"Stifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cheap lace and bits of stuff in the stifling air of the crowded place. They would buy a sack of salted peanuts from the great mound in the glass case, or a bag of the greasy pink candy piled in profusion on the counter, and this they would munch as ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... foremost | of the | toilers, | when the | driver's | morning | horn Calls a | -way to | stifling | millhouse, | or to | fields of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... cool atmosphere met him with a sweet calm, which flowed over his perturbed soul like a benediction. He drew a chair from a pile in a corner and sat down for a moment near one of the little side chapels, to recover from the stifling heat without and prepare his thought for the impending interview with the Bishop. A dim twilight enveloped the interior of the building, affording a grateful relief from the blinding glare of the streets. It brought him a transient sense of peace—the peace ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mercifully swallowed up this apparition: like as not, 'twas the sound of the fire itself. The end had come, both to the unhappy foresters and Robin's home. With a huge torrent of noise the roof of it crushed in, half stifling the fire. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... whom he follows, determined not to endure the inquisition of their looks any longer, into the chapel. The humour of the whole scene within is excellent. The stifling closeness, both of the atmosphere and of the sermon, the wonderful content of the audience, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... deeply interested," I answered, stifling my eagerness, "and it would be very kind ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Cupid is thwarted in Australia not only by the natural stupidity, coarseness, and sensuality of the natives, but by a number of artificial obstacles which seem to have been devised with almost diabolical ingenuity for the express purpose of stifling the germs of love. The selfish, systematic, and deliberate suppression of free choice is only one of these obstacles. There are two others almost equally fatal to love—the habit of marrying young girls to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... whoever he is," Jimmie said, as they discussed the signals in the almost stifling atmosphere of the cabin, "is strictly next to his job! He's showing ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Station. We were leaving by the 8.50 train, and we were not the only ones to leave Christmas behind, for hundreds of men were returning to the Front. Heartbreaking scenes were taking place, and many of the brave women-folk were stifling their sobs, in order to give their men a pleasant send-off, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... uplifted 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
... popularity ran against the accused, no one had been so loud as Scroggs; to attempt to the character of Oates or Bedloe, or any other leading witnesses, he treated as a crime more heinous than it would have been to blaspheme the Gospel on which they had been sworn—it was a stifling of the Plot, or discrediting of the King's witnesses—a crime not greatly, if at all, short of high treason against ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... not recovered from their surprise in the south, for no counterattacks were attempted, nor had any reserve divisions been brought to their support. Throughout the long, stifling July day squadrons of Allied aeroplanes were industriously bombing depots and lines of communication back of the German front. The much-lauded Fokkers were flitting here and there, doing little damage. Two were sent to earth by Allied airmen before the day was over. The Allies had a great ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... door behind him. He sat for a long time beside the table, absolutely spent, and still holding the revolver in his hand. He was shaking in a chill, though the temperature was over eighty, and the cabin, when he had first entered it, had seemed to him overpoweringly hot and stifling. He warmed himself with a nip of gin. He looked over his clothes for a trace of blood, and was thankful to find none. He took off his coat; he examined the soles of his shoes. No blood! Thank ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... drew back. All at once he forced his rebellious limbs to move on, and his trembling fingers to grasp the knife they had almost abandoned, and he stepped toward the regent, stifling a sob which was ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... appeared later; but in the meantime, the house being stifling hot, and the little patch of sand inside the palisade ablaze with midday sun, I began to get another thought into my head which was not by any means so right. What I began to do was to envy the doctor, walking in the cool shadow of the woods, with the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was something freeing and saving in that glimpse of herself as part of all the life there had ever been. Because the crowds had seemed the all—were suffocating her—something in that vastness of vision was as fresh air after a stifling room. It was not that it did away with the crowds—made her think they did not matter; they were, after all, the more vital—imperative—but she had more space in which to see them, was given a chance to understand them rather than be ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... ready for battle, for she spun all day long, and did not stop even to eat her chestnuts. A glance, as she passed, at the stable, still dark, where the horses were sluggishly moving about, at the stifling cow-shed, filled with heads impatiently stretched toward the door; and the first rays of dawn, stealing over the courses of stone that supported the embankment of the park, fell upon the old woman running through ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... back with De la Verendrye as chaplain. The trip was made at terrible speed, in the hottest season, through stifling forest fires. Behind, at slower pace, came the provisions. De la Verendrye reached the Lake of the Woods in September. Fearing the delay of the goods for trade, and dreading the danger of famine with so many men in one place, De la Verendrye despatched Jemmeraie to ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... in silence, stifling the impulse to rise and offer Apollo a chair. Instead, he turned lazily and knocked the ash collar off his cigarette, and afterward thumped the top pillow before ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... "the children are stifling me. Come and have tea; we have bought such a lot of buns. Will you help me put baby down in your corner? and you might give him your ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... court-martial was in keeping with that prelude. No effort was spared in stifling all the evidence on Lord Cochrane's side, and in adducing false testimony against him. Logbooks and witnesses alike were tampered with. In support of his scheme for annihilating the whole French fleet, Lord Cochrane produced in court a chart showing ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... all my thought To vex myself and him; I now would give My love, could he but live Who lately 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, his breast more cold Than daisies in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... couldn't see, probing the vast excavation before him, and then, strangely, he saw but couldn't realize what he saw. He stared for a solid minute, uncomprehending, then, stifling a gasp, he knew ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... in climbing up its sides. But it must fairly be owned that these advantages are accompanied by some very serious drawbacks. If Capri is fairly free from the bitter east wind of the Riviera, the Riviera is free from the stifling scirocco of Capri. In the autumn and in the earlier part of the winter this is sometimes almost intolerable. The wind blows straight from Africa, hot, dusty, and oppressive in a strange and almost indescribable way. All the peculiar clearness of the atmosphere disappears; one sees ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... clump of bushes overtook his quarry. There was no sound as the man beast sprang upon the back of his prey and bore it to the ground for steel fingers closed simultaneously upon the soldier's throat, effectually stifling any outcry. By the neck Tarzan dragged his victim well into ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... many interesting memories of those times cluster around this old place," he said, violently stifling a yawn. He had risen early and run far. Hunger and slumber contended ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... meant a fine; her head ached, and her feet felt like lead as she climbed the stairs to her department—a hot, dark, stuffy corner behind the shirtwaist counter. It was warm and close at any time, but today it was stifling, and there was already a crowd of customers, for it was the day of a bargain sale. The heat and noise and chatter got on Marcella's tortured nerves. She felt that she wanted to scream, but instead she turned calmly to a waiting customer—a big, handsome, richly dressed woman. Marcella ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Jack and Bart and grew very bitter, for somehow the fire seemed the result of their carelessness. Would they be trapped by it? They had two good strong legs. They would save themselves, he hoped. So must he! Gritting his teeth and stifling a groan, he tried to gallop, using the cane and injured foot in unison. It was painful, but he must make time—he must go ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... courage for a weak, confiding woman to bid her loved ones leave her for the field of carnage than it costs them to face the cannon's mouth. Maddy found it so, but Christian patriotism triumphed over all, and stifling her own grief, she sent him away with smiles, and prayers, and cheering words of encouragement, turning herself for consolation to the source from which she never sued for peace in vain. Save that she missed her husband terribly, she was not lonely, for her beautiful dark-eyed ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... closed the door and went back to the sitting-room. The room was sweet with the primroses and white violets they had sent her from Woodcote the day before. Rose felt herself pitying the flowers for being taken from the woods and sent to wither in that stifling air. For it was stifling this afternoon. Even when she threw open the window, no breath of coolness came to fan her burning face. The sky was cloudless, but yellow with smoke, and a dull haze ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... longitude, 71 deg. 2' 30'' East—at the entrance of the Gulf of Cambay, to the south of the Gujerat Peninsula. Its length from east to west is six miles and a half, and its greatest extent from north to south is one mile. It has a small but very fine harbour. The climate is dry and stifling, the soil barren, water scarce, and agriculture much neglected. Its principal products are wheat, millet, nachni, bajri, cocoanut, and some kinds of fruits. The population of Diu consists of about 10,765 inhabitants, of whom 419 are Christians, 9,575 Hindoos, and 771 Mahomedans. At ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... was something irritating in the suspicion that she had laughed as if it were a huge joke—perhaps, even now, she was doubled up in her narrow couch, stifling the giggle that ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the stifling room, on a raised platform, sat two oily and fat negroes, making the place hideous with their ribald songs and the twanging of a guitar and banjo. When, a familiar air was sounded the entire gathering joined in chorus, and when such tunes as "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" came, ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... Stifling my indignation at his rudeness, which by this time I found was my only plan, I replied that that was not so good a place for the shavings as that which I myself had selected, and asked him to tell me why he wanted me to put them in the place he designated. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... enough to "keep her going to the s'uth'ard," and then drew away his partner into the stifling little chart-house. "Now," he said, "you see how it is. Our little admiral up there is standing on his temper, and if he doesn't hear the plan of campaign, he's quite equal to making ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... very courts of law were honeycombed with corruption, and demoralised by the power of drink. His tremendous image of a fierce fire raging across a dry prairie, and burning the grass to its very roots, while the air is stifling with the thick 'dust' of the conflagration, proclaims the sure fate, sooner or later, of every community and individual that 'rejects the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despises the word of the Holy One of Israel.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... locked. The resistance recalled her to herself—she had a moment of shocked decency at the thought that she had been about to enter Constant's bedroom. Then the terror came over her afresh. She felt that she was alone in the house with a corpse. She sank to the floor, cowering; with difficulty stifling a desire to scream. Then she rose with a jerk and raced down the stairs without looking behind her, and threw open the door and ran out into the street, only pulling up with her hand violently agitating Grodman's door-knocker. In a moment the first-floor window was ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... concealed trap-door, which communicated with the storeroom. He had been doing this while I was waiting in the swamp. The storeroom opened upon a piazza. To this hole I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling; the darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I could sleep quite comfortably on one side; but the slope was so sudden that I could not turn on my other without hitting the roof. The rats and mice ran over my ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... the wide Atlantic, worthless London's puling child, Better that its waves should bear thee, than the land thou hast reviled; Better in the stifling cabin, on the sofa thou shouldst lie, Sickening as the fetid nigger bears the greens and bacon by; Better, when the midnight horrors haunt the strained and creaking ship, Thou shouldst yell in vain for brandy with a fever-sodden ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... Havana may prove, when seen through the moonlight of memory, it seems as good a place to go away from as any other, after a stifling night in a net, the wooden shutters left open in the remote hope of air, and admitting the music of a whole opera-troupe of dogs, including bass, tenor, soprano, and chorus. Instead of bouquets, you throw stones, if you are so fortunate as to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Lincoln was the profoundest that he made in his whole life. He felt burning upon his soul the truths which he uttered, and all present felt that he was true to his own soul. His feelings once or twice came near stifling utterance. He quivered with emotion. He attacked the Nebraska Bill with such warmth and energy that all felt that a man of strength was its enemy, and that he intended to blast it, if he could, by strong and manly efforts. He was most successful, and the house ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... every evening, sitting in the stifling, ugly house, and poured out his soul as if it were a libation to a goddess. She sometimes answered by telegraph, sometimes by a perfumed note. He schooled himself not to feel hurt. Why should Babette write? Does a ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... were loved in life?" said the Empress, caressing the bird in the cage with one jewelled finger, but attentively observing her son from the corner of her august eye. "They were; they are not," he remarked sententiously and stifling a yawn; it was a drowsy afternoon. "But who is it that has abandoned us? Surely not the ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... nevertheless she made it quietly and cheerfully, expecting no reward nor desiring any. She didn't expect much of Elsie Marley, indeed, recollecting the atmosphere of the household in which the girl had been reared, which she had herself found impossibly stifling during a short visit ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... friends, o'erwhelmed with terror, told All that I knew of that which he had done. Thereat he uttered piercing cries of grief, Such as had never come from him before, For in loud lamentations to indulge He ever held a craven weakling's part, And, stifling outcries, moaned not loud but deep, Like the deep roaring of a wounded bull. But in this plight, prostrate and desperate, Refusing food and drink, my hero lies Amidst the mangled bodies, motionless. ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... whither, she knew not. A cold numbness had chilled her senses, but still her feet drove her irresistibly onward. A dark current seemed to have seized her, she only felt that she was adrift, and she cared not whither it bore her. In spite of the stifling dullness which oppressed her, her body seemed as light as air. At last,—she knew not where,—she heard the roar of the sea resounding in her ears, a genial warmth thawed the numbness of her senses, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... outlived the storm Won but a feeble, half-contemptuous smile; And if a bird attempted a brief song, I closed my ears lest it should burst my brain. After much wandering I came at last To cooler skies and a less stifling air; And finally to this more temperate clime. Where every beauty is of milder type— Where the simoon nor tempest ever come, And I can soothe the fever of my soul In the bland ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... a mutual opening 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 ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... one came. The signal was given for departure. The train glided out. Diana's head slipped back and her eyes closed. Muriel, stifling her tears, dared ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again, and her soul appeared to wrap itself in denser gloom. The air of the room seemed to Amy stifling. The next moment she felt as if she were pierced with sharp spears of ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... attitudes favorable to the contemplation of her charms. She complied with all; from belly to side, from side to back I turned her; she smiled as if pleased, curious, and astonished; and when I turned to quench my passion in her, she met me with an ardour less demonstrative, but more stifling and satisfying than Charlotte; it was a worry to think that I had twice fucked her, and seemed to have finished each time ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... exercised about Duncan. She wondered what had happened to him after she had been parted from him by that shameful trick of the wicked "fairy mother." How angry and indignant she felt when she thought of it! Had Duncan wanted her? She seemed to see him lying up in that dark, stifling garret, perfectly still, on the dirty, unwholesome bed. She crept up and touched him. He was cold and dead. Then her mother came in, with grannie and Robbie following in slow procession behind. They were dressed in beautiful white robes like angels, and as they ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... hither flood And lean intent above the beach. Their beating hearts inhibit speech With stifling tides ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... rose and towered over Cameron, and then plunged down upon him, and clutched at his throat with terrible stifling hands. The harsh contact, the pain awakened Cameron to his peril before it was too late. Desperate fighting saved him from being hurled to the ground and stamped and crushed. Warren seemed a maddened giant. There was a reeling, swaying, wrestling ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and held her hand as she stepped from one 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 scarely 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 to come out ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... seeing maniacally in all men the assassins of his fame! and with the whole world against him, struggling for the thing that was his life, through day and night, in thoughts and in dreams ... struggling, stifling, breaking the hearts of the creatures dearest to him, in the conflict for which there was no victory, though he could not choose but fight it. Tell me if Laocooen's anguish was not as an ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... between Russia at Constantinople and Turkey at Constantinople, I should prefer the latter. The Turkish is in ordinary times a less stifling despotism than ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... tell," Mrs. Chatterton was saying to herself in the other room; "what good could it do? Oh! this vile air is stifling. Will no one come to say she is better?" And ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering reflection ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... or two, and then waited, for Andrew appeared to be attracted more than repelled by the gloomy aspect of the blank-looking place, and then, all at once, Frank's heart seemed to stand still, and a stifling sense of suffocation to affect him, so that it was some moments before he could speak, and then it was in a tone of voice ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... and exceedingly straight-laced in their morality. They were fine Bible students, indeed, Bible experts. This was a great joy to me at first, but the atmosphere to a red-blooded, jubilant nature like mine was rather stifling after a while. I was fond of a good story and was full of Irish folklore and fairy stories, and I noticed my brethren did not relish my outbursts of laughter. It was explosive, spontaneous and hearty, but not contagious among them. Their faces assumed a rather pained ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... in the sciences does not take on these delirious forms; it has the advantage of resting on an objective basis: it is the substitute of an unrepresentable reality. Scientific culture, which people often accuse of stifling imagination, on the contrary opens to it a field much vaster than esthetics. Astronomy delights in infinitudes of time and space: it sees worlds arise, burn at first with the feeble light of a nebular mass, glow like suns, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... may be born to erstwhile rural parents and may come to adult years with only a scant sense of the peace and beauty that can be found a few miles away, and often with little sense of anything else but the crumbling, teeming, stifling, noisy, sooty slums where they live—the other side of the monumental splendor along the Federal riverfront. Not all urban frustration is an outgrowth of the physical environment by any means, but much is. And this ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... they put his bloody shirt upon me? Already, without that, I swim in blood.... Why do I not drown in it?... How cold the blood is to-day!... Once it used to scald me, and this is no better! In the world it is stifling, in the gave so cold.... 'Tis dreadful to be a corpse. Fool that I am, I sought death. O, let me live but for one little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... upon a sparrow. Within it sat two women, thickly veiled, and I give you my word that in a sense I pitied them, for not a doubt of it, but they were in the act of congratulating themselves upon their escape from France. But sentiment may become fatal if permitted to interfere with enterprise. Stifling my regrets I desired them to alight, and they being wise obeyed me without demur. I allowed them to retain their veils. I sought the sight of things other than women's faces, and a brief survey of the ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... from the one to the other in open-mouthed astonishment for a minute or two, and then it dawned upon him that Minnie looked, to say the least of it, uncomfortable, and stifling his curiosity, which was by this time greater than ever, as best he ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... slaying the slain. See, by the living God! see those foot Charging down hill—hot, hurried, and mute! They loll their tongues out! Ah-hah! pell-mell! Horses roll in a human hell; Horse and man they climb one another— Which is the beast, and which is the brother? Mangling, stifling, stopping shrieks With the tread of torn-out cheeks, Drinking each other's bloody breath— Here's the fleshliest feast of Death. An odour, as of a slaughter-house, The distant raven's dark ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... with a strongly marked and serious countenance, dressed in sober-coloured habiliments, had lifted up the stifling folds of the tent and was bending over me. "Can you speak, my lad?" said he in English, "what is the matter with you? If you could but tell me, I could perhaps help you—" "What is it that you say? I can't hear you. I will kneel down;" and he flung himself on the ground, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... difficulty in stifling a smile at this specimen of Mynheer Krause's eagerness for intelligence. He very gravely walked up to him, looked all round the room as if he was afraid that the walls would hear him, and then whispered for a few seconds into the ear of ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it," she added, meeting an amused look. "I know a good deal more about sheep farming than either of you gentlemen. I can ride anything but a buckjumper, and boss the shepherds, and I do love the life, no stifling in fields and copses! I only wish you would come too, Bear; it would do you ever so much good to get a little red paint on those white banker's hands ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... All was stifling hot, with a breath of coal dust and smoke to choke the lungs. Even the Greek firemen sweated and cursed, though they were used to that environment. An ordinary man might have succumbed simply to that fiery, foul atmosphere. It was like a ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... preserves it near him in the cavern. The majority of these underground people have no clothes to speak of. Girls of fifteen and big boys go about absolutely without any linen. The rest—perhaps three or four—have only a few linen rags upon them. In the stifling atmosphere of these cave-dwellings it is by no means rare to see big children almost, if not absolutely, naked. I saw a great girl with a wild shock of uncombed hair, wearing nothing but a very ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in the same spot, drinking deep draughts from the 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 sagged under ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 us sleep with our windows open, which would ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... prepared to drop down the wide chimney; for at night the fire in such a cabin was allowed to smoulder, the coals being kept alive in the ashes. But Mrs. Merrill seized a feather-bed and, tearing it open, threw it on the embers; the flame and stifling smoke leaped up the chimney, and in a moment both Indians came down, blinded and half smothered, and were killed by the big resolute woman before they could recover themselves. No further attempt was made to molest the cabin ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... keen and frosty, the cold, slaty sky was thickly studded with sparkling stars, the snow was crusted over—it was a fine, fresh, clear, wintry night; at another time it would have invigorated and inspired him; now the air seemed stifling, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... heads, and wring their many hands in sympathy. Night, growing pale before it, gradually fades out of the church, but lingers in the vaults below, and sits upon the coffins. And now comes bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and reddening the spire, and drying up the tears of dawn, and stifling its complaining; and the dawn, following the night, and chasing it from its last refuge, shrinks into the vaults itself and hides, with a frightened face, among the dead, until night returns, refreshed, to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... where he could grasp the edge, but his strength had given out when one more effort would have freed him. He felt himself sinking back. Over him was the sky, reddened now by the fire that raged below. Through the hole the pent-up smoke in the building found vent and rushed in a black and stifling cloud. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... senses. It might be an hallucination, the baseless fabric of a vision, some image conjured from the deep recesses of his loving heart by his enfeebled disordered imagination, and yet he surely had heard a living voice, "Seymour—John—Oh, my love!" Stifling the beating of his heart, holding his breath even, stepping softly, lest he should affright the airy vision, he staggered to the door and stood gazing; then he ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Sacramento Valley, and very repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at a distance of 125 miles from the Pacific, has an elevation of only thirty feet. The mercury stood at 103 degrees in the shade, and the fine white dust was stifling. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... the bells. Behind its moving masses the dawn of a new day—Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St. Bartholomew—was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited the workers, still lay in twilight; still the gleam of the torches, falling on the house-fronts, heralded the coming of the crowd. But the dawn was growing, the sun was about to rise. Soon the day ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... accorded a free hand to the Devil to do his worst. As a matter of fact, it was simply a phrase adopted by the French economists of the eighteenth century to summarize the conclusion of their arguments against the antiquated restrictions which were then stifling the trade and commerce of France (see G. Weuleresse, Le Mouvement Physiocratique en France, 1910, Vol. II, p. 17). Properly understood, it is not a maxim which any party need be ashamed ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in the west wing she rushed, stumbling over hose lines, battling against the stifling clouds of smoke which rolled down the corridor. The room was gained, the picture secured, and she turned to make good her escape, all other valuables forgotten. But even in that brief moment the ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... already preceded me into the stifling fumes. With a last long breath of fresh air I plunged in after him, scarcely knowing what would happen to me. I saw the figure on the floor, seized it, and backed out of the room ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... case was different; even the highest officials were not admitted until they had waited a long time, and after a great deal of trouble. They all waited patiently every day, like so many slaves, in a body, in a narrow and stifling room; for the risk they ran if they absented themselves was most serious. There they remained standing all the time on tip-toe, each trying to keep his face above his fellow's, that the eunuchs, as they came out, might see ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search of flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her feet. With a pleasure in which compunction ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... cared these heavy-booted, rough-handed, big-framed, iron-sinewed, strong-hearted men for fresh air? They got enough of that, during their long hours on deck, to counteract the stifling odours ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sacramento 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 of silvery ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... quite undone, Cried, while thus pleading with her son, Who, leaning on his blacksmith's forge The stifling sobs quelled in his gorge. "'Tis very true," he said, "that we are poor, But had I that forgot?... I go to work, my ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... nor any of the servants under him had appeared, a circumstance that, to Monte-Cristo, seemed inexplicable. He, however, did not pause to give it thought, but dashed up the stairway and strove to reach his wife's apartment; blinding, stifling clouds of smoke, through which penetrated the glare of the conflagration, drove him back again and again, but he renewed his attempts to force a passage with undaunted energy and courage. Finally, compressing his lips and holding his nostrils with the thumb and forefinger ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... how little that old man musing in his parlour had had to do for years with its activities. Cornal Colin would sit of an evening with candles extravagantly burning more numerous than before to make up for the glowing heart extinguished; the long winter nights, black and stifling and immense around the burgh town, and the wind with a perpetual moan among the trees, would find him abandoned to his sorry self, looking into the fire, the week's paper on his knees unread, and him full of old remembrances and regrets. It had become for him a parlour full of ghosts. He ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... 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 took possession ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... that he had been lurking in a close and stifling hold, into which no single ray of sunlight penetrated, for three whole days— three ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... day. On shore the heat was intense, and it was a relief to get out of the stifling carriages of the crowded boat train, and to breathe the gentle air from the sea that met them as they crossed the gangway on to the steamer. Juliet enjoyed every moment of the journey; and would have been sorry when ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... 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 smells—beer, garlic, tobacco, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... stepped down from the bridge, having turned the wheel over to Alderson, he was approached timidly by Neidlinger and Gallagher. Higgins, in partial payment for his share in the revolt, was taking a turn at shoveling coal in the stifling furnace room. ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... he, "this place is stifling. If the Dons mean to make an end of us, they may as well ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the opera-glasses and she raised them to scan the house. It was a gala night and the theatre was hung with flags and brilliantly illuminated. There were candles everywhere, and the great chandelier that hung from the ceiling was lit. The heat was stifling, and the incessant fluttering of fans gave the women in the parterre and in the crowded boxes a look of unrest that was belied by their placid, expressionless faces. Many glanced up at the Menotti in their box. There was ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... 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 ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... miles, and was seen in the far distance terminating in the low sandy promontory of Fumacina, where the Tiber falls into the sea. Alas! what vicissitudes had that coast been witness to! There, where the idle wave was now rolling, rode in other days the galleys of Rome; and there, where the stifling sirocco was sweeping the herbless plain, rose the villas of her senators, amid the bloom and fragrance of the orange and the olive. To that coast Caesar had loved to come, to inhale its breezes, and to pass, in the society of his select friends, those hours which ambition ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... square moved forward by its right to get possession of a knoll of rising ground. All had fought in this manner many times before, and there was no novelty in the entertainment; always the same hot and stifling formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same boltlike rush of the enemy, the same pressure on the weakest side, the few minutes of hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only by the yells of those whom their handful ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... But stifling her mirth lest she awake them, she called her husband to her side. After a few whispered words, they went away, and returned with down quilts and steamer rugs, which they gently tucked about the vanquished heroes, and then lowering the lights left ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... of all arms. Every few minutes there would come a break in the flow, and our motor would wriggle through, advance a few yards, and be stopped again by a widening of the torrent that jammed us into the ditch and splashed a dazzle of dust into our eyes. The dust was stifling—but through it, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... against an insurmountable difficulty; my brain was almost on fire; my eyes were strained with staring at the parchment; the whole absurd collection of letters appeared to dance before my vision in a number of black little groups. My mind was possessed with temporary hallucination—I was stifling. I wanted air. Mechanically I fanned myself with the document, of which now I saw the back ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... dreary barocco emblems mar the dignity of death. A bulky Pieta by Gian Bologna, with Madonna's face unfinished, towers up and crowds the narrow cell. Religion has evanished from this late Renaissance art, nor has the after-glow of Guido Reni's hectic piety yet overflushed it. Chilled by the stifling humid sense of an extinct race here entombed in its last representative, we gladly emerge from the sepulchral vault into the air ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... being naturally a religious and mystical soul, but blighted and narrowed through the influence of Catholicism. We are made to feel that the only thing the matter with him is his creed—"all those stifling notions of sin, penance, absolution, direction, as they were conventionalized in Catholic practice and chattered about by ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... she stood in the middle of the stage stifling with a sense of mortification and defeat, then turned, and without a word or look to any one went ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... laden with costly pottery, reached from floor to ceiling. The polish and the colors flashed already in the fierce light of the closely neighboring flames. Great drifts and clouds of smoke against the windows were urging in and stifling the air. The first rush of water from the engines beat ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... fit; and first I tried to put leeches on her temples, but they would not bite, and we resolved to carry her into the fresh breeze in the verandah, for the air of the room seemed laden with something close and stifling. When I threw back the covering of the bed, I perceived that the veins of both arms had been cut, and a few drops of blood stained her night-dress; also there was a small empty bottle in the bed with "Laudanum" on its label. The terrible truth was evident—she ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... broke into the shrill laugh of hysteria. Jane led her to the couch and sat beside her. Kitty leaned forward, staring at the floor. Now and then she pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, stifling. Suddenly she looked ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... faint and far away, like an echo out of a vast distance, and it was some seconds before he could realize where he was or form any definite idea of his surroundings. Gradually he became conscious that the air was no longer hot and stifling, but cool and fragrant with the sweet, resinous breath of pines. Looking about him, he saw they were winding upward along an avenue cut through a forest of small, slender pines, which extended below them on one side and far above them ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... clapped her hands and laughed with glee. Her gladness gave Carley a little twinge of conscience. Jealously was an unjust and stifling thing. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... from her seat and looked haughtily at her son, her heart beating with great, stifling throbs. In all the years of their lives they had never before exchanged one cross word with each other, and in that moment she hated, with all the strength of her soul, the girl who had sown discord between them, and she wished that Heaven had stricken the girl dead ere ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... pyramids of skulls festooned with human hair, a cave inhabited by reptiles with human faces, and an apartment whose walls were hung with carpets of a thousand kinds and a thousand hues, which moved slowly to and fro as if stirred by human creatures stifling beneath their weight. But Beckford passes swiftly from one mood to another, and was only momentarily fascinated by terror. So infinite is the variety of Vathek in scenery and in temper that it seems like its wealthy, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and was put under the protection of a wild, rough- looking peasant woman, who stared at her like something from another world, but at length showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal among her father ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Cafe Royal. It was a sultry evening, and London was still stifling after a sweltering day. One had the feeling that the roofs and masonry of the buildings all about were still burning, as probably they were, with the heat of the sun that had been pouring down upon them all day; and the big city seemed to breathe its hot dust into ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... excitement and expectation that she could not be genuinely harsh. She had been thrilled by the audacity of the visit to Mr. Cannon. And though she hoped from it little but a negative advantage, she was experiencing the rare happiness of adventure. She had slipped out for a moment from the confined and stifling circle of domestic dailiness. She had scented the feverish perfume of the world. And she owed all this to herself alone! She meant on the morrow, while her mother was marketing, to pursue the enterprise; the consciousness of this intention was sweet, but she knew not why ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... future. But the rest of them waited in stolid, silent patience, sitting quite still in unbroken rank along the wall, their overcoats, if they had them, buttoned tight around their chins, though the office was stifling hot. The dirty man who was talking to the stenographer filled a pipe with some very bad tobacco and ostentatiously began smoking it, but not ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... seated around the long table in the stifling, breathless room, the armourer at the head. Those who came by way of the sewer had performed ablutions in the queer toilet room that once had been a secret vault for the storing of feudal plunder. What air there was came from the narrow ventilator ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... French, and a sermon in French was preached by an Abb; the music was excellent, all things airy and tasteful, and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris. The Cathedral of St. Mary, which I afterwards visited, where the Irish attend, was a contrast indeed, and more like one of our stifling Irish Catholic churches in Boston or New York, with intelligence in so small a proportion to the number of faces. During the three Sundays I was in San Francisco, I visited three of the Episcopal churches, and the Congregational, a Chinese Mission Chapel, and on the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... broils of the European nations, there would remain but one act to close our tragedy, that is, to break up our union; and even this they have ventured seriously and solemnly to propose and maintain by arguments in a Connecticut paper. I have been happy, however, in believing, from the stifling of this effort, that that dose was found too strong, and excited as much repugnance there as it did horror in other parts of our country, and that whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... bedtime. Come never, I would say to these spoilers of my dinner; but if you come, never go! The fact is, this interruption does not happen very often; but every time it comes by surprise, that present bane of my life, orange wine, with all its dreary stifling consequences, follows. Evening company I should always like, had I any mornings; but I am saturated with human faces (divine forsooth!) and voices all the golden morning; and five evenings in a week would be as much as I should covet to be in company; but I assure you that is a ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... came forth. With a shuddering avoidance of the water he came tearing along as one running from a ghost, and was darting past the trees, when he found himself detained by an arm of great strength. Mr. Pike clapped his other hand upon the boy's mouth, stifling a howl ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 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 voices ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to get out again. There was, in every room, an aged smell, grown faint with confinement. It pined in all the cupboards and drawers. In the little rooms of communication between great rooms, it was stifling. If you turned a picture - to come back to the pictures - there it still was, clinging to the wall behind the frame, like a ...
— To be Read at Dusk • Charles Dickens
... The room 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, when ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boys, it was no good bothering. Keep a look-out? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it too—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact. What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was very far from being aggressive—it was not even defensive, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... walked on, looking out for a disengaged hansom. I could hardly breathe: my heart seemed stifling me. What was in her mind? What would the next few minutes mean ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... stole a glance at his companion, wondering if she shared his feelings. Her rapt profile betrayed no unrest, but politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that she did not feel. He leaned back impatiently, stifling another yawn, and trying to fix his attention on the stage. Great things were going forward there, and he was not insensible to the stern beauties of the ancient drama. But the interpretation of the play seemed to him as airless and lifeless as the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... again, striking the polished oak in deadly cadence, stifling the voices. Over the stillness, one man spoke. He recognized the black voice of the judge and took his hands from his ears and put them in his lap. He was told to stand and ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... Note.) at most, seems hardly sufficient to protect the grubs against the inclemencies of the weather. Set on its pebble in the open air, without any sort of shelter, the nest will have to undergo the heat of summer, which will turn each cell into a stifling furnace, followed by the autumn rains, which will slowly wear away the stonework, and by the winter frosts, which will crumble what the rains have respected. However hard the cement may be, can it possibly resist all these agents of destruction? And, even if it does resist, will not the grubs, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... pitifully few nickels for car-fare and lunch, in the cloak-room with her coat and hat. But she did not stop to think of that. She was fleeing again, this time on foot, from a man. She half expected he might pursue her, and make her come back to the hated work in the stifling store with his wicked face moving everywhere above the crowds. But she turned not to look back. On over the slushy pavements, under the leaden sky, with a few busy flakes ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... parlour pungent at all times with the odour of liquor,—but used only on rare occasions, most of The Palmetto's patrons preferring the even more stifling atmosphere of the bar-room,—the Wells Fargo Agent had been watching and waiting ever since he had left The Polka Saloon. On a table in front of him was a bottle, for it was a part of Ashby's scheme of things to solace thus all such ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... a pause that seemed to George to stretch on and on endlessly. The rain pattered on the leaky roof. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled dismally. The darkness pressed down like a blanket, stifling thought. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to the left. There's a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid place always dirty and stifling. Then there's the operating-room, then another room for beds, then the kitchen. Outside to the right there's the garden, dry now with the heat, and the orchard smells of the men they've buried in ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the force of the wind could be fully appreciated, especially after leaving the stifling fo'castle. It seemed to stand up against you like a wall, making it almost impossible to move on the heaving decks or to breathe as the fierce gusts came dashing by. The schooner was hove to under jib, foresail, and mainsail. We proceeded to lower the foresail and make it fast. The night was dark, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... system of corruption by which he and the other steamer owners were able time after time not only to continue their control of Congress and the postal authorities, but to defeat postal reform measures. For fifteen years Vanderbilt and his associates succeeded in stifling every bill introduced in Congress for the reduction of the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... And my father is not young, Kathleen. So I thought I'd like to run down and take him out to dinner once or twice—to a roof-garden or something, you know. It's rather pathetic that men of his age, grown gray in service, should feel obliged to remain in the stifling ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... murdering or cursing all who resisted its advance. It exterminated scepticism by stifling knowledge, and putting a merciless veto on free thought and free speech, and by rewarding philosophers and discoverers with the faggot and the chain. It held its power for centuries by force of hell-fire, and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... in the day and the atmosphere of the room had become stifling; but no one seemed to be conscious of any discomfort, and a general gasp of excitement passed through the room when the coroner, taking out a box from under a pile of papers, disclosed to the general gaze the famous white ribbon with its dainty ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... there was no one in sight; but he noticed that a side door of the Cathedral was ajar. The sacristan must have forgotten to shut it. Surely nothing could be going on there so late at night. He might as well go in and sleep on one of the benches instead of in the stifling barn; he could slip out in the morning before the sacristan came; and even if anyone did find him, the natural supposition would be that mad Diego had been saying his prayers in some corner, and ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... The weather had cleared up a little, but a kind of veil of dust, like a thick gauze, was still spread over the surface of the heavens, and the sun made every glittering atom of dust glisten again within the circuit of its rays. The heat was stifling; but as the king did not seem to pay any attention to the appearance of the heavens, no one made himself uneasy about it, and the promenade, in obedience to the orders which had been given by the queen, took its course in the direction of Apremont. The courtiers who followed ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superstition, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry them on, while the very emancipation our Government's busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to rob ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... of those who have passed away in the latter part of the period under study the power of initiative has gone. New proposals are hushed. Variation is discouraged; the rut of custom and convention is preferred. And a subtle stifling air of the impossibility of all active purposes pervades social and religious and business activity ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... weaker, but clung to life with extraordinary tenacity. And now very bitterly they felt the evils of this voluntarily embraced poverty, for the summer heat was for a few days almost tropical, and the tiny little rooms in the lodging-house were stifling. Brian was very anxious to have the patient moved across to his father's house; but, though Charles Osmond said all he could in favor of the scheme, the other doctors would not consent, thinking the risk ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... under the familiarities of prolonged intercourse, without any immediate appeal to my amour propre, I know not; but every reflective mind, conscious of being accessible to antipathies, will remember that one certain method of stifling them is for the object to make some appeal to our interest or our vanity: in the engagement of these more powerful feelings, the antipathy is quickly strangled. At any rate it is so in my case, and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... same intelligence, adding the description of his disguise: on which the worthy magistrate put on his mask and bauta, and went out himself; when his eyes confirming the report of his informants, and the reflection on his duty stifling all remorse, he sent publicly for Foscarini in the morning, whom the populace attended all ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... will always dispose of surplus Cabbage advantageously, so there can be no serious objection to keeping up a constant succession. Plant out from seed-beds as fast as the plants become strong enough, for stifling and starving tend to club, mildew, and blindness. Where Red Cabbage is in demand for use with game in autumn, seed should ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... came somewhat to 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, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... something about 'Jenny Jones, of Hampstead,' and then withdrew. To Kate Mr. A. assumed a gallant, lover-like manner; to John King an air of half-amused defiance. By-and-bye two stones were thrown violently upon the table, but no one expressed any audible alarm. Still the room was hot and stifling, the darkness affected the coolest imagination, and straining one's eyes and ears for spiritual manifestations produced a not unnatural feeling of uneasiness in the mind. Sometimes I fancied the table ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... all around me men were swaying, striking, shooting, panting, locked in a deadly embrace. A sweating, red-faced soldier closed with me; chin to chin, breast to breast we wrestled; and I shall never forget the stifling struggle—every detail remains, his sunburned face, wet with sweat and powder-smeared; his irregular teeth showing when I got him by the throat, and the awful change that came over his visage when Jack Mount shoved the muzzle ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Red Ben ran his 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 ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... very early that year, and it was the hottest summer that Poppy had ever known. Even at the end of May and the beginning of June the heat was so great that it made people ill and tired and cross. Poppy's mother, who was never able to leave her bed, felt it very much. The court was close and stifling, and the old window in the small bedroom would only open a little way at the bottom, so that very little air could get into the room, and the poor woman lay hour after hour panting for breath, and ...
— Poppy's Presents • Mrs O. F. Walton
... smoke from the tunnel rolled in a thick cloud about them, stifling them. The girl, dazed with the roar and blinded by the smoke, could only cling to her protector. For an instant they felt as if they were about to be drawn into the awful power of the rushing monster. Then it had passed, and a roar of silence followed, ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... 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 favor 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, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at home, was to be found at the stopping-place. Harris tied his team at the door and went in, shaking the snow and frost from his great-coat. The air inside was close and stifling with tobacco, not unmixed with stronger fumes. A much-smoked oil lamp, hung by a wall-bracket, shed a certain sickly light through the thick air, and was supplemented in its illumination by rays from the door of a capacious wood stove which ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... who cannot trust his happier instinct, but perforce believes that beyond the sepulchral line of mortality he shall know no more of his friends, may find, as helps to a willing acquiescence in what is fated, either one of two possible contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the stifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness, but all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone of my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... among the educated class. They had some profound thinkers among them: Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the Kolokol in London in the Russian language, and by their agents spread it broadcast over Russia. The stifling of the insurrection in Poland strengthened the reactionary party. More repressive edicts were issued, with the usual result, that secret societies multiplied everywhere. Then came the revolution and commune in Paris, which greatly strengthened the spread of revolutionary ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... immaculateness and order, was as dreary as a tomb, and as Lily, turning from her brief repast between shrouded sideboards, wandered into the newly-uncovered glare of the drawing-room she felt as though she were buried alive in the stifling limits of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Cadogan Square was still in the hands of the police. To this house and particularly to Kara's bedroom T. X. from time to time repaired, and reproduced as far as possible the conditions which obtained on the night of the murder. He had the same stifling fire, the same locked door. The latch was dropped in its socket, whilst T. X., with a stop watch in his hand, made elaborate calculations and acted certain parts which he did not reveal to ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... Look into our tent, or enter, if you can bear the stifling smoke and the close atmosphere. There, wedged close together, you will see a circle of stout warriors, passing the pipe around, joking, telling stories, and making themselves merry, after their fashion. We were also infested by little copper-colored naked boys and snake-eyed ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... all leisure, though, thus hanging about the Equator under the scorching sun, now at noon precisely perpendicular over our heads, the heat at night too being almost as stifling and the stars as bright as moons; for Captain Gillespie took advantage of our inaction to "set up" the rigging, which had slackened considerably since we entered the tropics, the heat making the ropes stretch so that our masts got loose and the ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, 'THE SCREW,' was solely indebted to his own resources, and shipped his good humour, like his provisions, without any contribution or assistance from the owners. A dark, low, stifling cabin, surrounded by berths all filled to overflowing with men, women, and children, in various stages of sickness and misery, is not the liveliest place of assembly at any time; but when it is so crowded ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens |
