"Soporific" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for hours that night, but when I finally went to sleep and heaven knows I needed it!—it was with the soporific resolution to put my house rigidly in order the very next day. I would be polite about it, but very firm. The Titus family (omitting the Countess and Rosemary) was to be favoured with an ultimatum from ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... remained sunk in unpleasing reflections until he began to experience the incipient effects of his soporific draught. He then roused himself for an ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined that Algernon was, or would become, his evil genius. In reality, Edward was the perilous companion. He was composed of better stuff. Algernon was but an airy animal nature, the soul within him being ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the harried, anxious little clerk with his paradoxically grandiloquent intonation; the comedy assistant district attorney with his wheezy voice emanating from a Falstaffian body, who suffered from a soporific malady and was accustomed to open a case and then let it take care of itself while he slumbered audibly beneath the dais; even Ephraim Tutt, the gaunt, benignly whimsical-looking attorney, in his rusty-black frock coat and loose-hanging tie; his rotund partner, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... is really exciting in a way, we must expect something more soporific. Martesie takes the place of her absent mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for "Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not that Cyrus would, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... it is impossible longer to "look" at him, what shall she do! Tell her woe to the world, seek a soporific, repudiate the scheme of things, or from the vantage point of her failure turn to the untried relations of her life, call ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... a beverage eminently agreeable, inspiring and wholesome. It is at once a stimulant, a cephalic, a febrifuge, a digestive, and an anti-soporific; it chases away sleep, which is the enemy of labor; it invokes the imagination, without which there can be no happy inspiration. It expels the gout, that enemy of pleasure, although to pleasure gout owes its birth; it facilitates ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Following his vein, Sidney, after innumerable adventures, pastoral and warlike scenes, disappearances, unexpected meetings, scenes of deep love, of criminal, sweet or foolish love, comes at last to a sort of conclusion. King Basilius drinks a soporific draught; he is given up as dead. Queen Gynecia is accused of being the author of the deed; Zelmane, who has been found out to be a man is adjudged an accomplice; both are about to be executed. At that point, fortunately, the dead king springs to his feet; there are explanations, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... a soporific," said David gravely, as he handed him the bulky package, "my labor will not have been ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... did not feel it or, at least, the British did not want them to feel it. There was no more sign of an earthly storm brewing as one looked at the field than of a thunderstorm as one looked at the sky. Perfect soporific tranquillity possessed the surroundings except for shell-bursts, and their meagerness intensified the aspect, strangely enough, on that battlefield where I had never seen a quieter afternoon since the Somme offensive had begun. One could ask nothing better than that the tranquillity ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... with his fingers upon his lips to enjoin me to silence, while his eyes were turned towards the open prairie. I immediately looked in that direction, and there was a sight that acted as a prompt anti-soporific. About half a mile from us stood a band of twenty Indians, with their war-paint and accoutrements, silently and quietly occupied in tying the horses. Of course they were not of our tribe, but belonged to the Umbiquas, a nation of thieves ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... welfare; oblige nature by your industry to open her immense stores, to become propitious to your exertions; do these things, and the gods will oppose nothing to your felicity. Leave to idle thinkers, to soporific dreamers, to waking visionaries, to useless enthusiasts, the unproductive task, the unfruitful occupation, of fathoming depths, from which ye ought sedulously to divert your attention; enjoy with moderation, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... digestion, but passes without changes, and without needing change, to the tissues which are to use it. According to Sir Thomas Fraser nothing else can compete with alcohol as a food in desperate febrile cases, and to this use must be added its antipyretic power already explained and its action as a soporific. During its administration in febrile cases the drug must be most carefully watched, as its action may prove deleterious to the nervous system and the circulation in certain classes of patient. The state of the pulse is the best criterion of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... completely, when he begins slowly to emit the smoke from his nose, little by little, until it is all gone. The object of this with the Indian is to steep his senses more deeply with the narcotizing soporific. The tobacco they smoke is ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... into neologisms specially created for the needs of conversation, in a Roman corner of Africa. He was amused by the southern exuberance and joviality of a doubtlessly corpulent man. He seemed a salacious, gay crony compared with the Christian apologists who lived in the same century—the soporific Minucius Felix, a pseudo-classicist, pouring forth the still thick emulsions of Cicero into his Octavius; nay, even Tertullian—whom he perhaps preserved for his Aldine edition, more than ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... buoyant on the glistening bubble of Dignity, she had likewise a modest estimate of her dues. Alack, my poor heroine had no pride! Mrs. Ford's silent censure awakened no resentment. It sounded in her ears like a dull, soporific hum. Lizzie was deeply enamored of what a French book terms her aises intellectuelles. Her mental comfort lay in the ignoring of problems. She possessed a certain native insight which revealed many of the horrent inequalities of her pathway; but she found it so cruel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the horses ready, and all hurried from the spot, and were once more climbing up the mountain-path. Even the animals seemed to move slowly and lazily, as though they, too, had been under the influence of some soporific. But the pure cold air of the mountain soon produced its effect. All gradually recovered, and after cooking some charqui and ocas in the ravine, and making their breakfast upon these, they again felt light and fresh, and pursued ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... stand in the way of his money-getting. He never thinks of them as evils at all. To be sure, sometimes, across his torpid brain and heart may echo some harsh expressions, from those stern old Hebrew prophets, about these things. But he has a very comfortable pew, in a very soporific church, and he is only half awake, and the echo dies away and leaves no sign. He is just the man to tell us all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... went out into the gallery, stole softly thence to the saloon, where the duena was asleep, and seeing no Leonora there, he went to the duena's own room, opened the door gently, and beheld Leonora in Loaysa's arms, and both of them looking as if the soporific ointment was exerting its influence over themselves instead of upon the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... some of the more ancient peers by his skittish references to the coming Conference on the Second Chamber. When he expressed the hope that Lord CURZON would make an explicit statement, on the ground that their Lordships' House was in no need of a soporific, I fully expected one of the occupants of the mausoleum to rise and reprove him in the words of Dr. JOHNSON, "Sir, in order to be facetious it is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... the afternoon sunshine, to the soft, rather soporific cooing of some caged doves, that live in the back-ground out of sight behind a screen of lemon trees in huge red jars, such as Morgiana must have been familiar with. Beyond the terrace wall we note the carefully ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Smith that she could not sleep,—"I can furnish you," he said, "with a perfect soporific. I have published two volumes of Sermons; take them up to bed with you. I recommended them once to Blanco White, and before the third page—he was ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... the abacus; many of them were sitting at the doors of their houses, smoking in the evening air; the barbers were still at work preparing their customers for the night. Like Washington Irving, these may have considered a good clean shave the best soporific. Here and there a citizen of the better class was to be seen picking his way by the light of a lantern, held by a boy, and twice we met sedan chairs containing women, preceded by a lantern bearer. The passage of two sedans ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the need! ... Not the old religion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, a means of evasion,—I do not mean that as religion. But another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. We rise with it in the morning. It is a faith in life apart from our own personal fate.... ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... proves that he is right. Slowly and gapingly the audience arises, strolls sleepily out of the door, and entering wrong stages, is carried to all manner of wrong destinations. So strong is the soporific influence of the Phillipic drama, that not until hours after the play is over, does the average spectator become sufficiently wakeful to express an intelligible regret that Mr. WALLER and Mrs. MOLLENHAUER should not have made their reappearance ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios. Whether it was owing to the soporific emanations for these works; or to the profound quiet of the room; or to the lassitude arising from much wandering; or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places, with which I am grievously afflicted, so it was, that I fell into a doze. Still, however, my imagination continued busy, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... which I fell just after my return from the trap with the watch, and which, consequently, must have lasted for more than three entire days and nights at the very least. Latterly, I have had reason both from my own experience and the assurance of others, to be acquainted with the strong soporific effects of the stench arising from old fish-oil when closely confined; and when I think of the condition of the hold in which I was imprisoned, and the long period during which the brig had been used as a whaling vessel, I am more ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... remarkable purifier of the blood that I have ever known; it is a tonic, a diuretic, a nervine, and a gentle laxative. Is is alterative, sudorific, soporific, ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... made allowance for his own extreme weariness or for the soporific effect of the alcoholic fumes with which his comrade's breath was redolent. When six o'clock struck at the church of St. Eustache, the young detective's alarm resounded faithfully enough, with a loud and protracted whir. Shrill and sonorous as was the sound, it failed, however, to break ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... enveloped us both with a soporific humidity; and equally immersed in one unconscious thought, we remained there side by ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... wheel of his cart in the rut. The cutter wearied not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe, and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of the circling haven, and ceased not in her flight until the first wave of the Ocean leaped up against her bow with so much rude impetuosity that her hull staggered under its force, and her gaff-topsail shook with anger ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... Dick, in reply to Nort's obvious statement that he intended to administer some of the soporific ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... himself by the ease with which he made this monstrous threat, but it seemed to have a soporific influence on his companion, for he muttered an "aw gwan" and subsided ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... social charms; but the enormity of the offence will be greatly modified by a brief review of the attending circumstances. If you will but consider that the crackling of burning wood in a huge Franklin stove is strongly soporific in its tendencies,—that the cushion of a capacious arm-chair, constructed and adjusted as if with a single eye to a delicious dose, nay, to a long succession of doses, is a powerful temptation to a sleepy soul,—that the regular, and, it must be confessed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cheerfulness and happiness of those on whom it acts. Instruction in reading, arithmetic, geometry, and various other things is made exceedingly amusing; smiling countenances and sparkling eyes are observable all around when it is communicated; and what was dull and soporific, according to the old plan, is now insinuated so agreeably, that the child, while literally at play, is acquiring a large amount of valuable knowledge. At play he sees Nature's book, that world of beauties: he loves to look into it, there is no flogging to induce him to do it. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... wife's health rendered it impossible for her to quit the hotel, and he could not very well separate himself from her. She continued for some time in shrieking hysterics, varied by fainting fits; and when she became quieter, under the influence of a soporific administered by the doctor, she declared herself quite too ill and exhausted to rise from her bed. Her husband remained with her night and day, until the second morning, when he escaped from her sight and ken for a couple of hours, and absolutely refused to tell her where ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... like yourself, Mr. St. John," Mrs. Sillenger began in her quiet diffident way, "continue so prejudiced on this subject. How you could help on the moral progress of the world, if only you would forget the sweet soporific 'poetry of the pulpit," as Mrs. Malcomson calls it, and learn to think of us women, not as angels or beasts of burden—the two extremes between which you wander—but as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... consigned to the care of Grim Gribber, the porter of the castle, with directions to attach it to the wrist of the lady in the chamber of sleep, whither he accordingly proceeds for that purpose; but overcome by the soporific influences of the atmosphere of that enchanted place, he falls into a deep sleep ere his task is accomplished. The Prince Azoff, with his Squire Abnab, straying from a hunting party into the enchanted cedar grove, encounters the Fairy Blue-bell, protector of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... lawn. A heavy smell of flowers came from the borders and the house seemed to be sleeping in the hot sunshine. Everything was beautiful, well-ordered, and tranquil, but he knew if he stayed there long he would hear the cry of the black geese and the clang of flung-down rails ring through the soporific calm. Something in the girl's face indicated that she might find the calm oppressive and sympathize ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... generally understood a substance which the imagination grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the SOPORIFIC POWER of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the PECCANT HUMORS of ancient medicine, are entites. The entite is the support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the argumentum non apparentium. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... (Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado. He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy, As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy: And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific, When taken, will prove to be no soporific. Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be Sole Agent down here for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... He was having a difficult time staying awake. Uncle Ingemar's low, monotonous voice lecturing about so commonplace a thing as Evil had a soporific effect on him. He struggled to keep ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... Pete—a son?" Ben put the question calmly, considering his elation at his good luck. He had made up his mind that he might have to spend days in this soporific hamlet. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... out for New-Tarbat to-morrow. Could you come? Let nothing but wedlock detain you. Oh, Boswell! the soporific effluvia of a hearty dinner cloud all my faculties. I'm as dull as the tolling in of the eighth-hour bell, or a neighbour in the country, that pays you an annual visit. At this present moment, I'm astonished how anybody ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... but I don't know who you are; and if you mean Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying. She was very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say, but she is having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific medicine, and we are really beginning ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... singing of one of the many knightly orphans of romance, exposed in woods to the nurture of bears, his father slain, his mother dead of grief—a ditty he had perhaps chosen for its soporific powers—when a gay bugle blast rang through ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Now from the soporific scene [vi] I'll turn mine eye, as night grows later, To view, unheeded and unseen, [vii] The studious sons ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the hops, and calls for critical judgment and accuracy. Often, tired out with the previous ordinary day's work, we had much ado to keep awake at night, and it was fatal to arrange a too comfortable position with the warmth of the glowing fire and the soporific scent of the hops. Then Tom would announce that it was "time to get them little props out," which, in imagination, were to ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... your existence is! The world turns round as gently as ever; the flowers bud into life; and the winter nips them. Man lives, thinks, and dies. All very wondrous truisms. Well, after a half-hour—or perchance more—you will be gradually relapsing into a state of soporific nothing-at-all-ness (the best word I can find to express my meaning.) May there be some clear little stream just behind you, laughing along its idle way;—some chirping birds, singing their roundelay—some buzzing flies—you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... there the gentlemen visitors, chiefly diplomats, who wanted to speak to him, joined him; while the lady visitors sat round the Queen's table, at which the conversation was general, if occasionally soporific. It used to brighten up again with the arrival of any ladies whose wit or beauty attracted the men who had scattered about the drawing-room. This was always the case on the appearance of Mesdames de St. Aulaire and de Castellane, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... overtaken him. His breathing was gentle and regular, though his face was covered with gorged mosquitos. The healthy moistness of the skin showed that my prescription had operated as a sudorific, no less than as a soporific. Altogether, there was a marked diminution of what we call febrile symptoms; and, better still, he had managed to turn himself ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... what there was not any soporific in adopting was not agonising. There had not come to be division. There was that article. They saw that away. It was not a comfort. They had that to keep the place away. They were not blameworthy. They had the ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... in the same condition, was soon after seen his wife, who, of weaker conformation, had more quickly yielded to the soporific effect of the upas poison, from which, when it has once pervaded the blood, there is ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Mustapha went to bring his soporific, and having given it to the black slave, and shown him how much it was necessary to take for a dose, he went to Thiuli, and, telling him he must procure some medicinal herbs from the sea, hastened through the gate. On ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... she half whispered. "The wind in my face and the sun are too soporific for me. Let us not say a word ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the "Red Cedar," reaching sometimes a height of 200 feet and having a diameter in rare cases of over 20 feet; yielding for the state of Washington two-thirds of all the shingles produced in the United States. Similar to the Cypress, its sweet soporific scent is everywhere conspicuous and always pleasing. Other trees which provide lumber and add grace to the Washington woods are the hemlocks, spruces, larches, and white firs, in the western part ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... inimitable gaiety. In comparison whiskey was brutalizing; sherry was involved with a number of material accompanying pleasures; port was purely masculine and clarets upset him; beer was a beverage and not a delight; ale a soporific; and Rhine wines he ignored. Champagne held in solution the rhythm of old Vienna waltzes, of ball rooms with formal greenery, floating with passions as light as the tarleton skirts floating about dancing feet. But it wasn't, he insisted, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... In the soporific scent of the lilies and the stocks, the night drowsed in the darkness of the garden; Mike unlocked the gate and passed into the shadows, and hypnotized by the heavenly spaces, in which there were a few stars; by the earth and the many emanations of the earth; by the darkness which ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... cropped, with his hind legs far away stretched out, and his forelegs gathered under him, and his muzzle on the mole-hills; so that he had five supportings from his mother earth. Moreover, the linhay itself was full of very ancient cow dung; than which there is no balmier and more maiden soporific. Hence I resolved, upon the whole, though grieving about breakfast, to light a pipe, and go to sleep; or at least until the hot ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... you how you helped us to pass many a weary, restless hour. After the Bible had been read to me in a low monotone—when I was seeking sleep and could not find it—a volume of my published sermons was tried, and sometimes very successfully, as a soporific. I was familiar with them, and yet they presented as much novelty as to divert my mind from my troubles. And what if this failed? then came the Reminiscences to entertain me, and while away the long hours when all hope of getting sleep's sweet ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... him. Though I paced up and down before the fire, I had great difficulty in keeping my eyes open. The murmur of the stream as it flowed by, and the suppressed hum of insects with the occasional cry of some bird, had a very soporific effect. I kept walking about and stamping my feet, but every moment I stopped my head began to nod; and when I got a little distance from the fire and turned round to look at it, I could not make out whether it was the sun or the moon just rising. I pinched myself, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... bought the anti-administration newspaper of Charleston and, getting out of bullet range, put my back against a tree and tried to read. Mercury was ever a blithe and sportive god, and his gambols on Mount Olympus were noted in days of yore; but the modern namesake—or else my present position—had soporific tendencies; and fear of the target shooters growing dimmer and dimmer, I lost myself ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... colour, because she knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He sometimes felt as if they walked the English lanes together. His intimacy with her neighbours, and her neighbourhood, was one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking of old Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of soporific measure, when he lay awake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham, of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even found an old engraving of Lady Alanby in her youth. Her evident liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They were people whose dignity and admirableness were ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... their conduct. To my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sate as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his next neighbour, "Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?" and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feeling ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... sing me to sleep every night, especially with that song of Marlena; it is soporific as the airs ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in effect to saying that the sea is salt because of the large amount of saline matter which it holds in solution. Cheese is also a caseous preparation of milk; the duties of an archdeacon are to perform archidiaconal functions; and opium puts one to sleep because it possesses a soporific virtue. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid, poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple lights of rare old wines aloft, yet from his altitude he can look below upon a profane crowd in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... we provided that, but later he appeared from Boston with four bottles of lager-beer under his arms; lager-beer, he said now, was the only thing to make you go to sleep, and we provided that. Still later, on a visit I paid him at Hartford, I learned that hot Scotch was the only soporific worth considering, and Scotch-whiskey duly found its place on our sideboard. One day, very long afterward, I asked him if he were still taking hot Scotch to make him sleep. He said he was not taking anything. For a while he had found ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Christophe, on whom academic art had acted as a soporific, Sylvain Kohn proposed to take him to certain eclectic theaters,—the very latest thing. There they saw murder, rape, madness, torture, eyes plucked out, bellies gutted—anything to thrill the nerves, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Mack Nolan was snoring softly in deep slumber. Casey listened suspiciously, knowing too well how misleading a snore could be. But his own eyelids were growing exceeding heavy, and the soporific sound acted hypnotically upon his sleep-hungry brain. He caught himself yawning, and suddenly threw down ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... not, the wise old woman had steeped therein a few leaves of the ronyilu weed, brought from the Abyss, a powerful soporific. And presently a certain calm and peace began to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... determined to eat only such things as could not possibly have anything soporific introduced into them. Two eggs and some fruit composed my repast; then I drew another glass of water from my ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... As I say, practically all the early characters are of little or no account, including Rhoda herself. Indeed, nobody looks like mattering at all, and the whole tale has, to be frank, taken on a somewhat soporific aspect, when lo! there enters a lady with a Russian name, no back to her gown and green face-powder. If I said of this paragon that she made the story bounce I should still do less than justice to her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. It makes me wild to think of it. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... mass frequently in the water. In a few minutes the fish were darting about erratically, apparently making frantic efforts to get out of the water. One by one they became stupefied and helpless, floating belly up. Mickie filled his hat with them, and as the soporific effects of the juice of the leaves passed off, the remaining fish recovered and were soon swimming about again as if nothing had happened. Mickie had seen dynamite used to kill fish wholesale, hence his adaptation of the name of the plant known ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sulphate (i.e., 1/8 grain for a child of six years) or a full physiologic dose of sodium bromide. The apprehension is thus somewhat allayed and the excessive cough-reflex quieted. The morphine should be given not less than an hour and a half before bronchoscopy to allow time for the onset of the soporific and antispasmodic effects which are the desiderata, not the analgesic effects. Dosage is more dependent on temperament than on age or body weight. Atropine is advantageously added to morphine in bronchoscopy for ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... he has been sucked in by the mud-nymphs, and how they have shown him a branch of Styx which here pours into the Thames, and diffuses its soporific vapours over the Temple and its purlieus. He is solemnly welcomed by Milbourn (a reverend antagonist of Dryden), who tells him to "receive these robes ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to make a most soothing soporific. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... should like nothing better than to leave our teaching to do its own good work for the children. But in the minds of parents there is an ever recurring anxiety—the use to which the children will put this new knowledge. Ideas are not, we know, soporific. They tend to translate themselves into action. Will the children talk? And won't they start experimenting? The matter of "talking outside" is rapidly taking care of itself through the general adoption of sex-education ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... was better than hopelessness. There were no stars in the darkness that brooded over her heart after the sun went down. As she lay with clenched hands, counting the ten thousand woolly sheep whose agility in overleaping an obstructive wall is for some mysterious reason assumed to be soporific in its influence, she was conscious of a sort of terror of the thoughts lurking in ambush, ready to spring out upon her if she were off her guard for an instant. It was useless to tell herself that she was no poorer than before, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... path, and, followed by L'Isle, was soon ascending the hill. Moodie, somewhat under the influence of his soporific draughts, was in a reverie, wondering whether Lord Strathern would get his letter in time to send a troop of horse after the fugitives, and whether it might not come within the provisions of the military code to have L'Isle ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Church exalted the status quo; and where, as with Wesley, there was revolt, its impetus directed the mind to the source of salvation in the individual act. It may, indeed, be generally argued that the religious teachers acted as a social soporific. Where riches accumulated, they could be regarded as the blessing of God; where they were absent their unimportance for eternal happiness could be emphasized. Burke's early attack on a system which condemned "two hundred thousand innocent persons ... to so ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... curled his length inside the bee-hive, and made himself comfortable with Gard's cloak and blanket, and was presently snoring like a whole pig-sty. And that had a soporific effect on Peter. He had only stopped behind to oblige John, and personally had little expectation of anything coming of it. Moreover, the night air was chilly. If he could get that cloak from John now! He crawled in to try, but big John was rolled up like a caterpillar. It was warmer inside there ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... it seems rather an odd life for an artist: at least it strikes one as a life, despite Haydn's own opinion, not particularly conducive to originality. To use extreme language, it might almost be called a monotonous and soporific mode of existence. Probably its chief advantage was the opportunity it afforded, or perhaps the necessity it enforced, of ceaseless industry. Certainly that industry bore fruit in Haydn's steady increase of inventive power as he went on composing. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... colours, its lights shining from glasses and mirrors, its mellow odours of liquids and its softened sounds began to have a soporific effect upon Prescott, used so long to the open air and untold hardships. His senses were pleasantly lulled, and the voice of his friend, whom he seemed now to have known for a long time, came from far away. He could have closed his eyes ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... was that night attended by another doctor. The resident assistant-physician took him home to Savile Row in a cab, assisted him to bed, and sat with him a while after he had administered a tonic and soporific. Then he left him in charge of the silent man in black, whom he reassured by saying that there was no danger; that his master had a magnificent constitution; that he was only exhausted—though exhausted very much; and that all he needed was rest, sleep, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... got to bed than I determined, by a violent effort, to sleep. I had always a ready soporific at hand. It was a repeating and re-repeating of a pious little ode by a late fashionable poet. It seldom failed to produce somnolency at about the twelfth or thirteenth repetition. I would recommend a similar prescription to the sleepless; and I can assure them that there is much verse ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Cockburn drank from a tortoise-shell wassail cup to the health of an apotheosized recusant, who was his supererogatory patron, and an assistant recognizance in the immobile nomenclature of interstitial molecular phonics. The contents of the vase proving soporific, a stolid plebeian took from its cerements a heraldic violoncello, and, assisted by a plethoric diocesan from Pall Mall, who performed on a sonorous piano-forte, proceeded to wake the clangorous echoes of the Empyrean. They bade the prolyx Caucasian gentlemen not to misconstrue their inexorable ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... enjoyed his aunt's talk. She was the only person born in the cloister who seemed to have freed herself from the soporific influence of the church. She loved the Cathedral, as being her ancient roof-tree, but she did not retain much respect for the saints in the chapels, nor for the human dignitaries who sat in the choir. She laughed with the happiness of a healthy and placid old woman, her seventy years being, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... find a ruler for Afghanistan, and settle affairs with all speed. This was also desirable in view of the probability of a general election in the United Kingdom in the early part of the year 1880, the Ministry wishing to have ready an Afghan settlement to act as a soporific drug on the ravening Cerberus of democracy at home. Unhappily, the outbreak of the Zulu War on January 11, 1880, speedily followed by the disaster of Isandlana, redoubled the complaints in the United Kingdom, with the result that matters were more than ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... fitted for his work. He came, a Scotsman, to a colony one-third Scottish, and the name of Bruce was itself soporific to the opposition of a perfervid section of the reformers. His wife was the daughter of Lord Durham, whom Canadians regarded as the beginner of a new age of Canadian constitutionalism. He had been ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... observed, looking up at her host pleasantly, "I can see what is going to happen. Mr. Dartrey came out here to talk to you upon most important matters. This place, the beauty of it all, is acting upon him like a soporific. If we don't shake him up presently, he will go away with wonderful mind pictures of your cliffs and sea, and ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... use. The strongest soporific in the world wouldn't give me sleep this night. I tell you, Sime, I have ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... (Ere critics have injured their powers of nutrition,) Are he thinks, for weak stomachs, the best sort of feeding. Satires irritate—love-songs are found calorific; But smooth, female sonnets he deems a specific, And, if taken at bedtime, a sure soporific. Among works of this kind, the most pleasing we know, Is a volume just published by Simpkins and Co., Where all such ingredients—the flowery, the sweet, And the gently narcotic—are mixt per receipt, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... be smooth and tuneful, forgetting that smoothness and tunefulness are nearly synonymous with tameness and unmeaningness." He once said of Keats: "They are attempting to resuscitate him, I believe." He regarded Wordsworth as a soporific merely. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... their first childhood. In a special apartment, to be called the "Nursery," the cradle (or crib) of reposing age will be rocked successfully by skilful nurses or experienced Fogies, instructed on the Mainzerian system in the most soporific lullabies. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... I suggested, "in case Simpson is merely soporific. We anticipate a slumbering audience, and Samuel explaining a new kind of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... these soporific parts are so many scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public that whenever he was dull they might be assured there was a design ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the characters in dialogue, and to give impressiveness in the descriptive portions. She never made a remark, or asked her hearer's opinion. If the Countess was in the humour to sleep, the reading was soporific; if she desired to listen, she felt that her companion was not trying to bias her judgment by the introduction of dramatic intonation and effect. With an even, untiring correctness of utterance, Miss Skeat read one book just as she ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... tend to irritate the bees into a highly dangerous, if warrantable, frenzy, and that they would take immediate steps to abate the nuisance in their own simple way. But that, my brothers, is where we are wrong. Where bees are concerned, the 'smoker's' fumes are of a soporific and soothing nature. Indeed, before a puff of its smoke a bee's naughty malice and resentment disappear, and the bee itself sinks, gently humming, into the peaceful, contented slumber ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... even by demonologists, that all these supposed journies and entertainments are nothing more than dreams. Persons accused of witchcraft have been repeatedly watched, about the time which they had fixed for the meeting; they have been seen to anoint themselves with soporific compositions, after which they fell into profound sleep, and on awaking, several hours afterwards, they have related their journey through the air, their amusement at the festival, and have named the persons whom they saw there. In the instance told by Hoffman, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... I spent an hour at my house before they walked home to bed, and Choti read as a soporific, with a few bottles of Munich beer, the "Sermon to the Fishes" of St. Antonius. As he read, we heard the joyous stridence of an accordion in a hula harmony. The upaupahura was beginning in the grove where Uritaata ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... smell mignonette, think of it as a soporific. Just yawn and say you've been working like a fire-horse on the Fourth.... You see, it isn't what happens that gets out to the others, including those we care about, but what is imagined by minds which are not ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... afternoon, and Jack, who had kept sober for two days, incautiously fortified himself for the ordeal by taking a drink before arriving. He was nervously early, and immediately took a seat in the empty church near the open door. The quiet of the building, the drowsy buzzing of flies, and perhaps the soporific effect of the liquor caused his eyes to close and his head to fall forward on his breast repeatedly. He was recovering himself for the fourth time when he suddenly received a violent cuff on the ear, and was knocked backward off the bench ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... fluency of natural and musical style. In none of his plays is the mixture or rather the fusion of realism with romance more simply happy and harmonious: the rescue of the injured wife by a faithful lover from the tomb in which, like Juliet, she has been laid while under the soporific influence of a supposed poison could hardly have been better or more beautifully treated by any but the very greatest among Heywood's fellow-poets. There is no merit of this kind in the later play: but from the dramatic if not even from the ethical point of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... strongly blended natures on which extremes of joy or of grief have a soporific effect. Now on a youth so compounded that he could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of opium. When the Prince had drunk the whole of the bottle of port, eaten half a fish and some ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... enervating attacks of insomnia brought about by agitation of the spirit, he thought he would try to read. How many times had a short reading served him as a narcotic! So he got up and went into his library to choose a good and soporific work; but his mind, aroused in spite of himself, eager for any emotion it could find, sought among the shelves for the name of some author that would respond to his state of exaltation and expectancy. Balzac, whom he loved, said ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... mental vacancy of the preceding months, the sudden, almost instantaneous change in her surroundings, had been like a burst of air and sunlight which dissipates the soporific atmosphere of a sleeping-room. It had brought back her thoughts and feelings all at once to their normal standards, making her recollection of that infatuation seem like a fantastic, grotesque dream; unreal, impossible, yet shamefully real. Every time she entered her ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... fatigue than by excitement and anxious thought, I fell into a profound sleep, natural this time and not provoked by any soporific drug. When I awoke, after a length of time which I could not reckon, the "Terror" had not yet returned to the ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... quietude; not a sound even was heard throughout the vast palace. Outside, however, the guards of honor on duty, and the patrols of the musketeers, paced up and down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers; while the murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the fountains, whose waters fell tumbling into the basins, still went on uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Henschel concert. I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's latest book, and getting quite interested in occult philosophy. Unfortunately I have to do all my reading in bed, and I don't find the book as soothing a soporific as most new books. For keeping one awake I find Theosophy ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... to the house, under the great trees; Feliu and Captain Harris leading the way. It was sultry and bright;—even the sea-breeze was warm; there were pleasant odors in the shade, and a soporific murmur made of leaf-speech and the hum of gnats. Only the captain entered the house with Feliu; the rest remained without—some taking seats on a rude plank bench under the oaks—others flinging themselves down ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... a soporific, world-forgotten fragrance. There is no market here, no commercial or social life, save a few greybeards discussing memories on some doorstep; the only mirthful note is a swarm of young boys playing hockey on the sand-heaps, amid furious yells ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... man's room, where a window is never opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its occupant with a delicious sense of snug repose, and exerted its usual soporific charm. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... still, waiting with a sensuous pleasure for the first effects of the soporific. She knew in advance what form they would take—the gradual cessation of the inner throb, the soft approach of passiveness, as though an invisible hand made magic passes over her in the darkness. The very slowness and hesitancy of the effect increased its fascination: ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... The Baroness de Vibray, well known in the Parisian world and among artists, whose generous patroness she was, has been found dead in the studio of the ceramic painter, Jacques Dollon. The young painter, rendered completely helpless by a soporific, lay stretched out beside her when the crime was discovered. We say 'crime' designedly, because, when the preliminary medical examination was completed, it was clear that the death of the Baroness de Vibray was due to the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... clean roller a day forbade it. Nothing but the conscientious desire to embellish our "copy" with enough facts and references to make a showing of erudition ever induced Field or any of the active members of the editorial staff to borrow the library key from Ballantyne to break in upon the soporific labors of Mr. Plumbe. Here the editorial conferences, which Field has ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... prevailed powerfully over the gallant. If, as Tyler says, the New England theocracy was a social structure resting on a book, that corner-stone was the Bay Psalm-Book and the walls above it were built of sermons. These sermons seem to us technical, sapless, and jejune, "as soporific as a bed of poppies," but they show the intelligence, energy, and assiduity of the writers just as plainly as they show the gloomy theology and sad earnestness of the time. And though no one now reads them, we profoundly respect them, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... day. She spent the hours in loneliness and misery. Mr. Wyvern called, but even him she begged through a servant to excuse her; her mother likewise came, and her she talked with for a few minutes, then pleaded headache. At nine o'clock in the evening she went to her bedroom. She had a soporific at hand, remaining from the time of her illness, and in dread of a sleepless night she had ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Filled with a snake-encircl'd wand; By classic authors term'd caduceus, And highly fam'd for several uses. To wit—most wond'rously endu'd, 35 No poppy water half so good; For let folks only get a touch, Its soporific virtue's such, Though ne'er so much awake before, That quickly they begin to snore. 40 Add too, what certain writers tell, With this he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... hot, although the day is broiling. His white apron flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks with both eyes at once; even he is unable to withstand the soporific influence of the place, and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or two, and gazes out before him with eager wildness in his eye. Is it a job, or a ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... vast palace. Outside, however, the guards of honor on duty, and the patrol of musketeers, paced up and down; and the sound of their feet could be heard on the gravel walks. It seemed to act as an additional soporific for the sleepers, while the murmuring of the wind through the trees, and the unceasing music of the fountains whose waters tumbled in the basin, still went on uninterruptedly, without being disturbed at the slight noises and items ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... molded so that they fell roundly from the tongue in shapely phrases, hurting nobody. He was sufficiently sure of his command of language at length to look at Katharine and again at Denham. All this talk about Shakespeare had acted as a soporific, or rather as an incantation upon Katharine. She leaned back in her chair at the head of the tea-table, perfectly silent, looking vaguely past them all, receiving the most generalized ideas of human heads against pictures, against yellow-tinted walls, against curtains of deep crimson velvet. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... presence of her friends was irksome to her, and it was only to the soft and insinuating blandishments of Emily's love that she would at all yield. Perseverance and affection at length prevailed, and as Emily took the opportunity of some refreshments to infuse a strong soporific, Jane lost her consciousness of misery in a temporary repose. In the mean time a more searching inquiry had been able to trace out the manner and direction of the journey ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... says, "all the fine flavour and exhilarating properties of coffee, without any of its deleterious effects. The plant being of a soporific nature, the coffee made from it when drank at night produces a tendency to sleep, instead of exciting wakefulness, and may be safely used as a cheap and wholesome substitute for the Arabian berry, being equal in substance and flavour to the best ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... sweet-scented flowers of spring were bursting out from many a bush, and encumbering the ground around me. Their balmy odours filled my nostrils, the fresh air played round my brow, and the murmur of the stream sounded in my ears, till my pleased senses became completely overcome by the surrounding soporific influences, and wandered far away amid the regions of dreamland: in other words, I went fast asleep. At last I awoke, and rubbed and rubbed my eyes; I had good reason for rubbing them, for the beautiful landscape on which they had closed was ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... hind-leg broken. With his teeth he cut the broken leg off, and went away. It was supposed that he would not come again; but two nights afterwards he was found fast in a trap—in each case tempted by the castoreum. The stake was always licked, or sucked, clean. The substance seems to act as a soporific, as the creatures, after tasting it, always remain a day without coming out of their houses. So wary generally are the beavers, that a trapper is always careful not to leave his scent on the spot. To avoid this he ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dancing-girls climbed on board and feasted with them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a box of mochi, which are cakes of rice-flour sweetened with native sugar. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... freedom? If she is peaceful, and shows symptoms of economic recuperation, clearly she does not need or even want it. In other words, if all that is healthy in the patient battles desperately and not in vain, first against irritant poison, and then against soporific drugs, this healthy struggle for self-preservation is attributed not to native vitality, but to the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... knew nothing of this, and were all abroad, but they thought Rooke must have the key; so they proceeded to drink with him, and were just about to administer a really effective soporific in his grog, when they and all the merry party were suddenly startled by violent ringing at the bell, and thundering and halloaing at the hall door. The men jumped to their feet and balanced themselves, and looked half wild, half stupid. The women sat, and began to scream: for ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... crib. To soften his mood, his bottle of supper had been handed to him a little ahead of time. But, unwilling to lay aside the prominence which had been his, all day, he brandished the bottle as if it were a weapon instead of a soporific. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... services which followed he was not so much interested. The officiating clergyman delivered a long homily in a dull unimpassioned manner, which failed to awaken his interest. Already disposed to be drowsy, it acted upon him like a gentle soporific. He tried to pay attention as he had always been used to do, but owing to his occupying a back seat, and the low voice of the preacher, but few words reached him, and those for the most part were above ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... of the younger braves, tired of the sport when there were neither admiring squaws or approving old chiefs to look on. The chiefs in this case, of course, had consumed the greater portion of the whiskey and were now sleeping off its soporific effects, and the youngsters could only remain where they were, keep watch and ward against surprise, and make no move in any direction until their elders should be themselves again, unless the sudden coming of enemies should compel them to rouse their leaders from their drunken ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... of bees, and I've got incipient rheumatics in every joint in my body from lying all night on the damp ground. It's bad enough to have all that wrong with me, without being compelled to spend another day in idleness. No, if I get to work at once I'll feel much better. Work, you know, is a good soporific." ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... was off it; nothing much more exciting than a crop failure ever happened there. The main topic of conversation was the weather and, as Mark Twain said, everybody talked about it, but nothing was done. Within sixty days this soporific village became a roaring bedlam; every town lot was leased, derricks rose out of chicken runs, boilers panted in front yards, mobs of strangers surged through the streets and the air grew shrill with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... devotedly attended by Ned Bashford. They encouraged her whims and laughed at her follies, while she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty and delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This desire no longer prodded her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of Billy, the more certain she had been that she could not live away from Daisy. The more she ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... at last with an unusually loud and agonizing gasp Mott was awakened and suddenly sat erect and stared stupidly about him, the good-hearted, but boyishly irreverent audience, it is safe to affirm, was decidedly more interested in the slumbering sophomore than in the soporific speaker, though few doubtless thought them ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... I am staying is an angel of goodness. I have confided in her, and she promised me that when I felt the pangs coming on she would give that malicious woman a soporific, and thus we should be freed from all fears of her. By virtue of the drug she now sleeps soundly in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... their soporific effect on me, or I acquired tolerance to the usual dosage, and the folks had to hunt up new things to give. I took soothing syrups and "baby's friends" galore. The night and the day were not rightly divided for me; when I slept, it ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... having to turn over the leaves. Because you're bound to see where, and not turn two at once, or it don't follow on." Aunt M'riar and Uncle Mo confirmed this view from their own experience. It was agreed further that small type—Parliamentary debates and the like—was more soporific than large, besides spinning out the length and deferring the relaxation of turning over, when in book-form. Short accidents, and not too prolix criminal proceedings were on the whole the most palatable ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fell out that when I did actually leave Australia I was too busy at my clerking, and at inventing soporific answers to the mostly irrelevant inquiries of more or less distracted passengers, to catch a glimpse of the land disappearing below the horizon—the land in which I had spent the most formative years of my life—or to spare a thought for any such ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... really shown incomparable spirit, grace, and talent. They also talked of the productions of M. de Scudery—who was one of the most brilliant writers of the day—which the marquis declared that he considered perfect, but slightly soporific; adding that he, for his part, decidedly preferred the Rodomontades of Captain Fracasse to Lygdamon et Lydias—he was a gentleman of taste, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... open the howling and whistling of the wind always acts on me like a soporific. Inside of a house it is just the reverse; I know nothing that will keep my nerves as much on edge and prevent me as certainly from sleeping as the voices at night of a gale around the buildings. I needed ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove |
