"Benumbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her future under the shelter of institutions which unquestionably possess one supreme merit, that of durability. But while the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that great movement were benumbed by the personality and action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 1790, and the consolidation of revolutionary France was effected by a ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... grew fainter and yet fainter in their horrible workroom, and the lash of the whips resounded the more often. Hernando was lashed twice, for no real reason that his companions could discover. The second blow curled across the muscle of his arm and benumbed it for a while, and Johnnie whispered him to move in rhythm with them, whilst he and Jeffreys did the actual rowing. The fellow was grateful, and vowed by the Virgin never to forget ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... little child— She understands me better than the Twelve Knew the great heart of him they called their Lord. Ten times last night I woke in agony, I knew not why. There was no comforter. I stretched my arm to find her, and her place Was empty as my heart. Sometimes my pain Forgets its cause, benumbed by its own being; Then would I lay my aching, weary head Upon her bosom, promise of relief: I lift my eyes, and Lo, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... the chief still held the little ivory compass, and watched the quivering needle, his followers led Smith away to his own camp fire. Here lay the other white men dead, thrust through with many arrows. And here the Indians warmed and chafed his benumbed body, and treated him with all the kindness they knew. But that brought Smith little comfort. For he knew it was the Indian way. A famous warrior might be sure of kindness at their hands if they meant in the end to slay ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... irradiated by a huge log-fire; a very respectable display of bottles, bread, and various eatables covered the stone table, and the dogs, attached by couples to posts, pulled at their leashes and barked in chorus, while their masters, grouped around the fire, warmed their benumbed fingers over the flames, and tapped their heels while waiting for ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... dumb under the surging confusion in her brain. A sort of incredulous horror benumbed her, through which she still ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... riding-horse to a kago, he must, if he does not carry a saddle with him, determine to ride on an unsaddled horse, which, with the wretched steeds that are only available here, soon becomes so unpleasant that he at last prefers to let his legs hang benumbed from the kago. A peculiarity in Japan is that the rider seldom himself guides his horse. It is commonly led by a halter by a groom running alongside the rider. These grooms are very light-footed and enduring, so that even at a rapid pace they are not left behind. Running footmen also ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... of the labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, [20] but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his bishops; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... that we have all these different Sorts of Weather in the same Day. During this Season, Soldiers are subject to Coughs, Pleurisies, Peripneumonies, Rheumatisms, and other Disorders of the inflammatory Kind. And in very intense Frost, they are liable to have their Limbs benumbed with Cold, and their Extremities Frost bit (as it ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... Office, the real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be looked for in its dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating penances of the saffron crosses, and in the invisible police with which it benumbed the heart and soul of every man who had once fallen into its hands."[588] It is evident that these means of tormenting and coercing dissenters went much further to cause them to disappear than autos-de-fe and other executions. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... stopped short, and the bright color flushes his cheeks, till he looks quite beautiful. Ah! he has spied a little apple girl, seated upon the icy pavement. The wind is making merry with her thin rags,—her little toes peep, blue and benumbed, from out her half-worn shoes,—and she is blowing on her stiffened fingers, vainly trying ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Graces are his hard mistresses; though he daily invocate them, though he sacrifice hecatombs, they still look asquint. You shall note him (besides his dull eye, and lowering head, and a certain clammy benumbed pace) by a fair displayed beard, a night-cap, and a gown, whose very wrinkles proclaim him the true genius of familiarity. But of all others, his discourse and compositions best speak him, both of them are much of one stuff and fashion. He speaks just what ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Slowly, with benumbed fingers and trembling hands, she dressed herself: that bed she would lie in no more, for she had wronged her husband. Whether before or after he was her husband, mattered nothing. To have ever called him husband was the wrong. She had ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... foundations of their faith, and all the elements of a religious life. A book of poems, breathing faith and worship at all points, and in all attitudes of heavenward contemplation, within the circle of the Christian Year, would, he hoped, restore in many minds to many a benumbed ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... a cigarette and, tossing off my coat, sank into a chair. My mere return to that ordered elegance seemed to have benumbed my individuality. Downstairs thirty of our most intimate friends were amusing themselves at the cardtables, confident that at eleven-thirty they would be served with supper consisting of salads, ice-cream and champagne. They would not hope in vain. If they did not ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... indignation, pursing her lips and putting her chin in the air as though wounded in some finer sense, changing so rapidly from one mood to another, filling the room with such shrill clamor, that McTeague was dazed and benumbed. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... knows full well that she is Mistress Betty Lumley the great London actress, not Belvidera the Venetian senator's daughter; but he will never again turn from the chill of his stone-arched hall, where his fingers have grown benumbed riveting a piece of armour or copying an epitaph or an epigram, or linger under his mighty oak-tree, or advise with his poor tenants, or worship in church, without the sickening sense of a dull blank in his heart ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... two or three of the halls were devoted to selected works from modern artists. Two of these I would give every thing I have to possess. One of them is a winter scene, representing the portico of an old Gothic church. At the base of one of the pillars a woman is seated in the snow, half-benumbed, clasping an infant to her breast, while immediately in front stands a boy of perhaps seven or eight years, his little hands folded in prayer, while the chill wind tosses the long curls from his forehead. There is something so pure and holy in the expression ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... snowflakes the narrow trail is soon obscured, or entirely obliterated, the icy wind congeals the traveler's breath and courage simultaneously, he becomes confused and goes round and round in a circle, until, benumbed by the frost, he sinks down to die. This was what ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... even higher than in the morning, the fatigue of baling became very great; the boat was necessarily kept before the sea. The men were constantly wet, the night very cold, and at daylight their limbs were so benumbed, that they could scarcely find the use of them. At this time a teaspoonful of rum served out to each person was found of great benefit to all. Five small cocoa-nuts were distributed for dinner, and every one was ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... force the locked jaws apart, that they might administer a potion, and others were applying a red hot iron to the patient's head, in a desperate endeavor to arouse and bring back again into action the benumbed and stupefied sensibilities. Queen Catharine was so shocked by the horrid spectacle that she sank down in a fit of fainting and convulsions, and was borne immediately away back to ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... guide lost the path in a snow-storm, and declared it impossible to go on. The snow was too deep for the horses. Turning back was out of the question, as their tracks were obliterated by the wind, which would then be in their faces. Though benumbed and feeble, the courage of Dr. Grant did not fail. He could not tell how deliverance would come, but had a sweet assurance that God would send it, and encouraged his companions to new effort. Just then four mountaineers came tramping over the snow before them, and one of them consenting ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Children! is there any heart so sheathed in worldliness, or benumbed by sorrow, or hardened in its very nature, as to feel no gentle thrill responding to these terms? Surely, in some way these little ones have "touched the finer issues" of our being, and given us an unconscious benediction. Some of you are Mothers, and have acquired the holiest laws of duty, the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... through the cover to his fingers. He let his hand stay upon hers—perhaps the warmth would flow back into the cold arm, the chill heart; perhaps he could give her some of his vitality. The possibility afforded him a meager comfort, instilled a faint glow into his benumbed being. His hand closed upon that covered by the linen like a shroud. He sat rigid, concentrated, in his effort, his purpose. The light flickered again from the fiery perishing of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... floated hither and thither over the sea, soaked to the skin, nigh dead with cold, and so nearly benumbed that but for little Frillikin, who snuggled to her bosom, and kept a little warmth in her, she must have perished a hundred times. She was famished with hunger, but on seeing some oysters in their shells she took and ate as many as would appease her. Frillikin did the same, but only to keep ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... the sun set, the tongs fell from the steward's hands. He did not stop to finish his errand, but ran as if the devil or justice were at his heels. He made such leaps, he uttered such groans, he was so blackened, scorched, and benumbed, that every one in the village was afraid of him, thinking that he was mad. The boldest tried to speak to him, but he fled without answering, and hid himself in his house, more ashamed than a wolf that has left ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... they have by flood and field, and what hairbreadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on an average, about four or five thousand a month, or one hundred and fifty a day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by spiders, benumbed by cold, crushed by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and in many nameless ways cut off or disabled. In the spring the principal mortality is from the cold. As the sun declines they get chilled before they can reach home. Many ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... crouching low with her hands between her knees, her head thrown back and resting against the wall behind. What was the good of getting up or going to bed now? When she was thoroughly exhausted she threw herself, dressed, upon her bed. Otherwise she remained in the same position, chilled and benumbed; in her quiescent state, only her teeth chattered with the cold; she had that continual impression of a band of iron round her brows; her cheeks looked wasted; her mouth was dry, with a feverish taste, and at times a painful hoarse cry rose from her throat, and was repeated in spasms, while ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... of the highly rarefied air, the traveller at first experiences great difficulty in breathing, accompanied by a sharp, piercing pain at each inspiration. This increases until he becomes what the natives call "emparamento,"—when his extremities are benumbed, and he can no longer continue in motion. Soon after this he is seized with violent raving and delirium; froth issues from his mouth; he tears the flesh from his hands and arms with his teeth, pulls his hair, and beats ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... during the night to determine the latitude of the place by the passage of Fomalhaut over the meridian; but the observation was lost, owing to the time I employed in taking the level of the artificial horizon. It was midnight, and I was benumbed with cold, as were also our guides: yet the thermometer kept at 19.7 degrees. At Cumana I have never seen it sink below 21 degrees; but then the house in which we dwelt on the Imposible was 258 toises above ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... his obstinacy, and that he had set our house on fire, I caused him to be burnt, by means of sharp irons thrust under the nails of his thumbs, fingers, and toes, and the nails to be torn, off; and, because he never flinched, we thought his hands and feet had been benumbed with tying, wherefore we burnt him in other parts, as the hands, arms, shoulders, and neck, but even this had no effect. We then burnt him quite through the hands, and tore out the flesh and sinews with rasps, causing his shins to be knocked with hot searing irons. I then caused cold iron ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... almost universal peace,—when there had been no marked deficit in the productiveness of industry, when there had been no extraordinary dissipation of its results by waste and extravagance,—when no pestilence or famine or dark rumor of civil revolution had benumbed its energies,—when the needs for its enterprise were seemingly as active and stimulating as ever,—all its habitual functions are arrested, and shocks of disaster run along the ground from Chicago to Constantinople, toppling down innumerable well-built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... direction for some time, I came to a barn. Benumbed, fatigued, and ready as I was to drop from the saddle, I entered it as joyfully as a shipwrecked sailor climbs a barren rock. I scarcely could dismount, and it was with great difficulty I could unbuckle and take ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... out, the Frosty One was standing amid the ashes, trembling like an aspen leaf, and saying, "I never felt such a frost during the whole course of my life; if it had lasted much longer, I should have been benumbed!" ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... afterwards an impatient military man flung open the carriage door and sprang down into the road to pick a quarrel with the postilion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was repairing the trace restored Colonel d'Aiglemont's equanimity. He went back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his benumbed muscles, yawned, looked about him, and finally laid a hand on the arm of a young woman warmly wrapped up in ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... occasions; and though they have, such is their laziness, dullness, they will not compose themselves to do aught; they cannot abide work, though it be necessary; easy as to dress themselves, write a letter, or the like; yet as he that is benumbed with cold sits still shaking, that might relieve himself with a little exercise or stirring, do they complain, but will not use the facile and ready means to do themselves good; and so are still tormented with melancholy. Especially if they have ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... benumbed him to forgetfulness, so that during the final prayer he was dramatizing a scene in which three large and savage dogs leaped upon Frank and Frank destroyed them—ate them up. And when he stood at last for the doxology one of his feet had veritably gone ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... secured, it only remained to make sure of the other two. And this, as it happened, was a very easy task. For both, exhausted by their long, forced march and utterly benumbed by the cold, had fallen into a drowsy stupor under the hedge where they had been left, crouching beside my faithful steed for warmth. In this state it was simple work to secure them and march them off to custody, where at any rate they were not ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Harold," said Edward then, in a feeble voice; and the Earl drawing near, was grieved and shocked at the alteration of his face. "Thou art come back, to aid this benumbed hand, from which the earthly sceptre is about to fall. Hush! for it is so, and I rejoice." Then examining Harold's features, yet pale with recent emotions, and now saddened by sympathy with the King, he resumed: "Well, man of this world, that went forth confiding ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frosty seasons the bills of mortality are an evidence in the negative, as in long frosts many weakly and old people perish from debility occasioned by the cold, and many classes of birds and other wild animals are benumbed by the cold or destroyed by the consequent scarcity of food, and many tender vegetables perish ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... strained it all, and the sea-weed was drying on the sieve. Then she went back into the bedroom, and pulled down the green slat curtains with a shaking hand. Twice her father called her to bring his sermons, but she only answered, "Yes, father!" in dull acquiescence, and did not move. She was benumbed, sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another woman held his vows, and she was degraded. Her soul was wrecked as truly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... penetrated even the spy's benumbed brain. "Why is Mrs. Whitney wearing these finger tips?" and he held up the limp right hand. Each finger was fitted with a wax tip, and on the index finger, distinct and plain, was the scar shaped ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... the creature in its immobile posture? I foresee a more prolonged inertia. The chill, of course, must not be great, for it would be followed by the lethargy into which insects capable of surviving the winter fall when benumbed by the cold. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... awake or less benumbed by liquor than his fellows, heard the sounds from the river and called the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... they do do their work under such circumstances. They do; how greatly then they must be tortured, or for what a length of time they must have suffered to become benumbed. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... made yourself so absolute a mistress of the goose-quill, I can't imagine; how you can maintain the writing posture and pursue the writing movement for ten hours together, without benumbed brain or aching fingers, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... diving down he cut the cord, and releasing the dog from the bottom swam with him to the opposite shore from where Robert stood, all the while threatening him. Here his younger brother smoothed the water from the dog's coat, and instinctively rubbing its benumbed limbs until it became quite resuscitated, and after a short time, following close to Charles for protection, it returned to his mother's side in her boudoir. But Robert had been there before him, and had already manufactured a story redounding to Charles's discredit, and provoking both his mother's ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... which many a man has known before me, and many more will follow after me, the soul is like a skater, separated from his fellows upon a field of ice. Every movement that he makes seems to be bearing him farther from the society and the sympathy of his kind. Too benumbed, perhaps, to turn, he glides on, helpless as an ice-boat before the wind. Conscious of his mistake, of his danger, and knowing not how to retract the one or avoid the other, his helpless motions, seemingly guided by idleness, by madness, ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... with a deep, earnest sigh, the instant his lips were loosened, "and thanks to you, lad!" he added, endeavouring to rise; but his limbs had become so benumbed in consequence of the cords by which they had been compressed that for some ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging wind swept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemed every moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and cold at last benumbed the little boy, and when he woke he was being lifted from his seat and torches were flashing on a high escutcheoned doorway set in battlemented walls. He was carried into a hall lit with smoky oil-lamps and hung ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... low-hanging clouds, from which a few flakes of snow fell, her terror vanished suddenly before the excitement which ran through her body. She forgot her hunger, her loneliness, her shivering flesh, her benumbed and aching feet. A sensation not unlike the one with which the rector had marched into his first battle, fortified and exhilarated her. The fighting blood of of her ancestors grew warm in her veins. New York developed suddenly from a mere spot on ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... examine his conscience, to meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them. He could not weep. He could not summon them to his memory. He felt only an ache of soul and body, his whole being, memory, will, understanding, flesh, benumbed and weary. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... benumbed look in Ralph's face thawed in the warmth of her presence, and her words, though stern, touched a secret spring in his heart. He made two or three vain attempts to speak, then suddenly ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Miss Bark comes surgin' in with her Oscar foogitive, his heels tied onder the belly of the lead hoss. Any one can see by his benumbed expression that he's a married man. The two heads straight for the Votes For Women S'loon, an' after boltin' her new he'pmeet into the back room, Miss Bark takes a peek in the glass, pats down her ha'r, an' goes behind the bar ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... tall man encased in a dirty canvas shroud of an apron, was apparently expecting the party. More beans, more biscuits, more steaming tea—and then a bunk was spread for Parker. His previous night of vigil and his day spent in the wind had benumbed his faculties, and he speedily forgot his fears and his bitter ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... of that strange, benumbed state that had deadened for a while all his sense of suffering—coming back to a consciousness of utter bereavement and insupportable anguish—anguish written in such awful characters upon his pallid and writhen brow that Beatrice and her uncle exchanged ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... common people were badly fed and wretchedly clothed, those in the country for the most part living in huts with their cattle. Lord Kaimes said of the Scotch tenantry of the early part of last century, that they were so benumbed by oppression and poverty that the most able instructors in husbandry could have made nothing of them. A writer in the 'Farmer's Magazine' sums up his account of Scotland at that time in these words:—"Except in a few instances, it was little ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... was his name." He was slowly regaining his sleep-benumbed wits. "That reminds me," he continued. "He gave me a note ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... could not understand, but no sooner had the sound of her voice entered his ear than he sprang to his feet and tried to grasp the form. But mind and body again became benumbed, and, like the creeper from the tree, he sank at the feet of the enchantress; he could not speak. Again the woman, sitting down, took his head upon her lap. When Nagendra once more recovered from stupor it ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... found benumbed with cold, and almost or quite insensible, he should be taken into a cold room, the clothing removed, and friction commenced and continued for some time, with snow. When warmth begins to be restored, the individual should be rubbed with dry flannel, and the friction continued ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... aw could'nt goa until aw'd had a word wi' thee. Aw'm feeard tha'll tak it hard, lass, but if tha finds tha cannot bide it, ax th' parson to tell thee what he tell'd to me, an' it'll comfort thee." Bessy was unable to reply. Sorrows had been heaped upon her so heavily that her feelings were benumbed; she scarcely comprehended what was said, but in the bitterness of her soul she fell upon her knees ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... incapable of replying. His senses were benumbed and he hardly realized what was going on around him. Staggering to his feet he reeled to and ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... admirable coolness, took possession of the quarters he had found, shouting to their invisible proprietor that he was about to sleep in his bed; piled a barricade of bushes around the spot, rekindled the dying fire, warmed his benumbed hands, stretched himself on the dried grass, and slept ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... benumbed much more than he supposed. He held on—very wet, very cold, stiff in every limb; and in a momentary hallucination of swift visions (it is said that a drowning man thus reviews all his life) he beheld all sorts ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... mercy; but, though I gave a good account of myself, and he knew my captain, who lodged hard by him, it was to no purpose. They beat and mangled me in a shameful manner, leaving me near dead. I lost so much blood from the wounds I received, that I lay quite motionless, and was so benumbed that I could not feel any thing for many hours. Early in the morning they took me away to the jail. As I did not return to the ship all night, my captain, not knowing where I was, and being uneasy ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... situation is really quite critical; in a few moments my garments are frozen stiff; everything I have with me is wet; my leathern case, containing the small stock of medicines, matches, writing material, and other small but necessary articles, is full of water, and, with hands benumbed, I ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... thermometer was only twenty below, and, when they cooked, rose to zero. A pleasant time of it they must have had there on the ice, for those three days, in their bags smoking and sleeping! No wonder that on the fourth day they found they moved slowly, so cramped and benumbed were they. This morning a new sledge came to them from the ship; they got out of their bags, packed, and got under way again. They were still running along shore, but soon sent back the relief party ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... resist; his arm, benumbed by the violence of the blow which had broken his gun, refused its service. In an instant Pepe had untied the woollen scarf which was wound several times round his body, and bound with it the limbs of his ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... different cases from a few minutes to an hour or more, with a fly in her grasp, with which she re-enters her mine. On again emerging, the entrance is carefully closed with sand. During this interval she has laid an egg on the body of the fly which she had previously benumbed with her sting, and which is to serve as food for the soft, footless grub soon to be hatched from the egg. From what I could make out, the Bembex makes a fresh excavation for every egg to be deposited; at least in two or three of the galleries ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... explanation lies no doubt in the fact that in these man-and-woman affairs instinct is a surer guide than education and intelligence, unless, indeed, the intelligence is preternaturally keen. Lockwood's student life had benumbed the elemental instinct, which in the miners, the "men," yet remained vigorous and unblunted, and by means of which they assessed Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true worth. For all Lockwood's culture, his ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... His amazement had so benumbed him that even after that surrender he stood there, close to her, his countenance blank, his ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and incapable ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Rococo in the Pigtail. It, too, was founded, in part, on a mixture of the most subjective freedom and arbitrariness with the most rigid constraint of a new religious order; therefore it often appeared revolutionary, reformatory, and reactionary, all at the same time. They burst the fetters of benumbed dogmatism and petrified church government in order to inclose every free breath in new fetters. Even the last, most involuntary act of life—dying—had to be performed systematically. Pietistic literature ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... chime to chime, Work—work—work As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, As well as ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... came gliding across the water, wrapped in wreaths of ghostly mist, and, with the daylight, the rain ceased; and then, out came the glorious sun, sucking up the mists and warming the chill air. Benumbed, and utterly exhausted, we dragged ourselves to our feet, and went and stood in the bright rays, and were thankful for them. I can quite understand how it is that primitive people become sun worshippers, especially if their conditions of life ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... that fled laughing from his grasp; positive discomfort, positive pain, attacked him as he stood ruefully before the porch. His perspiration had dried upon him; and though the wind had now fallen, a binding frost was setting in stronger with every hour, and he felt benumbed and sick at heart. What was to be done? Late as was the hour, improbable as was success, he would try the house of his adopted father, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very condition is a source of injury, since it is nothing more nor less than the going to sleep of the sentinels which nature has posted at the portal of the body, for the purpose of giving warning of danger. The nerves of sensibility have become benumbed to such a degree that they no longer offer remonstrance against irritating substances, and allow the enemy to enter into the citadel of life. The mischievous work is thus insidiously carried on year after year until by and by the individual breaks down with some chronic disorder of the liver, kidneys, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... dogs. They came huddling from the ladders where I had left them, the sleigh still trailing at their heels. One poor animal was so benumbed I cut him from the traces and left him to die. Gathering up the robes, I shook them free of snow, replaced them in the sleigh and led the string of dogs down to the river. It would be bitterly cold facing that sweep of unbroken wind in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... philosopher's privilege to call upon the artist to show that what he is about is either good in itself or a means to good. It is the artist's duty to reply: "Art is good because it exalts to a state of ecstasy better far than anything a benumbed moralist can even guess at; so shut up." Philosophically he is quite right; only, philosophy is not so simple as that. Let ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... has one infallible, perhaps because it is automatic, regard for its own comfort and well-being—it cannot be induced to tie itself into a knot. It is in mind that once in the old country a very long and very cold lethargic boa constrictor became benumbed and forgot the primal instinct of the family, and paid for its absent-mindedness with its life. But the ordinary snake under extraordinary conditions, whatsoever its length, is most careful to disentangle itself even when knots are designed for the special purpose of embarrassing it. Though ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Jimmy lifted his right foot and held it from the ground. The warmth of the room was bringing pain to the benumbed member into which something had been stuck. "She told me to tell you please, 'm, to come if you could. Mrs. Cotter says she can't die until she sees you, and she's so tired trying to hold out. She won't have breath left to talk, mother ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... didn't have anything to do with it," exclaimed the benumbed Paul, "but I'm glad I got ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... he be, since even that desperate thought has a sort of comfort in it. But he is too weary to seek out some suitably retired spot to take cold leave of life in. On every side is darkness; on every side, wild storm. Why endeavor to drag farther his benumbed limbs? As well stretch himself here, upon this wet wintry sod, as anywhere. He has the presumption to do it,—never considering how deeply he may injure a fine gentleman's feelings ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... we reached Drenkova without accident, but completely benumbed: we hurried into the inn built by the steamboat company, where we found capital fare, a warm room, and tolerably comfortable beds. This was the first place we had reached since leaving Pesth at which we could thoroughly warm ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... at him without seeing him, and evidently did not take in the words. He merely gasped once or twice, and looked as if he had fainted away on his feet. His blank, stunned expression showed that his faculties were momentarily benumbed by the shock. Miss Rood felt as if she should die for the pity of it as she looked at his face, and her heart was breaking for grief as she sought to mollify the young man with some inarticulate words of apology, meanwhile still endeavoring to draw ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... found her clinging to the balusters, and pointing at the floor, with eyes protruding and full of horror. Her candle-stick had fallen from her benumbed hand; but the hall-lamp revealed what her finger was quivering and pointing at: a dark fluid trickling slowly out into the lobby from ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity—a Gray Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated, by the education she ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... had anticipated, to the Rue du Rocher, and there found the hapless Valerie, not dying, but dead, and white, and icy cold. Ah! the desperate, tearless grief of the husband, who fell upon his knees at the bedside, benumbed, annihilated, as if he also felt death's ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... and soon swung around, broadside to the sea, so as to be helpless and at the mercy of the breakers. Every wave broke over her decks. The condition of her crew was frightful. In the dead of winter, the wind keen as a razor, and the waves of icy coldness, the body soon became benumbed; and it was with the greatest effort that the men could cling to the rigging. So great was the fury of the wind and waves, that no assistance could be given her. For a boat to venture into that seething caldron of breakers would have been throwing away lives. So the crew of the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... come some day, depend on it," said the Viking's wife, "and dreadful will it also be for me. Better had it been that you had been put out on the highway, and the chillness of the night had benumbed you until you slept in death;" and the Viking's wife wept salt tears, and went angry and distressed away, passing round behind the loose skin partition that hung over an upper ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... right thing!' cried he; 'especially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face all ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is generally read at one sitting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, meeting it in a country inn, began to read it while standing with his arm leaning on a chimney-piece, and was not able to lay it aside till he had finished it, when he found his arm totally benumbed. In 1745, Johnson issued proposals for a new edition of Shakspeare, but laid them aside for a time, owing to the great expectations entertained of the edition then promised ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth; And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity May ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... took the direction of the Tuileries, and crossed the gardens with an undecided step. He walked as if he were in some desert, elbowed by men whom he did not see, hearing through all the voices of the crowd one voice alone—the voice of Death. He was lost in the thoughts that benumbed him at last, like the criminals who used to be taken in carts from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve, where the scaffold awaited them reddened with all the blood spilt here ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... of ice, which would have submerged and sunk them with their weight; in a word, warring even to the death with cold, the greatest enemy of life. This marvelous feat was accomplished by our French pontoon corps. Many perished, borne away by the current or benumbed by the cold. The glory of this achievement, in my opinion, exceeds in ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... all in the same black livery, and just visible by the gleaming of a few lamps. A large company of women were also ranged in a neighboring gallery in like manner. But they were all motionless, and no one knew his doom. Every eye was fixed, and each one seemed benumbed with misery. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... began to pain them so that each step was a penance, and when they reached the open country it looked so mournful and depressing in its limitless mantle of white that they all hastily retraced their steps, with bodies benumbed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... benumbed state. It had all seemed a fantastic dream, but he had only to look around him to know that it was reality. Three or four battle lanterns were shining and they threw a ghostly light over the deck of the schooner, which was littered with ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... eyes of the white wolf had pierced his hiding-place and in a moment he was hurled from his feet by the force of the attack. The lynx fought but feebly, seemingly benumbed by the strange apparition, and in a few minutes his limp form was stretched upon the ground. As for his mate, she too cowered before the sight of the white wolf and fled afar, never to return. So was Gray Wolf avenged and his avenger, once more mounting the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... could pass the winter. Mr. Pike was determined, if possible, to reach the Corbeau or Raven river, the highest point that had ever been reached by traders, in bark canoes. But he was not able to accomplish his intention; for, on the seventeenth, many of his men were so benumbed with cold, that their limbs became useless, and others were laid up with illness. He consequently fixed on a station near Pine Creek, where the borders of the Mississippi consisted of prairie, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Wesley, Kate sat, prone and disheveled, calling to him to look at her, to speak to her, as she kissed the cold lips in incredulous despair. She paid no heed to Mrs. Atterbury, to Olympia, kneeling beside her—all her heart, all her senses benumbed in the agony of the cruel blow. Jack moved to the piteous group, and, dropping on his knees, felt the lifeless pulse, and sank back, pale and shrinking, with the feeling that he was a murderer. Mrs. Atterbury turned to ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... jest, but her words sounded like scolding. She halted again under the lantern which stands not far from our house, and leaned against, almost hung over, the fence, and began to fumble for something among her skirts, with benumbed and awkward hands. Again they shouted at her, but she muttered something and did something. In one hand she held a cigarette bent into a bow, in the other a match. I paused behind her; I was ashamed to pass her, and I was ashamed to stand and look on. But I ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... fill your eyes with these, and ye neglect Christ as your righteousness, as one dead and risen again, and now sitting at God's right hand for us. You must first close with him, as ungodly men. Though you were godly, you must shut your eyes on any such thing, and lay living Jesus upon your dead and benumbed hearts. Answer all your challenges with his absolution, and stand before God, in his clothing. Put his garment immediately on your nakedness and vileness, and we may persuade you it shall yield you abundant consolation and life. Because he lives, ye shall live, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... wolves were supposed to lie was surrounded by the huntsmen. It was bitterly cold; the wind howled through the firs, and drove the light snow-flakes right in my face, so that when at length it came on to be dusk I could scarcely see six paces before me. Quite benumbed by the cold, I left the place that had been assigned to me and sought shelter deeper in the wood. There, leaning against a tree, with my firelock under my arm, I forgot the wolf-hunt entirely; ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of my childhood. I saw many souvenirs of the past among those leafless trees and faded lawns. There, when ten years of age, I had walked with my brother and my tutor, throwing bits of bread to some of the poor benumbed birds; there, seated under a tree, I had watched a group of little girls as they danced; I felt my heart beat in unison with the refrain of their childish song; there, returning from school, I had followed a thousand times the same ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something that drew the mind open to ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... now. Since he had heard of Lilla's death, the gloom of his remorse, emphasised by Mimi's upbraiding, had made more hopeless his cruel, selfish, saturnine nature. He heard no sound, for his normal faculties seemed benumbed. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... room, when, on opening the door, I saw poor Mangrove lying on his back in the middle of the floor, with his legs and arms extended as if he had been on the rack, his eyes set, his mouth open, and every faculty benumbed by fear. At his feet sat the negro child, almost as much terrified as he was, and crying most lamentably; while, at a little distance, sat the spectre of the old woman, scratching its head with the greatest composure, and exclaiming in Spanish, "a little brandy for love of the Holy ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... gallant captain instantly divined its cause, seized, loaded, and cocked his gun, and ordered the tent door to be opened, upon which a huge bear was seen outside. Captain Ommaney fired at the animal, but, whether from the benumbed state of his limbs, or the dim glimmering light, he unfortunately missed him, and shot away the rope that supported the tent instead. The enraged monster then poked his head against the poles, and the tent fell ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... instantly prepared to obey their commander. They struggled successfully against the roaring billows, and, benumbed with horror and despair, at length reached the shore. Here they wandered from one wretched hovel to another, but no human voice broke upon their ear. At length they espied a solitary cow, and, mute with apprehension, sword in hand, they hastened to the cot near which she was trying to graze. With ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... moved only a few feet along the bench to where a block of ice lay. I wedged myself between the ice and the wall and lay face downwards, until the steadiness of the light gave encouragement to rise and get away. Somewhat nerve-shaken, drenched, and benumbed, I made out to build a fire, warmed myself, ran home, reached my cabin before daylight, got an hour or two of sleep, and awoke sound and comfortable, better, not worse for my ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... you remember the dramatic ending? How the smart one on the fatal day sought to "press the button" and finding it gone, lost his wits completely and failed ignominiously? Many of us when we have lost a sustaining button, have we not felt as ridiculously helpless and wit-benumbed as the smart speller? ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... the Soul does not see well thro' purblind Eyes. The Ears hear not clearly when stopped with Filth. The Brain smells not so well when oppressed with Phlegm. And a Member feels not so much when it is benumbed. The Tongue tastes less, ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed, and incapable of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... you are saying? You to bandy words with me! A clod-brained fool to dare a man of science! Man of science forsooth! Your men of science are to me as brain-benumbed, as brain-bereft, as that fly ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... observations for a considerable part of the day, one of the older midshipmen being usually with him. "Well I remember," writes one of his officers, "that on being one day relieved to go down to my dinner, I was obliged to have some of the main-top-men to help me down the rigging, I was so benumbed with the intense cold: yet the captain was there six or seven hours at a time, without complaining, or ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... lowered—Heaven knows who took a hand at that—and so he disappeared for five minutes. Then a shout: the horse came into view, staggering downstream with harness cut, and scrambled up into the meadow; and the man, drenched and deadly white, and too benumbed to help himself, was hauled up on to the bridge, and carried to the nearest inn. I never heard his name—people of his sort, as Dickens knew, are generally anonymous—but he was one of the labourers of the locality, and only last winter ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... before and behind were other splashing feet, all hiding the trail in the thin current of the wide old Arkansas; that the quick turns to follow the water and the need for speed gave no consideration to the helpless rider. The image of six pairs of snaky black eyes came to help the benumbed brain, and I knew with whom I was again captive. But there was no question about the friendly motive now, for there was no friendly motive now. And as we pushed on east, Jondo and Bill Banney were hurrying toward the northwest, and the space between us widened ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... pain in abdomen; No emetic. Milk or odor of carbolic acid, flour and water; white of mucous membrane in eggs. around mouth white and benumbed; cold and clammy skin. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of nidification, but play and sport about either to recruit from the fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover its true tone and texture after it has been so long benumbed by the severities of winter. About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the martin begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... next moment he understood. Just within the rays of the electric light, across the street, was Afternoon Tea Willie, waiting faithfully with chattering teeth and benumbed toes. He stood and stared at Roderick as they passed, and then slowly followed at a distance, the picture of abject desolation. Roderick found it almost impossible to keep from laughing, until he began to consider his own case. He had plunged headlong into her presence, and now he ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Motionless, benumbed, as if struck by lightning, remained the prince upon the threshold; behind him were seen the astonished faces of his generals, who, on tiptoe, stretched their necks to gaze, over each other's shoulders, upon this singular ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... looked out into the swirling rain. Why should they? Only to see the wide deluged plain, the round drenched groves, the maraises and sinuous coolees shining with their floods, and long lines of benumbed, wet cattle seeking in patient, silent Indian file for warmer pastures. They knew it all ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... of day we began to try to move about, and gradually straighten ourselves, which was something of an effort, stiffened and benumbed as we were with remaining in our wet clothing so many hours. We had now an opportunity of examining our habitation. It was a building of about four hundred feet long, by seventy-five or eighty wide, three stories high, and built of stone, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... under the lights was to invite the fate he had so narrowly escaped. He knew Mattacheco's skill as a marksman: the Mexican would not be rattled twice in the same half-hour. Ford gripped the benumbed arm in impotent writhings. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... him it was a matter of indifference. That is, it was the same kind of matter of indifference that pain becomes in a limb that has grown benumbed. For reasons he could hardly explain, that part of his being to which Rosie Fay had made her pathetic appeal couldn't feel any more. It was like something atrophied from over-strain. There was the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... laid her rivers to snare us, She set her snows to chill, Her clouds had the cunning of vultures, Her plants were charged to kill. The glooms of her forests benumbed us, On the slime of her ledges we sprawled; But we set our feet to the northward, And crawled and crawled and crawled! We defied her, and cursed her, and shouted: "To hell with your rain and your snow. Our minds we have set on a journey, And despite ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... man put on the true look of a desperado, resolved on mischief if opposed: but that, after pausing a moment, he began, with a kind of humorous anger, to rub the side of his face, as if it were benumbed] Faith, on recollection, I believe I got a bit of a cold last night, which makes me ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... he ordered them to stand still with their spears fixed in the ground, and when the enemy came up, to draw their swords and fall upon them with all their force. The Volsci, wearied with running and shouting, set upon the Romans as if they had been quite benumbed through fear; but when they found the vigorous resistance that was made, and saw their swords glittering before their face, they turned their backs in great disorder, just as if they had fallen into an ambuscade. Nor had they strength sufficient even for flight, as they had advanced to the battle ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... often to stop to take breath. If these vapours are so strong without and in the open air, what must they be within the bowels of the earth in the mines, into which, if a fresh man go, he is suddenly benumbed with pain. This is the case with many, but seldom lasts above a day, and they are not liable to be affected a second time: Yet vapours often burst forth suddenly, by which the workmen are killed on the spot; and one way or another, great multitudes of Indians die in working the mines. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr |
