"Nerve-racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the opposite side was more nerve-racking. On the descent of one ridge, in spite of the experienced care of Ootah, the sledge bounded away from him, and at a declivity of thirty feet was completely wrecked. The frightened dogs dashed wildly in every direction to escape the falling sledge, and ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... is not to be thought of for a moment. It has all the disadvantages of the automobile (for indeed there are a few, such as dust and more or less cramped quarters, and, if one chooses, a nerve-racking speed) and none of its advantages, and, whether you are a mere man or a millionaire, you are tied down to rails and a strict itinerary, whereas you may turn the bonnet of your automobile down any by-road that pleases your fancy, and arrive ultimately at your destination, having made an enjoyable ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the other hand, be it said that he considered the employers he had to deal with here the fairest, most open-minded, most anxious to compromise in the name of justice, of all the groups of employers he ever had to deal with. The whole affair was nerve-racking, as is best illustrated by the fact that, while Carl was able to hold the peace as long as he was on the job, three days after his death ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... young henchman along the west trail, past Rodman's and up the canyon toward the first shoulder of Lost Chief Peak. The Moose did not approve of the trip. He showed his disapproval by plunging and side jumping with nerve-racking persistency. Ginger and Democrat gave him ample turning room, biting or kicking him if he drew too near them. Midway in the canyon Charleton left the trail and turned abruptly to the left, up the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... showed Denver's face weary and drawn. Those moments in the bank, surrounded by danger, had been nerve-racking even to his experience. But to him it was a business, and to Terry it was a game. He felt a qualm of pity for Lewison—but, after all, the man was a wolf, selfish, accumulating money to no purpose, useless to the world. He shrugged the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... moment's pause, as Folwell ran to join the others in their place of safety. Then from without there came a most nerve-racking and terrifying crash. It seemed as if the very mountain would be ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... Joyce, you really are maddening; you know perfectly well that I have to revise and retype an entire short story which in itself is a nerve-racking job, and all you do is to burble and sing, and gabble. ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... only anxious for his chief's welfare. He knew that he would succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... he bent forward beside the chauffeur, teeth set, every nerve tense and straining as though his very will power was driving the machine forward. Then there came a maddening slowing down through Dartford streets, a nerve-racking delay until Sam Ogilvy's giant brother had stowed away himself and his satchel in the tonneau; then slow speed to the town limits; a swift hurling forward into space that whirled blackly around them as the great acetylenes split the darkness and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... padre's recognized function is to cull and purvey news. And I had many friends engaged. A couple of miles back I found the 7th British Field Ambulance, to which my own chief, A.E. Knott, was attached. The sight here was far more nerve-racking than a battlefield. It was an open human shambles, with miserable men lying about, some waiting on tables to be operated on. Knott was about to help in amputating a leg. In the few words I had with him I learnt that Suffolk was killed. I think I am right ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... To the nerve-racking duties of night patrol in the Straits of Dover they had grown accustomed—indifferent with the contempt born of familiarity—but this did not cause any relaxation of vigilance. The element of surprise is too important a factor in modern war to be ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... comparatively little to do except wait until they were needed, which would be when their artillery had completed the preparation for the inevitable charge. On the other hand the German soldier had a nerve-racking part to play. He knew from the preparation that an attack in force was about to be made; but he did not know when it would occur nor where. Hence it was necessary for him to be constantly on the alert. Many of the Germans were under arms ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... way, the most frankly personal of the 'Benson books' as yet published. It is all graceful, soothing, and pleasant—the very book for tired minds in a nerve-racking world. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a girl's life has she a greater right to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling than during the period known among girls as "making up her mind." If she is the right kind of a girl, honest and delicate minded, it is nerve-racking to be talked about, and sacrilege to be talked to. Then the bloom is on the grape, which a ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... flash the animal was on its feet again, but with Tad riding in the saddle, a satisfied smile on his face. Once more the awful, nerve-racking bucking began. It did not seem as if a human being could survive that series of violent antics, and least ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... had added to the Empire, they hinted at a public funeral—and they all discreetly ascribed telling upon a weak heart. Sir Stephen's precarious condition had been known, they said, to his medical adviser, who had for some time past tried to persuade him to relinquish his arduous and nerve-racking occupations, and to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... see her—you're as much trustee and executor as I am. You might also save Barbara and myself from nerve-racking questions." ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... I had a few years of experience in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them. Even now the spell still works and it is the curly head, the "shining morning face," the ready tear, the glancing smile of childhood ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this nerve-racking experience was encountered. More than once serious leaks were started in the ship, which had to be met by working the pumps and building false bulwarks in the hold; but by the exercise of every art known to sailors, she was kept afloat ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... understand. Below those monstrous cliffs the lower roofs were like broken foot-hills; the streets were chasms, gulches, gashes. It looked as if there had been a conflagration, and the houses had been burned into the cellars; and the eye sought the nerve-racking tangle of pipe and wire which remains among the ruins after a great fire. Perhaps this was what made me think of scrap-iron—heaps, heights, pinnacles of it. No, there was no sublimity there. Some astronomers ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... functions of college life yet remained, one, the Presbytery examination, the other, Professor Macdougall's student party. The annual examination before Presbytery was ever an event of nerve-racking uncertainty. It might prove to be an entirely perfunctory performance of the most innocuous kind. On the other hand, it might develop features of a most sensational and perilous nature. The college barometer this year was unusually depressed, for ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... kept under fire for four days. At the end of that time, they are sent back a few miles in shifts to the nearest village where they find quarters, and rest from the nerve-racking, soul-shaking clamor of guns and buzz of bullets. The trenches were wonderful. Zaidos and Velo, the Red Cross badges on their arms giving them free passage, soon explored every inch until they were perfectly familiar with them all. Zaidos drew a sketch of the plan ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... brother at the door in a kind of fury. "Something must be done for that girl. I have had a perfectly nerve-racking time. We must get her out of that house before they ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... as nervous as only a young Englishman within his immemorial armor can be. Gwynne, who had gone through the same nerve-racking crisis, although from different causes, understood what he suffered and pressed him into service in the distribution of government rations, and garments to the different refugee camps. But Gathbroke had the active imagination of intelligent youth, and he never forgot to blame himself ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... vases, and milk in pans being spilled, and one of our chimneys badly cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we went back to bed, only to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... where, five short years ago, no one would ever have thought of finding them. They have witnessed and taken active part in scenes nerve-racking and heart-rending beyond the power of description. Often it has been my duty to watch car-load after car-load of severely wounded being dumped into the reception marquees of a Casualty Clearing Station. There they would be placed in long rows awaiting their turn, and there, amid the groans ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... nerve-racking, yes. And then there is a quality in the whole life. Of course I see few English people in Venice—only the old Venetian ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... distribution. The benefit accrues to the whole community, and to each individual therein. The physiognomy of our productive establishments, of our system of transportation and communication, especially also of our habitations, will be completely altered for the better. The nerve-racking noise, crowding and rushing of our large cities with their thousands of vehicles of all sorts ceases substantially: society assumes an aspect of greater repose. The opening of streets and their cleaning, the whole system of life and of intercourse acquires new ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... disturbing thoughts. Even Miss Clifford did not know to what an extent Roger was concerned over this matter of Esther's whereabouts. The complete uncertainty, linked as it was with the doctor's guarded implications, had strung him up to a pitch of nerve-racking apprehension. Moreover, not until this had happened did he fully realise what Esther meant to him, how differently he regarded her from any other girl he had ever known. Could it possibly be true that she was in some obscure ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... beguiled him into remote and odd parts of the Barrier, that he became familiar with rare scenes (denied to all save submarine adventurers in tropical waters), that he was oft in peril of his life, and that he could pause in the midst of strenuous, nerve-racking work to watch the never-ceasing hostilities of the denizens of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... food as remained to them, and Bob was looking for something in which to carry some water to the cellar, when there came again that nerve-racking screech, followed by a roar and bang that seemed to knock the very bottom out ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... the table, our faces long with disappointment; then we looked at each other in unspoken questioning. Genevieve's expression was so woe-begone that I laughed. The nerve-racking suspense was broken. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... all night in different forms. A number of dogs are being broken in by being tied up to stakes. These keep up a heart-rending and peculiar crying, beginning with a short bark which melts into a yowl and dies away in a nerve-racking wail. This ceases not day or night, and half a dozen of these prisoners are within a stone's throw ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nerve-racking; we were obliged to pack our camping kits; and it began to look as though we would have either to sail the next morning or to resign from the Bronx Park Zooelogical Society, because all the evening papers had the story in big type—the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... shown as clearly as that the characters belong to their helmets or shields, their war chariots or bamboo lances. Simple the task may seem in these days of public libraries and ready reference, yet it is a most nerve-racking business, this placing an embossed helm or set of greaves on the hero of a story, so that he may stand out a Roman, and when the labor is finished having him stare genially out at you, insistently proclaiming the masquerade, and seemingly proud ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... probation, laborious and nerve-racking as it was, enabled me to appreciate how important it was for J. P. to put to a severe test of ability, tact and good temper any one whom he intended to attach ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... so. Bless my insurance policy! I might as well take the same chance you do. But if you're going to have such a nerve-racking thing as that on the program, you'd better get to bed early ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... days that Quin was floundering in the bog of poverty, illness and despair, Eleanor Bartlett was triumphantly climbing the peak of achievement. "Phantom Love," after weeks of strenuous rehearsal and nerve-racking uncertainty, had had its premiere performance at Atlantic City and scored ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the cook singing hymns in the kitchen, and the ubiquitousness of her small brother. He was only ten, and small for his age, yet he appeared to have the power of being in two rooms at the same time while making a nerve-racking noise in another. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of the garage where he had found the cord tires, when the quiet of the night was split with the shrill, nerve-racking shriek of the fire whistle, four or five blocks away. In spite of himself, he was startled with its suddenness, and he stood tensed and waiting for the dismal hoots that would tell what ward the fire was in. One—two—three, croaked ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the turbulent tributaries of the Isisi River had been induced to return to their accustomed channels, Sanders came back to headquarters a very weary man, for he had spent a horrid week in an endeavour—successful, but none the less nerve-racking—to impress an indolent people that the swamping of their villages was less a matter of Providence and ghosts than the neglect of ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... more than once, referred to Simmonds as hard-headed and wanting in imagination—not always, I fear, in terms the most respectful. For that I ask his pardon; I shall not make that mistake again. For, in that nerve-racking moment, he never lost his coolness. Revolver in hand, he crept cautiously forward, while we others held our breath; then the pistol spoke, one, twice, thrice, and the ugly head ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... stuck, cracked his whip first and yelled. He yelled again and cracked his whip. And then he began to swear, loudly, and angrily at first and then in lower, steadier, more polite terms—but always in an unending nerve-racking torrent. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... them, who would be eaten first? Anno, Stanislaus, or the driver? Would they devour them with their clothes on? If not, how would they get them off? Then, filled with morbid curiosity, they strained their ears and listened. Again—this time nearer, much nearer—came that cry, dismal, protracted, nerve-racking. Nor was that all, for they could now discern the pat-pat, pat-pat of footsteps—long, soft, loping footsteps, as of huge furry paws or naked human feet. However, they could see nothing—nothing ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... always breathed a sigh of relief when a stretch of hard red earth gave a little respite. It was neither courage nor pride that kept me in the saddle, but the knowledge that much of the way would be worse rather than better, and I would wisely face it at the outset. If it got too nerve-racking I could always betake myself to my chair and, trusting in the eight sturdy legs of my bearers, abandon myself to enjoying the sights ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... and few preliminaries, because Bill knew Casey Ryan very intimately and had seen him in action when his temper was up. Bill adjusted an extra horn which he happened to have in stock. One of those terrific things that go far toward making the life of a pedestrian a nerve-racking succession of startles. Casey tried it out on himself before he would accept it. He walked several doors down the street with the understanding that Bill would honk at him when he was some little distance away. Bill waited until Casey's attention ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... not rising," she said, "but I've had a rather nerve-racking experience, as no one knows better than yourselves. I want to thank you with all my heart for the way you came to my help when I was unable to ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... to attribute this tired feeling to the freedom from strain after our nerve-racking work of the last few weeks, while I hazarded the opinion that our purely meat diet had made us lazy. Probably it was ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... enough to have acquired a nervous dread of almost everything—not long enough to have passed through that dread to callousness. Some women take so much longer than others. And even for a woman "of a certain type" her position was exceptionally nerve-racking in war-time, going as she did by a false name. Indeed, in all England there could hardly be a greater pariah than was this ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... the elephant BOMA for the night. I have a plan to give the Arabs a little taste of what they may expect if they remain in our country, but I shall need no help. Come! If they suffer no more for the balance of the day they will feel reassured, and the relapse into fear will be even more nerve-racking than as though we continued to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were emptied, one on the side of the Diamond X forces. Nort and Dick heard bullets whistling in the air over their heads, and though they may have ducked, instinctively, they did not after the first two or three of these nerve-racking experiences. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... fact is," said he, "this war is a nerve-racking business. I never dreamed I was so jumpy until I came home. I hate being by myself. I've kept my poor devoted mother up till one o'clock in the morning. To-night she struck, small blame to her; but, after five minutes on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... after Gorham left the house. The girl watched the older woman, waiting for her to speak. The anxious lines were still in Eleanor's face; her pallor remained, and Alice wondered that she gave no evidence of relief from the nerve-racking strain which she had endured, in the face of so hopeful a turn in the whole situation. Still more, to the girl's surprise, Eleanor rose abruptly from beside her, and walked irresolutely to ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... Keith was waiting for spring and the new doctor; and that the waiting was proving to be a little nerve-racking was proved by the infrequency of his letters home, and the shortness and uncommunicativeness of such ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... nerve-racking, bizarre effort to come at a basis of judgment; go away, and just tell Laurence that he could not advise him? And then—what? Something must be done. He knocked again. Still no answer. And with that impatience of being thwarted, natural to him, and fostered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lieutenant Danvers, who had come up behind them. "Now, you young men begin to have something like an idea of what an engine of war you are handling, because this craft would be much more deadly, and vastly more nerve-racking to an enemy, because she would approach under water, and those on the battleship would have little or no means of gauging their peril. Incidentally, Mr. Benson, I must congratulate you upon the neatness of ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... had slept better than she had done for the past ten nights. Both youth and weariness will assert themselves in the end against the tyranny of nerve-racking stress. She had slept but she woke up with her eyes full of tears. There were no traces of them when she met him in the shabby little parlour downstairs. She had swallowed them up. She was not going to let him see. She felt bound in honour to accept ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... to-day, even much better than ten years ago, how many serious disturbances result from the suppression of normal sexual life. The past has shown, moreover, that when society succeeded in spreading alarm and in decreasing prostitution by fear, the result was such a rapid increase of perversion and nerve-racking self-abuse that after a short while the normal ways were again ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... so acute, cudgeled his mind for some devise by which he might overcame the other. It was hopeless. At last, just as he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door. Warren's face brightened with hope. With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised: it was a torturing ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... They are one of the most pugnacious and courageous of birds attacking and driving away any feathered creature to which they take a dislike, regardless of size. Before and during the nesting season, their sharp, nerve-racking clatter is kept up all day long, and with redoubled vigor when anyone approaches their nesting site. They nest in any kind of a tree, in fields or open woods, and at any height from the ground, being found on fence rails within two feet of the ground or in the tops of pines 70 or 80 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... as a comforter, Charlie had hobbled to his corner, where his Christmas tree still stood, and, with that blessed forgetfulness of sorrow which childhood alone knows, had dragged forth his violin and begun a dismal screeching and scraping, a nerve-racking obligato to his ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... that she would soon celebrate the second anniversary of her wedding. She was so taken up with one fashionable function after another that she had no time to think. Sometimes in the midst of her social activities, she stopped to ask herself if she was really happy, if this nerve-racking existence of idleness and pleasure—with its bridge parties, its dinners, its opera and theatre-going—was the kind of life she had dreamed of in her girlhood days. Sometimes she felt a longing, a yearning for a more useful ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... men, fathers of families, whose homes might radiate kindliness and sympathy and set an example of wise, generous and broad-minded living, who, already rich beyond their needs, rush downtown before their children have gone to school, pass hectic, nerve-racking days in the amassing of more money, and return after their little ones have gone to bed, too utterly exhausted to take the slightest interest in what their wives have been doing or in the pleasure and welfare ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... duty," said he, "to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters' numerous and nerve-racking families." ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... left empty for the incoming convoys. Over two thousand have passed through since Sunday week. The contrast between the shady garden where I'm lazing now on rugs and cushions, with innumerable birds, including a nightingale, singing and nesting, and the nerve-racking sound of the guns and the look of the place inside, is overwhelming. It is in three Divisions—the house for the worst cases—and there are tent Sections and the straw-sheds and two schools in the village. We had our lunch at a sort of inn in the village. I've ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... sharply on the wood; waited for some reply, and then called out. Not a sound reached them from within. The situation was strange, nerve-racking, and she shrank back as though frightened before the black silence confronting her. West, his teeth clinched, stepped in through the open door, determined to learn the secret of that mysterious interior. ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... village on the way to Provincetown met and passed the long line returning Bostonward. The sound of motor horns echoed along the lane leading to Gould's Bluffs. Galusha found it distinctly safer and less nerve-racking to walk on the grass bordering that lane than in the lane itself, as had hitherto been his custom. The harassed Zacheus led more visitors than ever up and down the lighthouse stairs, expressing his opinion of those visitors, after their departure, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... vessel stood off the harbor of Nombre de Dios and stealthily approached unseen. It was planned to make the landing in the morning. A long and nerve-racking wait ensued. As the hours dragged on, Drake felt instinctively that his younger men were getting demoralized. They began to whisper about the size of the town—'as big as Plymouth'—with perhaps a whole battalion of the famous Spanish infantry, and so on. It ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... A generous though nerve-racking crash of thunder changed the current of conversation. It drifted from the weather immediately, however, to a one-sided discussion of the escaped ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... heads, others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... a month's delay. If they are men, they exult in the thought that they can be reached by wireless telegraphy on mid-ocean. We are apt to think of these men and women as painful products of our own time and of our own land; but they have probably existed since the building of the Tower of Babel,—a nerve-racking piece of work which gave peculiar scope to ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... terrible, nerve-racking silence. Colonel Chester had entered. He stood just within the door, pale and stern, whispering to the officer in charge of the men. People stared at him, at each other, at the bridegroom still standing motionless by the chancel steps. And then at last the silence broke into a murmur ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... else the obedience that he gave willingly to the Sheik. There were some very stormy times, and I never admired my father in anything so much as his handling of that young savage. His escapades were nerve-racking and his beaux yeux led him into endless scrapes. The only threat that reduced him to order was that of sending him home to the Sheik in disgrace. He would promise amendment and take himself off to the Bois to work off his superfluous energy on my father's horses—until ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... but he ignored the discomfort, and pressed on, the snow swirling past his ankles in a miniature storm. Twice or thrice he lifted his bent head and measured the distance between him and the quarry ahead. It was, he thought nearer, and cheered, he bent his body again to the nerve-racking toil. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... effort to guide the seam through the presser-foot. And piled between the opposing phalanxes of set faces were billows upon billows of foamy white muslin and lace—the finished garments wrought by the so-many dozen per hour, for the so-many cents per day,—and wrought, too, in this terrific, nerve-racking noise. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... with their great opportunities for the creation and accumulation of wealth, the "lust of power" is shown by the nerve-racking efforts to obtain wealth by the most reckless methods. The emotion drives us to spend extravagantly and conspicuously, that we may inspire the envy of our neighbors ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... which buttress the Coupee were considerably higher and bulkier than they are now, and along their rugged flanks the adventurous or sorely-pressed might find precarious footing. But it was a nerve-racking experience even in the day-time when the eye could guide the foot. Now, in the ebon-black night, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... whatever it was, were by far the most nerve-racking which I had as yet experienced. La ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... that had to leave the little buckskin and take that nerve-racking trip back to the Lazy A. Lite attended to that with perfect calm and a good deal of inner elation. So ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... spending a certain length of time at the front, are given a vacation and sent home. I could not ascertain the exact length of their stay in the trenches although it seems to be about a month. The artillery stay continuously on the battle-line as their work is less arduous and nerve-racking, since they are always somewhat toward the rear and usually well housed. Moreover, they fire only occasionally and have long periods of inactivity. The cavalry spends one week in action and then one week in the rear, some ten or fifteen miles ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... led Eleanor to hurry off after dinner, and again at the end of the play, bound to escape nerve-racking questions and congratulations. Later, when Betty knocked on her door, her first impulse was to let her in and ask her advice. But a second thought suggested that it was safer to confide in nobody. The next morning she was glad of the second ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... for getting out, each of which appears as though it would work, but in the end does not, usually in a quite entertaining way. Eventually they do think of a way, which I will not divulge here, and they get out, but it had been a long nerve-racking ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the outdoor girls be it said that even in this nerve-racking emergency they did not altogether lose heart and courage. Of course there was that first instinctive fear, and something like a gasping for breath, as when one plunges into cold water. But the reaction came, and the girls were themselves ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... the door; the latter was joined by their mother, and they went out to the clatter of hoofs, the thin jingle of harness chains, where the barouche waited for them in the street. Once Camilla obtruded into the room. "I wonder you don't give yourself a headache," she remarked; "I never heard more nerve-racking sounds." ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sound as Mr. Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... this phantom silence more nerve-racking than any clamor, I stepped outside the door—and my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to remain ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... time the Rector had recovered his composure after that nerve-racking day and that terrible landing through the surf, and after he had stopped nursing the bruises received from a fall as the vessel struck, the last wagon was driving off; and the long-shoremen had ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the Evil One in the operas of Gounod and Boito. In both these instances a scratch of the pen sufficed, and the deliberations which preceded the agreement were conducted in a decorous and businesslike manner. But to invoke Samiel and obtain his gifts was a body, mind, and nerve-racking business. In some particulars the details differed a little from those testified to by the Bohemian clerk. In the first place, the Devil's customer had to repair to a crossroads of a Friday between midnight and one ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and sinister opening the war seemed almost belittled by its tame conclusion. Years of nerve-racking experiences, the hardships, and the immutable association which towns like Ypres, Arras and Albert, and the trench-dwellings of Flanders and the Somme possessed, had indisposed the mind to receive new impressions from the last battle of the war. Patient from a hundred ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... childbearing and preparation of a multitude of things now made in factories, probably wasted an undue amount of nervous energy; but it is doubtful whether the modern woman, with her numerous outside activities and nerve-racking social requirements has any advantage in this phase of the matter. The colonial wife was indeed a power in the affairs of home, and thus indirectly exerted a genuine influence over her husband. And not only the mother but the father was vitally ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... by the plucky men who are watching our coast. This little book may help considerably to enlighten the general public on the work of the branches of the Navy, and prove that the men engaged in this tedious, hazardous, and nerve-racking vigil are going about it with the same old valour befitting the traditions of the Royal Navy. They have fought the savage beasts like true sportsmen. They have rescued enemy sailors, clothed and fed them, without a sign of animus, knowing that victory will crown their efforts to ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... reporter's work is generally the most nerve-racking of his journalistic experience. Unacquainted with his associates, ignorant of his duties, embarrassed because of his ignorance, he wastes more time in useless effort, dissipates more energy in worry, and grows more ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... bravely on such occasions: "What can be done to make servants better? They are getting worse every day." And the housewife (one might almost call her by Samuel Pepys's pleasing phrase, "the poor wretch") then pours out to any sympathetic ear endless recitals of aggravating, worrying, nerve-racking experiences. Instead of putting an end to such a regrettable state of affairs that would never be tolerated by any business employer, she seems content to bewail her fate and clings still ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... the sky-line cut the dark crest of the island as the freighter steamed valiantly ahead. She had a manner all her own of progressing by a series of headlong lunges, followed by a nerve-racking pause before she found her equilibrium again. But she managed to wallow forward at a good gait, and the island grew clearer momently. Sheer and formidable from the sea rose a line of black cliffs, and above them a single peak threw its shadow far across the water. Faintly we ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... them, the landseekers were all a little awed at that moment. Even I, seeing the endless sweep of that sea of golden grass, forgot for the moment the dry crackling sound of it under wheel and foot, and the awful monotony of its endlessness which could be so nerve-racking. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... local Forest Ranger post. After a nerve-racking wait, with the group expecting a charge from the beast at any minute, two rangers appeared and captured the bear with a net. One man of the government work crew knocked together a stout wooden cage. The beast, outraged, was loaded aboard the heliplane to ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... grave-stones which mark the spots where noble enterprises perished for lack of physical vigor to embody them in deeds." Thus wrote the educator, Horace Mann. And his words apply with special force to the worker in the arts. One should bear in mind that the latter is in a peculiar dilemma. His nerve-racking, confining, exhausting work always tends to enfeeble and derange his body. But the claims of the work are so exacting that it is no use for him to spare intensity. Unless he is doing his utmost ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... they hacked, and still the jets shot from him. It was horrible—horrible! They dragged him kicking to the door. The woman looked over her shoulder at him and her mouth gaped. I heard nothing, but I knew that she was screaming. And then, whether it was this nerve-racking vision before me, or whether, my task finished, all the overwork of the past weeks came in one crushing weight upon me, the room danced round me, the floor seemed to sink away beneath my feet, and I remembered ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the mouth of the creek. Freckles idly wondered whether the nerve-racking rasps they occasionally emitted indicated domestic felicity or a raging quarrel. He could not decide. A sheitpoke, with flaring crest, went stalking across a bare space close to the creek's mouth. A stately brown bittern waded into the clear-flowing water, lifting his feet high at every ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... were both glad to leave Colfax. Apart from a nerve-racking night, the mere proximity of the railroad with its accompanying associations served constantly to bring to mind all that I had fled to the mountains to escape. Yet I cannot bring myself to agree with those who profess to brand a railroad "a blot on ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... their hips. Nels's piercing yell seemed to divide Monty's roar of rage. Then they ceased, and echoes clapped from the crags. The silence of those three men crouching like tigers about to leap was more menacing than the nerve-racking yells. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... nerve-racking work. You knew you were on the level. In spite of the General Staff you believed you had a right to be where you were. You knew you had no wish to pry into military secrets; you knew that toward the allied armies you felt only admiration—that you wanted ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... day in the trenches. We have not had an attack yet, though there has been hard fighting on our immediate right and left. We are fairly safe here behind barbed wire entanglements, and this would be an easy job if one could get used to the row and the watching through the night, which is rather nerve-racking. This trench is in a bonnie fir wood, just like bonnie Scotland, but the shell fire has damaged nearly all the trees. Today, being windy, they are falling in all directions. We have not had a hot meal since we came here. We are not allowed to build fires, and it is impossible to get ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... swirling, swaying dust-cloud, and out of it continued to come those nerve-racking shouts, yells and shrill screams, accompanied by a fusillade ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope |
