"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... things that had once irritated him against her—her reserve, her fine perception, her excellent fastidiousness of taste, even that little air of coldness that became her so well. To come into her presence was like entering a fragrant English garden, after stifling for an hour in a conservatory where the air was heavy with the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... block of suffering in my breast, growing larger and larger, stifling me, strangling me. The physician that was called to treat me for the nervous crisis I was enduring, which recurred four or five times a day, injected morphine, which made me almost wild, and the great heat we have had aggravated my condition and threw me ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... trees. With the first dizzy swing from tree to tree all the old joy of living swept over him. Vain regrets and dull heartache were forgotten. Now was he living. Now, indeed, was the true happiness of perfect freedom his. Who would go back to the stifling, wicked cities of civilized man when the mighty reaches of the great jungle offered peace and ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... himself he was in a close, stifling room where candle-light from a distance threw weird shadows over the adobe walls. The witch-like voices of a woman and a girl in harsh, cackling laughter, half suppressed, were not far away, and some one, whose face was covered, was holding a glass to his lips. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... went to bed; but no sooner had the silence of night, like a stagnant pool, enveloped the house, than the engraver got up and climbed the wooden staircase, which creaked under his bare feet. The door of the garret stood ajar. From within came a breath of stifling hot air, mingled with the acrid smell of rotting fruit. On the broken-down bed of sacking lay the girl Tronche, fast asleep with ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... this foresight for offspring in a well-marked form. It is easy to understand that the species that first acquired and fixed an instinct propitious to the increase of the race has rapidly prospered, stifling beneath its extension those that are less favoured from this point of view, which is of capital importance in a struggle for a place beneath the sun. At the present day if the struggle of animal life offers few facts of lack of foresight for the rearing ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... incredible enthusiasm with which I was inspired by a far too ambitious scheme, I do so for the sake of the young, who will thus learn by my example to conquer their imagination. It is our most cruel foe. The student who has not succeeded in stifling it is lost for ever to erudition. I still tremble to think in what depths I was nearly plunged by my adventurous spirit. I was within an ace of what one calls history. What a downfall! I should have sunk into ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... their own prudent custom, it is with the utmost difficulty they can keep from laughing, when they see several French men or French women together, and always several of them speaking at the same time. I had observed them for two years stifling a laugh on those occasions, and had often asked the reason of it, without receiving any satisfactory answer. At length I pressed one of them so earnestly to satisfy me, that after some excuses, he told me in their language, "Our people say, that when several Frenchmen are together, they speak ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... come to her with open arms, take her in a close embrace, fall at her feet with a hoarse cry, as if he were stifling; and she, gently and sympathetically encouraged him, bending her head, offering her lips with an automatic loving expression which was the implement ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lived for me, and when he found 'Twas vain, in holy ground He hid his face amid the shades of death. I waste for him my breath Who wasted his for me: but mine returns, And this lorn bosom burns With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, And waking me to weep Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years Wept he as bitter tears. Merciful God! such was his latest prayer, These may she never share! Quieter is his breath, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... she had told no one that the mirages were no more than mirages—that her life still lacked all the vital elements of reality and sincerity. She was proud, and not even the people in dear old Marut suspected that she was stifling in the hot Madras air and in the unhealthy atmosphere of small lies and loose principles in which Travers was so thoroughly at home. Only Nicholson's sensitive temperament felt what others neither heard ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... thing that he did was to cut the cords and remove the gag that was stifling her. Attracted by the noise, the old nurse had hastened to the room with a lamp, which Renine took from her, casting ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... questions asked him, although he declared his answers by signs. The five Spaniards, on seeing their captain wounded—so suddenly that the murderer appeared and the blow was heard at the same moment—fell upon Ubal and cut him to pieces. They informed Master-of-camp Xara of the general's death, who, stifling his resentment, withdrew his men, and built a fort in the most suitable place, near the river. He founded there his colony, with suitable arrangements, so that our people could settle it. He appointed regidors and ministers of justice, and called it Nueva Murcia in honor of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... make history—a combination of freight, passenger, and "cattle." It had averaged eight miles an hour on its climb toward Yellowhead Pass and the end of steel. The "cattle" had already surged from their stifling and foul-smelling cars in a noisy inundation of curiously mixed humanity. They were of a dozen different nationalities, and as the girl looked at them it was not with revulsion or scorn but with a sudden quickening of heartbeat and a little laugh that had in ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... week for the heavier labors; and she ascended to a little pine wood on the right, all that remained of the superb pines which had formerly covered the plateau; but, here, too, she was ill at ease; the pine needles crackled under her feet, a resinous, stifling odor descended from the branches. And walking along the boundary wall past the entrance gate, which opened on the road to Les Fenouilleres, three hundred meters from the first houses of Plassans, she emerged ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Memoirs. The ramifications of the mischief they have done, have spread far and near. They have kept up a correspondence with some of the most patriotic individuals in every principal town and city in the kingdom; by which means they have frequently exercised the power which they thus acquire, of stifling those sparks of popular fervour, that would have long since kindled into an irrepressible blaze of patriotism, had it not been for the sinister exertions of this foul extinguisher of every particle of generous public liberty, that did not tend to promote their own base and selfish ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Stifling a somewhat weary sigh, I returned the book to its place and lingered looking out of the open window into the deepening dusk. Mentally my mood was a restless one, but it did not reflect itself physically; for I stood there leaning against the window whilst a procession ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... had held off unconscionably long; the air within the lodge was stifling, and without the garden waited, breathless. Everything seemed pervaded by a poignant distress; the hush of feverish, intolerable expectation. The still earth, the heavy flowers, even the growing darkness, breathed the exhaustion of protracted waiting. Caroline felt that she ought to go; ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... frieze, he found some memory of sculptures he had seen and hardly heeded, ancient things with the eternity of youth on them, the captured splendour of moving limb and passionate brain. Then he was aware of fresh wind and fruitful earth, but as she passed out of sight, he was imprisoned again by stifling furies. He had begun to love Miriam with a sincerity that wished to win and not to force her; he had controlled the wild heritage of his fathers and tried to forget the sweetness of her body in the larch-wood; he was determined not to take what ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... of which I am now writing was the middle of March, the hottest and, in every respect, the worst month of the year in Singapore. Day and night the land was oppressed by the same stifling heat, a sweltering calidity possessing the characteristics of a steam-laundry, coupled with those of the stokehole of an ocean liner in the Red Sea. Morning, noon, and night, the quarter in which the Hotel of the Three Desires was situated was fragrant ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... life of just dreary commonplaceness, alone, uncared for, with no outlook, with no prospect of joys. I want the most there is in happiness—every girl wants that; and this monotonous existence has been robbing me, stifling me, until sometimes I've been wild enough to leap off a ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... She felt herself stifling in the wagon and flung aside the covering. Thrusting her bare feet into moccasins and slipping on a sweater, she stepped into the white world that had ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... court in the centre, ventilating the whole house, and affording a cool place, full of scent of flowers and sound of fountains for the burning afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek a breeze on stifling nights, when the very stars seem faint for heat, and the dim plumy heads of cypress and poplar are motionless against the misty blue sky. In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; on the side and behind, elaborate ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... or five, who were lucky enough to be entangled with the lighter parts of the wreckage, escaped with their lives. But they were too much injured to get upon their feet, and there they lay, their sufferings made tenfold worse by the stifling air, and the horror of their inexplicable situation, until they were found and humanely relieved, more than ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... luxurious, but the girl's eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... Motopu man died away. A ringing came in my ears as when one puts a seashell to them and hears the drowsy murmur of the tides. My cigarette fell from my fingers. A sirocco blew upon me, hot, stifling. Kivi laughed, and dimly I ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that life is beautiful. Yes, if only it seems so! The life of us three hasn't been beautiful yet; it has been stifling us as if it was weeds... I'm crying. I oughtn't.... [Dries her tears, smiles] We must work, work. That is why we are unhappy and look at the world so sadly; we don't know what work ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... for?' well, I simply ran my pencil, so to speak, through her name and there was an end of her! The same with Sir Malcolm when I met him. And yet here was the family lawyer, who knew them both perfectly, so convinced of their guilt that he was obviously stifling investigation in any other direction. And on top of all that, all my natural instincts and intuitions told me that the man was a ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our flat so cool and big and pretty—and no one ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... he crossed the street and watched the windows from the other side, walking up and down in anguish of soul for half an hour or so in the stifling heat. Nothing stirred; the blinds were motionless; indeed, the prince began to think that the apparition of Rogojin's face could have been nothing but fancy. Soothed by this thought, he drove off once more to his friends at the Ismailofsky ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... he felt himself choking, stifling. Despite all his efforts to cheer himself the young chief engineer felt certain that his chum had mysteriously met his fate, and that brave, dependable Harry Hazelton was ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... to get up when I heard your foot on the stairs. I feel stronger this morning, and I want to get out-of-doors. The house is stifling me. I have been listening so hard for the sound of her foot or her voice that when I try to listen I can't hear for the thumping of my heart in my ears. I want to be with her. I too am only a trouble to people. She and I will not be ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... delay at the end—long enough to make him break into a sweat of fear lest something should have gone wrong. Such thoughts come easily enough when you are lying full length in black darkness, in a hole just large enough to hold a man; in air so stifling that the laboured breath can scarcely come; with the dank earth just under mouth and nose, and overhead a roof that may fall in at any moment. The dragging minutes went by. Then, just as despair seized him, the boots ahead moved. He wriggled after them, finding himself ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work—perhaps through life! A low room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... stifling evening, the evening of July the 29th. The rains had lashed the country for days, and even the trees that grew in among the houses of Paradise Street were fresh and green, though one of the hot, burning breaks ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... o'er which she leaned, As cold, with stifling breath, Her spirit sunk before the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... through, very carefully with a serious brow. He finished it and then knew that he had not read a word of it. He went, slowly, to the window and opened it because the room was of a stifling heat. Then he took the letter again and read it. As he finished it again he was conscious that the door-bell was ringing. He wondered why it ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... mind that he had been lurking in a close and stifling hold, into which no single ray of sunlight penetrated, for three whole ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... wine jug to cool their parched throats, their shirts open in front, sweating in streams, panting from the lifeless sultry calm, enviously watching the gulls that sailed by just above the water, as though afraid of the stifling muggy air on high. After their meal, the men walked about on deck for a time, lazily, and with heavy eyes, drunk with sunlight rather than with wine; then they went below, one after the other, throwing themselves flat on boards that were wet with bilge-water, and ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... on August 5th, a day of intense, almost stifling heat, we went at once to Mrs. Van Every, who kept the most elegant boarding house in the city, whose spacious apartments seemed filled with the breath of Paradise, which added a grateful welcome to our travel-tired bodies. Mrs. Van Every's mien of pure and native dignity, her voice ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... in the carriage there commenced a scene which baffles all description. Some of my fellow-prisoners commenced shouting, some screamed and laughed, others mocked and jeered, whilst above all curses loud and deep hurtled through the stifling air, and made night hideous with the sound. Their yells and oaths still ring in my ears, and that which was to my companions a scene of the utmost jollity and mirth was to me the nearest approach to hell my imagination had ever conceived. It was a cold spring night that witnessed ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... days which followed, Mary Whittaker made new advances in the task of winning Learoyd's confidence and stifling the furies of remorse that had gripped his heart. All her quiet patience was needed, for although her progress was sure, there were times when he lapsed, apparently without reason, into his old mood of suspicion and hostility towards her. ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... later. August, hot and sunny, is reigning with quite a mad merriment, making the most of the days that be, knowing full well that the end of the summer is nigh. The air is stifling; up from the warm earth comes the almost overpowering perfume of the late flowers. Perpetua moving amongst the carnations and hollyhocks in her soft white cambric frock, gathers a few of the former in a languid manner to place ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... I know the hour when hope Sinks dead, and 'round us everywhere Hangs stifling darkness, and we grope With hands ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... man's family. There were twelve or fifteen children of different ages and sexes, and not one silent. Some were at table, some quarreling, some going to sleep, and some waking. Two women were in serious dispute, and the Tartar words poured out freely. The room was hot, stifling, and filled with as many odors as the city of Cologne, and we were glad to escape into the open air as soon as possible. I did not envy that Mongol gentleman his domestic bliss, and am inclined to think he considered it no joke to be as much married ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... cases? I can myself remember the time when the patient was treated on the lowering system, and when every breath of air was excluded from the sick-room, doors and windows being listed lest the slightest change should take place in the stifling atmosphere of the bed-room. And now all is altered; we have the system supported by nourishments, and abundance of fresh air let in. Indeed, it is most amusing to see the change which has taken place as regards fresh air; many of ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... soon found out to their grievous disturbance. When Mother Posset had drawn her from under her dead mother's body she had not left shrieking for an hour, but had kept up her fierce cries until the roof rang with them, and the old woman had jogged her about and beat her back in the hopes of stifling her, until she was exhausted and dismayed. For the child would not be stilled, and seemed to have such strength and persistence in her as surely ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... quick and comprehending mind saw and suffered things that formerly never affected him. The hard and sometimes cruel discipline, toil from sunrise to sunset, scant food, the stifling of ambitions—all these began now to be perceived and felt, and the impression they left sank into the soul of this rebellious boy. He saw a slave killed by an overseer, on no other charge than that of being "impudent." "Crimes" of this nature were committed, as far as he could see, with ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... piece of wood to another until she came near enough to get the beads I held out to her. I then went to inspect the inside of the cage out of which she had come, but could scarcely put my head inside of it, the atmosphere was so hot and stifling. It was clean and contained nothing but a few short lengths of bamboo for holding water. There was only room for the girl to sit or lie down in a crouched position on the bamboo platform, and when the doors are shut it must be nearly or quite dark inside. The girls are never allowed ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... first-class securities, stocks, bonds, etc., was paid April 27, each receiving $24,125.[26] Miss Anthony gives an amusing account, in one of her letters, of the awful nightmare she had on board the sleeper going home, when she dreamed that a woman was at the head of her berth stifling her while a man knelt in front, his hand cautiously creeping toward the inside pocket where she had sewed the money and bonds. She awoke with a scream and did not go ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the rules which were subsequently made to carry it out. The introduction of proxies was no doubt intended to give absent creditors an opportunity of expressing their opinions upon any question which might arise. But the system was too often used for the purpose of stifling the views of those who took an independent part in the proceedings. The form of proxy prescribed by the rules contained no limitation of the powers of the proxy-holder and no impression of the opinion of the creditor. It simply appointed the person named in it as "my proxy," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... found to my surprise and something like dismay, that the sleepiness which had hitherto oppressed me, had in some unaccountable way entirely fled. In vain I contemplated the bed, comfortable enough now in its appearance that the stifling curtains were withdrawn; no temptation to invade it came to arouse me from the chair into which I had thrown myself. It was as if I felt myself under the spell of some invisible influence that like the eye of a basilisk, held me enchained. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... of arms and a head on Clytie's shoulder, wet eyes close in a corner that had once been the good woman's neck—and stifling sobs that seemed one moment to contract her body rigidly from head to foot—the next to leave it limp and falling. From the nursing shoulder she was helped to the bed, though she could not yet relax her arms from that desperate grip of Clytie's neck. Long she held her so, even ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... evil effects of excessive rains and strong winds; this may be easily done by placing an inverted bell-glass over the plants, invariably lifting this off on fine and warm days, and whenever there is no fear of damage from sudden winds or rains. Stifling hardy plants by keeping them in a confined atmosphere, whether indoors or out, is the worst possible plan to follow in order to ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... later, against my advice, the movement materialized, of my own accord I offered not alone my good offices, but my very life, and even my name, to be used in whatever way might seem best, toward stifling the rebellion; for, convinced of the ills which it would bring, I considered myself fortunate if, at any sacrifice, I could prevent such useless misfortunes. This equally is of record. My countrymen, I have given ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... canoe. His companion, still wearing the wolf mask, stepped out and lifted the helpless girl, bearing her along a path that led to a little opening where the moonlight fell brightly. He placed her on the ground and stood gazing down at her, his arms folded. He had removed the stifling blanket from her head ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... deck once more for a breath of fresh air, before retiring for the night to the hot and stuffy cabin. It was an exquisite evening. The moon rode in the pale green sky of the tropics. A strange light still lingered on the western horizon. The stifling heat of the Red Sea had given way long since to the refreshing coolness of the Indian Ocean. I strolled a while on the quarter-deck, and sat down at last near the stern. Next moment, I was aware of somebody creeping up ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the sun struck the fly of the small green master's- tent Kingozi appeared, demanding water wherewith to wash. At the sound of his voice men stirred sleepily, sat up, poked the remains of their tiny fires. As though through an open tap the freshness of night-time drained away. The hot, searching, stifling African day ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... somehow without causing the horrible, strangling, helpless sensation he had suffered from before. In fact, it seemed to be pleasant and restful, and by degrees produced a sensation of coolness that was most welcome after the stifling heat at the top of the zigzag, which had been made worse by the odour of the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... a shrill squeak, as of some animal in the agonies of death; and then there was a second squeak, that seemed to be suddenly interrupted by the stifling of the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... of stifling heat, we moved slowly forward. The sound of the guns grew in intensity, from a faint rumbling to a subdued roar, until one evening, sitting in the open windows of a stable loft, we saw the far-off lightenings ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... when they set off; it was early afternoon, but the heat seemed more stifling than ever. They made no more pretence at conversation; both were buried in their own painful thoughts. The land fell away from Disscourn in all other directions, but toward Sant there was a gentle, persistent rise. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... housekeeper, with entire power over the servants, and I am very proud of that period of my life. And when I was sixteen we three girls were all sent up to California to Mills Seminary, which was quite fashionable and stifling. How we used to long for home! We didn't chum with the other girls, who called us little cannibals, just because we came from the Sandwich Islands, and who made invidious remarks about our ancestors banqueting on Captain Cook—which was historically ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... wife and mother, but also her husband's lover. But she soon saw that love went for little with Philippe, a studious man, much more interested in mental speculation and social problems than in any manifestation of sentimental feeling. She therefore loved him as he wished to be loved, stifling within herself, like smothered flames, a whole throbbing passion made up of unsatisfied longings, restrained ardours and needless jealousies and allowing only just so much of this to escape her as was needed to give him fresh courage at ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... reputation still; but these people were not fit for the encounter. They had been living in the moist mildness of Holland for thirteen years, and for more than sixty days had been penned in that stifling "Mayflower" cabin, seasick, bruised and sleepless. It sleeted, snowed, rained and froze, and they could find no place to get ashore on; their pinnace got stove, and the icy waves wet them to the marrow. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... there was not the faintest movement in his whole body, and his brows were still contracted in the same forbidding frown. If Varvara Petrovna had remained another three minutes she could not have endured the stifling sensation that this motionless lethargy roused in her, and would have waked him. But he suddenly opened his eyes, and sat for ten minutes as immovable as before, staring persistently and curiously, as though at some object in the corner which ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... could make an outcry Chester and Hal both leaped forward. The former's hands grasped the German by the throat, stifling the sound of his voice, and Hal quickly delivered two hard blows to the man's face. The German fell limply into Chester's arms, and the boy laid him quietly ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... the breath was fairly choked out of him. Joe Hawkridge was desperately thrashing about in the swamp, gasping and snorting, his cries also smothered. In a twinkling they were captives, their arms tightly bound behind them, the stifling grip of their necks unrelaxed. Weakened almost to suffocation, the two lads could make no lively resistance. Jack uttered one feeble shout for help but subsided when those strong fingers tightened the clutch on ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... the slippery walls of gloom, And dares not look beneath, lest Fate should come; He enters now the stifling clouds that creep Around the causeway, while its shadows sleep Upon the stream that ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... draw breath, to take in with his glance some wider horizon. Again he remembered that it was the month Mesori, that a year had passed since the maneuvers; he felt a yearning for the desert. How gladly would he mount his light chariot drawn by two horses, and fly away to some place where it was not so stifling, and trees ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... you. I know that old palace,—knew it thirty years ago,—and I know that cortile, and although I have not had the good fortune to run across either your gondolier, Espero, or his sweetheart, Mariana, I have known a dozen others as romantic and delightful. The air is stifling here. Shall we have our coffee outside on ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with both at one portion or another of his career. But just this particular temper of Louie's, with its apparent lack both of passion and of moral sense, was totally new to her, and produced at times a stifling impression upon her, without her being able to explain to herself with any clearness what ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the sofa, wondering what was to be the fate of the unfortunate messenger, for, in spite of the sudden shutting of the door by the Russian, she caught a glimpse of the man lying face downwards on the floor of his stifling room. She also had received a whiff of the sweet, heavy gas which had been used, that seemed now to be tincturing the whole atmosphere of the car, especially in the long narrow passage. It was not likely they intended to kill the man, for his death would cause an awkward ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... committee, the nation had reason to expect that this proposal would have been embraced by a great majority; but several members, who in the preceding session had been loud in their demands of justice, now shamefully contributed their talents and interest in stifling ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... no better, and after the first week, the doctors decided that death was imminent. They were near the Line now, in the stifling heat of storms. The troop-ship kept on her course, shaking her beds, the wounded and the dying; quicker and quicker she sped over the tossing sea, troubled still as during ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... The same annual revolution whirls us through the balmy summer days and the biting winter ones. God's purpose is one. His methods vary. The road goes straight to its goal; but it sometimes runs in tunnels dank and dark and stifling, and sometimes by sunny glades and through green pastures. God's purpose is always love, brother. His withdrawals are gifts, and sorrow is not the least of the benefits which come to us through the Man ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... figment of the childish imagination. The first great discovery of the real nature of the stars did, in fact, logically or not, break up more effectually than perhaps any other cause, the old narrow and stifling conception of the universe represented by Dante's superlative power; and made incredible the systems based on the conception that man can be the centre of all things and the universe created for the sake of ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... same things a man does work as well in stifling her unrest as she fancies it has in man's case? If a woman's temperamental and intellectual operations were identical with a man's, there would be hope of success,—but they are not. She is a different being. Whether she is better or worse, stronger or weaker, primary ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... but huddle in with those poor laborers and working-women!" he would say to himself. "If I could but breathe that atmosphere, stifling though it be, yet made holy by ancient litanies, and cloudy with the smoke of hallowed incense, for one hour, instead of droning over these moral precepts to my half-sleeping congregation!" The intellectual isolation of his sect preyed upon him; for, of all the terrible things to natures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... opened by a venerable Chinaman in the flowing robes of a priest. He looked at them doubtfully. Baskinelli spoke three words that his companions did not hear. The priest vanished. Quickly the door was reopened and they stepped into the dim, smoky, stifling presence of ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... she had faith in that—and he would find she had fought to the end, even if he came too late. She buried her face in her hands, stifling a sob that shook her body, yet when she lifted the head again, there was no glimmer of tears in her eyes, and her cheeks were crimson. She waited motionless, scarcely seeming to breathe—the statue of a ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... hard, swallowing insult and stifling my sense of decency as far as possible, in order that I might serve you and prove myself worthy to be your friend," replied Surigny, with such earnestness that Darrin now found himself staring in open-eyed astonishment at ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... sprang into the warehouse again; regained and partially closed the door, when the stifling smoke choked him, and he fell to the ground. A few seconds later, Dale followed him, and found him there. Applying his great strength with almost superhuman energy to the door, it shut with a crash, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... divine. To my girlhood's love must I say farewell— To the dreams that were sweeter than words can tell! The chill embrace of the waters cold, Clasping my form in their viewless hold, Laving my brow in their terrible play, Tangling my locks with their glittering spray, Freezing my warm blood, stifling my breath, With awful kisses that bring but death,— To such endearments I now must go Where ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... History to take the habits and instincts of animals as fixed points, and to consider their structure and organization, as specially adapted, to be in accordance with these. This assumption is however an arbitrary one, and has the bad effect of stifling inquiry into the nature and causes of "instincts and habits," treating them as directly due to a "first cause," and therefore, incomprehensible to us. I believe that a careful consideration of the structure of a species, and of the peculiar physical and organic ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... surrender to the mastery that would not be denied. Yet when he turned to her outside in the hot sunshine with the blaring band close at hand she almost shrank away, she almost voiced a pretext for continuing their unprofitable wandering through the stifling tents. For, strangely, though he smiled at her, there was about him in that moment a quality that went near to scaring her. Something untamed, something indomitable, looked out at her from his glittering eyes. It was almost like a challenge, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... in what manner? By stifling me with virtuous rhetoric? Hah, it is rather awkward for you—is it not—that our sumptuary laws forbid you merchants to ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... little of novelty in the journey or the voyage. There were the usual incidents of winter travelling—the hot, stifling car—the snowy country stretching out mile after mile from morning till night—the hotels, which seemed strangely comfortless for an invalid—and then the great city with its noise and bustle, and the steamer where they had nothing to do but ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the foc's'le—a small, dark, stifling place where eight men slept. The thought of having to spend his nights in that dirty, close den made him half-inclined to jump ashore before the boat started. Quickly overcoming the thought, he set to work to discover which was his bunk, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and strikes, a thin, sudden note like the sob of a child. Clock, buhl clock that ticked out the tortuous hours of my birth, Clock, evil, wizened dwarf of a clock, how many years of agony have you relentlessly measured, Yardstick of my stifling shroud? ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Stifling a sigh, Mr. Forrester rose, going to his safe. A few turns of the combination lock and he pulled the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... strain that had come upon her escorts, and she felt less at ease in her journey. Never once had she faltered or complained, though she was sadly hampered by her totally unsuitable garments for such a walk. In the gloomy forest the heat was stifling; the trackless jungle was full of creeping life; at every step the feet tripped over fallen logs or crunched with shivery suggestion into rotten shells of storm-torn tree limbs. Bright eyes gleamed at them through the thickets, to vanish ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... ships lay motionless on the glassy water, with wood-work so hot as to burn the hands that touched it, with the meat putrefying in the casks below, and the water running from the loosened casks, and no one with courage and endurance enough to venture into the stifling hold even to save the provisions. And through all this the Admiral, racked with gout, had to keep a cheerful face and assure his prostrate crew that they would soon ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... and we ate our dinner there in the broiling sun, for we were above the trees, which ended some distance below us. It was fearfully hot—a dead, suffocating heat—with not a breath of wind to relieve the stifling atmosphere, and some one asked ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... not a pleasant sensation, that of a descent into a coal-pit. There is the rushing noise of the cage, the whirring of wheels, the constant dripping and plashing sound of falling water, the thudding of the pump, the stifling feeling of dank heat, the stuffy mist, and joined to all the knowledge that if that slender thread of wire-rope should happen to break, the cage would fall perhaps hundreds of feet, and its occupants ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... Calcutta by which I was to proceed to Bombay had already arrived. A few of us went on shore with small caps on our heads and some with cabbage tree hats, but we speedily discovered they would not do. The heat on shore was intense, a muggy, stifling heat, which to us Australians was killing. We were guided to the Bazaar, and introduced to several hotels by some five score natives, whose numbers increased as we proceeded, and were augmented by numerous sellers of sun toppee, pugarees, etc. We were ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... call from this house, and I thank you for the pleasant and friendly feeling you have shown. I have but a word to say. I had gone out of the room, not because of the discussion, but because it was too warm and the atmosphere so stifling, when I was recalled by hearing something to this effect: "That there had not been a single logical argument used on this platform in behalf of woman suffrage; that woman is abundantly represented by some man of her family; that when a woman lifts herself up in opposition against ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... firing of the rifle and which had hung for some time about the tree. Now we knew it could not be that, for it was growing thicker and thicker, and we noticed that it had a smell very different from that of burnt powder. Moreover, it produced a stifling, choking sensation, causing us to cough, and rub our eyes with the pain. On looking downward, I was unable to see either the ground or the peccaries; but I could perceive a thick cloud rising up all around the tree. I could hear the ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... word, with all it might mean, with all it might not mean, softened him as if by magic, made him gentle, amazed, shy as a boy, stifling under a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... a patch of thorns to a flat tableland that was part of the Ceza stronghold. By it, when I had gained sufficient strength, sometimes we used to climb to the plateau, and there take exercise. It was an agreeable change from the stifling atmosphere of the Black Kloof. The days were very dull, for we were as much out of the world as though we had been marooned on a desert island. Still from time to time we heard of the progress of the war through Nombe, for Zikali I ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... to dodge the missile, while Rollo exercised great forbearance in stifling a bark, "Greek is not quite so severe to some folks ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fiddles. In Eisenach I was told that this viol was ten feet high. Hans used to play this instrument at the village church, and his playing drew such crowds that the preacher had just cause for jealousy, and improved the opportunity, yet stifling his rage he ordered the verger to lock the doors and allow no one to depart until ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Jean had a stifling sense as of some great green tree bending down to crush her. She put out her hand to push ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... youth, faded in their prime! When a people cannot offer its daughters a tranquil home under the protection of sacred liberty, when a man can only leave to his widow blushes, tears to his mother, and slavery to his children, you do well to condemn yourself to perpetual chastity, stifling within you the germ of a future generation accursed! Well for you that you have not to shudder in your grave, hearing the cries of those who groan in darkness, of those who feel that they have wings and yet are fettered, of those who are stifled from ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... was possible only by a series of leaps or bounds; any other mode of progression would simply have resulted in their being tripped up at every other step. This, to men unaccustomed to such exercise, was in itself a sufficiently fatiguing process; but in addition to this they had to contend with the stifling heat of the stagnant atmosphere, which had been oppressive enough even whilst they had been in a condition of comparative inactivity; now it seemed to completely sap their strength and cause their limbs to hang heavy as lead about them. Then, too, the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Example 24, No. 2, it is only one 16th-note short of a full measure. And although this 16th, being the cadence-chord, is actually equivalent to the whole measure, it is sometimes less confusing to the hearer to silence it. This is called stifling the cadence (or Elision); and its presence depends simply upon sufficient proof that what was supposed to be the cadence-measure (and to a certain extent is such) is at the same time really the first measure of the next sentence. The following contains an illustration of the elision ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... owner, and a warrant was shown to him. A heated argument followed, at the end of which the infuriated man waved us in with a magnificent and most dramatic gesture. There were some twenty rooms in the house, and the stifling heat of a July noon made the task none too enjoyable. The police inspector was extremely thorough in his work, and an hour had passed before three rooms had been searched. He looked into the cupboards, went down on his knees to peer into the ovens, stood on tiptoe to ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... heat and stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... descend into dark vaults in which were fountains and baths with water ever cool,—to creep yet lower, with a dim flickering light, into the execution chamber, and stand under the beam which had sustained the fair form of many a frail and faithless beauty,—to retreat from the stifling influence of its confined air, and return to inspect delicate little mosques, in which the Queen and her maidens used to perform their devotions, and which were as pure and chaste as the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... It was bitter, stifling, cruel work; with their mouths choked with dust, with their throats caked with thirst, with their eyes blind with smoke; while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew, or the shot plowed through ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... doctor became wholly exhausted with the fatigue he had undergone, with the smoke and the fog, with the stifling, sulphureous air, with the tempestuous blasts, with the alternate extremes of heat and cold, and with the clamours, the lamentations, the agonies, and the howlings of the damned everywhere around him,—when, just in the nick of time, Beelzebub appeared to him again, and invited him ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... required us to form some decision. I formerly mentioned, that, during my abode at Malverton, I had not been insensible to the attractions of this girl. An affection had stolen upon me, for which it was easily discovered that I should not have been denied a suitable return. My reasons for stifling these emotions, at that time, have been mentioned. It may now be asked, what effect subsequent events had produced on my feelings, and how far partaking and relieving her distresses had revived a passion which may readily be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... herself she strained her ears, listening, and now heard distinctly above the sounds nearer at hand a distant crackling roar and the thud of heavy branches falling. The interior of the cabin had now grown even dimmer—to a dark redness—and the smoke came billowing in at the window almost stifling her with its acrid fumes. Outside the window, when she struggled for freedom, she caught a glimpse of sparks, flying like meteors past the dim rectangle of her vision, small ones, larger ones, and then flaming brands which must set fire to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... some tea?" said Jolyon, stifling the words: 'And see the house.' And he led the way into the hall. When he had rung the bell and ordered tea, he went to his easel to turn his drawing to the wall. He could not bear, somehow, that his work should be seen by Soames, who was standing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sometimes spattered Ferrol's clothes as he ran past. No matador ever played with the horns of a mad bull as Ferrol played his deadly game with Michael, the dancing bear. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter; he had a stifling sensation, a terrible tightness across his chest. He did not cough, however, but once or twice he tasted warm drops of his heart's blood in his mouth. Once he drew the back of his hand across his lips mechanically, and a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... heart and interest; there is nothing like a favor for securing the friendship or enmity of man, according to whether it be conferred with good will or hurled into his face and bestowed upon him in spite of himself. If the logical and regulated system of exploitation be chosen, stifling with the jingle of gold and the sheen of opulence the sentiments of independence in the colonies, paying with its wealth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India, who moreover leave the government to native rulers, then build roads, lay out highways, foster the ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... was stifling. As she waited she gave a tired gasp. Colette ran to her. "Madame is ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... crowded around him, and greeted most of the score of swarthy men and women by name. Tony masterfully stripped him of his overcoat and cap and placed them in the kitchen from which emanated odors of strange things cooking. The room was stifling with heat and with ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the afternoon was brilliant, but it is right to add that it required an African body and mind fully to appreciate the pleasures of it. The sun's rays were blistering, the heat was intense, and the air was stifling. Harold lay down and gasped, Disco followed his example, and sighed. After a few minutes spent in a species of imbecile contemplation of things in general, the latter raised himself to a sitting posture, and proceeded slowly to fill and light his pipe. Harold was no smoker, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... lungs filled with the pungent stifling smoke of powder, his nostrils with earth and dust, he frantically wheezed and sneezed, leaping about, falling drunkenly, leaping into the air again, staggering on his hind-legs, dabbing with his forepaws at his nose head-downward between his forelegs, and even ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... not have heard his own voice, he was unaware of the magnitude to which the mighty uproar had enlarged itself. Suddenly, something smote the rock as with the hammer of Thor, and, as suddenly, the air around him grew stifling hot. The next moment it was again cold. He started to his feet in wonder, and sought the light. As he turned the angle, the receding back of a huge green foam spotted wave, still almost touching the roof ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... her offering and regarded it a moment in silence, while my aesthetic nature shook to its foundations. Stifling the moan of horror that had risen to my lips, I faced her with a smile. Balaclava heroes could have ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... estufa was as brightly illuminated as a small fire could make it, the smoke of which found egress through the door and the two air-holes, or rose to the low ceiling, where it floated like a grayish cloud. The air was heavy and stifling, and the odour of burning pitch proceeded from the pine wood with which the flames were fed in the centre of the room. Close to the fire the tapop had squatted, with three aged men by his side in the same posture. All three wore short, black wraps with red stripes. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... flushed face and smarting dilated eyes. This frustration of a purpose towards which he had set out under the exalted consciousness that he was about to compensate in some degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air of the room stifling. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was dirty and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the village, in the borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade. The three men’s beds were on the floor, and a litter of pans and dishes. There was no standing furniture; Randall, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crowd the back of his mouth and strangle him. The sensation was that of a nightmare of impossible duration. It was possible to move and possible to see. One could breathe, with difficulty, and with titanic effort one could speak. But there was the same feeling of stifling resistance to every ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... sought refuge in a tomb, but the ashes had walled them tightly in. A soldier died bravely at his post, erect before a city gate, one hand on his spear and the other on his mouth, as if to keep from breathing the stifling gases. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... go out as usual. Old Treffy seemed no worse than before,—he was able to sit up, and Christie opened the small window before he went out to let a breath of fresh air into the close attic. But there was very little fresh air anywhere that day. The atmosphere was heavy and stifling, and poor Christie's heart felt depressed and weary. He turned, he hardly knew why, to the suburban road, and stopped before the house with the pretty garden. He wanted to see those merry little faces again,—perhaps they would cheer him; he felt so ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... would have left all on board the submarine gasping and stifling sixty feet below the fresh air that meant life. There was but one thing to do — come to the surface and run for it in the ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its head and ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... began to talk to Diana. In a few minutes he said, "Count, it is dreadfully warm in your rooms. I see the countess is stifling. I will give her my arm for a ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... watching to see what would happen next. He caught only snatches of the letter, just enough to know it was a description of a hunt in England, of a damp, cold, cloudy day, of an invigorating run—the contrast struck him forcibly—the stifling, hot little hut, and the jealous, half-savage woman standing there, her eyes aflame with anger at the slight she fancied ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... this afternoon, though I'm rather vague as to which train he arrives by. Rather a stifling day for ...
— When William Came • Saki
... of the existing calamity was the influx from the country into the city, and this was especially felt by the new arrivals. As there were no houses to receive them, they had to be lodged at the hot season of the year in stifling cabins, where the mortality raged without restraint. The bodies of dying men lay one upon another, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and gathered round all the fountains in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... a tunnel, and a cloud of stifling smoke wrapped the cars about and the cinders rattled against ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... he tried to write some letters. Worse and worse. The place was stifling, and the pen almost melted in ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... embarrassing situation, he should be rewarded with a peerage, of which he had long been desirous. He undertook on his side to obtain, by fair or foul means, a vote in favour of the peace. In consequence of this arrangement he became leader of the House of Commons; and Grenville, stifling his vexation as well as he could, sullenly acquiesced in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "When a child," says a famous English writer, speaking of the chimney-sweepers of London, "what a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation!—to see a chit no bigger than one's self enter into that dark hole—to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through so many stifling caverns—to shudder with the idea, that 'now surely he must be lost forever!'—to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered daylight,—and then (oh, fulness of delight!) running out of doors, to come just in time to see him ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... Holloway pending the Trial. The Trial took place before Mr. Justice Bodmin in the following July, occupying five days of oppressive heat in the thrashing out of that vexed question, the guilt or innocence of Owen Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S. who for airless, stifling years of weeks had eaten and drunk and slept and waked in the Valley of the Shadow of Penal Servitude. Who was conveyed from the dock to the cell and from the cell to the dock by warders and policemen, rumbling through back streets and unfrequented ways in a shiny prison-van. Who ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... thermometer was rarely above zero, and at night far below; but the heat and glare of the sun was stifling and blinding during much of the day; often they perspired profusely under their crushing burdens, with the thermometer nearly at zero. Snow fell daily, and ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... beating heart pressed and the lock, which in spite of its age seemed to have been recently oiled, probably by Barr, responded. The next instant with a click, the lock slid open and Billy walked out of the stifling air of the coop—free. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... more diffident instruments tinkled apologetically in the distance. Intermittently, across the gaunt scaffolding of the Ninth Avenue L, at one end of the block, roaring trains flashed long chains of lights. On the other hand, Eighth Avenue buzzed resonantly in stifling clouds of incandescent dust. The air ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mrs. Preston's, and how strange was this promenade down the fashionable boulevard where he had so often walked with Miss Hitchcock on bright Sundays, bowing at every step to the gayly dressed groups of acquaintances. He was taking the stroll for the last time, something told him, on this hot, stifling July afternoon, between the rows of deserted houses. In twenty-four hours he should be a part of them in all practical ways—a part of the struggling mob, that lived from day to day, not knowing when the bread would give ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... So I thought, so I said, when I knew not what I thought or said. Chagrin and stifling rage had enveloped my whole soul; love itself, in the full blaze of happiness, could not illumine it. But it has sent its daughter, Pity, more familiar with gloomy misfortune, and she has dispelled the cloud, ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... bordered with fruit-trees, whose white blossoms were then in full blow as well as their tender green leaves. The sky was blue, the air still, the May afternoon was full of brightness and fragrance. Released from the stifling class, surrounded with flowers and foliage, with a pleasing, smiling, affable woman at my side—how did I feel? Why, very enviably. It seemed as if the romantic visions my imagination had suggested of this garden, while it was yet hidden from me by the jealous boards, were more than ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... bureaucratic administration, conducted by an imported agency, and centring all power in its hands, and undertaking all responsibility, has acted as a dead weight on the Soul of India, stifling in us all sense of initiative, for the lack of which we are condemned, atrophying the nerves of action and, what is more serious, necessarily dwarfing in ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... there was indicated anywhere being a long and very distant strip of blue sky overhead when the weather was clear. Not even that to-day. The heavy clouds hung low, seeming to rest upon the house-tops, and shutting up all below under their breathless envelopment. Hot, sultry, stifling, the air felt to Betty; well-nigh unendurable; but Pitt seemed to be of intent that she should endure it for a while, and with some difficulty she submitted. Happily the place was cleaner than Martin's Court, and no dead cats nor decaying vegetables poisoned what air there was. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... to the Gods that heard not, By fits that found no favor in their sight, By faces bent above the babe that stirred not, By nameless horrors of the stifling night; By ills foredone, by peace her toils discover, Bid Earth be good beneath and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... breath increased, she felt suffocated. The livid dawn, the crimson sunset, changed to gray; the atmosphere around her grew thick; there was a smarting sensation in her eyes, a stifling sensation in her throat. Mechanically, not knowing what she did, she began to grope her way to the door. But in that thickening atmosphere she did not know which was the door—her outspread arms clasped some heavy piece of furniture—the wardrobe. She leaned against, it exhausted, helpless ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... themselves and their society strictly in the background, have nevertheless done what they could from time to time to assist the progress of truth in the world, and some half-century ago, in despair at the rampant materialism which seemed to be stifling all spirituality in Europe and America, they determined to make an attempt to combat it by somewhat novel methods—in point of fact to offer opportunities by which any reasonable man could acquire absolute proof of that life apart from the physical body which it was the tendency of science ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... filled with pity for her. He knew that a revelation of Penton's real character would sound as strange to her as to any person there. She knew her husband had "faults," but what does that common word signify to a woman in love? The atmosphere became too stifling for Evan. He felt his head throb and threaten to ache. He excused himself, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... a clear, starry night and I heaved a sigh of relief as I saw the Schloss-Platz glittering in the cold light of the arc lamps. So pressing had been the danger threatening me that the atmosphere of the Castle seemed stifling in comparison with the keen night air. A new confidence filled my veins as I strode along, though the perils to which I was advancing were not a whit less than those I had just escaped. For I had burnt my boats. My disappearance from the Castle must surely arouse suspicion and ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... "Good!" Sabatini replied, stifling what seemed to be a yawn. "You have awakened me from a long sleep, so let your news be ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the thing fairly with you if you let us out," said Dalness, stifling his anger behind the door, but still with the full force of it apparent in the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... icy, snowy, Sundays in mid-winter when one hugs the cheerless radiator and, shivering in chilly discomfort, wishes that Sundays were months instead of days apart. There are stifling, sticky, sweltering. Sundays in midsummer when one prays, if he can pray at all, for the night to come. And there are blustering, rainy, sleety, dismal, Sundays in the fall when the dead hours go in funeral procession by and the world ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright |
