"Acrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can persist! The racy old odors, which are as new as now, that still hover about the political and amorous quips of the Greeks. The nose-crinkling ones of the French, more vinegar-acrid than perfumed, although a seventeenth-century proverb calls France "a monarchy tempered by epigrams." The didactic ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... stabbed outward from behind the nearer building. Close at hand, one of the lava-needles vanished in soundless display of mushrooming explosion. Sharp, acrid heat penetrated even the insulating layers of suit. A pressure-wave of expanding gas ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... richness, it is to be diluted with an equal quantity of water or thin barley-water. If, however, the first milking can be obtained, which is more watery, and bears a closer resemblance in its chemical composition to human milk, but little dilution will be required. If green and acrid stools make their appearance, accompanied by emaciation and vomiting, the milk must be more diluted, and given less frequently. If the symptoms of indigestion do not yield, milk containing an excess of cream should be used. To procure it, allow fresh milk to stand for two or three ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... too, as he sat there with his "girl" and his wider experiences, felt that the ground over which Archelaus roamed was not altogether untrodden by himself. Annie, by the incursion of her eldest born, was changed, as always, from an acrid acquiescence to definite enmity towards Ishmael and his concerns. She became so rude to Blanche that it seemed the temper of a veritable angel still to be able to smile and answer with politeness. For her sake Ishmael also kept his temper, though inwardly he was ragingly angry—not so much ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... This last mentioned complaint appears, at the beginning, in scurfy spots upon different parts of the body, which finally settle upon the hands or feet, where the skin becomes withered, and cracks in many places. At length, the ends of the fingers swell and ulcerate, the discharge is acrid and foetid; the nails drop off, and the bones of the fingers become carious, and separate at the joints. In this manner the disease continues to spread, frequently until the patient loses all his fingers and toes. Even the hands and feet are sometimes destroyed ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... sight to see Cecil Barker's expressive face during this exposition of the great detective. Anger, amazement, consternation, and indecision swept over it in turn. Finally he took refuge in a somewhat acrid irony. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him; he is on the highroad of recklessness, and had it been the bottle instead of Caroline's coffee-cup, Patrick would soon have received a priming for a delivery of views upon the sex, and upon love, and the fools known as lovers, acrid enough to win the applause ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strength to a herculean measure, and giving of it without begrudgment. David saw their anger and did not care. Fatigue made him indifferent, ate into his pride, brought down his self-respect. He plodded on doggedly, the alkali acrid on his lips and burning in his eyeballs, thinking of California, not as the haven of love and dreams, but as a place where there was coolness, water, and rest. When in the dawn he staggered up to the call of "Catch up," and felt for the buckle of his saddle girth, he had a vision of a place ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... is well known to all our children in the East. The root is the most burning, acrid, horrible thing in the woods when raw, but after cooking becomes quite ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... subdue the hysteria which had been gaining on her since her escape from the balcony; whilst Elinor, seated on the corner of a drawer which projected from the dressing-table, talked incessantly in her most acrid tones. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... age with vigorous shoulders and hairy breasts, agile youths, old men shaking the multitudinous wrinkles of their rosy, and white-haired skins, or dragging their legs thinner and drier than the juniper staff that served them as a third leg, hurried on, panting and emitting an acrid odour and hoarse gasps. Yet she went on peacefully ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... voice, which aimed at charming piquancy and realised only an airy affectation, attracted his attention, and revamped her upon his mind as one of the party of star-gazers. Her personality was acrid and insistent, and he imagined that the friendship between the two women was of her own making and maintenance. The nature of her greeting left him no choice but a flat and awkward confession of absent-mindedness. This trifling irritation, however, was ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... partisanship, so long as he shares them with Bright and Gladstone. Just lately, his pronouncement that we ought to love the Germans, as our fellow-citizens in the Kingdom of God on earth, has provoked very acrid criticism from some who generally share his political beliefs; and in a Tory paper I noticed the singularly inept gibe that this doctrine was "medieval." For my own part I should scarcely have thought that an undue tendency ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine verjuice, do they not still belong to the Pomaceae, which are uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to the cider-mill. Perhaps they are not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... foaming around it except where the snow-slope, running up to a glacier, formed the landward boundary. But some of the larger rocks provided a measure of shelter from the wind, and as we clustered round the blubber-stove, with the acrid smoke blowing into our faces, we were quite a cheerful company. After all, another stage of the homeward journey had been accomplished and we could afford to forget for an hour the problems of the future. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of fire lanced the darkness, directed at the Thing in the window. While the air of the hut reeked with the acrid smoke, the echo of the volley sounded through the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... and vitrify. But while it lasted the boy knew of no excitement comparable with it. Little wonder that he remembered those fiery pits with the dark figures dancing around their brims! But yet more unforgettable was the smell of the burning kelp had been more than enough—that acrid, all-permeating, unforgettable odour. His mother had never been able to endure it. When the wind drove the smoke from the beach, she would shut every door and window, and build up every crevice with a barricade of sandbags; all in vain. It crept into the house, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... bubbled blue of morning-glory spires, Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snows Of clematis, through which September goes, Song-hearted, rich in realized desires, Are flanked by hotter hues: by tawny fires Of acrid marigolds,—that light long rows Of lamps,—and salvias, red as day's red close,— That torches seem,—by which the Month attires Barbaric beauty; like some Asian queen, Towering imperial in her two-fold crown Of harvest and of ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... of a smooth, club-shaped, slender spadix within a green and maroon or whitish-striped spathe that curves in a broad-pointed flap above it. Leaves: 3-foliate, usually overtopping the spathe, their slender petioles 9 to 30 in. high, or as tall as the scape that rises from an acrid corm. Fruit: Smooth, shining red berries ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... reminded him somewhat of Ellery Channing, was the most notable writer he met there. There was, however, very little speech-making, and plenty of good conversation. Unfortunately, he offended Jerrold, by using the word "acrid" as applied to his writing, instead of some other word, which he could not think of at the moment. The difficulty, however, was made up over a fresh bottle of Burgundy, and with the help of Hawthorne's unlimited good-will, so that they parted excellent friends, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... two friends at the edge of the handkerchief, and put the first pellets of the drug to his tongue. His heart was beating furiously; his forehead was damp with the sweat of excitement and of fear. The pellets tasted sweet, and yet a little acrid. He crushed them in his ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... arrested him. A glance at her face was enough; vexed, shocked, yet every sympathy instantly aroused, he resigned himself to whatever might be required of him; and within him a bitter mirth stirred—acrid, unpleasant; but his smile indicated ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... have made his head-quarters in any one of them. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quite weighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burning their pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you met with a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families, and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling them into candy-stores or toy-shops; all of the churches whose rules ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... be tasted. Perhaps the palate will grow used to the draught in time, and find its flavour less acrid. This pain must be undergone; its poignancy, I trust, will be blunted one day. Ellen would have come back with me but I would not let her. I knew it would be better to face the desolation at once—later or sooner the sharp ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... triumphant success. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy... was honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing France to the great Revolution—corruption, self-seeking, acrid class insolence, and skinless, morbid vanity."—THE ROYAL ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... kings and ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire during a delicate operation with some shredded onions, and the old man was seen backing out of the doorway, swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud of smoke, the name of Cavour—the arch intriguer sold to kings and tyrants—could be heard involved in imprecations against the China girls, cooking in general, and the brute of a country where he was reduced to live for the love of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... good manuscripts, destroyed and corrupted them, rather than let them fall into the hands of unlettered and ignorant Christians.[2] Aristotle should be read in the original, he also says; it would be better if all translations were burnt. The criticism is acrid; but the men he contemns served scholarship well by quickening the interest in Greek books, and they succeeded so well because they gave to the schoolmen not only versions of Aristotle's text, but commentaries ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... a tool no bigger than a nutcracker, forced the edge in, and sent the door flying open. The room or den was full of an acrid vapour, and close to them ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that eternity of which we know, and need to know, so little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann. Yet to Mr. Matthew Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a grudge. The day is perhaps not far off when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had seen their hands lifted in suspicion; heard their covert whispers as to why her husband did not come with her; why he had left her so soon after the honeymoon; why—a hundred things. She had even thought of Aunt Polly and her acrid tongue and made up her mind that whatever happened she did not want to go home ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... stage of the march against Kaskaskia, the woods, the chocolate streams, the coffee-colored swamps flecked with dead leaves,—and at length the prairies, the grass not waist-high now, but young and tender, giving forth the acrid smell of spring. Nick was delighted. He made me recount every detail of my trials as a drummer boy, or kept me in continuous spells of laughter over his own escapades. In short, I began to realize ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... He had not been used to hot, dusty, glaring days on the barren lands. Stretching his long length beside a tiny rill of clear water that tinkled over the red stones, he drank thirstily. The water was cool, but it had an acrid taste—an alkali bite that he did not like. Not since he had left Oregon had he tasted clear, sweet, cold water; and he missed it just as he longed for the stately shady forests he had loved. This wild, endless Arizona land bade fair to earn ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... man of the Shi' coming, take the wrappings off the head of the spear and bend your face over it; the heat of the spear, the stench of it, all its pernicious and acrid qualities will prevent you from ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... "aggravated" state; and Diana found her society very uncomfortable. There was never a word spoken pleasantly, by any chance, about anything; good was not commended, and ill was not deplored; but both, good and ill, were taken up in the same sharp, acrid, cynical tone, or treated with the like restless mockery. Mrs. Starling found no fault with Diana, other than by this bitter manner of handling every subject that came up; at the same time she made the little house where they lived together ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... reality apparently consisted in scorching alkali plains, with houses of the packing-box school of architecture at a distance of seventy or eighty miles apart. No ladies in white muslin poured tea; they garbed themselves in simple gunny-sacking, and their repartee had an acrid, personal note. But Mary was glad to know that Archie had that picture, and that he thought of her in ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... favoured Mr. Halsted and his patients with a visitation. Whenever the muscles of the abdomen are in a state of constriction, as described by him, the usual cause is spasm of some part of the intestinal canal, produced by colic, either of an accidental nature, arising from some acrid ingesta, which irritate the bowels without producing diarrhoea, attended with griping pains and distention, and spasmodic contraction of the abdominal muscles, with costiveness; or of a bilious form, closely allied to bilious diarrhoea and cholera (Gregory.) These are the varieties of ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and contains much starch. Roasted in ashes, or boiled in water, it forms a very nourishing food, and is a good substitute for bread. If eaten at three fourths of its growth it is less nourishing, but contains more sugar. Lastly, when perfectly ripe, it develops an acrid principle, both wholesome and palatable. The fig banana is a favorite species, and forms a universal dessert in the ripe state with the Creoles. A frequent reference is made to it in these notes because of its importance. The enormous productiveness of the plant and its nutritious ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... overcoat to go out in; fortunate at that when I had a bed, which was not always. I have sought my bread from every trade, and that bread cost me such bitter toil, it was so black, so tough, that in my mouth I keep still the flavour of its acrid and mouldy taste. And thus until I was thirty. Yes, my friends, at thirty years of age—and I am not yet fifty—I was still a beggar, without a sou, without a future, with the remorseful thought of the poor old mother, become a widow, who was half-dying of hunger away yonder ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... back in a comfortable seat, before a blazing fire that happily sent its acrid smoke up the chimney, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... with social conditions in America, are reported in the press. They include some observations about Sinn Fein in which, as in most of Mr. Campbell's allusions to Ireland, it is not difficult to detect his dismal origin, or the acrid smell of the smoke of Belfast. But the remarks about America are valuable in the objective sense, over and above their philosophy. He believes that Prohibition will survive and be a success, nor does he seem himself ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... sleep, had not till then noticed the blazing pile of litter. Now he did so with a quick cry of horror. The stuff was blazing up fiercely. Already there was an acrid ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... cloak, stood looking down at the dead man. Safiyeh was peeping round from behind the screen, her face a brown mask of terror. Hassan, holding his drum, appeared behind her, staring stupidly. To the smell of cigar smoke and perfume a new and acrid odour was added. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... warm air. Then the vile-smelling bazaar, crowded with buyers, bargaining and shouting under the swaying torches. Then they passed the European section of the town, where the streets were wide, clean and deserted. They must be going back of the quais now, for the air was heavy with the acrid scent of rubber. Then they turned into a narrow, wildly tumultuous street full of Chinese, scattered all over the road and sidewalk, shouting, calling, beating drums, yelling wares for sale, the babel of the Chinese quarter, only such as the Bishop had never seen it. ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... trapper's cabin, the great log-built lumber-jack communities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. And when you talk of making camp you must know whether that process is to mean only a search for rattlesnakes and enough acrid-smoked fuel to boil tea, or a winter's consultation with an expert architect; whether your camp is to be made on the principle of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is intended to accommodate the full ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... means of innumerable earthen tubes lining the sides of the laconicum, and covered with a peculiar plaster. But in both cases the nature of the resultant heat is identical. It radiates to one from all sides. There is no acrid biting of the face such as one feels in the worst type of hot-air baths; no unpleasant fulness or aching of the head; and no panting or palpitating. Such is the "bath" of pure radiant heat, a thing totally ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... without its fruits in Sibylla's mind. It lay and smouldered there. Had Lionel been attached to Lucy?—had there been love-scenes, love-making between them? Sibylla asked herself the questions ten times in a day. Now and then she let drop a sharp, acrid bit of venom to him—his "old love, Lucy." Lionel would receive it with ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... had been properly worked, dressed, cleansed, and purged of that sour quality that was naturally inherent in it, which it derived from the droppings of wet from the leaves of gum and other trees, and which were known to be of an acrid destructive nature. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... during supper, was icy, even though it was the middle of June. Thorpe noticed it and endeavoured to talk, but was not successful. Miss Mehitable's few words, which were invariably addressed to him, were so acrid in quality that they made him nervous. The Reverend Austin Thorpe, innocent as he was of all intentional wrong, was made to feel like a criminal haled ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... noted with the bullrushes (Typheae), and the arums (Aroideae). This last-mentioned order, familiar to us by the kind known as "Lords and Ladies," presents some climbing forms in tropical countries. Generally acrid, some species, when in flower, even produce headache and vomiting; at least an explorer was attacked with these symptoms after gathering forty specimens of Arum dracunculus. The order is also interesting from experiments as to vegetable heat, which have been made with the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... genial form of plotting for their happiness, the disposition of our favorite writers becomes a matter of great importance to us. A surly, sour-tempered person, taking advantage of our confidence, can turn us against our best friends. If he has an acrid wit he may make us ashamed of our highest enthusiasms. He may so picture human life as to make the message "Peace on earth, good will to ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch Whiskey, analogous fluids used by the Sect in those countries: it evidently contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though disguised with acrid oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent substance known to me,—indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... on the calf so as to hold it steady while she plied the hot iron. The odor of burnt hair and flesh was already acrid in his nostrils. Upon the red flank F was written in raw, seared flesh. He judged that the brand she wanted was not yet complete. Probably the iron had got too cold to finish the work, and she had been forced to ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... been concentrated on their restoration; but now that this strain was off, I looked round the room to see what had been the effect of the experiment. The thick smoke had nearly cleared away; but the room was still misty and was full of a strange pungent acrid odour. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... climate improved. It has been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse vegetation, is covered to-day with rich harvests. The rock-walls in the valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines. The wild plants, which yielded nought but acrid berries, or uneatable roots, have been transformed by generations of culture into succulent vegetables or trees covered with delicious fruits. Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... it was in motion. It was an endless procession, in which every man was for himself. I can see them now, bent under their burdens, straining at their hand-sleighs, flogging their horses and oxen, their faces crimped and puckered with fatigue, the air acrid with their curses and heavy with their moans. Now a horse stumbles and slips into one of the sump-holes by the trail side. No one can pass, the army is arrested. Frenzied fingers unhitch the poor frozen brute and drag it from ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... him scornfully the while, but only to explode with mirth the next moment, for the young West Indian, though he came from where his father's plantations produced acres of the pungent weed, was not to the manner born, and at the third draw inhaled so much acrid smoke that he choked, and stood coughing violently till Vane gave him a hearty ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... the amount of such matter in the water of the Dead Sea. The surrounding plain is barren, in places marshy, and often covered with an incrustation of salt. The whole scene is one of desolation. The acrid waters support no animal organization; birds shun them; the plain grows nothing but a few stunted and sapless shrubs. The only signs of life which greet the traveller are the carts of the natives, which pass him laden with the salt that is obtained with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... The air was acrid with the smell of burning. Blouses, pink and green, and cream, and blue, were stirred into a seething mass in the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon fichus torn in ribbons strewed the carpet. An ivory fan had been trampled into fragments ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... agility; yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before he continued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening La Farge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, that somehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of his acrid antagonism for Weil; that, by mental processes which as yet he could not exactly resolve into their proper constituents, it was beginning to dribble away from him. And realization came to him, almost ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... would become fashionable; and in imagination they already saw themselves reduced to the humble position of dissenters in their own kingdom. Jonathan Mayhew was called a heretic by his more conservative brethren, but he was one of the ablest and the most acrid of the Boston ministers. He took little pains to disguise his feelings, and so early as 1750 he preached a sermon, which was once famous, wherein he told his hearers that it was their duty to oppose the encroachment of the British ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... such long years of trouble, as if Death Had given him this memento of affection, And whispered in his ear, "Remember me!" How placid and how quiet is his face, Now that the struggle and the strife are ended Only the acrid spirit of the times Corroded this true steel. Oh, rest in peace, Courageous ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sometimes employed in medicine. Ginger (Amomum zinziber) is planted in small quantities. Of this also there are two kinds, alia jai (Zinziber majus) and alia padas (Zinziber minus), familiarly called se-pade or se-pudde, from a word signifying that pungent acrid taste in spices which we express by the vague term hot. The tummu (Costus arabicus) and lampuyang (Amomum zerumbet) are found both in the wild and cultivated state, being used medicinally; as is also the galangale (Kaempferia ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... which they seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain gifts of personal—dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid sharpness. They respect no one; above all, not their elders. To such a one his horse comes first, if he have a horse; then a dog; and then a stick; and after that the mistress of his affections. But their fault is not altogether of their own making. It is the girls themselves who ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... is profuse, thin, acrid, and offensive, and consists of pus, broken-down blood-clot, and sloughs. The edges are inflamed, irregular, and ragged, showing no sign of growing epithelium—on the contrary, the sore may be actually increasing ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... An acrid-soft odor as of primordial slime subtly intruded upon the sensory nerves of the visitor. The place breathed out decay; the decay of humanity, of cleanliness, of the honest decencies of life turned ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a species of thorn known in Cape Colony as wait-a-bit, which gives it a somewhat acrid and bitter flavour. The white species, however, feeds chiefly on grass. The flesh has in consequence a pleasant taste, and is usually very fat. A high polish can be given to the horns of the rhinoceros, and they are valuable articles of commerce. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... until a company from Kenosha consented to transport its entire industry thither if it could receive a building rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the passionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps ceased to swim with knobby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile, and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed on to the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... still filed past under the mist, going now in the opposite direction, and the same interminable game of whist was played in the smoking-room, only with greasier, second-class cards, amidst the acrid smoke of second-class tobacco. At supper, the first day out, a little Jew who sat next to Vandover, and who invariably wore a plush skull-cap with ear-laps, tried to sell him two ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil, and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into which the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... soulless erudition, but a great supply and command of varied facts, marshalled and turned to account by an intelligence which knows their use. The absence of learning, or the danger to learning, is the keynote of a powerful but acrid survey of the history and prospects of the Anglican Church, for which, in spite of its one-sidedness and unfairness, Churchmen may find not a little which it will be useful to lay to heart. Dissatisfaction ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... legend of yore told in the state of Kentucky When in the springtime the birds call from the beeches and maples, Call from the petulant thorn, call from the acrid persimmon; When from the woods by the creek and from the pastures and meadows, When from the spring house and lane and from the mint-bed and orchard, When from the redbud and gum and from the redolent lilac, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... PILLS should be recommended for Dysentery and Flux, many persons supposing that they would increase the relaxation. This is a great mistake, for these Pills will correct the liver and stomach, and thus remove all the acrid humors from the system. This medicine will give tone and vigor to the whole organic system, however deranged, while health and strength follow, as a matter of course. Nothing will stop the relaxation of the bowels so sure ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... applied with safety but emollient clysters and fomentations, and to drink copiously of camomile tea, or any other diluting liquor, till the spasms be relieved, and the nature of the disease more clearly understood. Persons who are subject to the bilious cholic in particular, should abstain from acrid, watery and oily food, especially butter, fat meat, and hot liquors: and pursue a calm ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping, Spouting like shocks of meeting waves, Death's fountains are playing, Shells like shrieking birds rush over; Crash and din rises higher. A stream of lead raves Over us from the left ... (we safe under cover!) Crash! Reverberation! Crash! Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash. Black smoke drifting. The German line Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry Of our men, 'Gah, yer swine! Ye're for it', die In a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... her name, his heart sank within him, for their talk the night he had sought her hospitality for the laird, came back to his memory, burning like an acrid poison. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor through the apartment; and I thought I saw—but of this I cannot take an affirmation—a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of the vial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Harry Wilson shuffling impatiently behind him, smelled the acrid smoke that floated from ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... leaf unite in pronouncing it far superior to the nectar with which the gods of old were wont to quench their thirst. It is truly one of the luxuries of life—so soft; so richly yet delicately flavored; so bright, glowing, and transparent as it flashes through the crystal glasses; nothing acrid, gross, or earthly about it—a heavenly compound that "cheers but ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... roof of some huge public baths glittered like crystal in the afternoon sun. Underneath him the branch post-office was opening its doors, as was its custom between two and three o'clock on Sunday afternoons. An acrid odor of ink rose upward to him. Occasionally a cable car passed, trundling heavily, with a strident whirring of jostled ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was certainly strong—acrid, but by no means disgusting. He broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that changed like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green colour. It was even an inviting-looking change. He broke off two other pieces to see it repeated. They were wonderful things ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... work it further. He had just found that wood and other combustibles were, under the action of heat, capable of disengaging a gas fit for lighting and heating. He had seen that the gas which is disengaged from wood is accompanied with blackish vapors of an acrid and empyreumatic odor. In order that it might serve for the production of light, it was necessary to free it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... during the greater part of the reign of his pupil he continued to satirize social and ecclesiastical abuses. His poems are exceedingly curious and grotesque, and the volubility with which he vents his acrid humors is truly surprising. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547), opened a new era in English poetry, and by his foreign studies, and his refinement of taste and feeling, was enabled to turn poetical literature into a path as yet untrodden, although in vigor and originality this ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... began with a black heat;—there were hours when the acrid air seemed to ferment for stagnation, and to burn the bronchial tubing;—then, toward morning, it would grow chill with venomous vapors, with morbific dews,—till the sun came up to lift the torpid moisture, and to fill the buildings with oven-glow. And the interminable procession of mourners and ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... about three inches in diameter and fourteen inches in length. Thus divested of all objectionable matter, the cabbage could be eaten raw, though it was much improved by cooking, the boiling process removing every trace of the acrid, or turnip, flavor. These men ate it dressed in the same way as ordinary cabbage, and it was an excellent substitute for that dish. The black bear is as fond of the palmetto cabbage as his enemy the hunter. He ascends the tree, breaks down the palm-leaves, and devours the bud, evidently ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... presided, and to his fair and impartial rulings and usual courtesy and dignity of manner, is attributable the fact that there was not considerably more friction than developed. Even as it was, the discussions were acrid and verged at times close to personalities and the oratory, especially on the part of those who advocated the "six-bit" policy, was both perfervid and vociferous. However, the representatives of the companies that had made up their minds that their honor and contracts were ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... and thrust the envelope into the flame. It burned slowly, at first a thin blue flame tipped with yellow, then, eating its way with a small fine crackling, a widening, destroying blaze that left behind it black ash and destruction. The acrid odor of burning filled the room. Not until it was consumed, and the black ash fell into the saucer of the candlestick, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... appearance in a remarkable degree. The office of the glands appears to be principally to form different secretions. Thus the salivary glands secrete the insipid saliva; the lachrymal glands, the saline tears; the liver, the yellow, ropy bile; and the kidneys, the acrid urine. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... had made no mistake; his keen insight was well nigh infallible; but his triumph was costly. The luscious fruit of professional success left an acrid flavor; the pungent dead sea ashes sifted freely. He set his heel on the embroidered butterfly, and in his heart cursed the hour he had first seen it. His coveted bread was petrifying ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... time the morning was well gone; the town had wakened to the day's affairs—a pleasant light grey reek with the acrid odour of burning wood soaring from chimneys into a sky intensely blue; and the roads that lay interlaced and spacious around the castle of Argyll were—not thronged, but busy at least with labouring folk setting out upon their duties. To them, meeting the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... travel; my solar topee getting the worse for wear every minute; my skin getting more and more wounded; my clothes at each step becoming more and more tattered. Besides these discomforts, there was a pungent, acrid plant which, apart from its strong odorous emissions, struck me smartly on the face, leaving a burning effect similar to cayenne; and the atmosphere, pent in by the density of the jungle, was hot and stifling, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... in a shawl came toward him through the haggard, his wife's mother. There was the sweetish, acrid odor ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Young's instant of hesitation on the threshold, the wind gusted sheets of snow into the Skinner shanty. Quieting the dog by a low-spoken word, Deforrest stepped in and closed the door against the storm. The acrid smoke drawn from the stove by the back-draft, filled the room,—a ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... family of Asclepiadaceae, which have all something more or less 'fleshy' looking about some parts of them, which, like the Apocyneae, were in the old world credited with medicinal properties, and which are generally acrid, stimulating, and astringent. There are many poisonous members of the family, such as the dog's-bane and wolf's-bane of our own country, favourite plants with the enchanters, while the cowplant of Ceylon is ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... stop Colonel Warre with five hundred men from joining him. He declined to assault the strong Weraroa pa—the key to the west coast. He hinted depressingly that 2,000 more troops might be required from England. In vain Sir George Grey urged him to greater activity. The only result was a long and acrid correspondence between them. From this—to one who reads it now—the General seems to emerge in a damaged condition. The best that can be said for him is that he and many of his officers were sick of the war, which they ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... slowly dissolving in the wind. As they approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once been ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... could be called bad blood. Horace perhaps had a little, but it was sweet and childlike compared to the "acrid-quack" fluid of Edmond de Goncourt's veins and heart. Probably several people have seen in M. de Goncourt the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... see,' she said, and she arranged her skirt like one about to rise. Temper, scorn, disgust, all the more acrid feelings, became her like jewels; and she now looked ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... blowing up along the street, heavy with strange smells. The pungent reek of incense from a street-shrine was in the smells. The heavy, acrid odor that made my skin crawl. In the hills behind Charin, the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... relationship, was not immense. Perhaps this thought flickered across Miss Alicia's mind among a number of other things. She had heard "dear papa" on Lady Mallowe, and, howsoever lacking in graces, the vicar of Rowcroft had not lacked an acrid shrewdness. Miss Alicia's sensitively self- accusing soul shrank before a hasty realization of the fact that if he had been present when the cards were brought up, he would, on glancing over them through his spectacles, have jerked out immediately: "What does the woman ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from which Napoleon first saw Moscow and I look upon the vastness of the city. I will go down and see the people whom I know more intimately than so many of my friends, Alyosha, and Vronsky, and a dozen more. But my eyes fall on a piece of porcelain and I smell the acrid odours of China. I am borne in a chair along a narrow causeway between the padi fields, or else I skirt a tree-clad mountain. My bearers chat gaily as they trudge along in the bright morning and every now and then, distant and mysterious, I hear the deep sound of a monastery ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... fair and sacred. Sapless doctrines doth rehearse, And the milk of falsehoods acrid, Burns our babe-lips like a curse, Cling we must to godless prophets, as the suckling ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... said our governess. "It was just one of these seemingly irresistible impulses that have so often proved disastrous for all concerned. If your father knew—" she bit off the words as though they had a pleasant, if acrid taste—"if your poor father knew of your criminal proclivities, he would be a ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... on the part of Nature; a most stingy trick upon the public, and a regular do. The mace has no taste whatever, and the nutmeg has simply a highly acrid and pungent taste, without any spicy flavor, but merely abounding in a rank and disagreeable oil. The latter is so plentiful that I am astonished it has not been experimented upon, especially by the natives, who are great ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... moonshiners in politics," was the Senator's acrid response. "And the stuff they're putting out is as raw and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... mode of preparing the olives as they reach us is as follows: They have been gathered when green, and soaked first of all in strong lye—that is, water saturated with alkaline salt, obtained by steeping wood ashes in the former. They are next soaked in fresh water to remove the somewhat acrid and bitter taste, and are then bottled in a solution of salt and water. Ordinarily they are presented at table in a dish or other suitable vessel, with a little of the liquid in which they have ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... The little fellow was engulphed in what Walt Whitman would call the liquid rims. These small, hard creatures are tenacious of life, and they have, moreover, the power of exuding a noxious secretion—an acrid oil, with a strong scent, and even taste, of saffron. It was all over in a moment. I rubbed my eye, and I suppose crushed him to death; but I could not get him out, and I had no companion to extract him; the result was that my eye was painful and inflamed for an ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the third day after its abandonment (unless the constituion has become so impaired by long habituation that there will probably be no vital reaction) opium begins to show its dissolutions from the tissue by a profuse and increasingly acrid bilious diarrhea, which must not be checked if diagnosis has revealed sufficient constitutional vigor to justify any attempt at abandonment of the drug. Hemorrhoids may result; they must be topically treated; mild astringents may be used when the tendency seems getting out of eventual control; ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... sunshine Mr. Thorndike stepped into the gloom of an echoing rotunda, shut in on every side, hung by balconies, lit, many stories overhead, by a dirty skylight. The place was damp, the air acrid with the smell of stale tobacco juice, and foul with the presence of many unwashed humans. A policeman, chewing stolidly, nodded toward an elevator shaft, and other policemen nodded him further on to the office of the district attorney. ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... liked none of the Bobsborough people. They were, according to her ideas, slow, respectable, and dull. But they had not found much open fault with her, and she was aware that it was for her interest to remain on good terms with them. Her letter, therefore, to Mrs. Eustace was somewhat less acrid than that written to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... irritable, turbulent, restless, intractable. He was a chivalrous defender of poorer brethren in art, and he was never a respecter of persons. His feuds with Betzki, the Empress's faithful factotum, were as acrid as the feuds between Voltaire and Maupertuis. Betzki had his own ideas about the statue that was to do honour to the founder of the Empire, and he insisted that the famous equestrian figure of Marcus Aurelius should be the model. Falconet was a man of genius, and he retorted ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... crude censers were in the hands of two priests; the incense was lit by long tapers, and its acrid odor wound up in wavering purple spirals of smoke. On each side of Hrihor were five under-priests, eyes stiffly on their superior's impassive face. The soldiers had retreated from the altar and now were massed in the rear of the ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... came to his nostrils. It was a musky, fetid odor, like that to be smelled in an animal cage; but it was sharper, more acrid than anything he had ever smelled on Earth. It smelled—ah, he had it!—reptilian. As though somewhere nearby a dozen titanic serpents ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... Berlin, after the first trial there); and will not be altogether avoidable to us in time coming, as one could have wished. Besides, he is Horace Walpole's friend and select London Wit: he contributed a good deal to the English notions about Friedrich; and has left considerable bits of acrid testimony on Friedrich, "clear words of an Eye-witness," men call them,—which are still read by everybody; the said Walpole, and others, having since printed them, in very dark condition. [In Walpole,—George the Second—(i. 448-461), the Pieces which regard Friedrich. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... a mysterious falsetto voice, which seemed to come from behind the copper basins, repeated, in an acrid ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... still lay scattered about the floor, but they had been trampled under foot and their beauty had suffered, their freshness was marred, and their perfume, rising acrid from bruised petals, greeted him unwholesomely after the fresh morning air, and rendered the atmosphere faint and oppressive. The stand with the flower pots, much disarranged, stood as he had left it when he pulled it ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... is supposed that the onion is a native of Hungary. It is now found over the whole civilized world. It contains a white, acrid, volatile oil holding sulphur in solution, albumen, much uncrystallizable sugar and mucilage, phosphoric acid both free and combined with lime, citrate of lime. The Spanish onion contains a large proportion of sulphur and thus may be satisfactorily used in those ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... acquaintance, expressions were caught such as come to the surface of those who are ill at ease in their own minds, and whose consciences groan at certain times. His complexion, which was sanguine under the soft skin of a Norman, had a crude or acrid color. The glance of his eye, whose iris was circled with a whitish rim as if it were lined with silver, was evasive yet terrible when he fixed it straight upon his victim. His voice had a hollow sound, like that of a man worn out with much speaking. His thin lips were not wanting in charm, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... turned into prayers irritate, disturb, unsettle. Wishes that are turned into prayers are calmed and made blessed. Stanley and his men lived for weeks upon a poisonous root, which, if eaten crude, brought all manner of diseases, but, steeped in running water, had all the acrid juices washed out of it, and became wholesome food. If you steep your wishes in the stream of prayer the poison will pass out of them. Some of them will be suppressed, all of them will be hallowed, and all of them will be calmed. Troubles, great or small, should be turned into prayers. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to shout, "Open this door! Want us to die like rats in a trap! Open this door!" There was a sound of splintering glass and the acrid smell of smoke. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... was at last persuaded that I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to be kissed by me—it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add—but it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that she had ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... elements abound in every article he consumes with the exception of the bread-fruit, the jak, and some varieties of beans. In their indolent and feeble stomachs these are liable to degenerate into flatulent and acrid products; but, apparently by instinct, the whole population have adopted a simple prophylactic. Every Singhalese carries in his waistcloth an ornamented box of silver or brass, according to his ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... thing until it ceased to move. He picked it up, then, and sniffed the air. Paula had been in a cloud of acrid smoke. She could not have detected the taint in the air he discovered. He went curiously, saw a broken branch overhead, and then saw something ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... rim was a southern exposure, hot and dusty. The junipers were thick. The green of their foliage somewhat resembled cedars, but their berries were gray-blue, almost lavender in color. I tasted several from different trees, until I found one with sweet, somewhat acrid taste. Significant it was that this juniper had broken branches where bears had climbed to eat the fruit, and all around on the ground beneath was bear sign. Edd said the tracks were cold, but all the same ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... cobbles, known as the pavement of the League. Whether the city grew much sweeter is doubtful; certainly Paris in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was as evil-smelling as ever. Montaigne, in the second half of the sixteenth century, complains that the acrid smell of the mud of Paris weakened the affection he bore to that fair city, and Howell writes in 1620, "the city is always dirty, and by perpetual motion the mud is beaten into a thick, black and unctuous ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... breath—and gasped, for the pungent fumes, acrid and penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed her lungs. It was like the breath of hell, to fit the simile, and aptly Professor Burr seemed the devil himself, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... away, deep in the tangle of impenetrable jungle, Numa, the lion, raised his massive head. Numa had dined well until almost daybreak and it had required much noise to awaken him. Now he lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air, caught the acrid scent spoor of the reed buck and the heavy scent of man. But Numa was well filled. With a low, disgusted grunt he rose and ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the small Eucalypti growing between the hill and the brushes, as this is the most northerly limit of that Australian genus known to me. Among the trees of the brushes I may mention the Anacardium, or cashew nut, with large red acrid fruit, Mimusops kaukii, often attaining a great size, and a species of Bombax, or silk-cotton tree, from the trunk of one of which the canoe we saw upon ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... bandages—grim reminders left behind after the last train went by— and he had touched a match to the heap in an effort to get rid of it by fire. By reason of what was upon them the clothes burned slowly, sending up a smudge of acrid smoke to mingle with smells of carbolic acid and iodoform, and the scent of boiling food, and of things ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... wheat. Nor can a day of potato-gathering be more appropriately ended than with a little fire built afield and the baking of some of the harvest under the wood ashes. Vintaging needs no praises, nor does apple-gathering; even when the apples are for cider, they are never acrid enough to ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... thy matchless hound, Burned in my breast like acrid wine; I swore no chief on Irish ground Should own a nobler hound than mine; 'Twas rashly sworn, and must not be, He'd pine to hear the well-known sound, With which thou call'st him to thy knee, Take back, MacJohn, thy ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... hot that she was obliged to throw open the casement window and let the cool, moist air steal into the room. For several minutes she leaned out, breathing in the night odours of the dark garden. With them came a heavier odour that was familiar, the acrid, pungent smell of the doctor's tobacco. By it she could tell that he, too, had his window open; he was sitting close to it, reading and smoking. She had no idea how he spent his evenings, but when she came to bed his light was always on. What an odd, self-contained, saturnine creature he was! ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... John," she said, with an acrid smile; "I had no idea you were such a philanthropist. If Fernley is to become an ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... two species, the Diplodactylus lepidopygus, Tsch., and the Discodactylus phacophorus, Tsch. They are nearly related to each other, being only distinguished by one species having an orifice in the thighs, serving as a passage for an issue from a gland which secretes a very acrid fluid. This little animal never bites; but it is possible that the fluid by touching a fresh wound, or scratch, may cause very ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... July arrived, and it was impossible to think of anything clearly. For days there had been a cannonade such as the world had never witnessed before; the whole countryside shook, the air was thick with shrieking shells, the ground trembled with bursting bombs. Every breath one drew was poison; the acrid smells of high explosives were everywhere. Then, after days of bombardment, which I will not try to describe, for it beggars all the language I ever learnt, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... too stunned to remember that he hated to be conspicuous, and that he had never made a public speech in all his life. He was paralyzed by the contrast between last night and today. Consequently, he made a very good speech indeed, and it had some acrid humour in it, too, and the audience actually cheered him—although later, when he reviewed the incident in his mind, he had to admit that the cheers were loudest just after he had told the ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... economical properties which they possess, and which are indeed frequently peculiar to the order. Such is the case with the natural order Euphorbiaceae, or spurge family, to which the tallow-tree of China belongs. The order includes 2500 species, all of which are more or less acrid and poisonous, these properties being especially developed in the milky juices which abound in the plants, and which are contained, not in its ordinary tissues, but in certain special vessels. Many important substances are derived from this order, notwithstanding its acrid and poisonous character. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... restrained him. His companion led the way. He followed in silence. Through the winding streets of the little fishing village they went, the familiar landmarks about them looming grotesque and mystical in the low-hanging fog. At length the acrid air of the sea assailed their nostrils and the silence of the night was broken by the noisy splashing of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... two like a big bear, for he was a giant. At first he made a wry face, holding his nose, because of the acrid smell ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Second by second that huge mountain of muscle slipped and jellied and actually melted before the eyes of the humans. At the same time a curious acrid odor arose; Smith fell to coughing. The ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... reverie throughout the uptown journey. And he strengthened himself with it, deriving a sort of acrid comfort from the knowledge that henceforth none should know the burden of his misfortunes save himself. There was no deprecation of Kellogg's goodness in his mood, simply determination no longer to ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... was composed chiefly of daphne shrubs—judging by the appearance of the fallen leaves, and some berries that still remained on the branches, Karl believed them to be of this species. But the bark was also a characteristic: being exceedingly tenacious, and moreover of a strongly acrid taste—so much so as to cauterise he skin of Ossaroo's mouth, who had been foolish enough to chew ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... no means new to the four walls of the Jailbird nor to the men concerned. It was a two-man fight, with as yet no call for the four friends of Quinnion to interfere. It would take the spit and snarl of a revolver, the flash of flame, the acrid smell of burning-powder to switch their sympathetic watching into actual participation. No new situation certainly for Chris Quinnion who took quick stock of the table with its heavy top and screened his body with it; ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... them. But it is quite otherwise with oranges, shaddocks, bananas, plantains, mangoes, and pine-apples: those great tropical fruits can only be eaten properly with a knife and fork, after stripping off the hard and often acrid rind that guards and preserves them. They lay themselves out for dispersion by monkeys, toucans, and other relatively large and powerful fruit-eaters; and the rind is put there as a barrier against small thieves who would rob the sweet pulp, but be absolutely incapable of carrying ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... perfect shower of apple blossoms were shaken on to the floor. Her hair had come undone from its sleek, smooth plaits, and now hung like a veil of gold on her shoulders. She looked closely at herself in the glass, and her face looked worn and haggard in the dim light. A pungent acrid odour permeated the room, and the heavy velvet curtains moved with subdued rustlings as the wind stole in through the window. On a table near her was a portrait of Vandeloup, which he had given Madame two days before, and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... swallowing it as he had swallowed the caribou meat. A little suspiciously he crushed it slowly between his jaws. The fat was sweet. He was about to gulp it down when he detected another and less pleasant taste, and what remained in his mouth he spat out upon the snow. But the acrid bite of the poison remained upon his tongue and in his throat. It crept deeper—and he caught up a mouthful of snow and swallowed it to put out the burning sensation that was crawling nearer to ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... room, Emmett Corbin listened to the screech of tormented metal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... boots, and no vest. There was nothing remotely suggestive of unusual ability or force of character, and I thought as I studied him that the sting of George D. Prentice's bon mot about him was in its acrid ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... signalling officer, and the doctor conducted an acrid argument that arose from the doctor's astounding assertion that he had seen a Philadelphia base-ball player smite a base-ball so clean and hard that it travelled 400 yards before it pitched. Wilde, with supreme scorn, pointed out that no such claim ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... please him,—nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure,—and yet, the very next moment, he smiled. While the latter expression was yet on his lips, he caught a glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily bent forward to the window; and then the smile changed from acrid and disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence. He bowed, with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindliness, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... half way down when a rank waft of acrid and mephitic air met him and half-choked him. He struggled on, and when he found his bearings by the dim and misty light he sat down on a locker and gasped. The atmosphere was heated to a cruel and almost dangerous pitch, and the odour!—oh, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... the mine; nor cares to walk With Wealth and Fashion in the parks and squares; But follow! Come thou down, and let the cold Cramp-headed cynics yelp alone, and leave The mugwump scoffers there to shape and sleek Their thousand paragraphs of acrid joke That like a squirting fountain waste in air: So waste thou not; but come; for hunger pale Awaits thee; haggard pillars of the hearth Appeal to thee; slum children call, and now The Crowd's astir, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... lead, so much used in paint, owes its pernicious effects to oxygen. In general, oxygen, in a concrete state, appears to be particularly destructive in its effects on flesh or any animal matter; and those oxyds are most caustic that have an acrid burning taste, which proceeds from the metal having but a slight affinity for oxygen, and therefore easily yielding it to the flesh, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... red, the mature ones are coriaceous. I have not seen it in flower; the juice, at least from small branches, is not very abundant, and at first is of a whitish colour; it is, on dit, after drying that it assumes the black tint; at any rate it is excessively acrid, for one of my servants who cut it incautiously, had his face spoilt for a time: the swelling even after four days had elapsed was considerable. With this as well as the Rhus they dye the strings of the simple fibres of Sawar, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... first shapeless shack. The hoofs of El Sangre bit into the dust, choking and red in daylight, and acrid of scent by the night. All was very quiet except for a stir of voices in the distance here and there, always kept hushed as though the speaker felt and acknowledged the influence of the profound night in the mountains. Someone ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... pleased with a little bottle of boracic acid solution for his sore eyes. The Mongols, like so many Eastern peoples, suffer much from inflammation of the eyes, the result of dirt, and even more of the acrid argol smoke filling the yurts so that often I was compelled to take flight. I expect the stern old Jesuit would say of them as he did of the Red Indian, "They pass their lives in ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same": this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... In morals we have the same phenomenon. A barbarous ideal of life requires tasks and dangers incompatible with happiness; a rude and oppressed conscience is incapable of regarding as good a state which excludes its own acrid satisfactions. So, too, a fanatical imagination cannot regard God as just unless he is represented as infinitely cruel. The purpose of education is, of course, to free us from these prejudices, and to develope our ideals in the direction of the greatest possible good. Evidently the ideal ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race— because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada's time ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... other cabins, in one of which I espied a cloak and feathered hat lying where their owner had dropped them; whipping the cloak about me I clapped on the hat and, staying for no more, hasted on breathing an air acrid with drifting smoke. Reaching a broad stairway I climbed at speed and found myself out upon the lofty poop, whence I might look down on the decks through a haze of smoke that poured up through the after hatchway, mounting in billowy wreaths against the splendour ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... repentance, &c.]. Indeed, he uttered the word repeatedly, as if his ear had been eager for this sound, which for him comprised the whole scale of the feelings which is produced by an intense plaint, from repentance to hatred, blessed or poisoned fruits of this acrid root. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Chocolate is a Substance very temperate, yielding soft and wholesome Nourishment, incapable of doing any Harm. And if this intrinsick Coldness is no more to be feared, it must be own'd, that it will be henceforward ridiculous, if not pernicious, to join it with hot acrid Spices, more likely to alter and destroy its good and real Qualities, than to correct the bad ones which it has not: I nevertheless do not doubt but the Pleasantness of the Smell, and the favourite Taste of several agreeable ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... compressed myself, feeling flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned. It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical horror; it passed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid smell of mineral oils and heated metal. Then all was over again, save for a choking-fit produced by ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... all systems outside the narrow limits of Benthamism, and making even philanthropy hateful. Had Mackintosh lived to read Mill's Fragment, he would certainly have thought it a proof that the Utilitarians were as dogmatic and acrid ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen |
