"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the union of kindred hearts, and the joys of reciprocated feeling and the pains of absence. Good Miss Ruey occasionally passed these to Mara, with glances full of meaning, which caused the poor old thing to resemble a sentimental goblin, keeping Sally Kittridge in a perfect hysterical tempest of suppressed laughter, and making it difficult for Mara to preserve the decencies of life toward her well-intending old friend. The trouble with poor Miss Ruey was that, while her body had grown old and crazy, her soul was just as juvenile ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... only by a few hysterical giggles from the ladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: "Now for ALSO SCHRIE ZENOPHOBIA!" Krafft stopped playing, but remained sitting at the piano, wiping down the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... gained the hall, mounted the flight to the roof, he groaning and urging, she sobbing, hysterical, and frenzied. She climbed the ladder with him, threw back the trap, and helped him on ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... everything rough made her act on instinct instead of reason. Valders-Roan, irritated by this uncalled-for action, now threw ceremony to the winds, and without further ado trotted up and rubbed his nose against hers. That was more than Lady Clare could stand. With an hysterical snort she flung herself about, and up flew her heels straight into the offending nose, inflicting considerable damage. Shag, being now quite clear that the programme was fight, whisked about in exactly the same manner, with as ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... pistol cut short her half hysterical outbreak. Following the report they listened ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... to himself as he let himself out and passed down the three glistening white steps into the quiet street. "Hysterical, useless, helpless set! Fit only for pleasure-seeking and money-spending. What is ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... matter. And then, look at her writings! She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality; she struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another, grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth. She may have read many writings of great men, and a few writings of great women; but she is as unable to discern the difference between her own style and theirs as a Yorkshireman is to discern the difference between his own English and a ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... food long since cooked and eaten, before he threw all the windows open. The front room was clean—after a man's idea of cleanliness. The floor was covered with an exceedingly dusty carpet, and a rug or two. Her latest photograph was nailed to the wall; and when Val saw it she broke into hysterical laughter. ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... this charm? He had many characteristics that belong to the most tiresome natures; he even had the qualities of the man as to whom one wonders whether partial insanity may not be his best excuse—inconstancy expressing itself in hysterical revulsions of feeling, complete lack of balance, proneness to act recklessly to the hurt of others. Yet he was loved and respected by contemporaries of tastes very different from his own, who were good judges and intolerant of bores—by Byron, who was apt to care little for any one, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard: and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded, "Therefore," said be, "hath it with all confidence been ordered, by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hastings ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Insane.—Foreign bodies may be introduced voluntarily and in great numbers by the insane. Hysterical individuals may assert the presence of a foreign body, or may even volitionally swallow or aspirate objects. It is a mistake to do a bronchoscopy in order to cure by suggestion the delusion of foreign body presence. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... her terrible emotions, made Zita half hysterical. Trembling in every limb, she made her way to Locke and fell on her knees by him. She wrapped her arms about him and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... only by keeping thus occupied, mentally and physically, that he and his sister, as well as the twins, were enabled not to succumb to the grief that racked them. Belle, rather more nervous and temperamental than her sister, did give way to a little hysterical crying spell, as they were on their way back to the marina from the steamer, but this was due merely to ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... sure that he should suffocate unless aid came quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical fear that had claimed him he now lay quietly searching for some means of escape from his dilemma. It finally occurred to him that the room in which Lord and Lady Greystoke had been sitting when he left them was directly beneath that in which he lay upon the floor. He knew that some time ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Durtal to himself as he came away, "it is quite evident that the woman is not mad. She has nothing the matter with her, either hysterical or mental: she is fragile and very thin, but she is scarcely nervous, and in spite of the laconic character of her meals she is in very good health, indeed is never ailing; nay more, she is a woman of good sense and an admirable manager. Up by daybreak, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... to your doctor. And then to the general of your army. I must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning half hysterical again. She laughed wildly. "Your general—he won't be General Washington, of course. But I must ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... came the sound, and the girl stood poised ready to fly when the dark face of Bududreen suddenly emerged into the moonlight beside her. With an hysterical cry of relief the girl ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of a music-hall show, with frequent turns and changes, commenced. Popular favourites from every department of the theatrical world, each in turn claimed attention and applause. Katharine watched it all with an interest always strained, a gaiety somewhat hysterical; Jocelyn Thew with the measured pleasure of a critic; Richard with uproarious, if sometimes a little unreal merriment. The time slipped by apparently unnoticed. Suddenly Richard glanced at ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said had an idiosyncrasy that prevented her drinking water. Every time she took the smallest quantity of this liquid into her stomach it was at once rejected, with many evident signs of nausea and pain. The patient was strongly hysterical, and I soon made up my mind that either the case was one of simple hysterical vomiting, or that the alleged inability was assumed. The latter turned out to be the truth. I found that she drank in private all the water she wanted, and that what she drank ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... fingers upon her hot eyes, beholding that fair impossible vision break and disappear from before her. Nettie's heart groaned within her, and beat against the delicate bosom which, in its tender weakness, was mighty as a giant's. She made no answer to her sister's outcry, nor attempted to comfort the hysterical sobbing into which Susan fell. Nettie gave up the hopeless business without being deceived by those selfish demonstrations. She was not even fortunate enough to be able to persuade herself into admiring love ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the owl was a bird of ill omen and should not be allowed to perch in the neighbourhood of a sick room. Immediately she was seized with foreboding and her husband was dispatched to scare away the prophet of evil. On his return she was trembling and hysterical. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... enough, through too careless, too inquisitive, and too impulsive a temperament. But of late, it is a rare thing that I sleep soundly at night. There is a countenance which haunts me, turn as I will. There is an hysterical laugh which will forever ring within ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... unexpected phase of affairs. However, when he found that Judge Wells, instead of attempting to return to the valley that night, proposed to pass the night at a ranch only a few miles from the Cahuilla village, he became almost hysterical with fright. He declared that the Cahuillas would surely come and murder him in the night, and begged piteously that the men would all stay with ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... But he was still nothing more than "a big and gloomy child," whose ill-balanced nature gravitated between fits of profound gloom and the wild abandonment of debauch; one hour, torn and shaken by religious terrors, fears of hell and of death; the next, the very soul of hysterical gaiety, with words of blasphemy on his lips, the gayest member of a band of Bacchanals in ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... Flight in County Clerk's Office, Where Couple is Arrested. Abductor Attacks Sheriff Viciously. Is Manacled in Presence of Hysterical Young Heiress Who Faints as Her Lover is Overpowered. Irate ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... me a silly woman, Mr. Wittekind; but I'm not—not to the extent of an hysterical invention. Mr. Chayne has told me definitely that those two manuscripts came to your office, that the books were printed from them and that they were destroyed ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... gave a hysterical sob and fled. A sense of injury tore her heart, as well as her anxiety. She flung herself face downward on her bed and wept. After a while she turned over on her back and looked at the room. Not one little ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... represents the Jericho-motif as you may hear it played almost any night in the Jerusalem hotels. It sounded to us partly like an echo of ancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of revenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people who travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet camp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were "humbugs," and an escort of soldiers a nuisance. So we placidly made our preparations to ride on the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the ludicrous methods and vulgar ineptitude of the Salvation Army, still the Church was making no effort to provide the sensible, thinking, educated people of England with an equivalent as suitable to their requirements as the Salvation Army was to the requirements of the foolish, the hysterical, the unthinking people who played the tambourines and brayed on the tuneless trombones. Thus it is that one man says to another nowadays, when he has got nothing better to talk about, "Are you a man of intelligence, or do ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... name was written on it, and though it was badly moulded, my features were recognizable. The image bore my cross of the Order of the Golden Spur, and the generative organs were made of an enormous size. At this I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, and had to sit down in an arm-chair ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... stretchers and the nouveaux clients; mussy bundles of blue rags and bloody blankets turned into human beings; an overworked, nervous medecin chef shouted contradictory orders at the brancardiers, and passed into real crises of hysterical rage. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... with the central figure. He was often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits, being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... given a glimpse of that large scheme that Harry was carrying forward somewhere out of her sight—such a glimpse as Clara had given her in the rifling of her room, as Ella had shown in her hysterical revelation. Again she felt the threat of these ominous signs of danger, as a lone general at a last stand with his troops clustered at his back sees in front, and behind, on either side of him, the glitter of ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... something must be done in some stupid way for backwards compatibility, and moreover that the feature it must be compatible with was the result of a bad design in the first place. "All IBM PC video adapters have to support MDA text mode for hysterical reasons." ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... undivided attention to her mistress, who bade fair to be hysterical for the rest ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... for sick-leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom! A request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to England! Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... said she never really knew. It was a burst of wild, hysterical yelling, such as girls and women alone are capable of. And as she screamed and ran she pointed back toward ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... the strange looking cave and the big handsome figure bending over her.... First she looked startled, then when she slowly realized their predicament she became hysterical, threw herself into her ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... succeed. In desperate alarm at the danger of her protector, and horrified at what she was about to do, she grasped the pirate by the hair and tore out a large handful, at the same time uttering shriek upon shriek mingled with appalling bursts of hysterical laughter. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... to be mixed up in such an affair, but I could see no escape from it. There were even marks of bruises on the poor woman's face, and when, promising assistance, I went out to see to the horses and think it over, Minnie Fletcher burst into hysterical sobbing as Aline placed an arm protectingly around her. She had retired before I returned, for I fancied that Aline could dispense with my presence and I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hysterical laugh. 'Where is he, my dear? That's the question. With consummate strategy, the wretch has disappeared into space ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... he'll notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden triumph. "Talk about surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene before her. "Well, at least we can have 'grace' before the Preacher comes!" she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across her eyes again, ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered what she had said about the treasury, and that fares are high ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... to be their associate, perhaps their accomplice. Ah! well. Judge me, Mr. Biddulph, as you will. I have no defence. Only recollect that I warned you to go into hiding—to efface yourself—and you would not heed. You believed that I only spoke wildly—perhaps that I was merely an hysterical girl, making all sorts of ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... a great actor should neglect a passage that paints with one touch Hamlet's half-hysterical state. Given as it might be given, it would curdle the blood in your veins. I asked the best Hamlet it has been my fortune to see, why he left out these lines. "I have often thought I would speak them; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... then; and I talk like a hysterical girl. But, seriously, if any man were given his choice, I think he'd prefer to cross the river at once to facing the gray and dreary days that ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... equally to the various forms of chronic rheumatism, chorea, paralysis agitans, infantile paralysis, hysterical paralysis, mercurial and lead poisoning, muscular atrophy; rigid atrophy, consequent upon the rheumatic diathesis; locomotor ataxia, as a result of rheumatism; syphilis, or local injury; cranial, facial, and intercostal neuralgia; sciatica, lumbago, ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... vigorous bandits!" she continued in hysterical enthusiasm. "I adore them. I should like to have them in my home, as they have gold-fishes in a globe, to feed them every hour, to see how ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "we'll promise to leave our pistols at home. The only danger you'll be in, Court, will come from a lot of hysterical women trying to kiss you, but I think I can fix it to have the best lookin' ones up ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... man, throwing up his hands and laughing in a hysterical way. "I yield because you must be a Texan. That cannot be the ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rule is also over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an hysterical and passing type—with sensational disturbances, falling exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It is a quickening of dead, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the opened stove sat the rescued girl—a slight, golden-haired thing, with wistful blue eyes and a frightened air. Every moment she caught her breath in a half-hysterical sob, while violent shivers shook her ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall to the window? Do you know of anything with a long, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... claiming the attention of others. To shield her from the attention of the passing throng, Dr. Morgan drew her within the private office. She anticipated comforting an hysterical girl. But in a moment Miss O'Day ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... he hit upon "An Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values," and went back to four volumes, though with a number of changes in their arrangement. In September, 1888, he began actual work upon the first volume, and before the end of the month it was completed. The Summer had been one of almost hysterical creative activity. Since the middle of June he had written two other small books, "The Case of Wagner" and "The Twilight of the Idols," and before the end of the year he was destined to write "Ecce Homo." Some time during December his health began to fail rapidly, and soon after ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... you for hours, Mr. Underwood," said he. "Looked for you quite early in the afternoon, so the maid says. Register here, please. Quite hysterical, she is, they tell me, and the maid was asking for ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... hysterical from overwork and all tired out from worry. There ain't no need to worry, baby. Quigley'll say it can go over another week. She ain't dunning ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... side were the evidences of panic. Stateroom doors were open, people in all stages of disarray were hurrying wildly along, or clinging frantically to each other. The hysterical sobs of women, piercing cries from the thin voices of children, deep-toned curses and wild ejaculations from men sounded on every hand. People were donning life-preservers, some putting on two or three in their eagerness and fear; and here and there fighting ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His body, catching up from behind, drops about him again—and then he knows. It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little Dolly hysterical with fear. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... this moment burst into a laugh that was no more than a hysterical gurgle. "Well, you can't hold that gun out forever! Pretty soon you'll have to ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... The symptoms appear in from two to five days after the operation, and take the form of restlessness, sleeplessness, low incoherent muttering, and picking at the bedclothes. It is not necessarily attended by fever or by muscular tremors. The patient may show hysterical symptoms. This condition is probably to be regarded as a form of insanity, as it is liable to merge ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... as if to refute and explain away any ordinary reason for her possession of the drug, he remembered, in a comprehensive flash the recent violent changes in her character—her uncontrollable attacks of nervousness, her spasmodic movements and her sudden flowing, almost hysterical, volubility of speech. His heart contracted with a sensation like that of terror, and he was turning away again when his glance was arrested by a heap of crumpled bills lying loosely in one corner of the open drawer. Recollecting that she had complained the day before of the smallness of her ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... big house full of excitement. Richie was with his mother, who had retired to her room and was tearful and hysterical; Ned and his wife had gone back after Christmas to the country town, where he held a small position under his father-in-law; and Jim was doing both his own work and that of his foster father for the time being, and could not be found by telephone; so Julia was received by Barbara ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... "if you come to analyse this, it resolves itself into nothing. You were confessedly agitated, and almost hysterical that night; your body was unstrung; you were wet through, and it was doubtless the sudden passage from the darkness outside to the dim and uncertain glimmer of your own room, which acted so powerfully on your excited imagination, as to project ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... has been estimated that during the three years of this awful visitation one-third of the people of Europe perished. Whole cities were wiped out. In the despair and desolation of the period of scarcity that followed, humanity became hysterical, and within a generation that oddest of all the extravagances of the Middle Ages, the "dancing mania," rose to its height. Men and women wandered from town to town, especially in Germany, dancing frantically, until in their exhaustion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and butted against Beaumanoir in his haste. Felix, whose skin was always sallow, became livid; but nothing happened, and he snatched the bomb from its dangerous resting place. Then he burst into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter which drowned for an instant a new ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... of brave women against the world's estimate of woman's position. It was the world-old struggle for liberty. The knitting women remember now with shame and sorrow that they have said hard things about the suffragettes, and thought they were unwomanly and hysterical. Now they know that womanliness, and peaceful gentle ways, prayers, petitions and tears have long been tried but are found wanting; and now they know that these brave women in England, maligned, ridiculed, persecuted, as they were, have been ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... Russia has been got to join, and more and more vigorously bear a hand; how Bruhl's rabidities of appetite, and terrors of heart, have continued ever since; how Austria and Russia,—Bruhl aiding with hysterical alacrity, haunted by terror (and at last mercifully EXCUSED from signing),—have, year after year, especially in this last year, 1755, brought the matter nearer and nearer perfection; and the Two Imperial ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... threw back his head and loosened a burst of high, hysterical laughter. It echoed back and forth between the metal walls like a torrent from a burst dam. It went on and on, as if now that the dam was gone, the ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... her hand he was never afterwards able to tell; for at its electric touch the room began to swim around him. But this could not have lasted for long; because, as he looked into her eyes, still seeking an explanation, she broke off the half-hysterical laugh that answered him, and pulled her hand away sharply at ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... allow herself to be vexed. Since the singular hysterical embrace in the twilight of the kitchen, she had felt for her mother a curious, kind, forbearing, fatalistic indulgence. "Mother is like that, and there you are!" And further, her mood had been so changed and uplifted by excitement and expectation ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Dazed, bewildered, almost hysterical, Laura was unable to answer. He advanced until he almost stood over her, his arm raised threateningly, as if about to strike ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... was spoken with all the ardour of youthful passion. There was no sham in it. No hysterical ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... answered Clarissa with great dignity; in which she broke down a little by adding hastily, in half audible accents. "Be quiet, Dulcie!" for Dulcie's risible faculties had been excited in a lively degree. She had been crying so lately that there was a hysterical turn in her mirth, and having once given way to it she could not restrain herself, but was making all sorts of ridiculous faces and spasms in her throat without effect. You see, these were two ordinary, happy young girls; and the stiff starch of their manners and pretensions ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fourteen years and involved thorough personal examination of the scenes of Frederick's life and battles. During his last fifteen years Carlyle wrote little of importance, and the violence of his denunciation of modern life grew shrill and hysterical. That society was sadly wrong he was convinced, but he propounded no definite plan for its regeneration. He had become, however, a much venerated as well as a picturesque figure; and he exerted a powerful and constructive influence, not only directly, but indirectly through the preaching of his ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... would take the dismal news. Would she become hysterical and go all to pieces? Would the prospect of a week of propinquity be too much for her, even though thick walls intervened to put them into separate worlds? Or, worst of all, would she reveal an uncomfortable spirit of bravado, rashly casting discretion to the winds in order to show ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... voice of the hysterical woman on the bed was loud and distinct, as she grasped the arm of the terrified little governess, who chanced to be within her reach. "Jeffrey, either leave my house at once, or speak more deferentially of Miss Miller. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... had felt that she must laugh or leave the room. As she had no desire to leave, she tried to hide her laughing in her arms upon the table. But when Mr. Dalken began to comfort her, she lost all control of herself and had an attack of hysterical laughter. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with the Newtons—members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my duty to supply ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gasp of laughter, which would have instantly developed into an hysterical roar, had not the young Prince, with quick, tactful disregard of British convention, sprung to his feet, and with one hand holding champagne glass, and the other uplifted, commanded silence. So did the stars in their courses still fight for Paul. "My lords, ladies ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... look beneath unusual human phenomena for signs of the pathologic finds Michelangelo "affected by a degree of neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." What a pity that more of us do not suffer from such degrees of neuropathy—and how much better for most of us if we had such enthusiasm for perfection, and such mania for work, at least of that health-bringing sort in which there is absorbing colabor of brain ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... also admitted the bewildering effect of "that extraordinary odor" upon himself, "pungent and acrid like the odor of lions." And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty Island Water he had let slip the further fact—a foolish avowal of his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards—that he had heard the vanished guide call "for help." He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous language. Also, while ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... pitched from his box, and half the money-bags had been already lost!—from L8000 to L4000 at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set in! Indeed, this may have been one of the strong reasons for his own election by an overwhelming minority of hysterical and panic-stricken passengers. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... controlling her feelings by a great effort, until she had gained the privacy of her own apartments, then giving way to a fit of almost hysterical weeping. It was years since her father had been seriously displeased with her, and loving him with such intense affection, his anger and sternness nearly ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... arrested for a moment the sound of voices. There was a dull splash in the river. Something had been thrown overboard. The orchestra began to play dance music. Conversation suddenly burst out. Every one was hysterical. A Peer of the Realm, red-eyed and shaking like an aspen leaf, was drinking champagne out of the bottle. Every one seemed to be trying to outvie the other in loud conversation, in outrageous mirth. Lady Isabel, with a glass of champagne in her ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Baron," added the clergyman, "let me reassure you. It is evident that you are a little nervous and hysterical. Pray be calm and trust your relatives to do what is best for you. I do not wonder that your nerves have given ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Dominican or Franciscan friar: while one voice thundering woe or pleading peace dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the sixteenth century in Italy—Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a real religious vigor in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... nearly out of her senses with distress and uncertainty, and being still weak, was less able to endure. She burst into violent hysterical weeping, and had to be helped up to her own room, where she sometimes lay on her bed; sometimes raged up and down the room, heaping violent words on the head of the tardy cowardly German; sometimes talking of loosing Skywing to show they were in the castle and cognisant of what was going on; but ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... during which neither of them said a word, or saw each other. As far as Adela was concerned, immediate speech was impossible. She neither cried, nor sighed, nor sobbed, nor became hysterical. She was simply dumb. She could not answer this little announcement of her neighbour's. Heretofore, when he had come to her with his sorrows, she had sympathized with him, and poured balm into his wounds. But she had no balm for him now—and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... hysterical child was incapable of hearing what she said, incapable of doing anything but scream louder and louder when she tried to pull down those desperately tight little hands held with frantic tenseness over the hurt eye. Marise could feel all his little body, quivering and taut. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... as though from some momentary trance. Checking herself on the verge of tears, she rallied, turned the conversation, and finding an excuse for going to the piano, dashed into a waltz. This unnatural gaiety ended, I fancy, in an hysterical fit. I heard her husband afterwards recommending sal volatile. He is the sort of man who would recommend sal volatile to the Pythoness if ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... form of hysterical subjectivism which destroys sound judgment, and dissolves the sense of reality which it has taken modern science many generations to build up. Science has all along had to combat such wresting of its more obscure and ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... critic. Hence this fine tribute: "The great soldier who defended Plevna refused to acknowledge such a word as defeat. When things were at their worst his outward demeanour was calmest and most confident. There was no hysterical shrieking for supports or reinforcements. These might have reached him, but through treacherous jealousy he was betrayed and left to his own resources. In spite of this no thought of capitulation or retreat ever entered the mind of Osman ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... come to anything! The crowd was cheerful, but some day they would come in different mood! He remembered there had been a mob in the late eighties, when he was at Brighton; they had smashed things and made speeches. But more than dread, he felt a deep surprise. They were hysterical—it wasn't English! And all about the relief of a little town as big as—Watford, six thousand miles away. Restraint, reserve! Those qualities to him more dear almost than life, those indispensable attributes of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... constant wanderings to and fro for readings and theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Martineau, who had known and greatly liked Dickens, to say after perusing the second volume of his life, "I am much struck by his hysterical restlessness. It must have been terribly wearing to his wife." On the other hand, there can be no manner of doubt that his wife wore him. "Why is it," he had said to Forster in one of the letters from which ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... about a couple of months after the baby had been born, and just as my unhappy hero was beginning to feel more hopeful and therefore better able to bear his burdens, he returned from a sale, and found Ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had found her in in the spring. She said she was again with child, and Ernest still ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... she said, turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes afire. "Have I ever deceived you? Have I ever pretended to care for you? Bah, no! You are only an unformed, hysterical boy. Before, you were indifferent to me. Now, I am very quickly growing to hate ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shattered. Jerry saw, as he stepped from the light, the riot of figures that surged in hysterical frenzy through the great hall. The priests were leaping among them ... the tall priest who had guarded the door was fighting his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... kind of hysterical and—well, it's the first time I ever knew her to do the sob act. Also I'd never been quite sure before that I was much more to her than sort of an amusin' pal. But when she grips me around the neck ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... couple of days he did not enter the room again. On the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for three hundred francs. Was he a child, to be scared by ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... crisis has come; and if there's a man alive in this sinful world, it's that chief o' yours. And then his emotion overcame him, and, hard-bitten devil as he was, he sat down on the ground and gasped with hysterical laughter, while Ashurst, with a very red face, kept putting the wrong end of a cigarette in his mouth and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... generally afflicted with sore eyes; but the women had besides this a variety of other disorders, chiefly rheumatic, a violent pain and weakness in the loins, which is a common complaint among them; one of them seemed much dejected, and as we thought, from the account of her disease, hysterical. We gave her thirty drops of laudanum, and after administering eye-water, rubbing the rheumatic patients with volatile liniment, and giving cathartics to others, they all thought themselves much relieved and returned ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... next to her host, her bosom and hair on fire with jewels, yet with the most wonderful light of all glowing in her eyes. A famous actor, who had thrown his proverbial reticence to the winds, kept his immediate neighbors in a state of semi-hysterical mirth. The clink of wine glasses, the laughter of beautiful women, the murmur of cultivated voices, rising and swelling through the faint, mysterious gloom, made a picturesque, a wonderful scene. Pale as a marble statue, with the ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the windows, fascinated to look on the scene which terrified them. Mrs. Thornton, the women-servants, Margaret,—all were there. Fanny had returned, screaming up-stairs as if pursued at every step, and had thrown herself in hysterical sobbing on the sofa. Mrs. Thornton watched for her son, who was still in the mill. He came out, looked up at them—the pale cluster of faces—and smiled good courage to them, before he locked the factory-door. Then he called to one ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... are! Hereabouts are many spies and agitators," he cried out in an hysterical voice, as he fixed his eyes upon me. In one moment I perceived his appearance and psychology. A small head on wide shoulders; blonde hair in disorder; a reddish bristling moustache; a skinny, exhausted face, like those on the old Byzantine ikons. Then everything else faded from view ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... we are all hysterical nowadays. We have lost our self-possession. You don't kick on the hearthrug and that kind of thing. A bucket of cold water is ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... intellectual worth. But in so far as this was a drawback to the intended action of the Societies, it was one only in the most negative sense; nor can we doubt, that, to a certain extent, Mr. Browning's best influence was promoted by it. The hysterical sensibilities which, for some years past, he had unconsciously but not unfrequently aroused in the minds of women, and even of men, were a morbid development of that influence, which its open and systematic extension tended rather to diminish than ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... not lessened. Another pushpot came soaring wildly into view, making hysterical outcries. It touched and banged violently to earth. Others appeared in the air beyond the construction Shed. One flopped so hard on landing that its tail rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. It made ten times more noise than before—the flame from its tail making wild gyrations—and ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... the curtains at the Northern. It was her brother, yet what mystery shrouded this affair, also? What kept him from her? What caused him to slink away like a thief discovered? She grew dizzy and hysterical. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... screamed and rushed for a farther corner of the church, while the more hysterical fainted. Even strong men were ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... wondered at that the emotional spirit was too strongly developed in all religious observances, and, as we have seen, it characterized, equally, the convent nun, the priestess of the mountain side, and the sister of mercy. The hysterical element, however, was often too strongly accentuated, and the nuns were often too intent upon their own salvation to give heed to the needs of those about them. But the sum total of their influence was for the best, and the examples of moderation, self-control, and self-sacrifice ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... cried the hysterical one, with a shudder, "there's a murdered man at the front door!—and I did shut it, but he ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... arose during the ceremonies, and Miss Cooper was taken home in the carriage with the distinguished prelate to escape the deluge. The various conveyances plunged down the hillside post-haste, with lightning crashing on every side. Some of the ladies in the party became hysterical. Miss Cooper alone was perfectly calm. "With a bishop by my side," she exclaimed, "I am not in the least ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... had begun to rebel against his nickname, "Le petit Litz." It was with the utmost difficulty that his father had been able to keep him from making religion his career, and giving up his already glittering fame. Never in his life did he cease to thrill with an almost hysterical passion ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... lamp began to waver in an extraordinary, hysterical fashion. Sergeant Bellews turned down the volume swiftly. He wiped sweat off ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Women." Thereafter the original plea merely for education became but a minor part of a larger demand for the franchise and for general equality; and instead of a sober emphasis on the necessity for learning, there was a somewhat hysterical clamour that women "should be admitted side by side with men into all the offices of public life with respect both to kind and degree." This agitation soon gathered abundant ridicule by the advocacy, led by Amelia Jenks Bloomer, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... really characteristic and indispensable feature of these caves is, however, still to be mentioned. It is the image of the lingam, or phallus, gigantic in size, and carven out of solid stone, in the innermost shrine, where it is the object of hysterical or lustful worship. Every year, on an appointed feast-day, three or four thousand people throng to this shrine, some to pray for offspring, others to seek license for illicit pleasure. Elephanta has become in this way the symbol and propagator of a debasing ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... trying to call him and the children at the same time, the little wife, almost hysterical, snatched her hat and ran out into the yard. But the soldier had disappeared over the hill into the hollowy beyond, and, by the time she had found the children, he was too far away for her voice ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Mr. Pitt's complaints were originally brought on by fasting too long and indeed only eating when he found it convenient, which ruined the tone of his stomach."[731] These statements explain the reason for the collapse of Pitt's strength late in the year. Hester's concluding remark is somewhat hysterical, but it is nearer the truth than the charge that Pitt was greedy of power. He killed himself by persistent overwork on behalf of a nation which did not understand him, and in the service of a Monarch who refused to allow him to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ran forward and, throwing her arms about her guardian's neck with a little hysterical sob, she exclaimed, "Oh, I thought ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... again they carry a hundred shares of stock for him. He is a kind of private news agency. The dull office gets ready to laugh when he comes in; and his tips, whispered merely out of friendship, of course, to the customers, add many a credit entry to Commission Account. It may be said, without any hysterical exaggeration, that he represents the worst of Wall Street; and that the worst of Wall Street is very bad. But among his virtues are a merry mind and an abiding faith that a "board member" is the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... and intensified, and exercised upon a superior plane, when it is utilized by intelligent spirit operators. It is not true that sensitiveness is confined to those who are diseased, weak of will, neurotic, or hysterical. Those who are susceptible to psychic influence may be impulsive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, sociable, and not by any means, or of necessity, weak-minded or vicious." Dr. Dean Clake says: "The word mediumship, as understood and used by spiritualists, technically ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... growled Eliashib Sparks, the biggest of the three, surprising Sally into a little hysterical laugh, and surprised himself still more at this unexpected sequence to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Flambeau exaggerated reports of new strikes in other spots, of strong indications and of rich prospects elsewhere. Stories grew out of nothing, until the camp took an hysterical pleasure in exciting itself and deceiving every stranger who came from north or south, for the wine of discovery was in them all, and it pleased them to distort and enlarge upon every rumor that came their way, such being the temper of new gold-fields. They knew they ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... who are marked with a debility. It's the old compensation story. Look at my weak right arm. What she had said about expecting to find me on the roof sounded like precognition. And she sniffled and sniffled. Maybe it was one more of those tied-in hysterical ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... blond creature close at hand suddenly gave way to a fit of hysterical laughter, and caught up the end of it with ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the delirious woman began to laugh, vacantly and foolishly at first, and with short interruptions of silence, but then more loudly, and by degrees more continuously, till the spasms grew wild and hysterical, and bad to hear. Sister Giovanna went quickly to her and at once tried to put a stop to the attack. The Princess was rolling her head from side to side on the pillows, with her arms stretched out on each side of her and her white hands ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... not laugh over such a serious matter," apologized Arline, with a half hysterical chuckle. "But I can't help thinking how surprised you must have been to receive that letter to Stanley, and how wrathful he must be by ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... near the second level. The air rushing down was smoky and filled with sparks. The ladder was ready and the men made a rush with it up the stairway. Most of their lamps were put out and it was dark in the stairway. The men were uttering hysterical, foolish cries as they rushed upward in their panic. The ladder jolting against the sides of the chamber knocked the men off their feet and there was tumbling and swearing and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... hurry t' try it on. I ain't heard tell of Young Matt's leaving th' country yet. You'd better stay away from Jennings' still though, when you do try it." Then, while the man was tying his mule to the fence, she ran into the cabin to greet her father with a hysterical sob that greatly astonished Jim. Before explanations could be made, a step was heard approaching the door, and Sammy had just time to say, "Wash Gibbs," in answer to her father's inquiring look, ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... loss of time that this dilemma entailed grew serious; for Mrs. Peach was now in such a hysterical state that he could not leave her with any good grace or feeling. It was necessary to take her to a refreshment room, lavish restoratives upon her, and altogether to waste nearly half an hour. When she had kept him as long as she chose, she forgave him; and thus at last he got away, ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... turn now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange, hysterical laughter. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... her surprise, Octavia began to laugh under cover of her handkerchief: reaction had set in, and, though the laugh was a trifle hysterical, it was still a laugh. Next she gave her eyes a final little dab, and rose to go to the glass again. She looked at herself, touched up the short, waving fringe left on her forehead, and turned to Lucia, with a ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... priestess among savages is a sorceress, usually an old woman whose charms have faded, and who has no other way of asserting herself than by assuming a pretence to supernatural powers and making herself feared as a sorceress. Hysterical persons are believed by savages to be possessed of spirits, and as women are specially liable to hysteria and to hallucinations, it was natural that they should be held eligible for priestly duties. Consequently, if there was any respect involved here at all, it was for an infirmity, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... accustomed urbanity and politeness, while they cast wondering glances toward each other; probably that they had not found Mrs. Orville in hysterical tears. But Miss Sharpwell, nothing daunted, and determined to sympathize, readily expressed her admiration of Mrs. Orville's fortitude of mind, that she could support herself with so much calmness, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... his uncle's with Miss Nipper, Walter found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined and come to be on terms of perfect confidence and ease with old Sol. Miss Nipper caught her in her arms, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then, converting the parlor into a private tiring-room, she dressed her in proper clothes, and presently led her forth to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... reached its height only when twoscore people, mostly young, were tightly clustered upon their knees about the rail, and in the space opening upon the aisle. Above the confusion of penitential sobs and moans, and the hysterical murmurings of members whose conviction of entire sanctity kept them in their seats, could be heard the voices of the Presiding Elder, the Soulsbys, and the elderly deacons of the church, who moved about among the kneeling mourners, bending over them and ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... humiliation and fury, Mignon turned and ran down the stairs, her slender body trembling with the anger of a defeat born of the failure of her plan and her own betraying haste. Gaining the shelter of her dressing room, she gave herself up to a paroxysm of rage that ended in a burst of hysterical sobs. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... judgment was full-grown. To invent an earlier play on the subject and imagine this scene a surviving fragment, a floating waif of that imaginary wreck, would in my opinion be an uncritical mode of evading the question at issue. It must be regarded as the last hysterical struggle of rhyme to maintain its place in tragedy; and the explanation, I would fain say the excuse, of its reappearance may perhaps be simply this; that the poet was not yet dramatist enough to feel for each of his characters ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wonderful," she continued thoughtfully. "And yet, can you understand what I mean when I say that it makes me feel a trifle hysterical? It is as though something had been poured into one which was too great, too much for our capacity. It is all true, I believe, but I don't want it ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lips parted in an odd little way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... made an hysterical attempt to join the laugh of his companions against himself, and it was observed that he never again, at least not for some years, spoke about his ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... thoughts raced through his mind, he had been standing erect and silent, his eyes staring at the paper that crackled in his clenched fist. Dorothy's voice sounded far away repeating something. It was not till a strange hysterical note crept into her voice that he realized what ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... do my best," he continued. "But you see ten to one I shan't be here at the moment. As it is I have neglected lingering sicknesses and sudden deaths, hysterical girls, croupy children, broken legs, and all the other pretty little amusements of a rather large practice, waiting for me. Suppose I happen to be twenty miles away on the far side of Westchurch, or seeing after some of Lady Fallowfeild's numerous progeny ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it. Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of his old patron, tactfully ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Immediately, Walther, looking at Eva, began softly to sing the famous song. As it magically swelled, Sachs came to her and again fitted the shoes. When the song was rapturously finished, Eva burst into hysterical sobbing, and threw herself into the shoemaker's arms. But this scene was interrupted by the coming of Lena and David, all dressed for ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... Ivor!" she panted, between her sobs and hysterical gusts of laughter. "The agony of it—the agony—and the joy now! You're wonderful. Good, precious ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... outline of a long-boat, fully manned, and she was coming straight to me. There could be no more doubt of it; I had passed through much suffering, but it was all child's play to the "might have been"; and in the reaction I laughed aloud like an hysterical woman, and blushed to remember those great tears which had rolled over my face not an hour gone. And all the time I never took my eyes from the boat; but feasted on it as a beggar-child feasts in imagination on the gauds of a groaning table. Its progress seemed ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... for when she went to Boston. It cost very little to keep her for a few months in her small room. The people of the house promised to be decently kind to her. Margery had only been away from home two weeks when the child was born. The hysterical paroxysms and violent outbreaks of grief its mother had passed through, her convulsive writhings and clutchings and beating of her head against the walls had distorted and exhausted the little creature. The women who were with her said its body looked as if it were bruised in spots all over, ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her! save her!" cried Josephine, who herself had enough to do to hold her ponies, in their turn startled by her own sudden cries. "Leam, save her!" she repeated; and then breaking down into helpless dismay she began to sob and scream with short, sharp hysterical shrieks as her contribution to the misery of the moment. Poor Josephine! it was all that she could do, frightened as she was at her own prancing ponies, distracted at the sight of Fina's danger, horrified at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... The strange hysterical "yes" that issued from her pallid lips caused Ballantyne to turn his keen grey eyes upon her intently. Then something of the truth must have flashed across his mind, for he walked up to the tree ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke |
