleanliness instead of disease and dirt, and home industries taking the place of the idleness that followed spasmodic labour, misgivings entered with them as she saw herself no longer "the lady" who stooped from a high level, but a mere doctor's wife (she would not admit even to her thoughts the undesirable title of "Mrs. Quin"), living in that ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... it; a long, loose pair of legs, with long boots on the feet, all in motion at the same time—all shining, and wriggling, and working with an indescribable vitality, a voice bubbling up from the vast depths below with cheery, spasmodic, and unintelligible words of welcome—this was the wonderful man that stood before me, the great Danish improvisator, the lover of little children, the gentle Caliban who dwells among fairies and holds sweet converse with fishes, and frogs, and beetles! I would have picked him out from among ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... A horrible spasmodic feeling thrilled through his soul; in order to conceal what he felt he became more than usually animated, yet there was a something hostile, a something sternly sarcastic in his words, which still, on account of the general gaiety, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... accept John Lambert; but what troubled him was a vague knowledge that it was not mere pique. He was used to dealing with pique in women, and had found it the most manageable of weaknesses. It was an element of spasmodic conscience than he saw ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... been steady, on every day of the 365 you would have seen more than 2,800 living beings—men, women, and children, of almost every conceivable condition except that of wealth or eminence—pass from the examination "pens" into the liberty of American opportunity. Since the stream was spasmodic, its numbers did reach as high in a single ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... is no time nor power in the instant of death, by any magical legerdemain, to turn away the impending retributions of wickedness and guilt. What is right, within the conditions of Infinite wisdom and goodness, will be done in spite of all traditional juggles and spasmodic spiritual attitudinizations. What can it avail that a most vile and hardened wretch, when dying, convulsed with fright and possessed with superstition, compels, or strives to compel, a certain sentiment into his soul, conjures, or tries to conjure, his mind into ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... evils which had always been there, had that which the others lacked, moral conviction, and Hartington was infected with moral indifferentism. The Conservatives no doubt thought that Mr. Gladstone's attitude was mere emotional facility, a mere exhibition of spasmodic power of transient enthusiasm, an effect rather of temperament than of conviction, and unlikely therefore to produce a continued consequence of action sustained at a high level. The public, however, saw more clearly. Power over the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... when the intervals between the courses were unduly prolonged and conversation could proceed without spasmodic jerks on the part of the entertainers. Mrs. Devereaux herself, a rather slight, elderly woman with soft white hair elaborately arranged, and kind, brown eyes, responded with evident pleasure to Marcia's pretty, childlike warmth, and was politely cordial to Frank and Kitty. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... only a few days; then, like a veritable conflagration, it began to languish; and, like the reflection of a dying fire, as it sank it began to glow with the red color of embers. But its changes were spasmodic; once about every three days it flared up only to die away again. During these fluctuations its light varied alternately in the ratio of one to six. Finally it took a permanent downward course, and after a ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... story, and its magic dispelled the wrath of her much neglected, sorely aggrieved mistress. Such a pretty little story it was, interspersed with sly looks, knowing nods, and rippling bursts of laughter. Listened to with, first, disdainful silence; then, growing interest; last, spasmodic giggles, apropos ejaculations, and much blushing and ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... indicates a dangerous attack, and the alae nasi (cartilages of the nose) rise spasmodically at each inspiration; the air rushes through the inflamed windpipe and bronchial tubes, so as to produce a loud, coarse respiratory murmur; and the spasmodic action of the abdominal muscles indicates the difficulty the animal also experiences in the act of expiration. Pressure over the intercostal (between the ribs) spaces, and pressing on the spine, induce the pain so characteristic ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... a spasmodic jerking of his hand toward his hip. Hare's arm moved quicker, and Chance's Colt went ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Rouen, there probably lurks a good deal of republicanism, akin to that which exists among the workingmen of Paris. Unfortunately it is of a kind which, though capable of spasmodic attempts to revolutionize society by force, is little capable of sustained constitutional effect, and which alarms and arrays against it, not only despots, but moderate friends of liberty and progress. The outward appearances, however, at Rouen are all in favor of the Zouave and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... he had [77] always yearned to, as popular imagination just now set thither also, in a vision of French ships going forth from the mouths of the Loire and the Gironde, from Nantes, Bordeaux, and La Rochelle, to the Indies, in rivalry of Spanish adventure. The spasmodic gaiety of the time blent with that of the season of the year, of his own privileged time of life, and allowed the opulent country through which he was to pass all its advantages. Ever afterwards that ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... toll-keeper's widow behind me as I watched the spasmodic jerkings of this umbrella. "I wasn't far out in my reckon. And you, sir, make twenty-two. It niver rains but it pours, they say. Times enow I don't see a soul for days together, not to hail by name, an' now you drops in on top ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sickly, faint-hearted, lukewarm, languid, and spasmodic efforts that the cause is to be kept alive. God will have all or nothing. This is an age in which, if never before, both good men and bad men are truly in earnest. The devil is fearfully and terribly in earnest "Therefore rejoice you heavens, and you that dwell in them Woe to the inhabitants ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the side of the boat, she made a grasp at the oar, but it was too far for her to reach it; and then, by a spasmodic movement of the other oar, the ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... to the exhibition occupies a bare, disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... finished their meal when the sounds lessened, dwindling to spasmodic, staggering gasps with lengthening pauses that broke suddenly in a quivering intake of breath and a vibration of the recumbent frame. The hysterical paroxysm was over. He lay limp and turned his ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... their talk in the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo. What she had offered then he had refused to take: was she the woman to forget such a refusal? Was it not rather to keep its memory alive that she had married him? Or was she but the flighty girl he had once imagined her, driven hither and thither by spasmodic impulses, and incapable of consistent action, whether for good or ill? The barrier of their past—of all that lay unsaid and undone between them—so completely cut her off from him that he had, in her presence, the strange sensation of a man who believes himself to be alone ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... long enough for Joel. He swept the blanket down upon the man, smothering his cries with fold on fold; and he grappled Varde, and crushed him, and beat at his head with his fists until the mate's spasmodic struggles slackened. Priss had heard the sounds of combat, swept out of her cabin, bent above them. He looked up and saw her; ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... eyes. The driven restlessness that had made Conscience doubt her sanity was slowly yielding to a sense of repose, as the tautened anguish of a mangled body relaxes to the balm of an anesthetic. Slowly the slenderly curved and graciously proportioned modeling of her lithe figure quieted from spasmodic unrest and the wild racing measure of her heart-beat calmed. Then she turned up her face. Her eyes cleared and her lips tilted ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... not—presently the hand he clasped sank heavily from his touch. Then there was a spasmodic convulsion of the whole frame. Then there burst a piercing shriek from her lips, as she half raised herself in agony from the sofa, and then each limb was set and motionless in the stern ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... returned, at intervals, with violence, and I still continued to bleed occasionally at the nose; but, upon the whole, I suffered much less than might have been expected. I breathed, however, at every moment, with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended with a troublesome spasmodic action of the chest. I now unpacked the condensing apparatus, and got it ready ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... habit we get of singling out some particular quality, some particular school of art for intemperate praise or, still worse, for intemperate abuse. Mr. Ruskin, I suppose, is answerable for the taste for this one-sided and spasmodic criticism; and every young gentleman who has the trick of a few adjectives will languidly vow that Marlowe is supreme, or Murillo foul. It is the mark of rational criticism as well as of healthy thought to maintain an evenness of mind in judging of great works, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you will you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling are alike asphyxiated. And when, at length, yielding to your ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... away, rather spasmodic. He had been through the very front hell of the war—and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. But ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... "Resign." The public officials of this favored country, Heaven be thanked, are infrequently slandered: they are, as a rule, so bad that calumniation is a compliment. Our best men, with here and there an exception, have been driven out of public life, or made afraid to enter it. Even our spasmodic efforts at reform fail ludicrously for lack of leaders unaffiliated with "the thing to be reformed." Unless attracted by the salary, why should a gentleman "aspire" to the Presidency of the United States? During his canvass (and he is expected to "run," not merely to "stand") ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... seemed to throw any light upon the case, except a condition of well-marked phimosis. Acting upon this, the Professor immediately circumcised the child, and from the very day of the operation the spasmodic action began to diminish, and in two weeks he was entirely well, without any other ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Yes, Le! With all my heart!" she impulsively answered. Then, catching her breath in a spasmodic way, as some painful thought sped like an arrow through her heart, she added, in a subdued tone: "But, Le, before anything of that sort is quite settled between us, I want you to talk ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in which Dr. Ryerson pre-eminently excelled—that of a controversialist. There was nothing spasmodic in his method of controversy, although there might be in the times and occasions of his indulging in it. He was a well-read man and an accurate thinker. His habit, when he meditated a descent upon a foe, was to thoroughly master the subject in dispute; ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead. His own throat had tightened and he grew weak in the knees every time the rubber-soled nurse stole into sight. Every now and then he heard that gasping cough, and felt the spasmodic grip of Chic's fingers upon his arm. It was terrible; for weeks ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of the skin as well as their own. Then, in case the lungs are the weakest organ, the mucous secretion becomes excessive; so that it would fill up the cells, and stop the breathing, were it not for the spasmodic effort called coughing, by which this substance is thrown out. In case the nerves are the weakest part of the system, such an exposure would result in pains in the head or teeth, or in some other nervous ailment. If the muscles ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... upon the body. Her mind, wandering and purposeless, yet spoke to mine, and renewed all its racking doubts, and exaggerated all its nameless fears. Her veins burned with fever. She was fitfully delirious. Words fell from her at spasmodic moments—strange, incoherent words, but all full of meaning in my ears. I sat beside the bed on one hand, while, on one occasion, her mother occupied a seat upon that opposite. The eyes of my wife opened upon both of us—turned from me, convulsively, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... nearing Trouville, the big drops fell. The grain-fields were soon bent double beneath the spasmodic shower. The poppies were drenched, so were the cobble paved courtyards; only the geese and the regiment of the ducks came abroad to revel in the downpour. The villas were hermetically sealed now—their summer finery was not made for a wetting. The landscape had no such ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... little. Marley Wood was not new to her. It had been a favourite spot of her brother Austin's, and the two had spent many a pleasant day beneath the umbrage of those old forest-trees; she, sitting and reading, neither of them talking very much, only in a spasmodic way, when Austin was suddenly moved by some caprice to pour out his thoughts into the ear of his little sister—strange bitter thoughts they were sometimes; but the girl listened as to the inspirations of genius. Here he had taught her almost all that she had ever learned of landscape art. She ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... with a straight nose, and large mouth, and high cheek-bones; but he had fine black eyes, though they were fierce, and had a look in them that suggested the woods and the wild things that live there. But Ranald, though his attendance was spasmodic, and dependent upon the suitability or otherwise of the weather for hunting, was the best ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... cuckoo, that seemed to come in whenever an interval of silence fitted. The swallows dipped and flashed and circled over the bosom of the lake. There were blackbirds eagerly but cautiously at work, with their spasmodic trippings, on the lawn. A robin perched on the iron railing eyed her curiously and seemed more disposed to approach than to retreat.—WILLIAM BLACK, in Green Pastures ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity which had recurred at intervals ever since he had been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so apathetic a condition that the exits and entrances into his room were not felt to be of great importance. He had lain so still, with his eyes closed, all this morning, that Maggie told ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... U-tube depending from a vessel of water (Fig. 4) and apply the lamp to one leg a circulation is at once set up within it, and no such spasmodic action can be produced. Thus U-tube is the representative of the true method of circulation within a water-tube boiler properly constructed. We can, for the purpose of securing more heating surface, extend the heated leg into a long incline ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... and strong, Necks that to the earth-supporting Atlas might full well belong. "But our strength un-scientific strives in vain thro' stagnant water, Every day, I blush to own it, Cambridge strokes are rowing shorter. With a short spasmodic impulse see the boats a moment leap, Starting with a flying motion, soon they stop and sink to sleep. Where are Stanley, Jones, and Courage? where is 'Judas' stout and tall, Where the Stroke named ''all' by Bargemen, known to Cambridge as 'Jack Hall'? 'Twas a spectacle ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... short, sharp raid of General Early—penetrating to the gates of the Capital and with possible capabilities of even entering them—can hardly be considered an organized scheme of invasion. It was rather the spasmodic effort by a sharp, hard blow to loosen the tightening and death-dealing grip upon our throat, and give us time for one long, deep breath before ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... genuine aid to the actor? Bannister said of John Kemble that he was never pathetic because he had no children. Talma says that when deeply moved he found himself making a rapid and fugitive observation on the alternation of his voice, and on a certain spasmodic vibration which it contracted in tears. Has not the actor who can thus make his feelings a part of his art an advantage over the actor who never feels, but who makes his observations solely from the feelings of others? It is necessary to this art that ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the Chimpanzee the requiem rang, Now the bell tolls for the Orang-Outang. Well may spasmodic sobs choke childhood's gorge, Now they who sighed for "Sally" grieve for "George." A "wilderness of monkeys" can't console, For Anthropoids defunct. Of Apedom's whole, One little Chimpanzee, one Gibbon small, (Who ought to write his race's "Rise and Fall,") ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... days, however, we can readily believe that Charles IX. died a natural death. His excesses, his manner of life, the sudden development of his faculties, his last spasmodic attempt to recover the reins of power, his desire to live, the abuse of his vital strength, his final sufferings and last pleasures, all prove to an impartial mind that he died of consumption, a disease scarcely studied at that time, and very little understood, the symptoms of which might, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 'No,' she said, standing like a statue petrified with horror. 'It was my servant... she knows.' And then, after a short silence, she went on: 'I was there... by his side.' And she uttered a sort of cry of horror, and after a fit of choking, which made her gasp, she wept violently, and shook with spasmodic sobs for a minute or two. Then her tears suddenly ceased, as if by an internal fire, and with an air of tragic calmness, she said: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... years after Kossovo the Serbs resisted; but their efforts, now at Belgrade, which was made the capital and fortified by Stephen the chivalrous son of Prince Lazar, now at Smederevo on the Danube, were spasmodic. Bands of Turks and also of Magyars were terrorizing the country; and the sagacious old despot George Brankovi['c] was the last to offer opposition to the Turk at Smederevo. Meanwhile in Bosnia, the Bogomiles, driven to despair by persecution, had been calling to the Turk. Constantinople fell ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... was heard from the men. Over the high weather rail, a topping wave flung into their eyes a handful of heavy drops that stung like hail. There were low groans of indignation. A man sighed. Another emitted a spasmodic laugh through his chattering teeth. No one moved away. The little kassab wiped his face and went on in his cracked voice, to the accompaniment of the swishing sounds made by the seas that swept regularly astern ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... known to us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal and most moving picture of a wicked man. Observe the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... not real opposition on the part of the Popes to science," that we owe the belief in "the supposed opposition between the Church and Science."[40] That the Popes did something to foster medical science in a spasmodic kind of way, that papal physicians were appointed and that the Church exercised control over some seats of learning may be freely admitted. That the monasteries preserved some of the Latin classics that they were not ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... firm foundation before he was conscious of a slight noise behind him. He turned, and at the same moment a form hurled itself upon him. In the frenzied movement of the hands for his throat, in the spasmodic clutch of the arms which clung animal-like about him he recognized the same mad, unreasoning passion with which young Arsdale had before attacked him. He could not see his face, and the man uttered no cry. The fellow's arms seemed stronger than before and even longer. But he himself was stronger ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... if you will give me your help, I think we can manage him. He is not very strong-willed. In a spasmodic way he can defy everyone, but the steady pressure of common sense will prevail with him, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... to mock the dreariness of their poverty with these flaunting raiments. It did not seem like them, or rather, consistent with my idea of them. There was incongruity deeper than their bizarre externals; a half-melancholy, half-crazy absurdity in their action, the substitution of a grim spasmodic frenzy for levity, that rightly or wrongly impressed me. When the increasing gloom of the evening made their figures undistinguishable, I turned into the first cross-street. As I lifted my hat to my persistent young friend with the Pritsche, I fancied ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... expression of the Low German type, is a history of the most stubborn struggle for freedom in Europe. This legend of German docility will not bear close examination. It is true that they are not given to spasmodic outbreaks, and that they do not lend themselves readily to intrigues and pronunciamentos, but there is every reason to suppose that they have the heads to plan and the wills to carry out as sound and orderly and effective a revolution ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... up and down the thicket, Weston apparently directing his course by the spasmodic movements of the fork, which now and then would lie still altogether. At length it commenced to jerk sharply, and Devine looked at his companion in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... hypercritical; he was largely and handsomely democratic—and slept in the deserted tan-yard with the hogs. My father tried to reform him once, but did not succeed. My father was not a professional reformer. In him the spirit of reform was spasmodic. It only broke out now and then, with considerable intervals between. Once he tried to reform Injun Joe. That also was a failure. It was a failure, and we boys were glad. For Injun Joe, drunk, was interesting and a benefaction to us, but Injun Joe, sober, was a dreary ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... being far removed from their fellow creatures, poor exiles relegated to this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux, since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but they ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... "Halt!" The recruits became rigid. "Medical inspection," cried the corporal—"Tongues out!" Three tongues were instantly thrust out. "Salute your general," was the next order. This was too much. In the middle of a spasmodic attempt at a salute a dubious look began to spread over the faces of the three victims, which broadened into certainty as with a yell they leapt upon their oppressor and made ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... new star had been accurately determined, it was found that it was identical with an insignificant looking star marked on one of the maps as of the 9-1/2 magnitude. The star exists in the same spot to this day, and it is of the same magnitude as it was prior to its spasmodic outburst in 1866. This was the first new star which was spectroscopically examined. We shall give in Chapter XXIII. a short account of the features of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... then, we must needs act; let us do so as becomes men engaged in a great and solemn cause. Not by processions and idle parades and spasmodic enthusiasms, by shallow tricks and shows and artifices, can a cause like ours be carried onward. Leave these to parties contending for office, as the "spoils of victory." We need no disguises, nor false pretences, nor subterfuges; enough for us to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... And three cheers followed for Africa. Whether Jericho knew much about Africa, may be a question; but he understood at least that this honor was offered to himself, and accepted it accordingly. It almost overwhelmed him. A wild chuckle of spasmodic delight burst from him, which threatened to end in a convulsion. And though he rallied from this, yet he was quite demoralized, and it was a long time before he settled down into that sedate old darky which was ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... Pinaleno Indians of the San Carlos region, while inclined toward spasmodic outbreaks, were not as hostile as their western neighbors, the Mohave and Yuma Apaches. A very dangerous element was added when, in 1876, under direction of the army, Agent John P. Clum moved to San Carlos 325 Indians of the Chiricahua-Apache ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, but many a time had to play peacemaker—smoothing down ruffled feelings, that I knew had been excited by Granger's freaky and spasmodic efforts to correct personally some trifling fault that ought to have been left to a regimental or company commander to remedy. Yet with all these small blemishes Granger had many good qualities, and his big heart was so full of generous impulses and good motives as to far ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... voice to a singularly deep guttural, I might still have continued to her the communication of my sentiments; this pitch of voice (the guttural) depending, I find, not upon the current of the breath, but upon a certain spasmodic action of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... elderly imagined they felt young and behaved accordingly. Of course they only imagined it, they were only deceiving themselves; but how deplorable were the results. She herself had grown old as people should grow old—steadily and firmly. No interruptions, no belated after-glows and spasmodic returns. If, after all these years, she were now going to be deluded into some sort ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... writes: "My whole nature goes out so to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that I have an emission while sitting by them with no thought of sex, only the gladness of soul found its way out thus, and a glow of health suffused the whole body. There was no spasmodic conclusion, but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops of semen passed." (In reality, no doubt, not semen, but urethral fluid.) This man's condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ceased to be a State in the Union, is not to be wondered at. The extent and determination of the secession movement were imperfectly understood, and the belief among the supporters of the government, and, perhaps, of the government itself, was, that it was a spasmodic movement for a temporary purpose, rather than a fixed determination to found an independent separate nationality; that it was and would be sustained by the real majority of the people of none of the States, with perhaps the exception of South Carolina; that the true policy of ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... had been content to leave it there! But no: with a certain spasmodic frugality which has often been my bane, I shook the saucepan vehemently, in order to dislodge some more of its contents into my already full dish. As I did so, my treacherous wrist, strained by the weight of ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... her widowhood, my mother shrank from society, and afterwards had only spasmodic fits of doubt whether it were not her duty to make my sister go out more. So that now and then Emily did go to a party, or to make a visit of some days or weeks from home, and then we knew how valuable she was. It would be hard ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will now be felt to palpitate spasmodically, as if opening and closing again in the coronal region; there will be a tightening of the scalp about the base of brain, as if the floor of the cerebrum were contracting; the seer will catch his breath with a spasmodic sigh and the first vision will stand out clear and life-like against ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... of infants is spasmodic croup, and is very rarely dangerous, although the symptoms ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... with a mere shadow of an army; the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result, and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... more guttural, she uttered ignoble things and silly cries which gave him pain—"My dear!—oh, hon!—oh I can't stand it!"—aroused nevertheless, he took this body which creaked as it writhed, and he experienced the extraordinary sensation of a spasmodic burning within a swaddle ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... not beautiful things in it; it shows one a wholesome nature and a grateful, kindly heart; but, in the first place, he writes a terrible style, the kind of style that imposes on simple people because it is allusive, and what is called unconventional; to me it is simply spasmodic and affected. The man seems, as a rule, utterly unable to say anything in a simple and delicate way; his one object appears to be not to use the obvious word. He has a sort of jargon of his own—a dreadful jargon. He must write "crittur" or "craythur," when he means "creature"; he says ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... disturbing; and I waked in the morning with a resentful recollection that I had received not a few hard knocks; but as everything was quiet, I dismissed the impression; for I had yet to learn that my new bed-fellow was a spasmodic kicker in his sleep of great ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... she found, on reaching her destination. The parlors were full, and the more enterprising of the guests were beginning to group themselves in twos and threes, and make spasmodic efforts at conversation. But conversation at a Bilberry assemblage was rarely a success,—it was so evident that to converse was a point of etiquette, and it was so patent that conversation was expected from everybody, whether they had ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood at her heels, is eying curiously, and with earnest variations of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... him again," she said slowly, in a low voice. "He is in jail, to be tried for murder, and he will probably be hung—" She hesitated, her face turned white and there was a spasmodic throbbing in her throat, but she went resolutely on: "And he does not care the least thing about me. He was merely fond of my little Bye-Bye, and I am grateful to him for that. But he is nothing to me. I'll marry Mr. Wellesly—I think—but I'll wait—" And then the throbbing in ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... HELMER'S domino, throws it round her, while she says in quick, hoarse, spasmodic whispers). Never to see him again. Never! Never! (Puts her shawl over her head.) Never to see my children again either—never again. Never! Never!—Ah! the icy, black water—the unfathomable depths—If only it were over! ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... the only experience of the first few sittings, it may be that of many; but, sooner or later, there will come a moment when the milky clouds and dancing starlights will suddenly vanish—a bright azure expanse like an open summer sky will occupy the field of vision; the brain will take up a spasmodic action, as if opening and shutting in the superior coronal region; there will be a tightening of the scalp on a level with the base of the brain, as if the floor of the cerebrum were contracting; the seer ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... on the old footing, without comprehensive plan, developing only the same spasmodic encounters, barren of strategic result, that had marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of the island, lay in sight, but how far distant ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... was only broken by the spasmodic sobs of Bigot as he leaned over the grave to look his last upon the form of the fair girl whom he had betrayed and brought to this untimely end. "Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!" said he, beating his breast. "Oh, Cadet, we are burying her like a dog! I cannot, I ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... forced final spasmodic effort, he seized the arms of his chair, and rose, lifted up his right arm, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... to my wife's dinner, Lisbeth," said he, scrutinizing her, for Lisbeth was perfectly well, trying to imitate the hiccough of spasmodic indigestion as she drank ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Julia was undoubtedly very ill, so ill that even Samson Mountain forbore to force her to descend to the parlour in which Mr. Tom Raybould nervously awaited her coming, and where, on Samson's return from his daughter's chamber, the pair sat and drank their beer together in miserable silence, broken by spasmodic attempts at conversation regarding crops and politics. The doctor had been called in, and, knowing nothing of the grief which was the poor girl's only ailment, had been too puzzled by the symptoms of her malady ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... divinely-commissioned society which should declare the will and communicate the grace of God, not to one nation only but to all men who were willing to hearken and obey,—and whose action, as a channel of intercourse between God and Man, should be continuous rather than spasmodic,—began to make itself felt. A Code of Law might conceivably suffice to regulate the life of one small nation; but when we consider under what varying conditions of climate, occupation, custom, tradition, and so forth, the general life of Humanity is carried on, we see clearly that no one ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... We reverse the old transformation, butterflies into grubs!' cried Lucy, with somewhat spasmodic laughter. 'Tell me ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... promoted and, therefore, she will retain her place on the pay roll. It were more logical to have the same teacher continue with the pupil during his entire school life of twelve years, for, in that case, her interest in him would be continuous rather than temporary and spasmodic. But the present plan of changing teachers would be even better than that if only every teacher's work could be made to project itself not only to graduation day, but to the days of mature manhood and womanhood. If only every teacher were able to make each lesson a vital ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... sail set, and we were soon alongside the ocean steamer whose iron sides rose above us like a city wall. There was nothing but an iron ladder, flat against this wall, by which to ascend. The heaving of the surf-boat was great. It approached the ladder and retreated from it in the most irregularly spasmodic manner. Only active men, accustomed to such feats, could get upon it. Kafirs, although active as kittens, are not accustomed to the sea, or to the motion of ships and boats. For them to ascend was ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... for his tormented mind began to affect his actions and disorder the progress of his life. At times he worked laboriously and did much with his own hands that might have been left to others; but his energy was displayed in a manner fitful and spasmodic; occasionally he would vanish altogether for four-and-twenty hours or more; and none knew when he ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of mind to take these precautions instantly; but he had not self-control enough to suppress the involuntary exclamation which burst from his lips, at the moment when the thin streak of candle-light first flashed into his eyes. A violent spasmodic action contracted the muscles of his throat. He clenched his fist in a fury of suppressed rage against himself, as he felt that his own voice had turned ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... gained as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that effort in the ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... before the end, pressure of the brain became apparent; severe pain, succeeded by torpor and loss of power, and, after a short time, utter unconsciousness, proved that the sands of life had nearly run down. A few hours of spasmodic suffering followed, very trying to those who watched by; but suddenly, about four on the morning of October 13th, 1845, the silver cord was loosed, the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the spirit returned to God ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little vexed that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had defrauded him of the first evening. His regret on that account came to the surface every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in which everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted by innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of affection and joy. Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... left hand to the full length of his arm; there was a soft dab, and Fred uttered a subdued "Oh!" as his companion's right hand grasped his with spasmodic violence. ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... months they are found far away in the colonies of their kinsfolk, here and there planted upon the prairie, or out in gangs where new lines of railway are in construction, the joy of the contractor's heart, glad to exchange their steady, uncomplaining toil for the uncertain, spasmodic labour of their English-speaking rivals. But winter finds them once more crowding back into the little black shacks in the foreign quarter of the city, drawn thither by their traditionary social instincts, or driven by economic necessities. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... beating Colonel Bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise your ambition—and so great, so influential an ambition!—by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... mountain of adamant, so famed in oriental fables. When he practised as a physician at Basle, he called one of his nostrums by the name of azoth—a stone or crystal, which, he said, contained magnetic properties, and cured epilepsy, hysteria, and spasmodic affections. He soon found imitators. His fame spread far and near; and thus were sown the first seeds of that error which has since taken root and flourished so widely. In spite of the denial of modern practitioners, this ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... both rooms were set low in the massive granite walls, and being always wide open, they offered, and indeed invited, easy access to—say, a grave-faced gentlemanly brown dog and a spasmodic rough-coated terrier without a tail, whenever the spirit moved them to incursion, which it invariably did at meal-times and frequently ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... old-time spirit of rebellion flared up in his passionate outburst against the King and the Loyalists. But it was only temporary, and when he learned that the girl was James Sterling's daughter, he was forced to capitulate. He made a few spasmodic efforts after that, but the gentleness of the girl, together with the fact that she knew and loved Dane, swept ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... naturally lead increasing numbers towards the entrance of the Occult Path, and will lend more and more attraction to the transcendent opportunities it offers for the continued strengthening and purification of the character—strengthening and purification no longer directed by mere spasmodic effort, and continually interrupted by misleading attractions, but guided and guarded at every step by the Masters of Wisdom, so that the upward climb when once begun should no longer be halting and uncertain, but lead direct to the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... lines and red patches; the paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as she pointed out some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any satirical comments for which she might have revenged herself. She exhausted her wit in trying to engage them in a conversation, in which she tried to ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... the waywardness of the Celt, as they met exactly the stronger nature of the Saxon. At intervals, when the government was exasperated by unusual outrages, some prince of the blood was sent across as viceroy; and half a century of acquiescence in disorder would be followed by a spasmodic severity, which irritated without subduing, and forfeited affection, while it failed to terrify. At all other times, Ireland was governed by the Norman Irish, and these, as the years went on, were tempted by their convenience to strengthen themselves by Irish alliances, to identify ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... throws off its criminals by a spasmodic effort. The gallows tree has borne its ghastly fruit. Fleeing "Roughs" are self-expatriated. Others are unceremoniously shipped abroad. The Vigilance Committee rules. This threshing out of the chaff gives the State a certain dignity. At least, an effort has been made to purge the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the publication of Treasure Island. Markheim appeared in 1884. Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... into a gentle slumber, when a chorus of pronounced grunts and a spasmodic shaking of the carriage revealed to me the fact that I was surrounded by those long-nosed black pigs, so celebrated for their courage and pertinacity. They had discovered that the iron steps of the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his head down upon the pavement. There was a crash as the breaking of a cocoa-nut shell by a hammer; and when Rock let go, the mass of mis-shapen humanity dropped in a dollop upon the flags, arms and legs limp and motionless, in the last not even the power left for a spasmodic kick. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... child I knew that the insect in question improved each shining hour by something honey something something every something flower. I had also heard that bees could not sting you if you held your breath, a precaution which would make conversation by the herbaceous border an affair altogether too spasmodic; and, finally, that in any case the same bee could only sting you once—though, apparently, there was no similar provision of Nature's that the same person ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... began to languish. Covertly watching, I saw that Chris's head had begun to droop. His body, propped comfortably against a tree, sagged a little. The hand that held the cup was lifted, stretched out in the direction of the enticing jar, then forgetting its errand fell heavily. After a few spasmodic twitchings of the eyelids and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... ask leave to scrutinise carefully every step of the argument which has such an ending, and demur if at any point of it we are invited to substitute unlimited hypothesis for patient observation, or the spasmodic fluttering flight of fancy for the severe conclusions to which logical accuracy of reasoning ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... had become bone. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I listened with awe to this physiological revelation, and with chastened and depressed spirits made a mental note of our national calamity. Privately I fancied that the mottled and spasmodic legs of Achille - whom she carried in her arms - or at least so much of the infant Pelides' legs as were not enveloped in a napkin, gave every promise of refuting ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... customer to remain at the Moonbeam for the rest of his life. But it was not so. It was in Mr. Horsball's nature to be civil to a rich hunting country gentleman; and it was the fact also that Ralph had ever been popular with the world of the Moonbeam,—even at times when the spasmodic, and at length dilatory, mode of his payment must have become matter for thought to the master of the establishment. There was no doubt about the payments now, and Ralph's popularity was increased fourfold. Mrs. Horsball got out from some secluded nook a special bottle of orange-brandy ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a table in one corner of a beer-garden, and waltzed with his wife, Constance, to keep warm when there was no fire and the weather was cold, and all the time danced attendance on the Archbishop of Salzburg. All of his feeble, spasmodic efforts at freedom came to naught, because there was no ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... concerned to hear of your indisposition, but thought the best thing I could do, was to make no formal calls when you were really ill. I have been suffering myself from another kind of malady—a severe, spasmodic, house-buying-and-repairing attack—which has left me extremely weak and all but exhausted. The seat of the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... systematic marshalling of facts and figures and arguments. One might say of many of his speeches, as was said of Alexander Mackenzie's sentences, that he built them as he built a stone wall. His tremendous energy was not spasmodic, but was backed by solid industry, method ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... shy—much like a young colt when it is going to break out of harness. She rocked back and forth with short spasmodic jerks, and twisted her handkerchief into ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... there at eight or nine o'clock in the morning. There is very little but absolute rubbish left for the post-prandial visitor. A few inveterate book-hunters have journeyed thither at various times and in a spasmodic manner, but the hope of anything worth having has usually turned out to be a vain one: ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... forget to turn the crank. The dancers were thus obliged to pause, one foot in the air, not knowing when to put it down, and when they did put it down they did not fall in measure, and had to commence all over again. This spasmodic waltzing almost made us crazy. As for me, I could not bear it any longer. No chariot nor horses could have kept me away from that piano; to feel again (after so many years) the delight of playing it! ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... urged a reduction of the tariff, generous pensions and civil service reform, together with the enforcement of the anti-trust laws and the popular election of senators. In the main, it was devoted to a condemnation of the existing Republican administration, which it denounced as "spasmodic, erratic, sensational, spectacular and arbitrary." It also contained a paragraph declaring that the question of the money standard had ceased to be an issue, on the ground that recent discoveries of gold had enormously increased the supply of currency ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... grieved to hear the day before yesterday from Sommer that poor Stockmar had had a relapse, but the illness is clearly of a spasmodic nature and therefore not at all dangerous, and the pain had speedily left him, but of course left him again weaker, which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... convulsively, anticipating the slash of steel, and my throat closed in spasmodic dread. This was breaking the compact, bound as they were not to inflict physical damage. I opened my lips to protest this breaking of the bond of honor and met her dark blazing stare, and suddenly the sweat broke out on my forehead. I had placed myself ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Christy minstrel with the briefest of intervals between his performances. There were black rims in the orbits of his eyes, as if he gazed feebly out of unglazed spectacles, which heightened his simian resemblance, already grotesquely exaggerated by what appeared to be repeated and spasmodic experiments in dyeing his gray hair. Without the slightest notice of Lance, he inflicted his protesting and querulous ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, love, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... this does not imply that it is an easy or a brief one. The enterprise of beating Colonel Bogey at golf is an agreeable one, but it means honest and regular work. A fact to be borne in mind always! You are certainly not going to realise your ambition—and so great, so influential an ambition!—by spasmodic and half-hearted effort. You must begin by making up your mind adequately. You must rise to the height of the affair. You must approach a grand undertaking in the grand manner. You ought to mark the day in the calendar as a solemnity. Human nature is weak, and has ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... women vote on a property qualification. The Peruvian Minister of Justice has declared that Peru places women on the same footing as men. Thus all over the world is the idea of human rights taking root and cropping out in a healthful rather than a spasmodic outgrowth. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... said after a while, and the risaldar drove to the right, toward where a Hindu temple cast deep shadows, and a row of trees stood sentry in spasmodic moonlight. In front of the temple, seated on a mat, was a wandering fakir of the none-too-holy type. By his side was a flat ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... influence on the excited brain, and must always, sooner or later, prove fatal to inordinate excitement. A few peculiarly constituted individuals may show themselves capable of a lifelong enthusiasm, but the multitude is ever spasmodic in its fervour, and begins to slide back to its former apathy as soon as the exciting ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... at the ravaged face of our brother, convulsed with spasmodic laughter and tears, a feeling ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... plaintive voices. Wings longer than tail; both wings and tails usually drooped and vibrating when the birds are perching. Habits moody and silent when perching on a conspicuous limb, telegraph wire, dead tree, or fence rail and waiting for insects to fly within range. Sudden, nervous, spasmodic sallies in midair to seize insects on the wing. Usually they return to their identical perch or lookout. Pugnacious and fearless. Excellent nest builders and devoted mates. Kingbird. Phoebe. Wood Pewee. Acadian ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... army, was not present at drills. Still, his palace was swarming with nobles, officers, jugglers, and singers, while at night great orgies took place, at which the sound of harps mingled with the drunken shouts of guests and the spasmodic laughter of women. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... might have been expected to have belonged to the 'Spasmodic school,' judging by his parental antecedents. His father was accused of having a share in Babington's conspiracy, but was released because he was godson to Queen Elizabeth. Soon after, however, he was imprisoned ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... taking each other by the shoulders, and then hopping now on the one foot now on the other. When many took part in the dance, they placed themselves in rows, sang a monotonous, meaningless song, hopped in time, turned the eyes out and in, and threw themselves with spasmodic movements, clearly denoting pleasure and pain, now to the right, now to the left "La saison" for dance and song, the time of slaughtering reindeer, however, did not happen during our stay, on which account our experience ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... powers of cordiality, or else Nuttie's stiffness froze him. They were all embarrassed, and had reason to be grateful to Lady Kirkaldy's practised powers as a diplomate's wife. She made the most of Mrs. Egremont's shy spasmodic inquiries, and Mark's jerks of information, such as that they were all living at Bridgefield Egremont, now, that his sister May was very like his new cousin, that Blanche was come out and was very like his mother, etc. etc. Every one was more at ease when Lady Kirkaldy ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... o'clock the policeman in the village joined in the search, and yet nothing was heard of Molly. Mrs. Carteret became really frightened, and Miss Carew was surprised to see her betray so much feeling as almost to lose her self-control. She kept walking up and down, while odd spasmodic little sentences escaped from her every ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... there was no dearth of substantial necessaries and comforts, as well as tobacco and cigarettes galore. Our illustration shows a group of soldiers cooking their Christmas geese in the open, and as intent upon their task as though such conditions were quite orthodox and even such minor alarums as "spasmodic artillery duels, and local fusillades" were ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... cloths bound tightly round their waists, upon which they again recovered, and remained free from complaint until the next attack. This practice of swathing was resorted to on account of the tympany which followed these spasmodic ravings, but the bystanders frequently relieved patients in a less artificial manner, by thumping and trampling upon the parts affected. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... impulsive response to Prime Minister Kerensky's eloquence or the result of isolated local conditions. Gradually the fighting spread over more and more ground. It became more efficient and less spasmodic. Undoubtedly this was partly due to the fact that matters behind the front began to settle down somewhat and that supplies of ammunition and food again flowed more regularly and abundantly. Then too the new commander in chief seemed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... him the thousand forms of opinions for each of which the same internal witness is affirmed. The Mayo peasant, crawling with bare knees over the flint points on Croagh Patrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in the spasmodic extasy of a revival, alike are conscious of emotions in themselves which correspond to their creed: the more passionate—or, as some would say—the more unreasoning the piety, the louder and more clear is the voice within. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the tired spirit. I find that every prominent scoundrel known to us pursued his work of sin with an absolute unconsciousness of all moral law until pain or death drew near; then the scoundrel cringed like a cur under the scourges of remorse. Thackeray, in a fit of spasmodic courage, painted the archetypal scoundrel once and for all in "Barry Lyndon," and he practically said the last word on the subject; for no grave analysis, no reasoning, can ever improve on that immortal ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope—for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared—and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... probability, of a miserable night. The trio, however, still held on their way; the black boy, during the momentary illuminations caused by the repeated flashes of lightning, continued to discern the, but to him, evanescent path; and with spasmodic starts; and intervals of salient progression, proceeded in ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... followed by vomiting, and the only remedy which is of value in whooping cough is a nerve depressant which will diminish the activity of the nervous system without at the same time interfering with the strength or vigor of the patient. On account of this connection between the lungs, whose spasmodic ejection of air seems to threaten the entire collapse of the little patient, and the stomach, so alarming do the repeated fits of vomiting appear that often this feature of the disease is even more serious than ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... for myself. Until now everything which I had heard spoken in that happy household were simple words of true meaning. If we bad aught to say, we said it; and if any one preferred silence, nay if all did so, there would have been no spasmodic, forced efforts to talk for the sake of talking, or to keep ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... man on our right was too slow in getting on his helmet; he sank to the ground, clutching at his throat, and after a few spasmodic twisting, went West (died). It was horrible to see him die, but we were powerless to help him. In the corner of a traverse, a little, muddy cur dog, one of the company's pets, was lying dead, with his ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... of such moneys as Roger Stapylton had bequeathed to him; for the colonel considered—now—it was a man's duty personally to support his wife and child and sister. And he vigorously attempted to discharge this obligation, alike by virtue of his salary at the Library, and by spasmodic raids upon his tiny capital, and—chief of all—by speculation in the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... temporary it is true, but most harassing to the subordinate, since I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, but many a time had to play peacemaker—smoothing down ruffled feelings, that I knew had been excited by Granger's freaky and spasmodic efforts to correct personally some trifling fault that ought to have been left to a regimental or company commander to remedy. Yet with all these small blemishes Granger had many good qualities, and his big heart was so full of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... long, discordant cry could be heard somewhere in the distance, ending in a spasmodic jerk. It was like nothing human. Yet strangely it suggested something human. As if some unearthly ghoul were trying to simulate the wailing of human anguish.... Then again it was quite grotesque, bearing no resemblance to the cry of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... H——, AEt. 40. A spasmodic asthma, attended with symptoms of effusion. An infusion of Digitalis relieved her very considerably, and she lived four years afterwards without ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... to some persons, and they thrill and stir me so that I have an emission while sitting by them with no thought of sex, only the gladness of soul found its way out thus, and a glow of health suffused the whole body. There was no spasmodic conclusion, but a pleasing gentle sensation as the few drops of semen passed." (In reality, no doubt, not semen, but urethral fluid.) This man's condition may certainly be considered somewhat morbid; he is attracted to both men and women, and the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... belief that other than natural causes were at work. There could be no other reason given that John Louder should miss his mark, than that his gun was "bewitched." It was an age when the last dying throes of superstition seemed fastening on the people's minds, and the spasmodic struggle threatened to upset their reason. The New Englander's mind was prepared for mysteries as the fallow ground is prepared for the seed. He was busied conquering the rugged earth and making it yield to his husbandry. His time was divided between arduous toil for bread and fighting ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... close of the preceding year the Midlands, after several spasmodic struggles, appeared prostrate and helpless at the feet of the Conqueror, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to build strong castles everywhere, and to garrison them with brave captains and trusty soldiers. Warwick Castle was given to Henry de Beaumont, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the old footing, without comprehensive plan, developing only the same spasmodic encounters, barren of strategic result, that had marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and therewithal the practical ruin of ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... 1786, a fate which, at a later date, also befell another place of public entertainment, the Circus, in Bradford Street, and the theatrical history of the town, for a long term of years centred round the Theatre Royal, though now and then spasmodic attempts were made to localise amusements more or less of a similar nature. One of these, and the earliest, was peculiarly unfortunate; early in 1778 a wooden pavilion, known as the "Concert Booth," was erected in the Moseley Road, dramatic performances being given ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... his throbbing head upon his crossed arms and sank into a feverish kind of sleep, during which, in a short half-hour, he went through what seemed like an age of trouble, before he started up, and in an excited, spasmodic way, hardly realising what he was doing in his half-waking, half-sleeping state, but under the influence of his troubled thoughts, he roughly selected a few of his under-things for a change and made them up into a bundle, after which ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... a week before. Dr. Ringer's experiment went so far as to give him apparently considerable apprehension. He speaks of the flushed face, the trembling hand, and lips, the laboured breathing, the spasmodic movements ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... as upright as a candle, was conducting an invisible orchestra when Aline returned. The frightened maid tried to hold the lean, spasmodic arms as they traced in the air the pompous rhythm of a march that moved on silent funereal pinions through the chamber. The woman stared threateningly at the picture on the wall, the picture of the skeleton which had come from nothingness to reveal nothingness to the living. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... forth—a figure. It drew forward into the zone of uncertain light where fire and shadows mingled, not ten feet away; then halted, staring at them fixedly. The same instant it started forward again with the spasmodic motion as of a thing moved by wires, and coming up closer to them, full into the glare of the fire, they perceived then that—it was a man; and apparently that ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... appointment to the Naval School at Annapolis, in the early part of the year 1856, the United States navy was under the influence of one of those spasmodic awakenings which, so far as action is concerned, have been the chief characteristic of American statesmanship in the matter of naval policy up to twenty years ago. Since then there has been a more continuous practical recognition of the necessity ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... mentioned by Moore ('Life', p. 110). Picking up a Turkish dagger on the deck, Byron looked at the blade, and then, before replacing it in the sheath, was overheard to say to himself, "I should like to know how a person feels after committing a murder." In 'Firmilian; a Spasmodic Tragedy' (scene ix.) the sentiment is parodied. Firmilian determines to murder his friend, in order to shriek "delirious at the taste of sin!" He had already blown up a church full of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... The spasmodic lunge of the Shawanoe had overturned the craft, which resembled a huge tortoise, drifting with ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... appetite, and becomes thirsty and feverish; he vomits in the morning, and is affected with spasmodic pains in the region of the stomach. He is often seized with permanent dyspepsia, and either wastes away by degrees, or dies suddenly of a fit of cramp ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... was unprepared {1736.}. As he made these various arrangements for the Brethren, he entirely overlooked the fact that he himself was in greater danger than they. He was far more widely hated than he imagined. He was condemned by the Pietists because he had never experienced their sudden and spasmodic method of conversion. He offended his own relatives when he became a clergyman; he was accused of having disgraced his rank as a Count; he disgusted a number of other noblemen at Dresden; and the result ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... rehearsal; and sometimes they have not even an idea of the nature of the turn until band parts are put in. This means that they must read at sight, that the conductor must follow every movement of the artist, in order to catch his spasmodic cues for band or patter, and that the boys must keep one eye on music they have never seen before, and the other on ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... peace, the administration of military affairs in the United States is somewhat spasmodic, resulting directly and unavoidably from the fact of our maintaining only the merest skeleton of a standing army compared to the vast territorial extent of the Union. As an incident of this system, Fort Moultrie had been allowed to become defenseless. "A child ten years old can easily ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... less excluded from friendship and free intercourse with their neighbors. Ranald, shy, proud, and sensitive, felt this exclusion, and in return kept himself aloof even from the boys, and especially from the girls, of his own age. His attendance at school was of a fragmentary and spasmodic nature, and he never really came to be on friendly terms with his fellow-pupils. His one friend was Don Cameron, whom the boys called "Wobbles," from his gait in running, whose father's farm backed that of Macdonald Dubh. And though Don ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical—a Socialist—or ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... a great degree limited to such exercises as Mr. Home's elongation, Mrs. Guppy's flight from Highbury to Lamb's Conduit Street, or, more recently still, the voices and manipulations of John and Katie King, the orations of Mrs. Hardinge, Mr. Morse, and Mrs. Tappan. But all this was spasmodic, and not likely to take the world by storm, while Spiritualists had adopted the time-honoured maxim—"Magna est veritas et prevalebit." Therefore they must organize. They have done so, not without protest on the part of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... themselves, they sat down and did justice to the meal, with appetites that might have dismayed the waiting throng. Whenever a snake's head came in contact with one wire, while his tail touched the other, he gave a spasmodic leap and fell back dead. If he happened to fall across the wires, lie immediately began to sizzle, a cloud of smoke arose, and lie was reduced to ashes. "Any time that we are short of mastodon or other good game," said Ayrault, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... already upright form, and, by a strong bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still were partially confined by the bonds, but his right hand he lifted, with a gesture of immense self-satisfaction, and pointed ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... worshippers take up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel. It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered "the thing" to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst into luminous showers of "Amens" and "Halleleujahs." ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,—its spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,—there is such ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... existed in these small beginnings, in the gorgeous but quaintly formal or fantastic devices of illuminated missals, and in the stiff spasmodic efforts of here and there an artist spirit such as the old Florentine Cimabue's, when a great man heralded a great epoch. But first I should like to mention the means by which art then worked. Painting on board and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... despatch was opened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the French Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare for war; Brunswick was summoned ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... refresh his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant companion,—the best energies of his mind and the freshest hours of life were absolutely given to Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... presents itself is what is laughter? and our answer must be that it is a change of countenance accompanied by a spasmodic intermittent sound—a modification of the voice—but that we cannot trace its physical origin farther than to attribute it to some effect produced upon the sympathetic nerve, or rather the system of nerves termed respiratory. These communicate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... way between the clenched teeth. For fully ten minutes he strove to coax a small quantity of the spirit down his chiefs throat, and at length had the satisfaction of seeing that some at least had been swallowed. The almost immediate result of this was a groan and a slight, spasmodic movement of the emaciated limbs; and presently, after a few minutes of further persistent effort, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... these catastrophes, so crushing, so unexpected, filled him with a kind of primeval terror. Mr. Parker was neither a devout believer nor the reverse. He was a fool and liable, as such, under the stress of bodily or mental disturbance, to spasmodic fits of abject fright which he mistook for religion. An attack of indigestion, the failure of some pecuniary speculation, the demise of a beloved stepsister—these various happenings, so dissimilar to one another, had yet ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... against the window-panes, and one could hear how the water was falling to the ground from the roof, sobbing there. This sobbing sound was joined by another sound—a shrill, often interrupted, hasty scratching of a pen over paper, and then by a certain spasmodic grumbling. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... fingers on the glass counter. "He was drunk," he snapped out, and stared sternly off into space. And then as if he felt it becoming of him, he frowned and his adam's-apple moved up and down with quick, spasmodic jerks. But he would not look ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... extraordinary much fraud appeared to be mixed. And if some of the cases upon which designed misrepresentation could not be charged were not at the time satisfactorily accounted for, it was because the efficacy of strong spasmodic affections was not then sufficiently known. Finally, the cause of Jansenism did not rise by the miracles, but sunk, although the miracles had the anterior persuasion of all the numerous adherents of that cause to ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the order, and paid Paganini the dividend. I told him what it was, thinking, as a matter of course, he would return it. He seemed uncertain for a moment, paused, smiled sardonically, looked at the three and sixpence, and with a spasmodic twitch, deposited it in his own waistcoat pocket instead of mine. Voltaire says, "no man is a hero to his valet de chambre," meaning, thereby, as I suppose, that being behind the scenes of every-day life, he finds out that Marshal Saxe, or Frederick the Great, is as subject to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... WORKERS NOT BEST UTILIZED.—Under the best types of Traditional Management we do find more or less spasmodic attempts at the functionalization of the worker. When there was any particular kind of work to be done, the worker who seemed to the manager to be the best fitted, was set at that kind of work. For example—if there was a particularly heavy piece of work he might say—"Let A do it because ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... intense, and he could no longer bear up against them. His head fell backwards, his jaws closed convulsively, he crushed the neck of the bottle between his teeth, his neck grew rigid, his limbs writhed with spasmodic action, and he ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Paris and had gone to the old house on the Rue de Braque, and he had hastened thither in joyful surprise, a little vexed that he had not been forewarned, and especially that Frantz had defrauded him of the first evening. His regret on that account came to the surface every moment in his spasmodic attempts at conversation, in which everything that he wanted to say was left unfinished, interrupted by innumerable questions on all sorts of subjects and explosions of affection and joy. Frantz excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and the pleasure it had given him to ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... trees. The wet clothing he could not replace, and that would have to be endured. But he rubbed his body to keep him warm and to induce circulation. The night was now far advanced, and the distant firing became spasmodic and faint. After a while it ceased, and the weary combatants lay on ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... even the little crosses that befell in an ordinarily quiet life! How she had lost the so-lately-gained influence over Alfred and Julia by a few cross words! How much reason she had given Sadie to think that her attempts at following the Master were, after all, only spasmodic and visionary! But Ester had been to that little clothes-press up stairs in search of help and forgiveness, and now she clearly saw there was something to do besides mourn over her failures. It was hard to do it, too. Ester's ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... said Aunt Emmeline, "you are not in your first bloom. That we can't expect. Your colour is a little harder and more fixed" (the figure in the glass gave a spasmodic jerk. The sulky expression was pierced by a gleam of fear. "Fixed!" Good gracious! She might be talking of those old people who have little red lines over their cheek-bones in the place of "bloom". It's ridiculous to say I am "fixed". It is a matter of indifference to me how I look, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the breaking of a cocoa-nut shell by a hammer; and when Rock let go, the mass of mis-shapen humanity dropped in a dollop upon the flags, arms and legs limp and motionless, in the last not even the power left for a spasmodic kick. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... that statute, were regarded by those interested in silver production as a certain guaranty of its increase in price. The result, however, has been entirely different, for immediately following a spasmodic and slight rise the price of silver began to fall after the passage of the act, and has since reached the lowest point ever known. This disappointing result has led to renewed and persistent effort in the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... glittered a magnificent diamond ring. The other ladies were no better dressed, and none of them had any covering for the head. Their faces bore distinct traces of the sufferings they had undergone. Their eyes were sunken, their cheeks pale, and every now and then a sort of spasmodic twitch seemed to pass over their features. One of them could just stand, but could not walk; the others were comparatively helpless. A gentleman was lying close by the ladies, still suffering grievously in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... more at his ease, or perhaps less inclined to talk, since he only received curt monosyllabic answers to his pleasant sallies. Five minutes had gone by without any other sound, save the spasmodic creak of Sir Percy's pen upon the paper, the while Chauvelin and Collot watched every ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... seemed to think—with a great deal more to the same effect. In a word, she passed with great decency through all the ceremonies incidental to such occasions; and being supported upstairs, was deposited in a highly spasmodic state on her own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards flung herself ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... data published in the monthly U. S. Labor Bulletin covers most of the articles which are at all important in the wage earners' budget. The collection of such data, however, has remained spasmodic up to the present. See the article by H. S. Hanna in the October, 1919, issue of the Monthly Review of the U. S. Department of Labor. The Sumner Committee Report on the "Cost of Living in Great ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... rooms were set low in the massive granite walls, and being always wide open, they offered, and indeed invited, easy access to—say, a grave-faced gentlemanly brown dog and a spasmodic rough-coated terrier without a tail, whenever the spirit moved them to incursion, which it invariably did at ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... for food for a short time and means to get animals, farm implements, etc., will end the present conditions and put the people of the island on the road to prosperity. Spasmodic issues of army rations give only temporary relief and tend to ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Barbary ape (Inuus ecaudatus) to an extraordinary degree; and I observed in this monkey that the skin of the lower eyelids then became much wrinkled. At the same time it rapidly moved its lower jaw or lips in a spasmodic manner, the teeth being exposed; but the noise produced was hardly more distinct than that which we sometimes call silent laughter. Two of the keepers affirmed that this slight sound was the animal's laughter, and when I expressed some doubt on this ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling, moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead. His jacket and shirt were open at the throat, and exposed his young bronzed neck. There could be seen spasmodic ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... in flannel shirt and chaps came forward, dragging blanket, saddle and bridle. At sight of him the horse gave a spasmodic fling, then trembled again violently. A blind was coaxed over its eyes and the bridle slipped on. Quickly and warily, with deft fingers, the young man saddled and cinched. He waved a hand jauntily to the ropers. The lariats ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Jess Hogue, with the aid of the twenty-eight army mules which they had acquired in ways that invited research, had started a freight-line from Medora to Deadwood, but its service turned out to be spasmodic, depending somewhat on the state of Medora's thirst, on the number of "suckers" in town who had to be fleeced, and on the difficulty under which both Williams and Hogue seemed to suffer of keeping sober when they were released from their obvious ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... levers with blades or keys attached, forming a keyboard four feet long. The levers, each three feet long, are delicately hung on fine brass centers, and each lever is counterbalanced by a weight hung in a vessel of water, which acts as a hydraulic brake, and checks any spasmodic movement in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... convulsions and rushes of the dishevelled girl were too near. Lady Agnes wore much of the time the countenance she might have shown at the theatre during a play in which pistols were fired; and indeed the manner of the young reciter had become more spasmodic and more explosive. It appeared, however, that the company in general thought her very clever and successful; which showed, to Sherringham's sense, how little they understood the matter. Poor Biddy was immensely struck; she grew flushed and absorbed in ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... exiles relegated to this land of ice, poor creatures who should have been Esquimaux, since nature had condemned them to live only just outside the arctic circle! In vain did I try to detect a smile upon their lips; sometimes by a spasmodic and involuntary contraction of the muscles they seemed to laugh, but ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... lie in the sun, with a wing and a leg stretched out,—lazily picking at the gravel, or relieving their ennui from time to time with a spasmodic rustle of their feathers. An old, matronly hen stalks about the yard with a sedate step, and with quiet self-assurance she utters an occasional series of hoarse and heated clucks. A speckled turkey, with an astonished brood ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... for suppressing hiccoughs are scarcely superstitions in reality, as they doubtless often do relieve the nervous, spasmodic action of the respiratory muscles, by fixing the attention upon the cure. But in the popular mind some charm, I take it, is attributed to the counting, repeating, or ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... was quiet, after one wild roll of her eyes at him. The colour was returning to Adrianna's cheeks; her mother was drinking hot tea in spasmodic gulps. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Saviour reigned supreme. And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... sharp crack and the yellow-faced man, reeling, dropped face downwards on the carpet without a sound. In his fall his foot caught a small table on which a vase of chrysanthemums stood, and the whole thing went over with a loud crash. He made a spasmodic effort to rise, hoisted himself on to his knees, swayed again, and then collapsed full length on the ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Elbow.—The chief obstacle to reduction is the spasmodic contraction of the muscles passing over the joint, and, in the backward variety, the hitching of the coronoid process against the edge of the olecranon fossa. In recent cases, to effect reduction the patient is seated on a chair, while the surgeon grasps the humerus and wrist, and places ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... bespattered with ebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews' pitch. At times the mass, receiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the coiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a spasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the thither side of Phlegethon, with charge on charge, was driving tormented humanity, with all ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... few feeble and spasmodic attempts to persuade observance of the law, with some ill-advised attempts to enforce individual ideas of propriety ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... In a last spasmodic convulsion the big rabbit doubled up its rear legs and gave a kick that sent Ba-ree sprawling back, yelping in terror. He regained his feet and then, for the first time, anger and the desire to retaliate took possession of him. The kick had completed his first education. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... advanced in a straight line, Max and Steve being armed, and apparently ready to do fell execution, should there be any necessity for action. But nothing happened. The swinging object continued to move back and forth, but none of them could detect any spasmodic kicking connected with it that would suggest the dying struggles of a wild beast that was being slowly but ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... scherzo in one respect: it has to be given in detached jerks—literary, not musical—and these jerks don't come at any stated intervals at all. The music was bad enough—so Sally and Laetitia thought—but the chronicle is more spasmodic still. However, if you want to know its remaining particulars, you will have to brace yourself up to tolerating an intermittent style. It is the only one our means of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... though but a whisper fell, as with a spasmodic jump of his whole body he flung himself round in his chair, and cowering low against the arm, peered into the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... cry of the child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests until ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... not answer. His breathing was hard, spasmodic, intensely painful to hear. He had the look of a man stricken ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... run about the room on all-fours in an amusing imitation of a spaniel fetching and carrying for his master. The boss inserted the point of his tongue into his cheek and withdrew it again, repeating the process several times in rapid succession. In response, the Mayor's face went into a series of spasmodic smiles and frowns that aroused general laughter. At the conclusion of the performance, the boss gently clicked his tongue against his palate, and the Mayor promptly stood on his head in the middle ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... himself into the task of turning the wheel, which he did in quick, short, spasmodic jerks, rather than by a steady application ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... year 1539. [Rentsch, p. 452.] To the great joy of Berlin and the Brandenburg populations generally, who had been of a Protestant humor, hardly restrainable by Law, for some years past. By this decision Joachim held fast, with a stout, weighty grasp; nothing spasmodic in his way of handling the matter, and yet a heartiness which is agreeable to see. He could not join in the Schmalkaldic War; seeing, it is probable, small chance for such a War, of many chiefs and little counsel; nor was he willing yet to part from the Kaiser Karl V., who was otherwise ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... the girl was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't know ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... mining flat, crossed and broken by the burrows and mounds made by the forgotten engines of the early gold-seekers. Johnny, at times hidden by these irregularities, kept closely in their rear, sauntering whenever he came within the range of their eyes in that sidelong, spasmodic and generally diagonal fashion peculiar to small boys, but ready at any moment to assume utter unconsciousness and the appearance of going somewhere else or of searching for something on the ground. In this way appearing, if noticed at all, each time in ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to Miss Rolleston, he found her still fixed in the attitude into which terror had transfixed her. The poor girl had remained motionless for an hour, under the terrible fascination of the reptile, comatized. He spoke to her, but a quick spasmodic action of her throat and a quivering of her hands alone responded. The sight of her suffering agonized him beyond expression, but he took her hands—he pressed them, for they were icy cold—he called piteously on her name. But she seemed incapable of effort. Then, stooping he raised her tenderly ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... on fire. And suddenly she snatched my shawl off me, and oh! if her look was terrible before, it was consuming now! Hannah, I seemed to shrivel all up in the glare of that look, like some poor worm in the flame!" gasped Nora, with a spasmodic catch of her breath, as she once more clung to the neck ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... had been for some time asleep, when I was aroused by a horrible squeaking, followed by a loud bark from True, who was sleeping under my hammock. The squeaks and a few spasmodic grunts which succeeded them soon ceased. The voices of my companions outside the hut showed me that they were on the alert; and knowing that True would attack our visitor, whether puma or jaguar, I tied him to one of the posts of the hut before ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... irritating substances from the bronchial tubes, trachea, and nasal passages by coughing and sneezing. To produce these effects they all act together. Their violent and continued action sometimes produces hernia, and, when spasmodic, may occasion ruptures of ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... soul ordinarily selects the channels of the circulation, and the contractile parts, as the route for influencing the body. Hence in fever the pulse is quickened, due to the increased activity of the soul, and convulsions and spasmodic movements in disease are due, to the, same cause. Stagnation of the blood was supposed to be a fertile cause of diseases, and such diseases were supposed to arise mostly from "plethora"—an all-important element in Stahl's therapeutics. By many this theory is regarded as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... a Boat ought to have," quoth the Baron, cheerily, and then he called aloud, "Bring me Pickwick!" He commenced at the Review, and the first meeting of Mr. Pickwick with the Wardle family. Within five minutes the Baron was shaking with spasmodic laughter, and CHARLES DICKENS'S drollery was as irresistible as ever. Of course the Baron does not for one moment mean to be so unfair to the Three Men in a Boat as to institute a comparison between it and the immortal Pickwick, but he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... of some portions of the air-passages are relaxed, a peculiar vibration follows, known as snoring. Coughing and sneezing are sudden and spasmodic expiratory efforts, and generally involuntary. Sighing is a prolonged deep inspiration, followed by a rapid, and generally audible expiration. It is remarkable that laughing and sobbing, although indicating opposite states of the mind, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... were deeply exciting, the clash of interest upon interest was swift, novel in sequence, and most dramatic in outcome, but the applause was sharp and spasmodic, not long continued and hearty as before. Some of the men who had clapped loudest at the opening now sat gnawing their mustaches ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of wages is the continuance or the steadiness of the employment. Two dollars a day for half the year is no more than a dollar a day for the whole year. Employment in most protected industries is spasmodic. In the leading industries for the past ten years employment has not averaged more than three fourths of the time, and not at very high wages. Within the last year manufacturers of silk, carpets, nails and many other ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... of mind, appeared never to be put on quite straight or properly hooked and buttoned. It was as if she perpetually dressed in a panic, forgetting to fasten her placket, to put on her collar or to mend the frayed edges of her skirt. When she went out, she still made some spasmodic attempts at neatness; but Susan's untiring efforts and remonstrances had never convinced her that it mattered how one looked in the house—except indeed when a formal caller arrived, for whom she hastily tied a scarf at the neck of her dirty basque ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... could further signify his pleasure. In 1657, the Council of State requested Cromwell to appoint some person to go to Virginia as its Governor, but this he failed to do.[358] With the exception of such spasmodic interruptions as these, and the partial enforcement of the Navigation Acts, the colony was left almost to its own devices throughout the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... to purple hue, his hand trembled just enough to incite Shirley to a desperate chance. As the criminal drew the trigger with a spasmodic jerk, Shirley was dropping to the floor, whence he pushed himself forward with a froglike leap, as he straightened ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... remorselessly the stone knife was driven home through the glossy hide—time and again it drank deep, until with a final agonized lunge and shriek the great feline rolled over upon its side and, save for the spasmodic jerking of its muscles, lay quiet ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... lived in had ever stirred her to an even momentary enthusiasm. They were all so fatuously contented with their environment. Sheltered from birth, their anxiety was chiefly how to make life pass the pleasantest. They occasionally showed a spasmodic excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... mightiest ocean-surge into which I had ever dared plunge my mortal body. Keats hints at the same sudden emotion, in a wild poem written among the Scottish mountains. It was not the distinctive sensation which drowning men are said to have, that spasmodic passing in review of one's whole personal history. I had no well-defined anxiety, felt no fear, was moved to no prayer, did not give a thought to home or friends; only it swept over me, as with a sudden tempest, that, if I meant to get back to my own camp, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Herbertson rattled away, rather spasmodic. He had been through the very front hell of the war—and like every man who had, he had the war at the back of his mind, like an obsession. But in ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... want Ireland is made miserable and kept low in the scale of nations. Had the race been self-respecting, sturdy, upright, stubbornly industrious, all this savage neglect would have mended itself. Being what it is—excitable, imaginative, spasmodic, given over to ideas rather than to facts, and trusting to Hercules in the clouds rather than to its own brawny shoulders—this squalor continues and is not dependent on poverty. Time alone will show whether changed agrarian conditions ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... any country in the world equal to America in the irregularity and spasmodic nature of the demands which society makes upon its women? Are there any girls in the world so ready to rush headlong into all kinds of exercise, mental or physical, which may be recommended to them, as our American ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the windows of the Eclipse office dropped the walls of a terrible chasm in the darkness of which could be seen vague struggling figures. Looking down into this appalling crevice one discovered only the tops of hats and knees which in spasmodic jerks seemed to touch the rims of the hats. The scene represented some weird fight or dance or carouse. It was not an exhibition of men ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... her tapestry and listened attentively, smiling and blushing a little when he told her what had immediately preceded the impulse to write. But gradually the delicate pink left her face, and she began to move in the spasmodic, uncontrollable way of a person handling an electric battery. She clasped the arms of her chair with such force that her arms looked twisted and rigid, and finally she bent slowly forward, gazing up into his face with ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... were nearing Trouville, the big drops fell. The grain-fields were soon bent double beneath the spasmodic shower. The poppies were drenched, so were the cobble paved courtyards; only the geese and the regiment of the ducks came abroad to revel in the downpour. The villas were hermetically sealed now—their summer finery was not made for a wetting. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... struggled for an instant, the one to free his arm, the other to retain his grip. Bellamy spurred his horse closer. The more powerful of the two, he slowly twisted around the imprisoned wrist. Inch by inch the revolver swung in a jerky, spasmodic circle. There was a moment when it pointed directly at the mine owner's heart. His enemy's finger crooked on the trigger, eyes passionate with the stark lust to kill. But the pressure on the wrist had numbed the hand. The weapon ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... along the grass, their struggles appeared each moment to grow less violent, and their melancholy cries became weaker and weaker. Their contortions at length came to an end. A feeble effort to raise themselves alone could be perceived,—then a spasmodic motion of their long crooked limbs,—their cries became indistinct; and, after a while, both lay motionless and silent! Were they dead? ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to decline rapidly, and was suffering much from his usual spasmodic attacks; yet he had Turner with him, making drawings for the new edition of his poems. Referring to his last article in the Quarterly on Pitcairn's "Criminal Trials," he bids Lockhart to inform Mr. Murray that "no one knows ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... suavely—as suavely, by the way, as his wincing at the cost of it all would admit of—received, introduced, and seated them. The first arrival was a single gentleman, whom he saluted as Fred. He was short, and bald, and spasmodic,—so much so that his pantaloons were never straight, and his collar, through much moistening of its raspy edges, was soiled. After him, a lady and gentleman drove up to the gate in a carriage, and, alighting, the lady swept up the path, in a double sense, while her husband upbraided ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... end, pressure of the brain became apparent; severe pain, succeeded by torpor and loss of power, and, after a short time, utter unconsciousness, proved that the sands of life had nearly run down. A few hours of spasmodic suffering followed, very trying to those who watched by; but suddenly, about four on the morning of October 13th, 1845, the silver cord was loosed, the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the spirit returned to ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... what civilization is, should be, and may be as a world enterprise—these considerations are the foundation stones upon which we must build the temple of education now in the process of reconstruction. Otherwise the work will be narrow, illiberal, spasmodic, and sporadic. It must be possible to arrive at a common denominator of the concepts of society, citizenship, and civilization as pertaining to all nations; it must be possible to contrive a composite of all ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... parties over the Tugela on either flank, which were only checked by our patrols being extended from Springfield on the west to Weenen on the east. A few plundered farmhouses and a small list of killed and wounded horsemen on either side were the sole result of these spasmodic ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the wood pigeon, and the soft call of the cuckoo, that seemed to come in whenever an interval of silence fitted. The swallows dipped and flashed and circled over the bosom of the lake. There were blackbirds eagerly but cautiously at work, with their spasmodic trippings, on the lawn. A robin perched on the iron railing eyed her curiously and seemed more disposed to approach than to retreat.—WILLIAM BLACK, in Green Pastures ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... the prick of curious desires, chiefest among which, perhaps, was the desire to hurt Genevieve. When, after long and tortuous degrees, he had achieved the bliss of putting his arm round her waist, he felt spasmodic impulses to make the embrace crushing, till she should cry out with the hurt. It was not his nature to wish to hurt any living thing. Even in the ring, to hurt was never the intention of any blow he struck. In such case he played the Game, and the goal of the Game was to down an ...
— The Game • Jack London
... his word for it, and munched at tongue and biscuits. As for muscle, we were both in hard condition. He was fresh, and what distress I felt was mainly due to spasmodic exertion culminating in that desperate spurt. As for the fog. it had more than once shown a faint tendency to lift, growing thinner and more luminous, in the manner of fogs, always to settle down again, heavy ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... courtesy of salute. All at once Dick birled three rapid strokes from left to right as though about to roll the log, leaped into the air and landed square with both feet on the other slant of the timber. Jimmy Powers felt the jar, and acknowledged it by the spasmodic jerk with which he counterbalanced Darrell's weight. But he was ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... The man on whom he fixes his eye is conscious of him. In his natural disposition, he seems calm and self-possessed, sustaining his great responsibilities cheerfully, without shrinking, or weariness, or spasmodic effort, or damage to his health, but all with quiet, deep-drawn breaths; just as his broad shoulders would bear up a heavy burden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which very possibly did duty as a bed by night, made by day a particularly comfortable couch, covered as it was with a fine soft buffalo-robe of huge dimensions. More than once towards the conclusion of his story Isidore had nodded, but had roused himself with a spasmodic start. At last, utterly overcome by prolonged fatigue, he had sunk down ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... found, on reaching her destination. The parlors were full, and the more enterprising of the guests were beginning to group themselves in twos and threes, and make spasmodic efforts at conversation. But conversation at a Bilberry assemblage was rarely a success,—it was so evident that to converse was a point of etiquette, and it was so patent that conversation was expected from everybody, whether they had anything ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nitric ether, are poisonous in moderately large doses, but in small doses serve as narcotics or, anaesthetics, greatly delaying the subsequent action of meat. But some of these vapours also act as stimulants, exciting rapid, almost spasmodic movements in the tentacles. Carbonic acid is likewise a narcotic, and retards the aggregation of the protoplasm when carbonate of ammonia is subsequently given. The first access of air to plants ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... little "Dora," religiously believed the chief end of man consisted in "dancing continually ta la ra, ta la ra," sat busily plying the needle, elbow-deep in ribbons; the consumptive-looking flute-player before the foot-lights trilled out his spasmodic trickle of melody, and contemplated with melancholy pleasure the excited audience; the lank danseuse ogled and smirked at it behind them, and, with passionate gestures of her thin legs, implored its applause; men, women, and children, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, sublimity, suborn, subpoena, subsidiary, subsidy, substratum, subtend, subterfuge, subterranean, subvention, subvert, sudorific, supercilious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... wires in a circle about the mastodon and themselves, they sat down and did justice to the meal, with appetites that might have dismayed the waiting throng. Whenever a snake's head came in contact with one wire, while his tail touched the other, he gave a spasmodic leap and fell back dead. If he happened to fall across the wires, lie immediately began to sizzle, a cloud of smoke arose, and lie was reduced to ashes. "Any time that we are short of mastodon or other good game," said ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... laughter. They needed entertainment. A damper, less enthusiastic company never gathered to a public show. Though the rain had ceased, and the sun shone, those who possessed umbrellas were not to be coaxed, but held them aloft with a settled air of gloom which defied the lenitives of nature and the spasmodic cajolery of the worst band in Edinburgh. "It'll be near full, Jock?" "It wull." "He'll be startin' in a meenit?" "Aiblins he wull." "Wull this be the sixt time ye've seen him?" "I shudna wonder." It occurred to me that, had we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trail, at a distance of about one half mile, where a rude grave was dug, and, wrapped in their blankets, in the same common house, were deposited all that remained of these three brave men. An observer of these obsequies, would have seen the lips of daring men, now and then, giving spasmodic twitchings; eyes swimming in tears, and a silence and solemnity that bespoke the truest kind of grief. Among that party, such a one would have been sure to have marked out the countenance of Kit Carson; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... most harassing to the subordinate, since I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, but many a time had to play peacemaker—smoothing down ruffled feelings, that I knew had been excited by Granger's freaky and spasmodic efforts to correct personally some trifling fault that ought to have been left to a regimental or company commander to remedy. Yet with all these small blemishes Granger had many good qualities, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... these people are good-natured and generous, but spasmodic and impulsive in all their actions. Their greatest fault lies in their impulsiveness and lack of self-control, and unless a good Line of Head be shown on the hands, they rush madly into all kinds of difficulties and dangers and often make a complete muddle of their opportunities and the ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... any theory or idea. Although she was influenced more deeply by Egypt than she had ever imagined it possible to be influenced by the unseen, or by atmosphere and surroundings, she still walked firmly on her two feet. Her momentary standings on her head were passing and spasmodic. She neither felt convinced nor unconvinced upon the subject of Akhnaton's vision or upon the truth and reliability of the old man's words at el-Azhar. Suggestion is so often at the root of what appears to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... might not have been aware of it, but the repetitions of the threats were, in themselves, confessions of weakness. He came a step or two forward,—then, stopping short, began to tremble. The perspiration broke out upon his brow; he made spasmodic little dabs at it with his crumpled-up handkerchief. His eyes wandered hither and thither, as if searching for something which they feared to see yet were constrained to seek. He began to talk to himself, out loud, in odd ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... contended that no revivals or reforms are possible in heathenism. There have been many of these, but with all allowance for spasmodic efforts, the general drift has been always downward.[164] There is a natural disposition among men to multiply objects of worship. Herbert Spencer's principle, that development proceeds from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... would be about right to say that little Whitie's spasmodic announcements directed Pee-wee in his idle wanderings on that morning when he was fearful ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... fury, pain, and exertion sent Bob's breath roaring in and out in noisy blasts—now long and laboured, now spasmodic quick. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... lung-strangling began, and they were racked and torn by a dry cough, spasmodic and uncontrollable. Smoke noted his temperature rising in a fever, and Labiskwee suffered similarly. Hour after hour the coughing spells increased in frequency and violence, and not till late afternoon was the worst reached. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... had been the affair that during that hour they had forgotten the Revolution, Russia, the war. Moreover, always in the past, they had assumed that public life was no affair of theirs. The Russo-Japanese War, even the spasmodic revolt in 1905, had not touched them except as a wind of ideas which blew so swiftly through their private lives that they were ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the same thing, and of more, he would go; or stopping his court carriages, would send into churchyards, and ask 'how many new graves there were today,' though it gave his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... undoubtedly very ill, so ill that even Samson Mountain forbore to force her to descend to the parlour in which Mr. Tom Raybould nervously awaited her coming, and where, on Samson's return from his daughter's chamber, the pair sat and drank their beer together in miserable silence, broken by spasmodic attempts at conversation regarding crops and politics. The doctor had been called in, and, knowing nothing of the grief which was the poor girl's only ailment, had been too puzzled by the symptoms of her malady to be of any great service. She was feverish, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... from excess of amazement, Sanin did not at once follow the girl. He stood, as it were, rooted to the spot; he had never in his life seen such a beautiful creature. She turned towards him, and with such despair in her voice, in her eyes, in the gesture of her clenched hand, which was lifted with a spasmodic movement to her pale cheek, she articulated, 'Come, come!' that he at once darted after her to the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... horror. 'It was my servant... she knows.' And then, after a short silence, she went on: 'I was there... by his side.' And she uttered a sort of cry of horror, and after a fit of choking, which made her gasp, she wept violently, and shook with spasmodic sobs for a minute or two. Then her tears suddenly ceased, as if by an internal fire, and with an air of tragic calmness, she said: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... affected for about three days with what I regarded as the ordinary complaints of the season, when one night, after my family had retired, I found myself suddenly very ill—my symptoms being coldness, debility, and spasmodic pains. I believed myself to be attacked with cholera. I efficiently practised the artificial respiration in fresh air as before described. Gaining strength as I proceeded, I soon found a death-like coldness giving place to genial warmth. Violent exercise, with ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... are silent. Animals of all kinds which habitually use their voices utter various noises under any strong emotion, as when enraged and preparing to fight; but this may merely be the result of nervous excitement, which leads to the spasmodic contraction of almost all the muscles of the body, as when a man grinds his teeth and clenches his fists in rage or agony. No doubt stags challenge each other to mortal combat by bellowing; but those with the more powerful voices, unless at the same time the stronger, better-armed, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... taking especial interest in the log-books, for he was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic literary effort that ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... being triangular in shape, and armed with a pair of pointed teeth (T). By means of powerful muscles this shell is made to open and shut with great rapidity, and thus the body of the little creature is quickly driven through the water in a series of spasmodic jumps. Then comes a period of rest, obtained by using the long thread or 'byssus' (B) as a float, this thread being thrown out along the surface of the water. Then the hunt for a host begins again. On and on they go, till one after another—'curiouser and curiouser!'—seizes ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... hartshorn bobbed under her nose! The wonder is I am not dead; yes, dead by your hand, you brutal black nigger! But where was I in my presentation? O, I recollect! That mad-cap girl, my second jewel, so horrified me. I dare not yet refer to it lest my nerves become spasmodic again. Pray excuse her, Miss Orville, and I will proceed to my youngest, my infant-jewel! Eldora Adelaide Maria Suzette, greet your cousin, love, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... shoulders, pausing occasionally as the water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call "balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... see me or the kid again, or would dare to say that he ever had! Lord! I'd like to see his fastidious mug if me and Eddy walked in upon him and his high-toned mother and sister some arternoon." He threw himself back and laughed a derisive, spasmodic, choking laugh, which was so far from being genial that it even seemed to indicate a lively appreciation of pain in others rather than of pleasure in himself. He had often laughed at her in ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... set forth in florid language, the passionate outbursts of grief expressed at times in words so artificial as to leave a doubt in the Anglo-Saxon mind as to whether the sentiments can be genuine, the spasmodic eruption of real kindness of heart into a character steeped in cynicism, the excess of flattery accorded at one time to Peel for purely personal objects contrasted with the excess of vituperation poured forth on O'Connell for purposes of advertisement, and the total absence of any moral ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... preternaturally increased; but this depends chiefly on the accumulated excitability, which gives such a degree of irritability to the system, that the smallest irritation, whether external, such as heat, exercise, &c. or internal, as emotions of the mind, excite a strong spasmodic action, which brings on the symptoms of epilepsy and hysteria. This inordinate action however soon exhausts the morbid excitability, and thus suspends itself, a sleep often follows, from which the patient wakes with only a general ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... ceased to be performed between Newcastle and Carlisle, even Hexham being deserted for a time. After the battle of Bannockburn, matters were worse, if possible, and all the north lay in fear of the Scots, but from time to time spasmodic efforts at retaliation were made by the boldest of the Northumbrian landowners. In the reign of Edward III., however, many of these great landowners thwarted the King's designs by making a traitorous peace ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... joy. He opened his eyes very wide, turned crimson, and suddenly falling on my shoulder, he began to kiss me and to repeat in a spasmodic voice:—"Uncle ... benefactor.... May God reward you!..." He melted into tears at last, and doffing his kazak cap, began to wipe his eyes, his nose, and his lips ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the vast expanse of solitude spread glitteringly. All crimson and violet, with deep purple marking the depressions in its monotonous surface, and here and there the dry bed of one of its spasmodic lakes, showing almost black in its obscurity. These lakes were water-filled only in the early spring, and their moisture had long since died out of them. Under a noon-day sun they showed like shallow bowls filled ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... moments the clinch of the fighting men remained unbroken. They lay there upon the ground locked in a deadly embrace. A spasmodic jolt, a violent, muscular heave. The result was changed position, while the clinch remained unrelaxed. There were movements of gripping hands. There were changes of position in the intertwined legs clad in their ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... but as his head was raised and the medicine held to his lips, he seemed suddenly to realize the position, to comprehend that it was his nephew who leaned over him. With a spasmodic movement he turned towards John, his lips twitching with some inward ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... not naturally expert in the water know well the feelings of horror that overwhelm them, when in it, at the bare idea of being held down, even for a few seconds,—that spasmodic, involuntary recoil from compulsory immersion which has no connection whatever with cowardice; and they will understand the amount of resolution that it required in Peterkin to allow himself to be dragged down to a depth of ten feet, and then, through a narrow tunnel, into an almost pitch-dark ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... The Major took a spasmodic part in the discussions of peace or war, sitting sometimes in a moody silence, and flaring up, like an exhausted candle, at the news of an abolition outbreak. In his heart he regarded the state of peace as a mean and beggarly condition and the sure resort of bloodless ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... only cooeperative effort on the part of the Negro was such as that in the isolated society to which Cotton Mather gave rules, or in a spasmodic insurrection, or a rather crude development of native African worship. As yet there was no genuine basis of racial self-respect. In one way or another, however, in the eighteenth century the idea of association developed, and especially in Boston about the time of the Revolution ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... that her daughters actually did go to church every Sunday; but their French governess's convictions calling her to the rival fane, and the fatigues of the week keeping their mother in her room till luncheon, there was seldom any one present to verify the fact. Now and then, in a spasmodic burst of virtue—when the house had been too uproarious over night—Gus Trenor forced his genial bulk into a tight frock-coat and routed his daughters from their slumbers; but habitually, as Lily explained to Mr. Gryce, this parental duty was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... pursuit in the distance more and more. Every now and then there was a spasmodic outburst of shooting, and Andrew grinned in spite of his pain. They were closing around the place where they thought he was making his last stand, shooting at shadows which might ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... sufficiently well for implication, yield in extent, darkness and intricacy, to the republican plot against the President's life and those of his counselors. The police operations prove that the late murder as not a spasmodic and fitful crime, but long premeditated, and carried to consummation with as much cohesion and resolution as the murder of Allessandro ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... years his work was more or less spasmodic on account of his bitter struggle with poor health, in 1883 he achieved success by the publication of Treasure Island. Markheim appeared in 1884. Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... very grey, the world is very damp, His light the sun denies by day, the moon by night her lamp; Across the landscape soaked and sad the dull guns answer back, And through the twilight's futile hush spasmodic rifles crack. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... and sudden convulsive attack, which left me speechless, though not motionless-for some strong men could not hold me; but whether it was epilepsy, catalepsy, cachexy, or apoplexy, or what other exy or epsy the doctors have not decided; or whether it was spasmodic or nervous, etc.; but it was very unpleasant, and nearly carried me off, and all that. On Monday, they put leeches to my temples, no difficult matter, but the blood could not be stopped till eleven at night (they had gone ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... from the front, but between the heads of those before them they could see what was going on below. Victor stood immovable, his face as pale as death. His cap had fallen off, his hair was dank with perspiration, his eyes had a look of concentrated horror, his body shook with a spasmodic shuddering. In vain Harry, when he once saw what was going to take place, urged him in a low whisper to leave. He did not appear to hear, and even when Harry pulled him by the sleeve of his blouse he seemed equally unconscious. Harry was ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... were both several rods distant from him. He did not swim, but seemed to struggle with all his strength, apparently with a spasmodic effort, as though he had ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... silently advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw, starting up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes with a new lightning in them, seemed changing to marble: ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... which the same internal witness is affirmed. The Mayo peasant, crawling with bare knees over the flint points on Croagh Patrick, the nun prostrate before the image of St. Mary, the Methodist in the spasmodic extasy of a revival, alike are conscious of emotions in themselves which correspond to their creed: the more passionate—or, as some would say—the more unreasoning the piety, the louder and more clear is the voice within. But these ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... placed at the opening by the composer to announce that the overture will be sung—for the real overture is the great movement beginning with this stern attack, and ending only when light appears at the command of Moses—the Duchess could not control a little spasmodic start, that showed how entirely the music was in ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... What she had offered then he had refused to take: was she the woman to forget such a refusal? Was it not rather to keep its memory alive that she had married him? Or was she but the flighty girl he had once imagined her, driven hither and thither by spasmodic impulses, and incapable of consistent action, whether for good or ill? The barrier of their past—of all that lay unsaid and undone between them—so completely cut her off from him that he had, in her presence, the strange sensation of a man who believes himself to be alone ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... BEST UTILIZED.—Under the best types of Traditional Management we do find more or less spasmodic attempts at the functionalization of the worker. When there was any particular kind of work to be done, the worker who seemed to the manager to be the best fitted, was set at that kind of work. For example—if there was a particularly heavy piece of ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... private pockets by throwing every conceivable obstacle in the way of progress, and embarrasses every commercial movement in order to extort bribes from individuals. Following the general rule of his predecessors, a new governor upon arrival exhibits a spasmodic energy. Attended by cavasses and soldiers, he rides through every street of Khartoum, abusing the underlings for past neglect, ordering the streets to be swept, and the town to be thoroughly cleansed; he visits the marketplace, examines the quality ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... old footing, without comprehensive plan, developing only the same spasmodic encounters, barren of strategic result, that had marked the course of the earlier ten years' rebellion as well as the present insurrection from its start. No alternative save physical exhaustion of either combatant, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... state that this exemplary and distinguished gentleman was suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a severe spasmodic affection. Dr. ——— was immediately sent for, who pronounced it to be gout in the stomach. The first medical assistance ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force, but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... The fire in the cooking-stove in the room crackled at spasmodic intervals. One lid was misplaced, and the girl could now see that this fact created a little flushed crescent upon the ceiling. Also, a series of tiny windows in the stove caused patches of red upon the floor. Otherwise, the room was heavily ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... that all he looked forward to in life was to see me wedded and with future heirs to the name springing around me, that it would have been actual unkindness to resist. Moreover, as you can imagine, Adrian is not exactly a man of business, and his spasmodic interferences in the control of the property being already then of a very injudicious nature, I confess that, having nursed it myself for eleven years with some success, I dreaded to think what it would become under his auspices. And so I agreed to remain. But the position ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... ourselves to believe that the lyric solo made but a single spasmodic appearance in the "Orfeo" and had to be born again in the artistic conversion brought about by the labors of Galilei and Caccini, we shall be deceived. The fashion set by Poliziano's production was not wholly abandoned and throughout the remainder of the fifteenth and the whole ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... of Mark's shrieks and her own spasmodic reactions to them, she sent her intelligence circling quietly . . . and in an instant . . . oh yes, that was the thing. "Listen, Mark," she said in his ear, stopping her effort to take down his hands, "Mother's learned a new song, a new one, awfully funny. And ever ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... bleedings. Similarly, if an ounce of the bruised root is boiled in three half-pints of water, down to a pint, a teacupful of this may be given every three or four hours. The decoction is also useful against whooping-cough in its spasmodic stage. The bark contains tannin; and if an ounce of the same be boiled in a pint and a half of water, or of milk, down to a pint, half a teacupful of the decoction may be given every hour or two for staying relaxed bowels. Likewise ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... with a growl in his throat. The Harvester dropped his load with a crash and ran in leaping bounds, but the dog was before him. Half way to the house, Ruth Jameson swayed in the grip of her uncle. One hand clutched his coat front in a spasmodic grasp, and with the other she covered ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... with a spasmodic effort, sat down again. "The fact is, Mr. Meeson," she said—"The fact is, that, I thought that, perhaps, as 'Jemima's Vow' had been such a great success, you might, perhaps—in short, you might be inclined to give me ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... Maurice had been so self-possessed that the impediment in his speech was scarcely observable, was seized anew and cast into chains by his invisible enemy. The captive struggled in vain; the avenues of speech were barricaded; all his limbs were shackled; his movements became uncertain and spasmodic, menacing tables, chairs, vases, which, had they been gifted with consciousness, must have trembled at his approach; his nervous fingers thrust themselves into his hair, and threw it into ludicrous disorder; his countenance was suffused with scarlet; ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... charger, the glory of the squadron and of his owner's heart, was in a perilous case. So securely had he entangled himself in the head-rope that, despite the freedom of his heels, and spasmodic efforts to regain his feet, he remained pinned to earth, not many yards from where the fire was raging,—his fear and misery increased by wind-blown fragments of lighted straw, by the roar and crackle of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... was plain that he was worried. The Jews had got on his nerves. They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive. And further, they were subtle. The Romans had a straight, forthright way of going about anything. The Jews never approached anything directly, save backwards, when they were driven by compulsion. Left to themselves, they always approached by indirection. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... shore, a sudden upward lunge of the bow, and the torture of being submerged, inch by inch, in the icy, yellow water. Despite the splashing behind me, I sat as though paralyzed until I was waist deep and the boards turned under me, and then, with a spasmodic contraction of my whole being I struck out—only to find my feet on the muddy bottom. Such was the inglorious end of the good ship Petrel! For she went down, with all hands, in little more than half a fathom of water.... It was not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... only broken by the spasmodic sobs of Bigot as he leaned over the grave to look his last upon the form of the fair girl whom he had betrayed and brought to this untimely end. "Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!" said he, beating his breast. "Oh, Cadet, we are burying her like a dog! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,—its spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to the manege of the cloak-room and the table,—there is such a terrible uncertainty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my dearest Hal, and found your letter waiting for me. The aspect of these, my hired Penates, is comfortable and homelike to me, after living at inns for a fortnight; and the spasmodic and funereal greetings of the nervous Mulliner, and the lugubrious Jeffreys, gladden my spirits with a sense of returning to ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... take place in the minds of the actors ... somewhat like 'Paracelsus' in that respect. You know, or don't know, that the general charge against me, of late, from the few quarters I thought it worth while to listen to, has been that of abrupt, spasmodic writing—they will find some fault with this, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and truculent in the expression of their faces, against the more normal type, who would have passed unnoticed in an omnibus or an underground railway. It was notable that the talk was confined to groups, and was, at first, entirely spasmodic in character, and muttered in undertones as if the speakers were suspicious ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... clatter of sharp claws on the rocky floor, saw the pig-like eyes of the animals shining red under the light, heard their spasmodic breathing, and was about to make a desperate rush forward when the outer cavern was flooded with a racing light which grew and grew as Tommy looked. Then he heard the ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... before the muffled hearth she had been able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness and confusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and her attempt to trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a convalescent's first efforts to pick up the thread of living. She seemed to herself like some one struggling to rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so much easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of torpor, a deadness of soul traversed by wild flashes ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... whisper. She could have said no more than half a dozen words, but they stupefied Barrie. She threw back her head, almost as if to avoid a blow. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she pressed her lips together in a spasmodic effort at self-control. The bright rose-red of excitement was drained from her face; but she did not draw away from her mother, who still held the girl's hands. All she did was to turn her head with a bird-like quickness and ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mother or nurse of young children awake and listening through the night-watches was the sound of a cough, and the anxious waiting to hear whether the next explosion had a "croupy" or brassy sound. It was, of course, early recognized that there were two kinds of croup, the so-called "spasmodic" and the "membranous," the former comparatively common and correspondingly harmless, the latter one of the deadliest of known diseases. The fear that made the mother's heart leap into her mouth as she heard the ringing croup-cough was lest it might be membranous, or, if spasmodic, might ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... came over Haydon. The clawlike fingers began to straighten; imperceptibly at first, and then with a spasmodic motion that flexed the muscles in little jerks. The hand became limp; it dropped slowly to his side—down beyond the pistol holster. Then it came up, and the man swept it over his eyes, as though to brush away a vision ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... as Peters shut the door. Whatever the old servant lacked in agility he made up in certain knowledge; as he laid out a fresh tuxedo, Anthony changed with the speed of one pursued. The conversation was spasmodic to a degree. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... with a forced final spasmodic effort, he seized the arms of his chair, and rose, lifted up his right arm, and turned to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... have been lately "rectified," the liquor traffic still goes on, and the war is to be carried into the suburbs. What then? Where next? Which party can play this game the longer? Tears, prayers and songs will soon lose their novelty—this spasmodic effort will be likely soon to spend itself; is there any permanent good being wrought? Liquor traffic opposes woman suffrage, and with good reasons. It knows that votes change laws, and it also knows that the votes of women would change the present temperance laws and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... reached abruptly for the decanter on the desk and poured himself a stiff drink of Scotch whisky. The neck tinkled a little tattoo against the glass. He swallowed the liquor neat and shook his head in a spasmodic grimace. The sigh with which he settled back in his chair was ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... is tottering, the movements of the head and extremities jerky, not always co-ordinated, hence unsteady, inappropriate and spasmodic; her look is restless, objects are not definitely fixated. The normal functions of her mind are far inferior to those of a child of four years. The eight-year-old Margaret speaks only the word Mama; no other articulate ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... was about to faint. His eyes, bulging with terror, avoided us, while his right hand, with a spasmodic movement, twitched at the beard that covered his honest, gentle, and now despairing face. At length regaining his self-possession, he bowed to us, and remarking, in a changed voice, that he was obliged to return to the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... the home-made automobile Len Scaritt died. The loss to the household was social more than economic. Len had been one of those good-natured, voluble, walrus-moustached men who make such poor providers. A carpenter by trade, he had always been a spasmodic worker and a steady talker. His high, hollow voice went on endlessly above the fusillade of hammers at work and the clatter of dishes at home. Politics, unions, world events, local happenings, neighbourhood gossip, all fed the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... profound, with his long, dark, straight locks of hair, one of which was continually being brushed away from his forehead as it continually fell; with his gold-bowed eye-glass, his large nose and peculiar blue eyes, his spasmodic expressions of nervous horror, and his cachinnatious laugh. There were sturdy Teel, and heavy Eaton, and frisky Burnham, and bluff Rykman, with round-eyed Fanny Dwight and another graceful Fanny, and oh! so many ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... old, on to the moors where Linton Heathcliff was to meet them. Cathy was loath to leave her father even for an hour, he was so ill; but she had been told Linton was dying, so nerved herself to go once more on the moors: they found Linton in a strange state, terrified, exhausted, despondent, making spasmodic love to Cathy as if it were a lesson he had been beaten into learning. She wished to return, but the boy declared himself, and looked, too ill to go back alone. They escorted him home to the Heights, and Heathcliff persuaded them to enter, saying ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Both sides literally dug themselves in and along the battle line in many places, the hostile trenches were separated by only a few yards. At the end of the month the burrowing had been succeeded by tunneling, and both sides prepared for a winter of spasmodic action. It was a military deadlock, but a deadlock full of danger for the side that first developed a weak point in ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
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