"Ordeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... therefore be said that the Serbs know how to treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought like lions, and they suffered as none others suffered in Europe's terrible ordeal. A Serbian spark at Sarajevo fired the arsenal of European militarism, and a common ungenerous thought sometimes blames the spark instead of blaming the recklessness of those who allowed Europe to be enkindled. And there used to be some ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... During this sickening ordeal, not a muscle of the old man's face quivered; not a groan escaped from his firmly set lips. To judge from his appearance, it might have been a stick that he was burning. When at length he drew back the crisp burnt finger of his now blistered ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... of all came John Howland, that "lusty yonge man" who on the voyage had been washed overboard and carried fathoms deep beneath the sea, yet by his courage and endurance survived the ordeal, and lived to found one of the chiefest Plymouth families. By the hand he led Elizabeth Tilley, a sweet slip of a girl, with true and loving eyes ever and anon glancing proudly at the stalwart form of the only man she ever loved, and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the hurried and condensed manner in which the sketch of 1842 is written; the style of the later Essay (1844) is more finished. It has, however, the air of an uncorrected MS. rather than of a book which has gone through the ordeal of proof sheets. It has not all the force and conciseness of the Origin, but it has a certain freshness which gives it a character of its own. It must be remembered that the Origin was an abstract or condensation of a much bigger book, whereas ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... honour and ordeal by flame. You promised true. In joy we trembled lest We should be found unworthy when it came; But—oh—we never guessed The fury ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... adoption of the constitution, much had been done toward mitigating the severity of the common law, particularly in the administration of its criminal branch. The number of capital crimes, in this country at least, had been largely decreased. Trial by ordeal and by battle had never existed here, and had fallen into disuse in England. The earlier practice of the common law, which denied the benefit of witnesses to a person accused of felony, had been abolished by statute, though, so far as it deprived ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... been beforehand with him. The spirit of contradiction and the affectation of superiority, however, led him to reproach his rival with pusillanimity, and he went so far that at length he found himself committed to undergo the ordeal: merely stipulating that, in consideration of his being a foreigner, he should be permitted to elevate ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... when it was ended, so eager to get away from the place and have the dread ordeal over, that she scarcely heard a word the clergyman uttered while congratulating her. She was dimly conscious of the clasp of his hand and the sound of his voice, but did not even notice the hated name by ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was brightened by going to the school to see full justice done to Norman, and enjoying the scene for him. It was indeed a painful ordeal to Norman himself, who could, at the moment, scarcely feel pleasure in his restoration, excepting for the sake of his father, Harry, and his sisters. To find the head-master making apologies to him was positively painful and embarrassing, and his countenance would have been ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... War brings out fundamental virtues in the individual; it also destroys the weaker and the meaner race and leaves the strong and the virtuous. Struggle, they say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged that war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just arbiter of fate. The saving of the world through bloodshed, the uniting of the world through war, war as the great teacher of mankind, war as the creator of great personalities—all ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... king, and taken his first dip into the cynical waters of Ottawa, where he was but one of a Ministerial group some of whom were abler and more interesting than himself. He had not yet appeared in Parliament. He dreaded the ordeal. He had no knowledge of just to what programme he would be expected to adhere, except the general one of winning the war. He had little enthusiasm for the Premier, probably less for most of his colleagues. So far as he had been ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... these two points. The possessor of a rotund countenance experiences considerable difficulty in performing this feat, and is apt to spill the contents over himself, yet every one of the emperor's guests has to submit to the ordeal, for an inscription on the goblet says that all persons attending shooting-parties at Rominten for the first time must empty the vessel of its contents,—a pint bottle of champagne,—at one draught, to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... and as she gathered her wraps together she found that she was bracing herself as for an ordeal of some sort. The big car stopped, a little way out of town, in front of a long driveway bordered with maple-trees; she and the young man descended from one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into the midst of loud ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the terrible ordeal he knew was before him. Both the other lads also shut their lips firmly, so that they might endure the gruesome sights without feeling faint; for they were not accustomed to such things, and ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... although to stand in a tub under a thin drip of hot water in front of a broken window through which a cold gust of wind came and whistled round our shoulders, was no pleasure. But the ordeal was quickly over and before eleven o'clock in the morning most of us were free to do as we pleased. The greater part of the day was still before us and the morrow was ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... with the fact that opposition has confronted every onward movement of the Republic from its opening hour until now, but without success. The Republic has marched on and on, and its step has exalted freedom and humanity. We are undergoing the same ordeal as did our predecessors nearly a century ago. We are following the course they blazed. They triumphed. Will their successors falter and plead organic impotency in the nation? Surely after 125 years ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... had been pleading with the great Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel's message. Now He wants to speak again in a way that will compel attention. He needs these three young men. They consent to be His messengers. It meant going through a terrible ordeal. They simply remained true in their personal devotion to God. This was the thing God needed, and used. Everything of use to God roots down in the life. The personal plea of the great king, and the prospect ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... times almost impossible—for her to do her duty as she saw and understood it. This new complication was scarcely less difficult, but once having attained the fine, moral rigour that had carried her through her former ordeal, it became easy now to do right under all or any circumstances, however adverse. If she had failed then, she certainly would have failed now. That she had succeeded then made it all the easier to succeed now. Dimly Lloyd commenced to understand ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... endeavouring to recall Greek and Latin lines or some other fragment of his studies. At about six he dozed fitfully for an hour, and then came the knock at the door which summoned him from his bed to the first day of his ordeal. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... language reeled and cracked under the strain of giving form to her admiration; but it was so honest and well meant that it could not but give pleasure even in the midst of bewilderment. My father bowed his head with a painful smile; but I dare say it did him good when the ordeal was over. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... abusing the authority of the Church through excess of zeal or more corrupt motives. It invited bishops to set up free schools to teach poor scholars grammar and theology. It forbade trial by battle and trial by ordeal. It subjected the existing monastic orders to stricter superintendence, and forbade the establishment of new monastic rules. It forbade superstitious practices and the worship of spurious or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... been shattered like an egg shell; but when, later on, we came to dismember her, we were still more amazed to find how little damage, comparatively speaking, she had sustained while passing through that fearful ordeal on the reef, and what extraordinary exertions were needed to wrench her several parts asunder. But a detailed description of the varied schemes to which we were obliged to resort in order to effect our purpose would be ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... will give a mighty impetus to events, and many great changes will be wrought in the condition of the Southern people, and in their feelings toward the Union, against which too many of them are still breathing hate and vengeance. They have scarcely yet been sufficiently chastened even by the fiery ordeal through which they have been compelled to pass. Every day, however, increases the bitterness of the scourge under which they suffer, and if it does not avail to humble them, it tends at least to convince them, in their hearts, of the terrible mistake into which they have been led. We ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Sacred Host, and turning to the king, offered him the remaining half, bidding him to follow his example, if he held himself to be guiltless. Henry refused the ordeal, doubtless because he did not dare to risk the penalty, and was glad enough to escape from the presence of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... an ordeal. Many were quite upset after a siege in the studio. One man annoyed the artist by ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... their loves: she knew, and he felt, that he was going in the road of nobleness and honour; and the fiery ordeal which he had to struggle through, raised that hearty earthly lover more nearly to a level with his heavenly-minded mistress. Through misfortune and mistrust, and evil rumours all around, in spite of opposition from false friends, and the scorn of slanderous foes, he stood by her ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is absolutely necessary, I think she would better be excused," Hinman answered. "She is still very nervous. The ordeal might ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... 1826 Mrs. Howitt was preparing for the press a new volume of poems by herself and her husband, The Desolation of Eyam, and in a letter to her sister, now transformed into Mrs. Daniel Wilson, she describes her sensations while awaiting the ordeal of critical judgment, and expresses her not very flattering opinion ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... easy nonchalance, and roughly pulling up the coarse trousers (made with buttoned flaps at the sides, like Mexican calzoneros, in order to give free play to the ankle fetters), so that he might assure himself that no tricks had been played since his last visit. As each man passed this ordeal he saluted, and clanked, with wide-spread legs, to the place in the double line. Mr. Meekin, though not a patron of field sports, found something in the scene that reminded him of a blacksmith picking up horses' feet to examine the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... hard to imagine him, when the Etna, with her crew seduced or drugged to man her, should be clear of soundings and the business of the voyage put in shape, when every watch on deck would be a quaking ordeal of fear and pain, and every watch below an interval for ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... influenced the course of the Executive. The treaty which had thus been negotiated had failed to receive the ratification of the Senate. One of the chief objections which was urged against it was found to consist in the fact that the question of annexation had not been submitted to the ordeal of public opinion in the United States. However untenable such an objection was esteemed to be, in view of the unquestionable power of the Executive to negotiate the treaty and the great and lasting interests involved in the question, I felt it to be my duty to submit the whole subject to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... ordeal at Williamsburg, the young man must have ridden back to Hanover with some natural elation over his success, but that elation not a little tempered by serious reflection upon his own deficiencies as a lawyer, and by an honest purpose to correct ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... extraordinary feats of agility; his powers were described to Feversham, who promised him his life if he would submit to be stripped, have one end of a rope fastened round his neck, and the other round that of a wild young colt, and would race the colt as long as it could run. He agreed to the ordeal; the brutal Generals and no less brutal soldiers collected round the young man to prepare him for the race, close to the Bussex Rhine in Weston. Away they started at a furious rate till the horse fell exhausted by the side of his ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... not ask you to go through such an ordeal, my dearest. I know that we could have all these grand things, and for that reason, if for no better one, I'm perfectly willing to go without them. No, Alice, we will be married here in this room. We ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... young candidate for military honors had was only such as he had obtained at the district school, and the examination for admission was considered a very trying ordeal, though it included only the branches taught in the common schools. He "brushed up" his studies, and as he was always cool and self-possessed, he did not fail from embarrassment, as many do on such occasions, but was passed and admitted. Of the class ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... combine for gayety," Dave replied. "Just now, of course, with all the men thinking of war, and so many women wearing black for dear ones they've lost at the front, the city can't show much of its former gayety. Paris is going through her ordeal of fire. These are dark days for good ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... limp, unconscious form into the parlor, and after some efforts managed to bring her out of the faint, and when she had fully recovered so as to withstand the ordeal, she slowly repeated to me the story of her summer's experience, how Foreman McDonald, unable to be without his Helen, had wasted to a shadow of his former self; and in August had died of a broken heart, and how only the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... clothes, and about four o'clock presented himself at Mrs Yule's house. By ill luck there happened to be at least half a dozen callers in the drawing-room; the strappado would have been preferable, in his eyes, to such an ordeal as this. Moreover, he was convinced that both Amy and her mother received him with far less cordiality than on the last occasion. He had expected it, but he bit his lips till the blood came. What business had he among ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... under fire has already been mentioned, and the same correspondent, in describing the defensive operations at Kalafat, says: 'I was struck with the admirable conduct at this time of the Roumanian gunners, who never flinched in the slightest degree under the trying ordeal.'[181] After their defeats before Plevna and elsewhere, the Russians, too, began to estimate their allies at ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... my son to say nothing about it?" added the banker with a twinkle in his eyes, not wholly lost on the boy who was standing so rigidly before him, steeling himself to the most trying ordeal he ever ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... to undergo one more test of endurance before he could call himself a warrior, which he must be able to do ere he could assume the duties of Bow-bearer. He must pass through the ordeal of the Cassine, or black drink. This was a concoction prepared by the medicine-men, of roots and leaves, from a recipe the secret of which was most jealously guarded by them; and to drink of it was to subject one's self to the most agonizing pains, which, however, were but ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... his sitting-room, among which he recognized the high note of Miss Verepoint, reminded him of the ordeal before him. He entered with what he hoped was a careless ease of manner, but his heart was beating fast. Since the opening of rehearsals he had acquired a wholesome respect for Miss Verepoint's tongue. She was sitting in his favorite chair. There were also present ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him say, "All right!" The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed it would have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... way associate with the carcass, went Harold, shuddering in so grim companionship, and in the awakened fears of his own approaching. ordeal, beyond which it loomed already, the gossamer fabric of a scaffold. He tried to talk for his own exoneration, saying he had ridden, as was his wont, beyond the East Branch, and returning, found Booth wounded, who ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... them at full speed, and reached them in time to save them from the clutches of the Indians, whose camps were near at hand. They were kindly treated, recovered from the effects of their frightful ordeal, and were afterwards exchanged. Pringle lived to old age, and died in 1800, senior ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... contact, they sparred and quarrelled still. He was a man of high and rather stern ideals, which had perhaps been intensified—made a little grimmer and fiercer than before—by the strain of the war; and the selfish frivolity of certain persons and classes in face of the national ordeal was not the least atoned for in his eyes by the heroism of others. The endless dress advertisements in the daily papers affected him as they might have affected the prophet Ezekiel, had the daughters of Judah added the purchase ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... took on the dignity of a regular train and sped out of the network of tracks behind Colon. As it gained speed Mrs. Cortlandt, to divert her guest's mind from his recent ordeal, began to explain the points of interest as they passed. She showed him the old French workings where a nation's hopes lay buried, the mechanical ruins that had cost a king's ransom, the Mount Hope Cemetery, whither daily trains had borne ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... ordeal a second time. This time there was no bucking, and shortly afterwards the lads started for their companions bearing the trophy of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... possessor to investigate, instanter, things beyond the veil of matter, but they are only developed by a patient application and continuance in well doing extended over years, and few are they who have faith to start upon the path to attainment or perseverance to go through with the ordeal. Therefore the occultist's assertions are not ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... can have no honest or human pleasure in either of them except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit that living in a democratic country, a country where politics and aesthetics can no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a large part of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is a country where paintings have little but the Constitution of the United States wrought into them; where sculpture ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to the human mind; or when conversely any alteration in the state of knowledge on which the human mind forms its judgment, imparts to an old established religion an aspect of opposition which was before unperceived; the religion is subjected to the ordeal of an investigation. Science examines the doctrines taught by it, criticism the evidence on which they profess to rest, and the literature which is their expression. And if such an investigation fail to establish the harmony of the old and the new, the result takes two forms: either the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Union, where he made his first start in the speaking line (Feb. 1830) in a strong oration much admired by his friends, in favour,—of all the questionable things in the world,—of the Treason and Sedition Acts of 1795. He writes home that he did not find the ordeal so formidable as it used to be before the smaller audiences at Eton, for at Oxford they sometimes mustered as many as a hundred or a hundred and fifty. He spoke for a strongly-worded motion on a happier theme, in favour of the policy and memory of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... But a severe ordeal was in store for the nascent civilisation of Sierra Leone. On a Sunday morning in September 1794, eight French sail appeared off the coast. The town was about as defensible as Brighton; and it is not difficult to imagine the feelings which the sansculottes inspired among Evangelical ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... acquiescence possible. He asked me questions—whether I had noticed this thing or that about her, or remembered what she had said upon one point or another, and led up to compliments of her which I was glad to pay. In the long ordeal they had undergone they had at least kept all the freshness ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... finally "bogged" in a quagmire of absurdities. Not long ago, shortly after the publication of his book, the lawyer had occasion to cross-examine a modest-looking young woman as to the speed of an electric car. The witness seemed conscious that she was about to undergo a severe ordeal, and Mr. Wellman, feeling himself complete master of the situation, began in his most winsome ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his father slowly dissolve and disappear in death, without once yielding his will, without once relenting before the omnipotence of death. Like a Red Indian undergoing torture, Gerald would experience the whole process of slow death without wincing or flinching. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... that good health is the one great object. Suppress all ambition to be merely strong. Many brutes are stronger than many of the strongest men, and many strong men have gone to pieces where lighter but more enduring men have come through the ordeal fresh and unharmed. This I have often noted in war times, when soldiers were called on to make a forced march over trying roads and in ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... desired to test it with his accusers by walking through a field of living fire. He believed God would protect him from the flames, like the worthies of old. His enemies were unwilling to go with him into the fiery ordeal. He was condemned and executed. The martyr of Florence in after years became one ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... was over and she lay back in the dark again, she made no effort to deny admission to the thoughts that came crowding so thickly. She must think; she must, before the ordeal of the next breakfast table, have taken thought. She must have decided if not what she should do, at least what she could hope for. She was much clearer and saner for the little interlude ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... hall of the town, and attended by all the best people. The champion still wore the costume of the morning, in place of evening dress, save that long stockings and dancing-pumps had taken the place of riding-boots. Rena went through the ordeal very creditably. Her shyness was palpable, but it was saved from awkwardness by her native grace and good sense. She made up in modesty what she lacked in aplomb. Her months in school had not eradicated a certain self-consciousness born of her secret. The brain-cells never ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the accusation of the husband, the woman could clear herself by swearing her own innocence; if, however, the accusation was not brought by the husband himself, but by others, the woman could clear herself by submitting to the ordeal by water; that is to say, she would plunge into the Euphrates; if the river carried her away and she were drowned, it was regarded as proof that the accusation was well founded; if, on the contrary, she survived and got safely to the bank, she was considered innocent and was forthwith allowed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... analysts, the jealous clairvoyance of dissentient theorists, the oblique glances of suspicious sister-sciences, the random flashes that skepticism throws from her faithless mirror to dazzle all eyes that seek for truth; through such a varied and protracted ordeal must every record that embodies long and profound observation, large and lofty thought, reach the golden Imprimatur which is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... to unite Monsieur Goupille with Mademoiselle Adele de Courval. The ceremony was performed, and bride and bridegroom went through that trying ordeal with becoming gravity. Only the elegant Adele seemed more unaffectedly agitated than Mr. Love could well account for; she was very nervous in church, and more often turned her eyes to the door than to ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ordeal was over, and Ramage opened the door. She emerged with a white face and wide-open eyes upon a little, red-lit landing. She went past three keenly observant and ostentatiously preoccupied waiters down the thick-carpeted staircase and out of the Hotel Rococo, that remarkable laboratory ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... of reassurance? To Garry, miserably intent upon the ordeal ahead, the big Irishman, whistling softly in his chair, had sent a message through the dark to ease the tension. Already the daredevil light danced ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and the ordeal was too difficult for him. Now he had a greater scope for his abilities, and less ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... all is! And how the anxious pleading of the wooer resembles the vain waiting of the friend! But, alas, what in my case is but a disappointment of the heart, a tiresome obstacle to the evolution of an idea, is perhaps in his case a cruel and lasting ordeal! ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... narrative haunted me. Here was a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Her introduction to her husband's friends had been an ordeal for Bob Flippin's daughter. But she had gone through it simply, quietly, unaffectedly, with the Judge by her side standing sponsor for his son's wife in chivalrous and stately fashion, with Mrs. Beaufort at her elbow helping her over the initial small talk of her presentation. With Truxton ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... particular as the instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. The German soldier is taught—or was—that victory was inevitable, and would be as swift as it would be triumphant; the French soldier was taught that he had before him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, one that would be long, one in which he ran a fearful risk of defeat, and one in which he might, even if victorious, have to wear down his enemy by the exercise of a most ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... hope that he being, of course, furiously angry, had vented his rage upon them afterwards, as chance offered, but he said, no, that would not do at all. The ordeal was to test a boy's temper and to find whether he could stand fire without getting mad or at least without showing it. "You have passed your examination," he added, "and have been given your place among your companions, and ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... his admonitions, and professed myself willing to undergo any ordeal which reason should prescribe. What, I asked, were the conditions, on the fulfilment of which depended my advancement to the station he alluded to? Was it necessary to conceal from me the nature and obligations of ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... escaped through the awful ordeal of war with only one bad wound, while many of his friends and comrades—the best and bravest, the most happily young, had fallen round him—but he had come back to find himself transformed from a penniless adventurer into a very rich man. An old Brisbane millionaire, into whose office he ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... governed by a clan council, consisting of chiefs (tecuhtli) elected by the clan, and inducted into office after a cruel religious ordeal, in which the candidate was bruised, tortured, and half starved. An executive department was more clearly differentiated from the council than among the Indians of the lower status. The clan (calpulli) had an official head, or sachem, called the calpullec; ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Venice in that moment when his name appeared on the first folded paper drawn from the fateful urn; with what dignity he concealed his baffled hope and watched, from under frowning eyebrows, a Morosini and a Ziani pass, in turn, through the fierce ordeal of relegation to obscurity—the annals of that secret ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the presence of several of the foremost surgeons of the city and of a body of medical students. The patient slept quietly while the surgeon's knife was plied, and awoke to astonished comprehension that the ordeal was over. The impossible, the miraculous, had ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hundred and fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand what was the meaning of this night excursion—this candle, this tool-house, this bag of soot. I think we little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came, then, and showed our little hands to the master; washed them or not—most probably, I should say, not—and so went bewildered back ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Shin-Kukedo-San.. From the high vault at this point it is believed that a great stone will detach itself and fall upon any evil-hearted person who should attempt to enter the cave. I safely pass through the ordeal! ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and face brought back to the Indian lad with a rush the memory of the recent ordeal he had been through. He gave one glance at the unconscious form on the other couch and his hand darted to the hunting-knife at his hip as he staggered, dizzily, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... safely, if not triumphantly, from this ordeal amid much laughter, and was just congratulating himself upon his skillful handling of "the trade" in a period of acute shortage when he received a knockout blow. In depositing the trifling price of the peppermint sticks in his trousers pocket, he discovered there ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... smiling upon her in great contentment. "I rather admired that girl myself! But believe me, Quita, it's all real enough to satisfy us both. 'There's no discharge in that war.' And you don't get a human man to go through the ordeal of that service except under severe stress of circumstance! If I couldn't recapture you any other way, I'd do it . . ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... his homecoming was an ordeal for Paul. He was still feeble, and dead tired from travelling, to begin with—and to have to listen and reply to the endless banalities of his mother's guests was almost more ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... dear?" said Mrs. Orgreave to Hilda. "You aren't wet?" She drew Hilda towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her. The embrace was to convey the mother's sympathy with Hilda in the ordeal of the visit to Turnhill, and her satisfaction that the ordeal was now over. The ageing lady seemed to kiss her on behalf of the entire friendly family; all the others, appreciating the delicacy of the situation, refrained from ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... it isn't enough that my thesis should be finished. I can't get my degree without a last, terrible ordeal. Oh, Kate, you can't imagine what it is like! Girls who have been through it have told me. You are asked into a room where the most important members of the faculty are gathered. They sit about you in a semicircle ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and allow him a place in their esteem and veneration at least as high as we accord to John the Baptist. But this British bulldog contempt is founded on a complete misconception of his reasons for submitting voluntarily to an ordeal of torment and death. The modern Secularist is often so determined to regard Jesus as a man like himself and nothing more, that he slips unconsciously into the error of assuming that Jesus shared that view. But it is quite clear from the New Testament ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Fatakah there. I believe that I shall be healed, and have vowed to give a great feast if I return to Algiers, in celebration of the miracle. Had it not been for my cousin's wish that I should go with thee, I should not have felt that the hour had come when I might face the ordeal of such a journey to the far south. But the prayer of Si Maieddine, who, after his father, is the last man left of his line, has kindled in my veins a fire which I thought had burnt out forever. Have no fear, daughter. I shall be ready ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sounded an alarm of fire and she was blindly fumbling her way through smoke. In a vague way she was conscious that she was facing one of the big moments of her life, and she wondered why, when she needed to centre all her thoughts on the ordeal that confronted her, they should slip backward to a trivial thing that had happened years ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... thing upon the credit of others; much less was it consistent with sound sense to agree with their guides, who, either deceivers or deceived, forbade others to submit it to the scrutiny of reason; who were themselves frequently in an utter incapacity to pass it under such an ordeal. Thus some thinkers, disgusted with the obscure and contradictory notions which others had through habit mechanically attached to this incomprehensible property, had the temerity to shake off the yoke ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... be a perplexing ordeal. Bilkins had packed in a lot of stuff that he might have manipulated, though to me it was worse than Greek. Of course, I could cook up coffee and bacon—the kind of meal Smilax and I were used to—but ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... assize for the repression of crime we find the origin of trial by jury, so often attributed to earlier times. Twelve lawful men of each hundred, with four from each township, were sworn to present those who were known or reputed as criminals within their district for trial by ordeal. The jurors were thus not merely witnesses, but sworn to act as judges also in determining the value of the charge, and it is this double character of Henry's jurors that has descended to our "grand jury," who still remain charged with the duty of ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... been her impulse to rush to her home, to her husband, as for refuge. Now she perceived that there was no refuge for her, no comfort in her despair, but rather another ordeal to be faced. She would have to tell her husband the truth, so far as she knew it. Good God! Why could she not shake off from her soul the degradation, the burning shame of this fair flesh of hers, and return ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... would tremble, she would have tried to escape, she would hesitate in her story, she would contradict herself, break down, attempt to shed false tears, act as only a woman who has committed a first great crime could act. And this child stands here, submitted to this fearful ordeal, defended by none, but defending herself with the whole innocence of her nature, the glory of truth in her eyes, the self-conscious courage of a stainless life in her heart. Is this assumed? Is this put on? You have seen murderers—it ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the hall, the family were waiting for him; Mrs. Sandal and her daughters standing together in a little group, the squire walking leisurely about with his hands crossed behind his back. It would have been to some men a rather trying ordeal to descend the long flight of stairs, with three pairs of ladies' eyes watching him; but Julius knew that he had a striking personal appearance, and that every appointment of his toilet was faultless. ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... tailors, as if comparing them with certain revolutionary visages in his mind. Terrible was the keen, detective glance of his eye, and it went straight through the poor Maltese, who vanished with great rapidity when they were declared free to enter the city. At last, they all passed the ordeal, but Caesar and I remained, looking in at the door. "There are still these two Frenchmen," said the captain. "I am no Frenchman," I protested; "I am an American." "And I," said Caesar, "am an Austrian subject." Thereupon we received a polite invitation ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... as these made a picturesque setting for the Indian maid on the night of her debut. It might have been a painful ordeal for her had she known that all these people were there mainly to satisfy their curiosity concerning her. But Mrs. Coolidge had carefully kept from her the knowledge that she was of especial interest ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... words, and then said, 'O king, thou hast completely subjugated the five organs of action and the five organs of knowledge with the mind as their sixth. Thou hast for this come out unscathed from the fiery ordeal I had prepared for thee. I have been properly honoured and adored, O son, by thee, O foremost of all persons possessed of speech. Thou hast no sin, not even a minute one, in thee! Give me leave, O king, for I shall now proceed to the place I came from. I have been exceedingly pleased with thee, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Lizzie Trotter's going through that again," exclaimed Susan, momentarily forgetting her own prospective ordeal, in sympathy for the other woman's severer trial. "I don't want to accuse Divine Providence, but I must say it hardly seems fair to put all the responsibility for getting the children into the world off on women. If 'twas turn and turn about, now, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... at the breakfast table discussed the matter of the horse-thief pretty thoroughly. It was a hard ordeal for poor Ann, who could not take easily to deception. She had unexpected trouble too with Nabby. Nabby had waked up the ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the wedding march, but with nothing joyous in their demeanor—in fact they appeared like two wooden images at the reception and endured for over an hour the stares and loud criticism of the guests. He assumed during the ordeal a look of bored indifference while the little bride sat with her head bowed on her breast, apparently terror stricken. But once she raised her face and I saw a merry twinkle in her shining black eyes that made me realize ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... take her arm as her feet touched the unprotected path, but the girl, though unnerved by the ordeal, shook off his big claw, and with her hands clasping mine I led her across the short but dangerous ledge of rock that led to the opening in the wall. I felt strong enough to fight a dozen devils like Leith at that moment. The trusting manner in which the dear girl had given her ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... vessels, and but one crew. Volunteers were called for from the army, men who had had experience in any capacity in navigating the western rivers. Captains, pilots, mates, engineers and deck-hands enough presented themselves to take five times the number of vessels we were moving through this dangerous ordeal. Most of them were from Logan's division, composed generally of men from the southern part of Illinois and from Missouri. All but two of the steamers were commanded by volunteers from the army, and all but one so manned. In this instance, as in all others during the war, I found ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... need that prescience should try, By ordeal pitiless, assured event, Disclosed beforehand to prophetic eye? Need was there, by austere experiment, To test the frailty and the fall foreknown Of man, beneath o'erwhelming burthen bent? In this was tutelar prevision shown? Hardly may he, in such belief confide, Who sees ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... could not take up a newspaper without reading in it a fancied libel on himself. First he bought laudanum, and had gone out into the fields with the intention of swallowing it, when the love of life suggested another way of escaping the dreadful ordeal. He might sell all he had, fly to France, change his religion, and bury himself in a monastery. He went home to pack up; but while he was looking over his portmanteau, his mood changed, and he again resolved on self-destruction. Taking a coach he ordered the coachman to drive to the Tower Wharf, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Ye stand before the king as the representatives of wisdom. Ye profess to be able to bring to light hidden mysteries, and to make known the transactions of the future. The correctness of your professions is about to be tested. If it stands the ordeal, well; if not, ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... "The said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently."] On the popular superstition of touching the corpse of a murdered person, as an ordeal or test for the discovery of the innocence or guilt of suspected murderers, the reader cannot better be referred than to the very learned and elaborate essay in Pitcairne's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 182-189. Amongst the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... authorized. We might even have consigned the Southern States to a species of provisional and quasi nationality, with the claim and expectation of their ultimate return within the pale of the Union, when, through the severe ordeal of military despotism or anarchy at home, or from other causes, they should have purged themselves of that institution, adverse to all our policy, which has been the sole cause ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... she cried, and the blows fell heavily. "Up with thee, and away. Go quickly, and make ready the altar in the Grove of Mystery. Cease thy bleating, old witch, and summon thy shaky wits against the ordeal I shall put thee to. Some one among ye stirred up the rising which resulted as ye now see. That one I shall know before sundown, and he shall bitterly repent ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and left the room. The empress looked after her daughter as she went, and a sudden pang shot through her heart. She felt as though she could not let her go—she felt as if she must call her back, and pressing her to her heart, release her from the ordeal which tried her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the reader will comprehend that to have reached him in the form of a printed book, this brief narrative must have gone through some struggles—which indeed it has. And after all, its worst struggle and strongest ordeal is yet to come but it takes comfort—subdues fear—leans on the staff of a moderate expectation—and mutters under its breath, while lifting its eye to that of ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... waiting, my turn came. I was as stupefied, as benumbed, as if I had already passed through the ordeal. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... series of questions, which he put with a vigor and perseverance that I fear left me without a single fact of my life unrevealed, except those connected with the sacred sentiment that bound me to Anna, and which were far too hallowed to escape me even under the ordeal of a Stunin'tun inquisitor. In short, finding that I was nearly helpless in such hands, I made a merit of necessity, and yielded up my secrets as wood in a vice discharges its moisture. It was scarcely possible that a mind like mine, subjected to the action of such a pair of moral screws, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... amazed by the magnificence of the Emperor's court, when, accompanied by her husband, she walked the length of the great room to make obeisance before the throne. At first entrance she shrank timidly, closer to the side of Wilhelm, trembling at the ordeal of passing, simply costumed as she now felt herself to be, between two assemblages of haughty knights and high-born dames, resplendent in dress, with the proud bearing that pertained to their position ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... near his death, Father Hecker once said to the writer: "While I was kneeling among the novices, outside Pere Othmann's room, waiting to go to confession, I often begged of God that it might be His will that I should die before my turn came, so dreadful an ordeal had confession become on account of the severity of the novice-master." Yet, as recorded in the memoranda, the victim was eager for the sacrifice when the knife was not actually lifted over him. "I begged the novice-master," he said on another occasion, "to watch me carefully, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... answered tremulously, dreading the ordeal, dreading still more the thought of her appearance when she ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... that winter when he was the chief lion of Edinburgh society many records remain to show, both in his own letters and in the reports of those who met him. On the whole, his native good sense carried him well through the ordeal. If he showed for the most part due respect to others, he was still more bent on maintaining his respect for himself; indeed, this latter feeling was pushed even to an exaggerated independence. As Mr. Lockhart has expressed it, he showed, "in the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the laws, but they considered them as something which ought not to be altered. Thus when the emperor Otho was doubtful on a point of the law of inheritance, he caused the case to be decided by an ordeal or judgment of God. In Sicily, one city had Chalcidian, another Doric laws, although their populations, as well as their dialects, were greatly mixed; but the leaders of those colonies had been Chalcidians in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the cuts downwards and flays the testicles and the penis, ending with amputation of the foreskin. Meanwhile the spear must not tremble and in some clans the lad holds a dagger over the back of the stooping barber, crying, "Cut and fear not!" When the ordeal is over, he exclaims, "Allaho Akbar!" and attempts to walk towards the tents soon falling for pain and nervous exhaustion, but the more steps he takes the more applause he gains. He is dieted with camel's milk, the wound is treated with salt and turmeric, and the chances in his favour are ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the proprietor's wife to look out for you if you should require anything. Will you go in there and compose yourself before going upstairs? Or, if you would prefer waiting until morning, I shall not insist on the—er—ordeal to-night." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... bearings on the great work which emancipation involved—the preparation of these people for their new life. We regard the renewal of this observance as specially fitting now, because the colored people of the South are passing through a terrible ordeal, and need all the encouragement and help that is possible, to save them from utter discouragement. It is said that the work of this Association is among the agencies most helpful in their elevation. Last year a Concert ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 49, No. 02, February, 1895 • Various
... without a scene. This animal, which was a well-bred Australian, was a stranger to me, and had never carried a lady before that day. Nevertheless, she passed successfully through a terribly trying ordeal, and I am certain that she would not have made the great efforts she did in jumping, if I had not soothed and encouraged her with my voice. She was only 14-2 in height, and was competing against big horses, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... PHYSOSTIGMA VENENOSUM.—A strong leguminous plant, the seeds of which are highly poisonous, and are employed by the natives of Old Calabar as an ordeal. Persons suspected of witchcraft or other crimes are compelled to eat them until they vomit or die, the former being regarded as proof of innocence, and the latter of guilt. Recently the seeds have been found to act powerfully in ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... ordeal for all of them; for, like most young soldiers, they were enthusiastically anxious to go on active service, and there was, of course, some uncertainty as to ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... as soon as the ordeal was over. "It is no use for me to attempt to express my regret or my humiliation," said Muhlenberg, "I shall be ashamed of this as long ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... see-saw of hope and fear must be an awful ordeal, feeling as she does," Miss St. Quentin said presently. "And yet, even so, I am uncertain. I can't help ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... must be free from taint of yamen service, prostitution, the barber's trade and the theater, or the candidate would not have obtained his first degree. With the forms 300 cash (about 1s.) are presented to each candidate for food during the ordeal. The lists being thus prepared, on the sixth day of the eighth moon (Tuesday, the 8th of September, in 1891), the city takes a holiday to witness the ceremony of "entering the curtain," i.e., opening the examination ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various |
